THE "MANCHURIAN REPUBLICAN" AND HIS (PROBABLY FUTILE) FIGHT TO KEEP A FEW LIBERAL CRUMBS
The reason I alternately rail against President Obama and defend him against charges of being a Republican in Democrat's clothing is that I genuinely believe he believes he's fighting the good fight, and I also think he's passed up opportunities to just rubber-stamp the Republican agenda -- even though I agree that he's done a very poor job of sticking up for our values. Here's what I'm seeing as I read the news that John Boehner has walked away from negotiations on a "grand bargain": obvious Obama has disastrously allowed this hostage crisis to take place; obviously he's willing to put the core Democratic programs, Medicare and Social Security, on the table; obviously he's willing to accede to other draconian cuts; obvious he's not willing to argue that it's insane to go Hooverite at this moment, or even that, if you're going to go Hooverite, it's crazy the budget cut/revenue increase ratio to be so one-sided in favor of cuts...
... and yet he's fighting for a tiny but crucial bit of liberalism, and that seems to be what was intolerable to Boehner:
...Tax policy disputes were at the center of the collapse, including differences with the White House over President Barack Obama's demand that future tax reforms must maintain or increase the progressivity of the tax code....
Ending oil and gas tax breaks, as well as the favorable "carried interest" capital gains rates used to shelter investor income, would be part of the picture. But reform also would have to contribute its share of new revenues.
Boehner's camp argued that much of this could be accomplished through the extra revenues generated from new economic growth. But it would have been very difficult to cover the entire $1 trillion this way and some net increase in taxes -- perhaps $400 billion -- seemed almost certain, albeit much smaller than the spending cuts Obama was offering.
In this context there was a fear that some tax breaks, such as favorable capital gains, could be jeopardized. And it appears the Boehner negotiators wanted a freer hand than the White House would accept given its insistence that middle- and lower-income tax payers be kept whole.
Progressivity was to be measured by the percentage in after-tax income for each quintile as well as the top 2 percent, and that was a standard that apparently met objections from the speaker's camp.
A Republican familiar with the negotiations agreed that the tax issues were the central issue....
So Obama was talking about a $4 deficit reduction package in which a mere 25% was supposed to come from new revenues and a mere 10% was supposed to come from revenues generated by tax increases -- and those pittances were too much for Boehner, as was an insistence that non-rich taxpayers wouldn't pay a greater share of the tax burden after all aspects of the bargain kicked in. If that's the case, that's a fight for some degree of liberal principle. So I give Team Obama a little credit.
And yet Boehner holds all the cards -- he has nothing to lose by playing good cop and hoping that Obama will give everything away voluntarily, or at least he has nothing to lose by seeming to be interested in a deal, because he knows Democrats, and Obama in particular, will blink first, either just as the debt ceiling is about to be reached or just after the Republicans blow everything up.
Meanwhile, I don't know how the hell Time's Jay Newton-Small can write this, and I'm baffled as to why Steve Benen is nodding in agreement:
...the collapse of the grand bargain leaves President Obama in a more favorable political position. If both parties agree to cut $2 trillion from the budget with minor tax increases....
Right there Newton-Small loses me: Republicans are simply never going to agree to any tax increases. They don't have to. They won't be punished if everything blows up.
...If both parties agree to cut $2 trillion from the budget with minor tax increases, he'll notch a bipartisan accomplishment. But he can also say he tried something more ambitious in putting cuts to Social Security and Medicare on the table without facing the political fallout of actually slashing those programs. He went big and congressional Republicans -- not to mention the noticeably silent 2012 Republican presidential candidates -- didn't. It will be Republicans who will have to justify bowing to the extreme wing of their party and walking away from a deal that included some ten times more spending cuts than revenue increases.
Rhetorically, however, Republicans, particularly Republican presidential candidates, are "going big" -- because in empty rhetoric you can call for anything and it sounds good: Cut trillions and pass a balanced budget amendment and don't vote for a debt ceiling increase and go for a flat fax or a "Fair Tax" or a Fed audit or the abolition of the EPA or an abolition of the capital gains tax or an abolition of the "death tax" or the repeal of "Obamacare" or all of the above, and more.... This is where Republican rhetoric stands now. Low-information voters don't understand the implications of it all; they just know Republicans are promising ponies -- blue-sky promises of balanced budgets and jobs and lower/fairer/simpler taxes -- while Obama, in the real world, possibly accedes to benefit cuts and absolutely doesn't bring the economy back. And God knows what he'll agree to when a debt ceiling crisis is either imminent or at hand. So how on earth is Obama at a political advantage?
Sunday, July 10, 2011
Saturday, July 09, 2011
WELL, AS LONG AS WE'RE HANDING OUT A'S FOR EFFORT...
John Cole flags this post from Eli at Firedoglake:
Worst President Ever, Revisited
No, I'm not ready to crown Barack Obama the Worst President Ever just yet, but consider this:
Yes, George W. Bush wrecked our economy, destroyed New Orleans, turned a budget surplus into massive deficits, ignored warnings of a major terrorist attack and used that mistake to lead us into two disastrous military quagmires...
But he also pushed relentlessly for conservative policies and delivered for his base with war, deregulation, tax cuts, environmental rollbacks, and an army of right-wing ideologues embedded in the federal government and judiciary. He failed to privatize Social Security, but not for lack of trying.
Barack Obama, on the other hand, inherited a mess rather than creating one. But not only has he failed to create jobs or restart the economy, he has paid only lip service to progressive policies and betrayed his base at almost every turn....
So which is worse? The president who serves his base and sets the country on fire, or the president who stiffs his base and fights fire with gasoline?
If I'm following this logic correctly, the results from the Bush presidency were horrible and the results of the Obama presidency are horrible so far, but we ought to give Bush credit because he doled out the horrors deliberately.
By that logic, I guess we ought to ask: who piloted a mass transportation vehicle in the most monstrous way in the past century -- the 9/11 hijackers or the captain of the Titanic?
Really, it's an open question, isn't it? Oh, sure, the 9/11 hijackers killed nearly 3,000 people with malice aforethought, but that's just the point. The malice aforethought is a good thing -- they served their base. The fact that the captain of the Titanic didn't want to kill people very possibly makes him a worse person.
Right?
John Cole flags this post from Eli at Firedoglake:
Worst President Ever, Revisited
No, I'm not ready to crown Barack Obama the Worst President Ever just yet, but consider this:
Yes, George W. Bush wrecked our economy, destroyed New Orleans, turned a budget surplus into massive deficits, ignored warnings of a major terrorist attack and used that mistake to lead us into two disastrous military quagmires...
But he also pushed relentlessly for conservative policies and delivered for his base with war, deregulation, tax cuts, environmental rollbacks, and an army of right-wing ideologues embedded in the federal government and judiciary. He failed to privatize Social Security, but not for lack of trying.
Barack Obama, on the other hand, inherited a mess rather than creating one. But not only has he failed to create jobs or restart the economy, he has paid only lip service to progressive policies and betrayed his base at almost every turn....
So which is worse? The president who serves his base and sets the country on fire, or the president who stiffs his base and fights fire with gasoline?
If I'm following this logic correctly, the results from the Bush presidency were horrible and the results of the Obama presidency are horrible so far, but we ought to give Bush credit because he doled out the horrors deliberately.
By that logic, I guess we ought to ask: who piloted a mass transportation vehicle in the most monstrous way in the past century -- the 9/11 hijackers or the captain of the Titanic?
Really, it's an open question, isn't it? Oh, sure, the 9/11 hijackers killed nearly 3,000 people with malice aforethought, but that's just the point. The malice aforethought is a good thing -- they served their base. The fact that the captain of the Titanic didn't want to kill people very possibly makes him a worse person.
Right?
LUCKY FOR HER...
We just lost Betty Ford, at the age of 93. Try to imagine a Republican like this now:
...Few first ladies have been as popular as Betty Ford, and it was her frankness and lack of pretense that made her so. She spoke often in support of the Equal Rights Amendment, endorsed legalized abortion, discussed premarital sex and revealed that she intended to share a bed with her husband in the White House.
... unlike many other wives of presidents, Mrs. Ford rarely hesitated to make public her views on touchy subjects. She held a White House news conference announcing her support of the Equal Rights Amendment; the mail response ran three to one against her. In 1975, appearing on "60 Minutes," she said she "wouldn'’t be surprised" if her daughter, Susan, had a premarital affair; the mail was four to one against her. Her husband jokingly told her later that the comment had cost him 20 million votes in the 1976 election, she said....
Fortunately for her, she did all this before Murdoch, Limbaugh, Drudge, and Breitbart largely took over the dissemination of political conventional wisdom in America. Gerald Ford faced a strong challenge for the 1976 Republican presidential from Ronald Reagan, and Reagan nearly beat him. Can you imagine the level of character assassination Betty Ford might have faced with Murdoch et al. running rampant? It's hard to believe that her subsequent substance-abuse revelations would have emerged on her own terms -- I think she would have been brutalized by agenda-driven extremists.
She had a fascinating life. And she got it in just under the wire.
We just lost Betty Ford, at the age of 93. Try to imagine a Republican like this now:
...Few first ladies have been as popular as Betty Ford, and it was her frankness and lack of pretense that made her so. She spoke often in support of the Equal Rights Amendment, endorsed legalized abortion, discussed premarital sex and revealed that she intended to share a bed with her husband in the White House.
... unlike many other wives of presidents, Mrs. Ford rarely hesitated to make public her views on touchy subjects. She held a White House news conference announcing her support of the Equal Rights Amendment; the mail response ran three to one against her. In 1975, appearing on "60 Minutes," she said she "wouldn'’t be surprised" if her daughter, Susan, had a premarital affair; the mail was four to one against her. Her husband jokingly told her later that the comment had cost him 20 million votes in the 1976 election, she said....
Fortunately for her, she did all this before Murdoch, Limbaugh, Drudge, and Breitbart largely took over the dissemination of political conventional wisdom in America. Gerald Ford faced a strong challenge for the 1976 Republican presidential from Ronald Reagan, and Reagan nearly beat him. Can you imagine the level of character assassination Betty Ford might have faced with Murdoch et al. running rampant? It's hard to believe that her subsequent substance-abuse revelations would have emerged on her own terms -- I think she would have been brutalized by agenda-driven extremists.
She had a fascinating life. And she got it in just under the wire.
Friday, July 08, 2011
A BUDGET AX IN THE FACE FOREVER
Even after we get done responding to our godawful employment numbers in the most perverse way possible -- by upping the level of austerity and cutting even more government jobs (which are, after all, actual jobs paying actual money that the economy desperately needs), do you know what's going to happen? The right-wingers are going to say that the budget-cutting isn't really cutting at all:
... On Thursday's "Special Report" on the Fox News Channel, [Bill] Kristol said the Republicans were going to give in and agree to the terms set forth by the Obama administration.
"It sounds as if it's heading towards a deal," Kristol said. "It's not a deal that I'm going to like I suspect, and think I it's going to be a bad deal for conservatives and Republicans but I think they're intimidated," Kristol said. "The president has been running around talking about corporate jets and the rich, and how the sky is going to fall unless Republicans cave. And I think they're getting ready to cave in a pretty big way on Sunday.”
Basing it on what Republicans leaders have said publicly, Kristol forecast that defense spending cuts, tax increases and other cuts would be dressed up to be more than they really are in the end. And that would lead to a conservative revolt against Republicans.
"So great, we have a Republican House, and they are going to agree to the huge defense cuts, tax increases, phony spending cuts and increased debt," Kristol said. "I think there will be a huge rebellion among conservatives in the country if Republicans sign on to this deal."
(Emphasis added.)
And as Jonathan Chait notes, this argument was also recently made by James Capretta of National Review:
In the current fight, it's quite clear what President Obama and his allies are trying to accomplish. First, they want a package upon which the president can campaign in 2012. Something on the order of a "$3 trillion deficit-cutting program" (no matter how phony) -- or even $2 trillion -- would help the president downplay the big-spending, liberal image that most independent voters now have of him.
(Emphasis added again.)
Chait calls this "what I suspect is going to be the emerging conservative line on a deficit agreement." I'm sure he's right. So when we're done with this exercise, and the savage cuts doesn't improve the economy or reduce unemployment, we'll be told that they didn't work because we didn't do any real cutting -- and now we're going to have to start the job of getting rid of "big government."
I don't know how long the Republicans can keep this up. I suppose they'll do it until (a) we're literally a failed state that's devolved into anarchy or (b) they take over the entire government, at which point deficits and big government (at least the parts that don't upset the plutocrats) won't matter, will they?
Even after we get done responding to our godawful employment numbers in the most perverse way possible -- by upping the level of austerity and cutting even more government jobs (which are, after all, actual jobs paying actual money that the economy desperately needs), do you know what's going to happen? The right-wingers are going to say that the budget-cutting isn't really cutting at all:
... On Thursday's "Special Report" on the Fox News Channel, [Bill] Kristol said the Republicans were going to give in and agree to the terms set forth by the Obama administration.
"It sounds as if it's heading towards a deal," Kristol said. "It's not a deal that I'm going to like I suspect, and think I it's going to be a bad deal for conservatives and Republicans but I think they're intimidated," Kristol said. "The president has been running around talking about corporate jets and the rich, and how the sky is going to fall unless Republicans cave. And I think they're getting ready to cave in a pretty big way on Sunday.”
Basing it on what Republicans leaders have said publicly, Kristol forecast that defense spending cuts, tax increases and other cuts would be dressed up to be more than they really are in the end. And that would lead to a conservative revolt against Republicans.
"So great, we have a Republican House, and they are going to agree to the huge defense cuts, tax increases, phony spending cuts and increased debt," Kristol said. "I think there will be a huge rebellion among conservatives in the country if Republicans sign on to this deal."
(Emphasis added.)
And as Jonathan Chait notes, this argument was also recently made by James Capretta of National Review:
In the current fight, it's quite clear what President Obama and his allies are trying to accomplish. First, they want a package upon which the president can campaign in 2012. Something on the order of a "$3 trillion deficit-cutting program" (no matter how phony) -- or even $2 trillion -- would help the president downplay the big-spending, liberal image that most independent voters now have of him.
(Emphasis added again.)
Chait calls this "what I suspect is going to be the emerging conservative line on a deficit agreement." I'm sure he's right. So when we're done with this exercise, and the savage cuts doesn't improve the economy or reduce unemployment, we'll be told that they didn't work because we didn't do any real cutting -- and now we're going to have to start the job of getting rid of "big government."
I don't know how long the Republicans can keep this up. I suppose they'll do it until (a) we're literally a failed state that's devolved into anarchy or (b) they take over the entire government, at which point deficits and big government (at least the parts that don't upset the plutocrats) won't matter, will they?
RICK PERRY MISSES A GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY
The Huffington Post, citing "Republican insiders," says Rick Perry seems increasingly likely to run for president -- but one unnamed insider quoted by the HuffPo does say, "Historically speaking Rick Perry has not been a disciplined, focused person."
And, well, maybe that's true, because look at the opportunity he squandered: Last night Humberto Leal, a Mexican national convicted of the rape and murder of a teenager, was executed in his state, after the White House sought a stay of execution from the U.S. Supreme Court on the grounds that Lael wasn't informed by police of his legal right to seek assistance from the Mexican consulate. The high court rejected that argument and the execution took place -- but come on, Rick: if you want the Republican nomination for president, you should have linked an announcement of your candidacy to the execution! You should have held a press conference saying, "The SOB's dead, Texas justice has been served, and guess what? I'm running for president. YEE-HAW! U-S-A! U-S-A! Praise Jesus!"
Rick, I'm telling you: instant #1 in the polls in Iowa if you'd done that.
Oh, sure: some handwringing pantywaist liberal journalists would have declared such an announcement to be unseemly. Your obvious response would have been to denounce "political correctness" and walk away smirking. Objection rebutted!
C'mon, Rick, you missed your chance. Look at what's been the lead story all morning at Fox Nation -- a story about this case. This is the media organization that has its finger on the pulse of your potential voter base:
(Strange: You know the media cliche "If it bleeds, it leads"? At Fox, that cliche seems to have been turned on its head. You've got a Mexican accused of rape and murder who's been facing execution and is now dead -- and yet the story is about the Supreme Court rejected an Obama administration appeal. At Fox, therefore, it's "If it rebuffs Democrats, it leads, even if something else bleeds.")
A real coup for Perry would have been to wangle a postponement of the execution so that it took place on the same day as his big prayer meeting, which, of course, will take place one week before the Iowa straw poll. Pray to Jesus, kill the brown guy, flip off the Mexican consulate and the Obama administration, then announce for president -- that would have to be any Republican's idea of a perfect day! Michele who? Mitt who? The nomination would be Perry's for the asking.
The Huffington Post, citing "Republican insiders," says Rick Perry seems increasingly likely to run for president -- but one unnamed insider quoted by the HuffPo does say, "Historically speaking Rick Perry has not been a disciplined, focused person."
And, well, maybe that's true, because look at the opportunity he squandered: Last night Humberto Leal, a Mexican national convicted of the rape and murder of a teenager, was executed in his state, after the White House sought a stay of execution from the U.S. Supreme Court on the grounds that Lael wasn't informed by police of his legal right to seek assistance from the Mexican consulate. The high court rejected that argument and the execution took place -- but come on, Rick: if you want the Republican nomination for president, you should have linked an announcement of your candidacy to the execution! You should have held a press conference saying, "The SOB's dead, Texas justice has been served, and guess what? I'm running for president. YEE-HAW! U-S-A! U-S-A! Praise Jesus!"
Rick, I'm telling you: instant #1 in the polls in Iowa if you'd done that.
Oh, sure: some handwringing pantywaist liberal journalists would have declared such an announcement to be unseemly. Your obvious response would have been to denounce "political correctness" and walk away smirking. Objection rebutted!
C'mon, Rick, you missed your chance. Look at what's been the lead story all morning at Fox Nation -- a story about this case. This is the media organization that has its finger on the pulse of your potential voter base:
(Strange: You know the media cliche "If it bleeds, it leads"? At Fox, that cliche seems to have been turned on its head. You've got a Mexican accused of rape and murder who's been facing execution and is now dead -- and yet the story is about the Supreme Court rejected an Obama administration appeal. At Fox, therefore, it's "If it rebuffs Democrats, it leads, even if something else bleeds.")
A real coup for Perry would have been to wangle a postponement of the execution so that it took place on the same day as his big prayer meeting, which, of course, will take place one week before the Iowa straw poll. Pray to Jesus, kill the brown guy, flip off the Mexican consulate and the Obama administration, then announce for president -- that would have to be any Republican's idea of a perfect day! Michele who? Mitt who? The nomination would be Perry's for the asking.
BACHMANN AGREES: IN SOME WAYS, SLAVERY WASN'T SO BAD
Michele Bachmann is the first presidential candidate to sign the pledge currently being circulated by the Family Leader, a religious-right group formerly known as the Iowa Family Policy Center. The main thrust of the pledge is a vow to protect "traditional marriage" from usurping gay, "quickie divorce," and other reportedly dire threats. But as I noted in an update to my previous post on the pledge, it also includes this pronouncement (from the PDF of the text of the pledge, at the Family Leader's site):
Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families, yet sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA‟s first African-American President.
So not only was slavery an good thing for marriage, but illegitimacy was apparently invented by the guy who was inaugurated on January 20, 2009. Bachmann reads that and says, "Yup, sounds good to me."
The source for this, according to the text of the pledge, is a paper (PDF) published under the aegis of the Institute for American Values ... in 2005. So not only is our evil Negro president destroying marriage, he's using a time machine to do so. The fiend!
Michele Bachmann is the first presidential candidate to sign the pledge currently being circulated by the Family Leader, a religious-right group formerly known as the Iowa Family Policy Center. The main thrust of the pledge is a vow to protect "traditional marriage" from usurping gay, "quickie divorce," and other reportedly dire threats. But as I noted in an update to my previous post on the pledge, it also includes this pronouncement (from the PDF of the text of the pledge, at the Family Leader's site):
Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families, yet sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA‟s first African-American President.
So not only was slavery an good thing for marriage, but illegitimacy was apparently invented by the guy who was inaugurated on January 20, 2009. Bachmann reads that and says, "Yup, sounds good to me."
The source for this, according to the text of the pledge, is a paper (PDF) published under the aegis of the Institute for American Values ... in 2005. So not only is our evil Negro president destroying marriage, he's using a time machine to do so. The fiend!
Thursday, July 07, 2011
MURDOCH DEALS WITH HACKING SCANDAL THE WAY FELLOW PLUTOCRATS HAVE DEALT WITH THE RECESSION
You know -- by using the situation as an excuse to carry out cutbacks, screw ordinary workers, and protect the people at the top. That's what governments all over the world are doing now in the recession; that's what corporations have done, by using the downturn as an excuse to get "lean and mean" and demand more work from fewer workers -- and that's what Murdoch's doing in response to his scandal.
Yeah, I know it looks as if he's taking a big hit:
Murdoch to Close Tabloid Amid Fury Over Hacking
The media titan Rupert Murdoch abandoned his defiance of popular and Parliamentary pressure on Thursday, sacrificing the mass-circulation British tabloid News of the World in a bid to protect his News Corporation empire from fallout as the phone hacking scandal turned yet more disturbing....
But read on and you see he's just engaging in the sort of cost-cutting he was already considering:
The announcement raised immediate speculation that The Sun, another News International paper, might begin publishing on Sundays. Company executives had discussed earlier this year whether to merge some of the two papers' operations as a way to save money, and the domain name thesunonsunday.co.uk was registered on Tuesday.
(Emphasis added.)
And just as most corporate responses to the recession have protected the biggest of corporate bigwigs, former News of the World editor Rebekah Brooks, who's now an upper-level Murdoch corporate honcho even though all this happened on her watch, is keeping her job, as Labour Party leader Ed Miliband and others have noted:
"Some people are losing their jobs, but one person who is keeping her job is the person who was editor of News of the World at the time of the Milly Dowler episode," Mr. Miliband said, referring to the case of the 13-year old. On Monday, lawyers for her family said the paper hacked her phone after she was abducted in 2002, deleting some messages to make room for more in a move that confused police investigators and created false hope that she might still be alive....
"The staff at the News of the World have lost their jobs to save one person and her 2.5 million pound job," said one reporter at the paper, speaking of Ms. Brooks. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he did not want to harm future job prospects.
"If she had gone at the start of the week, we'd all still be employed," the reporter said. "I hope she’s worth it for Rupert." ...
Remind you of how we ordinary schlubs have been treated in the recession, and how our betters have been spared? It should.
****
HOWEVER: If the scandal hits The Sun as well -- authorities are now looking into phone-hacking allegations at that paper -- then Murdoch and Brooks could be in serious trouble. But remember, this is an era of near-absolute lack of accountability for the powerful, so don't be sure they won't worm their way out of this, too.
You know -- by using the situation as an excuse to carry out cutbacks, screw ordinary workers, and protect the people at the top. That's what governments all over the world are doing now in the recession; that's what corporations have done, by using the downturn as an excuse to get "lean and mean" and demand more work from fewer workers -- and that's what Murdoch's doing in response to his scandal.
Yeah, I know it looks as if he's taking a big hit:
Murdoch to Close Tabloid Amid Fury Over Hacking
The media titan Rupert Murdoch abandoned his defiance of popular and Parliamentary pressure on Thursday, sacrificing the mass-circulation British tabloid News of the World in a bid to protect his News Corporation empire from fallout as the phone hacking scandal turned yet more disturbing....
But read on and you see he's just engaging in the sort of cost-cutting he was already considering:
The announcement raised immediate speculation that The Sun, another News International paper, might begin publishing on Sundays. Company executives had discussed earlier this year whether to merge some of the two papers' operations as a way to save money, and the domain name thesunonsunday.co.uk was registered on Tuesday.
(Emphasis added.)
And just as most corporate responses to the recession have protected the biggest of corporate bigwigs, former News of the World editor Rebekah Brooks, who's now an upper-level Murdoch corporate honcho even though all this happened on her watch, is keeping her job, as Labour Party leader Ed Miliband and others have noted:
"Some people are losing their jobs, but one person who is keeping her job is the person who was editor of News of the World at the time of the Milly Dowler episode," Mr. Miliband said, referring to the case of the 13-year old. On Monday, lawyers for her family said the paper hacked her phone after she was abducted in 2002, deleting some messages to make room for more in a move that confused police investigators and created false hope that she might still be alive....
"The staff at the News of the World have lost their jobs to save one person and her 2.5 million pound job," said one reporter at the paper, speaking of Ms. Brooks. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he did not want to harm future job prospects.
"If she had gone at the start of the week, we'd all still be employed," the reporter said. "I hope she’s worth it for Rupert." ...
Remind you of how we ordinary schlubs have been treated in the recession, and how our betters have been spared? It should.
****
HOWEVER: If the scandal hits The Sun as well -- authorities are now looking into phone-hacking allegations at that paper -- then Murdoch and Brooks could be in serious trouble. But remember, this is an era of near-absolute lack of accountability for the powerful, so don't be sure they won't worm their way out of this, too.
AH, BUT I'M SURE THIS WASN'T WASTEFUL GOVERNMENT SPENDING
(updated)
So you may have head about this:
The Brody File has learned that The Family Leader, an influential pro-family group in Iowa will ask each of the 2012 presidential candidates to sign a marriage pledge that professes everything from marital fidelity to embracing a federal marriage amendment. The document, which has a total of fourteen points is called, "The Marriage Vow-A Declaration of Dependence Upon Marriage and Family"
...Some of the fourteen points within the document are as follows:
Personal fidelity to his/her spouse
Appointing faithful constitutionalists as judges
Opposition to any redefinition of marriage
Support for the legal advocacy for the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA)
Humane efforts to protect women and children, (sex trafficking, pornography, etc)
Rejection of anti-women Sharia Islam
Commitment to downsizing government because of the burden to the American family...
I'm sure you'll be pleased to know that this worthy organization, formerly known as Iowa Family Policy Center Action, received $3 million of your federal tax dollars during the Bush years:
Between 2004 and 2009 the politically influential Christian organization Iowa Family Policy Center (IFPC) received more than $3 million in federal grants through two subsidiaries of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
In 2004 and 2005 the IFPC received a total of $850,000 from the Administration for Children and Families' Compassion Capital Fund. From 2006 to 2009 they received $2.2 million through the U.S. Healthy Marriage Demonstration Fund, which is doled out in yearly increments of $550,000 and will be awarded to IFPC through 2011.
...The money IFPC receives apparently goes to a marriage-counseling program called Marriage Matters, which offers couples weekends along with marriage and pre-marital mentoring....
The group is known for informative campaigns like this:
The head of the group, Bob Vander Plaats, led the campaign to oust three Iowa judges who voted for marriage equality in the state; he subsequently ran for governor and, while defeated in the Republican primary, received 40% of the vote. He's tried to have the entire Iowa Supreme Court impeached; he and his group have also courted and been courted by a number of GOP presidential wannabes.
Ah, but don't worry: presumably his group didn't provide any gynecological or voter-registration services to poor people, so that federal funding in the Bush years obviously didn't help fund any political advocacy or partisanship, right?
****
UPDATE: Oh, there's a lot more to the pledge.
Included in the sweeping pledge, and in a supporting document that offers rationales for it, are provisions that:
• Ask candidates to oppose the placement of female soldiers in combat situations;
• Contend that, by one metric, African-American families are worse off than during slavery, and
• Dispute that genetics determine sexuality.
That bit about African-American families?
In arguing that the institution of marriage is under assault, Family Leader contends that by one measure African-American families were in better shape during slavery than now: African-American children were more likely to be raised in a two-parent household in 1860 than if they were born today, as the group put it, "after the election of USA's first African-American president."
Wow.
I bet Cain, Bachmann, Perry, and Santorum all sign this.
(updated)
So you may have head about this:
The Brody File has learned that The Family Leader, an influential pro-family group in Iowa will ask each of the 2012 presidential candidates to sign a marriage pledge that professes everything from marital fidelity to embracing a federal marriage amendment. The document, which has a total of fourteen points is called, "The Marriage Vow-A Declaration of Dependence Upon Marriage and Family"
...Some of the fourteen points within the document are as follows:
Personal fidelity to his/her spouse
Appointing faithful constitutionalists as judges
Opposition to any redefinition of marriage
Support for the legal advocacy for the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA)
Humane efforts to protect women and children, (sex trafficking, pornography, etc)
Rejection of anti-women Sharia Islam
Commitment to downsizing government because of the burden to the American family...
I'm sure you'll be pleased to know that this worthy organization, formerly known as Iowa Family Policy Center Action, received $3 million of your federal tax dollars during the Bush years:
Between 2004 and 2009 the politically influential Christian organization Iowa Family Policy Center (IFPC) received more than $3 million in federal grants through two subsidiaries of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
In 2004 and 2005 the IFPC received a total of $850,000 from the Administration for Children and Families' Compassion Capital Fund. From 2006 to 2009 they received $2.2 million through the U.S. Healthy Marriage Demonstration Fund, which is doled out in yearly increments of $550,000 and will be awarded to IFPC through 2011.
...The money IFPC receives apparently goes to a marriage-counseling program called Marriage Matters, which offers couples weekends along with marriage and pre-marital mentoring....
The group is known for informative campaigns like this:
The head of the group, Bob Vander Plaats, led the campaign to oust three Iowa judges who voted for marriage equality in the state; he subsequently ran for governor and, while defeated in the Republican primary, received 40% of the vote. He's tried to have the entire Iowa Supreme Court impeached; he and his group have also courted and been courted by a number of GOP presidential wannabes.
Ah, but don't worry: presumably his group didn't provide any gynecological or voter-registration services to poor people, so that federal funding in the Bush years obviously didn't help fund any political advocacy or partisanship, right?
****
UPDATE: Oh, there's a lot more to the pledge.
Included in the sweeping pledge, and in a supporting document that offers rationales for it, are provisions that:
• Ask candidates to oppose the placement of female soldiers in combat situations;
• Contend that, by one metric, African-American families are worse off than during slavery, and
• Dispute that genetics determine sexuality.
That bit about African-American families?
In arguing that the institution of marriage is under assault, Family Leader contends that by one measure African-American families were in better shape during slavery than now: African-American children were more likely to be raised in a two-parent household in 1860 than if they were born today, as the group put it, "after the election of USA's first African-American president."
Wow.
I bet Cain, Bachmann, Perry, and Santorum all sign this.
AT THIS POINT, IMPEACHMENT WOULD ACTUALLY BE A GOOD THING
You know that the White House is talking about massive budget cuts -- $4 trillion over the next few years, including "significant reductions in Medicare" and cuts in Social Security, in return for a pittance in tax increases. ("While Democrats would be asked to cut social-safety-net programs, Republicans would be asked to raise taxes, perhaps by letting tax breaks for the nation's wealthiest households expire on schedule at the end of next year." Perhaps!)
The one show of spine we're getting from the White House (even though it's almost certainly a bluff) is a hint that the 14th Amendment might be invoked to raise the debt ceiling without a vote in Congress. No, I don't believe it will happen, but at least one member of Congress says it would be an impeachable offense:
While some have asserted that the debt limit might be unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment, and therefore President Obama does not need congressional approval to raise it, Republicans have been quick to express skepticism over the idea. On Tuesday, a Republican congressman went a step further, saying that if Obama were to use that argument to bypass Congress on the issue, it would be an impeachable offense.
"This president is looking to usurp congressional oversight to find a way to get it done without us. My position is that is an impeachable act from my perspective," said Rep. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) at a meeting sponsored by the Tea Party group LowCountry 9.12 Project on Tuesday, first reported by Lindsay Street on Summerville Patch.
His comments were met with enthusiastic applause....
David Frum, in a column in which he assails Obama's weak negotiating tactics, argues that impeachment would be inevitable if Obama did this, or at least would be a sword hanging over his head:
You don't need a crystal teacup to foresee how the Tea Party will react to a bond issue in disregard of the debt ceiling. They will accuse the president of trashing the U.S. Constitution, and somebody will commence impeachment proceedings.
This shift of topic is pure win-win for the Tea Party. Unperturbed by the risk of national bankruptcy, they can now hurl charges of tyranny and usurpation against the president through 2012, reserving impeachment as a back-up plan should the GOP candidate somehow lose.
But why would this be a problem? I wish the president would go for it -- I wish he'd invoke the 14th, I wish he'd do it knowing he was courting impeachment, and I wish the House would do it, and make his day.
I say this because because no matter how much the White House gives, and no matter how intransigent and reckless Republicans are, the public will inevitably assume that any impasse can be resolved if the two parties compromise equally. It doesn't matter if Democrats have done 99% of the compromising -- the public will say the impasse is both parties' fault equally. (The White House, of course, won't ever try to change that by enumerating its compromises, and the lack thereof on the GOP's part.)
But if there were impeachment, even low-information voters would understand which side was being implacably hostile. The White House would simply have to continue offering to work toward some sort of long-term budget deal -- this time without a gun to its head -- and an ongoing attempt to impeach would be seen as Republicans being the bad guys, the guys who aren't trying to do the people's business. It worked for Clinton. It would work for Obama.
I wish Obama had the guts to court impeachment. But he hasn't had the guts to resist demands for extreme cuts -- why would he dare to do this?
(Frum column via Talking Points Memo.)
You know that the White House is talking about massive budget cuts -- $4 trillion over the next few years, including "significant reductions in Medicare" and cuts in Social Security, in return for a pittance in tax increases. ("While Democrats would be asked to cut social-safety-net programs, Republicans would be asked to raise taxes, perhaps by letting tax breaks for the nation's wealthiest households expire on schedule at the end of next year." Perhaps!)
The one show of spine we're getting from the White House (even though it's almost certainly a bluff) is a hint that the 14th Amendment might be invoked to raise the debt ceiling without a vote in Congress. No, I don't believe it will happen, but at least one member of Congress says it would be an impeachable offense:
While some have asserted that the debt limit might be unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment, and therefore President Obama does not need congressional approval to raise it, Republicans have been quick to express skepticism over the idea. On Tuesday, a Republican congressman went a step further, saying that if Obama were to use that argument to bypass Congress on the issue, it would be an impeachable offense.
"This president is looking to usurp congressional oversight to find a way to get it done without us. My position is that is an impeachable act from my perspective," said Rep. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) at a meeting sponsored by the Tea Party group LowCountry 9.12 Project on Tuesday, first reported by Lindsay Street on Summerville Patch.
His comments were met with enthusiastic applause....
David Frum, in a column in which he assails Obama's weak negotiating tactics, argues that impeachment would be inevitable if Obama did this, or at least would be a sword hanging over his head:
You don't need a crystal teacup to foresee how the Tea Party will react to a bond issue in disregard of the debt ceiling. They will accuse the president of trashing the U.S. Constitution, and somebody will commence impeachment proceedings.
This shift of topic is pure win-win for the Tea Party. Unperturbed by the risk of national bankruptcy, they can now hurl charges of tyranny and usurpation against the president through 2012, reserving impeachment as a back-up plan should the GOP candidate somehow lose.
But why would this be a problem? I wish the president would go for it -- I wish he'd invoke the 14th, I wish he'd do it knowing he was courting impeachment, and I wish the House would do it, and make his day.
I say this because because no matter how much the White House gives, and no matter how intransigent and reckless Republicans are, the public will inevitably assume that any impasse can be resolved if the two parties compromise equally. It doesn't matter if Democrats have done 99% of the compromising -- the public will say the impasse is both parties' fault equally. (The White House, of course, won't ever try to change that by enumerating its compromises, and the lack thereof on the GOP's part.)
But if there were impeachment, even low-information voters would understand which side was being implacably hostile. The White House would simply have to continue offering to work toward some sort of long-term budget deal -- this time without a gun to its head -- and an ongoing attempt to impeach would be seen as Republicans being the bad guys, the guys who aren't trying to do the people's business. It worked for Clinton. It would work for Obama.
I wish Obama had the guts to court impeachment. But he hasn't had the guts to resist demands for extreme cuts -- why would he dare to do this?
(Frum column via Talking Points Memo.)
Wednesday, July 06, 2011
IF RIGHT-WINGERS "WORK THE REFS" WITH JOURNALISTS, WHY NOT POLITICIANS? INCLUDING PRESIDENTS?
Paul Krugman expresses despair at President Obama's apparent rejection of Keynesian economic ideas -- the need for more stimulus right now rather than belt-tightening, the notion that unemployment this high isn't the inevitable result of automation and other changes in the way business is conducted today. Krugman writes:
...since Obama keeps talking nonsense about economics, at what point do we stop giving him credit for actually knowing better? Maybe at some point we have to accept that he believes what he’s saying.
I know a lot of you are certain that he believes what he’s saying. I'm not. I don't think he knows what he believes without getting a nod of approval from his GOP and fat-cat overlords. That's the problem.
We know the basic narrative about the "liberal media": a large percentage of journalists are culturally liberal, cool with abortion and gay rights and all that, but right-wingers "work the refs" until these same journalists embrace right-wing frames in their discussion of just about everything. They may do this even while continuing to regard themselves to be liberals. After a certain point, they don't even need to be worked -- they work themselves.
I'm saying that that's what's happened to Obama. I think he thinks he's a liberal. I also think he thinks it's necessary for his survival in politics not to rock the boat -- and the modern GOP and ever greedier fat cats have made clear that the "rocking the boat" line would be crossed if even one major fat cat were indicted in the wake of the financial meltdown, if the profits of major financial institutions were curtailed even slightly by a mortgage program that genuinely helped ordinary Americans, or if (at this point) any economic program even an inch to the left of Hoover's were undertaken. Obama desperately wants not to be a rabble-rouser, and the powers that be have responded to that impulse by defining a half-century's worth of mainstream economics as rabble-rousing. Obama's inner compass tells him not to have an inner compass -- or, rather, it directs him to be directed. It tells him to let other people explain what he's allowed to do.
So is it true that "he believes what he’s saying"? Well, he's not sure. He'll have to ask.
Paul Krugman expresses despair at President Obama's apparent rejection of Keynesian economic ideas -- the need for more stimulus right now rather than belt-tightening, the notion that unemployment this high isn't the inevitable result of automation and other changes in the way business is conducted today. Krugman writes:
...since Obama keeps talking nonsense about economics, at what point do we stop giving him credit for actually knowing better? Maybe at some point we have to accept that he believes what he’s saying.
I know a lot of you are certain that he believes what he’s saying. I'm not. I don't think he knows what he believes without getting a nod of approval from his GOP and fat-cat overlords. That's the problem.
We know the basic narrative about the "liberal media": a large percentage of journalists are culturally liberal, cool with abortion and gay rights and all that, but right-wingers "work the refs" until these same journalists embrace right-wing frames in their discussion of just about everything. They may do this even while continuing to regard themselves to be liberals. After a certain point, they don't even need to be worked -- they work themselves.
I'm saying that that's what's happened to Obama. I think he thinks he's a liberal. I also think he thinks it's necessary for his survival in politics not to rock the boat -- and the modern GOP and ever greedier fat cats have made clear that the "rocking the boat" line would be crossed if even one major fat cat were indicted in the wake of the financial meltdown, if the profits of major financial institutions were curtailed even slightly by a mortgage program that genuinely helped ordinary Americans, or if (at this point) any economic program even an inch to the left of Hoover's were undertaken. Obama desperately wants not to be a rabble-rouser, and the powers that be have responded to that impulse by defining a half-century's worth of mainstream economics as rabble-rousing. Obama's inner compass tells him not to have an inner compass -- or, rather, it directs him to be directed. It tells him to let other people explain what he's allowed to do.
So is it true that "he believes what he’s saying"? Well, he's not sure. He'll have to ask.
GOVERNANCE IS HARD. MAKING DEMOCRATS SQUEAL LIKE STUCK PIGS IS EASY.
Politico tells us today that Republicans don't seem to be trying very hard to get rid of the Affordable Care Act and replace it with a plan of their own:
When they took control of the House, Republicans could barely stop talking about their plans to "repeal and replace" the health care reform law.
Six months later, they hardly talk publicly about those plans at all. And they're nowhere close to "replacing" the law....
So what happened? ...
Steve Benen thinks that's because they don't have any smart ideas of their own for alternatives. Me, I don't know why that would stop them:
The key takeaway from all of this, to my mind, isn't just that the repeal push was a fool's errand, but also that congressional Republicans were always blowing smoke on the "replace" part of their campaign promise. The GOP finds it easy to tear down, but building up requires policy chops that Republicans frankly don't have.
Sure, the GOP could come up with some kind of health care reform alternative, but they know perfectly well that it would be awful compared to the Affordable Care Act -- rival Republican plans have always failed to cover the uninsured, failed to bring down costs, and failed to protect consumers against insurance-industry abuses.
What's more, Republicans also realize that many ideas that have traditionally been part of the GOP health care agenda -- most notably, the individual mandate -- have already been adopted by Democrats.
The result is a party that talked a good game on "repeal and replace," but couldn't even try to deliver.
I think that's giving them too much credit. If that could launch an easy assault on the law and cause maximum pain to Democrats by doing so, they'd do it in a heartbeat. In fact, I think that's what they're going to do if they win the White House and both houses of Congress next year.
For now, though, they don't have the votes to overturn the law -- but they do have the votes to create a hostage situation around the debt. So that takes priority. An immediate opportunity to hurt Democrats politically, damage the social safety net, and transfer more money to the rich? Of course it takes priority.
Now, if Republicans had any interest in effective governance, they might simultaneously work up a detailed health care plan that they sincerely believed would be effective, and then try to sell it to the voters, even if they couldn't get it passed with Obama as president. But they don't have any interest in that. (They tried that with Medicare, and look where it got them.)
When they're in power again -- i.e., in 2013 if they win back the White House and Senate -- I think they'll quickly try to ram through a repeal combined with their usual half-baked ideas (tort "reform," buying insurance across state lines), because that will be easy. That will be fun. That will make their contributors wealthy and make Democrats squeal.
And they won't need to sell it -- they'll just rush it through fast, like union-stripping in the states this year, and they'll give their bill a name like "the Health Care Freedom Act of 2013," so if anyone asks why it's better than the Affordable Care Act, why, silly, the answer is right there in the name! FREEDOM!
For now, of course, health care repeal (or at least nullification) is a tantalizing promise to the base. Michele Bachmann is obsessed with it. Even Mitt Romney promises a nationwide waiver, effectively nullifying the law.
So it's most useful to Republicans right now as a campaign issue. And who knows -- maybe I'm wrong about insta-repeal in 2013 (or maybe Obama will win and the Supreme Court won't declare the law unconstitutional), in which case health care might remain a GOP campaign issue forever, like abortion: Republicans will chip away at the law every chance they get, and keep running on total repeal, which will always be just around the corner.
Politico tells us today that Republicans don't seem to be trying very hard to get rid of the Affordable Care Act and replace it with a plan of their own:
When they took control of the House, Republicans could barely stop talking about their plans to "repeal and replace" the health care reform law.
Six months later, they hardly talk publicly about those plans at all. And they're nowhere close to "replacing" the law....
So what happened? ...
Steve Benen thinks that's because they don't have any smart ideas of their own for alternatives. Me, I don't know why that would stop them:
The key takeaway from all of this, to my mind, isn't just that the repeal push was a fool's errand, but also that congressional Republicans were always blowing smoke on the "replace" part of their campaign promise. The GOP finds it easy to tear down, but building up requires policy chops that Republicans frankly don't have.
Sure, the GOP could come up with some kind of health care reform alternative, but they know perfectly well that it would be awful compared to the Affordable Care Act -- rival Republican plans have always failed to cover the uninsured, failed to bring down costs, and failed to protect consumers against insurance-industry abuses.
What's more, Republicans also realize that many ideas that have traditionally been part of the GOP health care agenda -- most notably, the individual mandate -- have already been adopted by Democrats.
The result is a party that talked a good game on "repeal and replace," but couldn't even try to deliver.
I think that's giving them too much credit. If that could launch an easy assault on the law and cause maximum pain to Democrats by doing so, they'd do it in a heartbeat. In fact, I think that's what they're going to do if they win the White House and both houses of Congress next year.
For now, though, they don't have the votes to overturn the law -- but they do have the votes to create a hostage situation around the debt. So that takes priority. An immediate opportunity to hurt Democrats politically, damage the social safety net, and transfer more money to the rich? Of course it takes priority.
Now, if Republicans had any interest in effective governance, they might simultaneously work up a detailed health care plan that they sincerely believed would be effective, and then try to sell it to the voters, even if they couldn't get it passed with Obama as president. But they don't have any interest in that. (They tried that with Medicare, and look where it got them.)
When they're in power again -- i.e., in 2013 if they win back the White House and Senate -- I think they'll quickly try to ram through a repeal combined with their usual half-baked ideas (tort "reform," buying insurance across state lines), because that will be easy. That will be fun. That will make their contributors wealthy and make Democrats squeal.
And they won't need to sell it -- they'll just rush it through fast, like union-stripping in the states this year, and they'll give their bill a name like "the Health Care Freedom Act of 2013," so if anyone asks why it's better than the Affordable Care Act, why, silly, the answer is right there in the name! FREEDOM!
For now, of course, health care repeal (or at least nullification) is a tantalizing promise to the base. Michele Bachmann is obsessed with it. Even Mitt Romney promises a nationwide waiver, effectively nullifying the law.
So it's most useful to Republicans right now as a campaign issue. And who knows -- maybe I'm wrong about insta-repeal in 2013 (or maybe Obama will win and the Supreme Court won't declare the law unconstitutional), in which case health care might remain a GOP campaign issue forever, like abortion: Republicans will chip away at the law every chance they get, and keep running on total repeal, which will always be just around the corner.
SORRY, JACK -- EVERYONE BIG IS TOO BIG TO FAIL
Over the years, it's been revealed that the voicemail of royals and celebrities has been hacked into by people in the employ of Rupert Murdoch's News of the World. In Britain, this became a mid-level scandal at best. But now it's been revealed that the voicemail of a teenage murder victim, Milly Dowler, was hacked by the News of the World, and that the paper's practice of deleting messages, to free up voicemail storage space, led her family to believe, falsely, that she was alive. And now it's known that other victims of News of the World phone hacking include the families of two other murder victims, as well as relatives of people killed in the London terrorist bombings of July 7, 2005.
Appalling? Sure. But Slate's Jack Shafer is impossibly naive if he really believes that Murdoch himself is in serious trouble:
I can't think of any jam that Murdoch has gotten into that's tighter than this one. As long as the victims of the phone-hacking were rich people and big shots, Murdoch didn't have to worry too much about public opinion dragging him and his newspapers down. But Dowler's parents are neither rich nor big shots....
Murdoch's instinct, of course, will be to sacrifice [Rebekah] Brooks [the editor of the paper when the hacking took place], but I doubt that the mob that is gathering will be satisfied with one body. They'll want strong, tough, old meat, too. Something that's fit for grilling on the barbie.
How can Shafer believe that Murdoch's downfall is even a remote possibility? This is an era of absolute lack of accountability and total moral moral hazard for the powerful and politically connected. Awful as this is, people with Murdoch's wealth and clout who've done far worse in recent years have paid no penalty whatsoever -- and I mean all of them.
Yes, I see from The New York Times that
Ford Motor Company, meanwhile, suspended advertising in The News of the World.
But Murdoch isn't going to feel too much pain:
Ford said it would be using "alternative media within and outside News International Group instead of placing Ford advertising in the News of the World" while it awaited the outcome of an internal investigation.
So some of the money is just going to other Murdoch papers.
That's how these things work. Many companies that boycotted Glenn Beck's Fox News show just shifted their ads to other Fox shows; Beck is gone, but Fox still thrives. And celebrities don't (or don't dare to) bear grudges against Murdoch: one of the celebrity hacking victims was Gwyneth Paltrow, and she's now a recurring guest star on Fox's Glee.
It's 2011. All of Western society agrees on one thing: The fish never stinks from the head.
Over the years, it's been revealed that the voicemail of royals and celebrities has been hacked into by people in the employ of Rupert Murdoch's News of the World. In Britain, this became a mid-level scandal at best. But now it's been revealed that the voicemail of a teenage murder victim, Milly Dowler, was hacked by the News of the World, and that the paper's practice of deleting messages, to free up voicemail storage space, led her family to believe, falsely, that she was alive. And now it's known that other victims of News of the World phone hacking include the families of two other murder victims, as well as relatives of people killed in the London terrorist bombings of July 7, 2005.
Appalling? Sure. But Slate's Jack Shafer is impossibly naive if he really believes that Murdoch himself is in serious trouble:
I can't think of any jam that Murdoch has gotten into that's tighter than this one. As long as the victims of the phone-hacking were rich people and big shots, Murdoch didn't have to worry too much about public opinion dragging him and his newspapers down. But Dowler's parents are neither rich nor big shots....
Murdoch's instinct, of course, will be to sacrifice [Rebekah] Brooks [the editor of the paper when the hacking took place], but I doubt that the mob that is gathering will be satisfied with one body. They'll want strong, tough, old meat, too. Something that's fit for grilling on the barbie.
How can Shafer believe that Murdoch's downfall is even a remote possibility? This is an era of absolute lack of accountability and total moral moral hazard for the powerful and politically connected. Awful as this is, people with Murdoch's wealth and clout who've done far worse in recent years have paid no penalty whatsoever -- and I mean all of them.
Yes, I see from The New York Times that
Ford Motor Company, meanwhile, suspended advertising in The News of the World.
But Murdoch isn't going to feel too much pain:
Ford said it would be using "alternative media within and outside News International Group instead of placing Ford advertising in the News of the World" while it awaited the outcome of an internal investigation.
So some of the money is just going to other Murdoch papers.
That's how these things work. Many companies that boycotted Glenn Beck's Fox News show just shifted their ads to other Fox shows; Beck is gone, but Fox still thrives. And celebrities don't (or don't dare to) bear grudges against Murdoch: one of the celebrity hacking victims was Gwyneth Paltrow, and she's now a recurring guest star on Fox's Glee.
It's 2011. All of Western society agrees on one thing: The fish never stinks from the head.
Tuesday, July 05, 2011
WHAT WILL WE TELL THE CHILDREN, MICHELE BACHMANN?
Michele Bachmann, as you may know, thinks children can be corrupted by Elton John:
At the November 2004 EdWatch National Education Conference, Bachmann said the "normalization" of homosexuality would lead to "desensitization": "Very effective way to do this with a bunch of second graders, is take a picture of 'The Lion King' for instance, and a teacher might say, 'Do you know that the music for this movie was written by a gay man?' The message is: I'm better at what I do, because I'm gay."
So, um, why is she seen in this campaign-trail video dancing to a song written by a guy who was once convicted of transporting a teenage girl across state lines for immoral purposes, and who later owned a club where he allegedly engaged in surreptitious videotaping in the women's bathroom, an appropriate accompaniment to a personal videotape he allegedly once made involving a woman not his wife and his own urine? And as for the singer of the song Bachmann is dancing to, shoulfn't she be concerned that he famously enjoyed watching women wrestling after they'd stripped down to white panties, and also reportedly enjoyed asking strippers to wrestle his pet chimpanzee?
Is that really an appropriate song for Bachmann and her husband to dance to?
Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot. Elvis and Chuck Berry? Straight. So no harm done.
Michele Bachmann, as you may know, thinks children can be corrupted by Elton John:
At the November 2004 EdWatch National Education Conference, Bachmann said the "normalization" of homosexuality would lead to "desensitization": "Very effective way to do this with a bunch of second graders, is take a picture of 'The Lion King' for instance, and a teacher might say, 'Do you know that the music for this movie was written by a gay man?' The message is: I'm better at what I do, because I'm gay."
So, um, why is she seen in this campaign-trail video dancing to a song written by a guy who was once convicted of transporting a teenage girl across state lines for immoral purposes, and who later owned a club where he allegedly engaged in surreptitious videotaping in the women's bathroom, an appropriate accompaniment to a personal videotape he allegedly once made involving a woman not his wife and his own urine? And as for the singer of the song Bachmann is dancing to, shoulfn't she be concerned that he famously enjoyed watching women wrestling after they'd stripped down to white panties, and also reportedly enjoyed asking strippers to wrestle his pet chimpanzee?
Is that really an appropriate song for Bachmann and her husband to dance to?
Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot. Elvis and Chuck Berry? Straight. So no harm done.
LET'S ADD A QUALIFICATION TO DAVE WEIGEL'S QUALIFICATION
Eve Conant has a story at the Daily Beast right now about a growing number of white supremacist candidates running for office across America; her capper is a report that David Duke is thinking of making another presidential bid.
I don't know if what she's telling us is accurate. (On the subject of Duke, he hasn't posted a response at his Web site -- but, hey, nice beard, Dave!)
However, Dave Weigel is flat-out certain that the story is overblown. In reference to the latest racist candidates, Weigel writes:
Most aren't winning -- not yet.
... According to the research, only one did last year -- Loy Mauch, a batty neoconfederate in Arkansas....
Mauch's opponent in the race was Terry Bracy.... When told that Mauch was a member of a group that believes in Southern secession and is a strident defender of the Confederate flag, Bracy said that he didn't have that information during the campaign....
More information about racist (or, fine, neoconfederate) candidates leads to the candidates not winning. That's certainly the conclusion to draw from the fact that the rest of these idiots aren't winning. When David Duke ran as the Populist Party's candidate in 1988, near the peak of his fame (he's the definition of a has-been now), he scored 47,004 votes. Nationally.
Yes ... but three years later Duke ran for governor of Louisiana and received 671,009 votes in the general election, after receiving 491,342 in a multi-candidate open primary. So what happened in those three years? Did Louisianans somehow become less informed about Duke's racism? Did the free flow of information somehow go in reverse between 1988 and 1991?
You might recall that 1991 was the worst year for crime, and violent crime, in recent decades. The national discussion of crime at that time was nakedly racial. Under those circumstances, information wasn't enough to keep Duke out of a gubernatorial runoff.
This year and next aren't like 1991, but these are very bad years in different ways. I don't know if white supremacists are going to do well at the polls, but the potential for someone fringey to do a hell of a lot better in 2012 than would be expected in a normal year is very much there. Hell, it's happening already in the GOP presidential polls. It happened in the 2010 midterms. The only question is what kinds of nuts will thrive. Information can't trump voter desperation.
Eve Conant has a story at the Daily Beast right now about a growing number of white supremacist candidates running for office across America; her capper is a report that David Duke is thinking of making another presidential bid.
I don't know if what she's telling us is accurate. (On the subject of Duke, he hasn't posted a response at his Web site -- but, hey, nice beard, Dave!)
However, Dave Weigel is flat-out certain that the story is overblown. In reference to the latest racist candidates, Weigel writes:
Most aren't winning -- not yet.
... According to the research, only one did last year -- Loy Mauch, a batty neoconfederate in Arkansas....
Mauch's opponent in the race was Terry Bracy.... When told that Mauch was a member of a group that believes in Southern secession and is a strident defender of the Confederate flag, Bracy said that he didn't have that information during the campaign....
More information about racist (or, fine, neoconfederate) candidates leads to the candidates not winning. That's certainly the conclusion to draw from the fact that the rest of these idiots aren't winning. When David Duke ran as the Populist Party's candidate in 1988, near the peak of his fame (he's the definition of a has-been now), he scored 47,004 votes. Nationally.
Yes ... but three years later Duke ran for governor of Louisiana and received 671,009 votes in the general election, after receiving 491,342 in a multi-candidate open primary. So what happened in those three years? Did Louisianans somehow become less informed about Duke's racism? Did the free flow of information somehow go in reverse between 1988 and 1991?
You might recall that 1991 was the worst year for crime, and violent crime, in recent decades. The national discussion of crime at that time was nakedly racial. Under those circumstances, information wasn't enough to keep Duke out of a gubernatorial runoff.
This year and next aren't like 1991, but these are very bad years in different ways. I don't know if white supremacists are going to do well at the polls, but the potential for someone fringey to do a hell of a lot better in 2012 than would be expected in a normal year is very much there. Hell, it's happening already in the GOP presidential polls. It happened in the 2010 midterms. The only question is what kinds of nuts will thrive. Information can't trump voter desperation.
WHEN YOU HELP THE SHEPHERD...
Writing for Time's Swampland blog, Amy Sullivan speculates as to why Rick Perry seems to be the presidential choice of the best-known Evangelicals, rather than Michele Bachmann or Rick Santorum:
...no one questions the social conservative credentials of Rick Santorum or Michele Bachmann. But Santorum's poll numbers in Iowa are smaller than the number of children he has. And while Bachmann has been on a hot streak since the first candidate's debate, Christian Right leaders continue to be far less willing to embrace her (or Sarah Palin, for that matter) than the rank-and-file or more secular politicos. Is that sexism at work? Possibly. Maybe even probably. But geography is an important factor as well. Many Christian Right leaders think the GOP primary schedule favors a Southern candidate. And southern Minnesota does not count.
So that's it? Sexism and regionalism?
I have a different theory. Let's move on to Sullivan's explanation of why Perry is so well regarded by the Evangelical leaders:
... the Texas governor is ... a terrific match for the Christian Right. Sarah Posner of Religion Dispatches recently outlined Perry's social conservative bona fides and they're impressive:
* Signed a gay marriage ban into law at a Christian school in Fort Worth with evangelical heavyweights Tony Perkins (Family Research Council), Rod Parsley (Ohio mega-church pastor), and Don Wildmon (American Family Association) in attendance
* The Sunday before his 2006 re-election, Perry attended Cornerstone Church and sat by the side of controversial pastor John Hagee (in 2008, John McCain had to reject Hagee’s endorsement after critics pointed out the pastor’s many extreme statements, including calling the Catholic Church “the whore of Babylon”)
* Supported and was a primary beneficiary of the Texas Restoration Project, an effort to increase the electoral involvement of conservative pastors
All of this, however, pales beside Perry's current project-- a Christian all-day prayer event called "The Response" on August 6 in Houston. The governor is sponsoring the event along with the American Family Association....
Do you see a subtle pattern emerging? I do: Evangelical leaders like Perry because Perry shamelessly sucks up to them.
It's really not that confusing. He feeds their egos. He makes them feel as if it's still 1981 and they'd be as close to power as it's possible to be if he were elected president. Bachmann and Santorum and the rest just need to do a little more butt-kissing.
(Post title based on Jim Bakker's immortal words to Jessica Hahn in flagrante.)
Writing for Time's Swampland blog, Amy Sullivan speculates as to why Rick Perry seems to be the presidential choice of the best-known Evangelicals, rather than Michele Bachmann or Rick Santorum:
...no one questions the social conservative credentials of Rick Santorum or Michele Bachmann. But Santorum's poll numbers in Iowa are smaller than the number of children he has. And while Bachmann has been on a hot streak since the first candidate's debate, Christian Right leaders continue to be far less willing to embrace her (or Sarah Palin, for that matter) than the rank-and-file or more secular politicos. Is that sexism at work? Possibly. Maybe even probably. But geography is an important factor as well. Many Christian Right leaders think the GOP primary schedule favors a Southern candidate. And southern Minnesota does not count.
So that's it? Sexism and regionalism?
I have a different theory. Let's move on to Sullivan's explanation of why Perry is so well regarded by the Evangelical leaders:
... the Texas governor is ... a terrific match for the Christian Right. Sarah Posner of Religion Dispatches recently outlined Perry's social conservative bona fides and they're impressive:
* Signed a gay marriage ban into law at a Christian school in Fort Worth with evangelical heavyweights Tony Perkins (Family Research Council), Rod Parsley (Ohio mega-church pastor), and Don Wildmon (American Family Association) in attendance
* The Sunday before his 2006 re-election, Perry attended Cornerstone Church and sat by the side of controversial pastor John Hagee (in 2008, John McCain had to reject Hagee’s endorsement after critics pointed out the pastor’s many extreme statements, including calling the Catholic Church “the whore of Babylon”)
* Supported and was a primary beneficiary of the Texas Restoration Project, an effort to increase the electoral involvement of conservative pastors
All of this, however, pales beside Perry's current project-- a Christian all-day prayer event called "The Response" on August 6 in Houston. The governor is sponsoring the event along with the American Family Association....
Do you see a subtle pattern emerging? I do: Evangelical leaders like Perry because Perry shamelessly sucks up to them.
It's really not that confusing. He feeds their egos. He makes them feel as if it's still 1981 and they'd be as close to power as it's possible to be if he were elected president. Bachmann and Santorum and the rest just need to do a little more butt-kissing.
(Post title based on Jim Bakker's immortal words to Jessica Hahn in flagrante.)
BROOKS SAYS THE GOP IS CRAZY (TRUE), BUT THE SYSTEM ISN'T (FALSE)
There's a lot of chatter right now about today's David Brooks column, in which he ticks off all the budget concessions Republicans have gotten from Democrats, and then expresses bafflement that Republicans won't declare victory and take their winnings:
If the Republican Party were a normal party, it would take advantage of this amazing moment. It is being offered the deal of the century: trillions of dollars in spending cuts in exchange for a few hundred million dollars of revenue increases....
But we can have no confidence that the Republicans will seize this opportunity. That's because the Republican Party may no longer be a normal party. Over the past few years, it has been infected by a faction that is more of a psychological protest than a practical, governing alternative.
The members of this movement do not accept the logic of compromise, no matter how sweet the terms. If you ask them to raise taxes by an inch in order to cut government by a foot, they will say no. If you ask them to raise taxes by an inch to cut government by a yard, they will still say no.
Fine so far -- although, as Steve Benen points out, on the subject of GOP obstructionism, the scales fell off Brooks's eyes last December:
BROOKS: And my problem with the Republican Party right now ... is that if you offered them 80-20, they say no. If you offered them 90-10, they'd say no. If you offered them 99-1 they'd say no.
Well, who cares when he realized the GOP was crazy, as long as he gets it?
But the problem is that he doesn't get that the system rewards this craziness. And of course he doesn't get this, because he's part of the system, in a very cozy, plugged-in way, and he can't admit that he and his fellow insiders have been enabling this craziness for years, by rarely if ever mentioning it.
You know he doesn't believe that the system rewards the craziness because he ends his column with a completely implausible scenario in which the craziness is punished:
If the debt ceiling talks fail, independents voters will see that Democrats were willing to compromise but Republicans were not. If responsible Republicans don't take control, independents will conclude that Republican fanaticism caused this default. They will conclude that Republicans are not fit to govern.
And they will be right.
That's preposterous. Nothing like that is going to happen. If the debt ceiling talks fail, independent voters are going to blame everyone -- they're going to blame Republicans for being stubborn and Democrats for failing to get them to see reason (I don't know how Democrats are supposed to do this, but independents will say they should have done it somehow). Meanwhile, in the right-wing media, the message will be that all negative consequences are the Democrats' fault. So, on balance, the Democrats will get more blame than the Republicans. And Republicans who aren't in Congress -- e.g., most of the GOP presidential candidates -- won't be blamed at all. The party as a party won't be blamed, or punished, by voters. The Republican presidential nominee may even beat Obama next year.
The Republicans, in other words, will get away with it. We know this because they get away with most things, which is why they've controlled the White House for 20 of the past 31 years, the House for 13 of the past 17 years, and the Senate for 18 of the past 31 years (and they'll almost certainly control the Senate again after 2012).
The intransigence of the GOP -- the fact that they willfully undermine any government they don't control -- ought to be the main political story in America. But Brooks will stop talking about GOP intransigence the minute we're over this hump. His fellow insider pundits will do the same, or will never address the issue at all. Thus, the public will never truly grasp that one of our major parties is crazy and dangerous, and that that's an ongoing problem.
That's how insiders enable fanaticism, which is why the fanaticism won't stop here, and won't result in negative consequences for the fanatics.
There's a lot of chatter right now about today's David Brooks column, in which he ticks off all the budget concessions Republicans have gotten from Democrats, and then expresses bafflement that Republicans won't declare victory and take their winnings:
If the Republican Party were a normal party, it would take advantage of this amazing moment. It is being offered the deal of the century: trillions of dollars in spending cuts in exchange for a few hundred million dollars of revenue increases....
But we can have no confidence that the Republicans will seize this opportunity. That's because the Republican Party may no longer be a normal party. Over the past few years, it has been infected by a faction that is more of a psychological protest than a practical, governing alternative.
The members of this movement do not accept the logic of compromise, no matter how sweet the terms. If you ask them to raise taxes by an inch in order to cut government by a foot, they will say no. If you ask them to raise taxes by an inch to cut government by a yard, they will still say no.
Fine so far -- although, as Steve Benen points out, on the subject of GOP obstructionism, the scales fell off Brooks's eyes last December:
BROOKS: And my problem with the Republican Party right now ... is that if you offered them 80-20, they say no. If you offered them 90-10, they'd say no. If you offered them 99-1 they'd say no.
Well, who cares when he realized the GOP was crazy, as long as he gets it?
But the problem is that he doesn't get that the system rewards this craziness. And of course he doesn't get this, because he's part of the system, in a very cozy, plugged-in way, and he can't admit that he and his fellow insiders have been enabling this craziness for years, by rarely if ever mentioning it.
You know he doesn't believe that the system rewards the craziness because he ends his column with a completely implausible scenario in which the craziness is punished:
If the debt ceiling talks fail, independents voters will see that Democrats were willing to compromise but Republicans were not. If responsible Republicans don't take control, independents will conclude that Republican fanaticism caused this default. They will conclude that Republicans are not fit to govern.
And they will be right.
That's preposterous. Nothing like that is going to happen. If the debt ceiling talks fail, independent voters are going to blame everyone -- they're going to blame Republicans for being stubborn and Democrats for failing to get them to see reason (I don't know how Democrats are supposed to do this, but independents will say they should have done it somehow). Meanwhile, in the right-wing media, the message will be that all negative consequences are the Democrats' fault. So, on balance, the Democrats will get more blame than the Republicans. And Republicans who aren't in Congress -- e.g., most of the GOP presidential candidates -- won't be blamed at all. The party as a party won't be blamed, or punished, by voters. The Republican presidential nominee may even beat Obama next year.
The Republicans, in other words, will get away with it. We know this because they get away with most things, which is why they've controlled the White House for 20 of the past 31 years, the House for 13 of the past 17 years, and the Senate for 18 of the past 31 years (and they'll almost certainly control the Senate again after 2012).
The intransigence of the GOP -- the fact that they willfully undermine any government they don't control -- ought to be the main political story in America. But Brooks will stop talking about GOP intransigence the minute we're over this hump. His fellow insider pundits will do the same, or will never address the issue at all. Thus, the public will never truly grasp that one of our major parties is crazy and dangerous, and that that's an ongoing problem.
That's how insiders enable fanaticism, which is why the fanaticism won't stop here, and won't result in negative consequences for the fanatics.
IS IT POSSIBLE THAT AMERICA'S LONGEST WAR WON'T ENTER ITS THIRD CENTURY?
This report about Civil War reenactments, from yesterday's All Things Considered on NPR, might have been the only good news I came across all weekend:
... just about any diehard history buff will tell you there aren't nearly enough people getting into what they call the hobby....
... there's the cost of travel, the cost of gear. That runs into the thousands. And it's economic pressures like these that have some shying away from re-enacting. And the ones that are doing it are doing less of it.
An estimated 30,000 people nationwide re-enact the Civil War, but recently those numbers have dropped....
Also, there are so many more entertainment options now. Playing a historical computer game can give someone a battle fix from an easy chair....
I'd like to believe that maybe there's a decline in interest because fewer young people in the South love the Civil War. I know the reenactors want us to believe that reenacting is all about embracing our history and remembering the tragic events that made this country what it is today. But you know what? I live in New York. There are no 9/11 reenactors. No one would want to do that. That's because we find it genuinely horrifying. Civil War reenactors don't find the Civil War horrifying. They dig it. But maybe that feeling is passing.
(And yes, I know that there are reenactors of other wars, but this is the war that's most often reenacted by Americans.)
Is it possible that, apart from cost and time and the appeal of other distractions, the reason for the dropoff in interest in Civil War reennacting is that we're no longer fighting the Civil War? Or, at least, we won't be soon, because young people don't care?
Hard to know. Elsewhere on All Things Considered, we had an interview with National Journal's Ron Brownstein, who thinks our politics were actually becoming less racial until recent demographic changes reversed the trend:
Mr. RON BROWNSTEIN (National Journal): ... It's not only a phenomenon of Phoenix and Dallas and Miami. Iowa, Utah, Nebraska are seeing substantial increases in their minority population, particularly their Hispanic population. And all of these changes are most concentrated and forceful among the young.
... You have, as we've said before, an under 18 population, a giant millennial generation that is heavily non-white, soon to be majority non-white, and by and large, those families believe they need public investment, particularly in schools and health care, to help their kids ascend into the middle class.
On the other side, you have a aging baby boom generation that is preponderantly white. Eighty percent of American seniors are white.... That aging white baby boom has grown increasingly skeptical of government, increasingly resistant to paying taxes to fund government services.
And so you have each political coalition - I mean, this really is the core or the anchor of each political coalition now. The older white population is at the absolute center of the Republican coalition, especially the non-college, working-class part of it.
... I have felt, until recently, that in general, American politics today was less racialized than it was in the '70s and '80s. There were a series of very racially overt issues - affirmative action, bussing, crime, welfare - that really served to polarize the country along racial lines and lead to this realignment.
But in the '90s, under Bill Clinton, the welfare issue was largely taken off the table. The mend-it-don't-end-it reduced the toxicity of affirmative action as an issue. And crime went down nationally. George W. Bush did not really play in these waters, either. And so I kind of felt that, you know, roughly from say '92, post-Willie Horton, to 2008, we were in a less I think racially incendiary or explosive kind of political environment.
I think that is beginning to change again. It is moving or transmuting into this debate about the role of government, and I think many of these debates are now re-acquiring a kind of racial content to them, even if there is no racial language.
And I can point to one empirical fact on that. You know, we do a quarterly poll here called - at National Journal called the Heartland Monitor. The last one, we looked at how Americans feel about the changing diversity. And there is no question that whites who say they are troubled by the pace of racial change express conservative views on a whole series of other issues, particularly the role of government....
Of course, older right-wingers see racial changes and think "Government is evil!" because right-wing media propagandists for the rich -- who generally think government is evil, unless it's helping them -- make the connection between affirmative government and the rise of all those brown people.
So young people aren't sustaining interest in the Civil War. And old people are trying to finish fighting it once and for all, with a different ending.
This report about Civil War reenactments, from yesterday's All Things Considered on NPR, might have been the only good news I came across all weekend:
... just about any diehard history buff will tell you there aren't nearly enough people getting into what they call the hobby....
... there's the cost of travel, the cost of gear. That runs into the thousands. And it's economic pressures like these that have some shying away from re-enacting. And the ones that are doing it are doing less of it.
An estimated 30,000 people nationwide re-enact the Civil War, but recently those numbers have dropped....
Also, there are so many more entertainment options now. Playing a historical computer game can give someone a battle fix from an easy chair....
I'd like to believe that maybe there's a decline in interest because fewer young people in the South love the Civil War. I know the reenactors want us to believe that reenacting is all about embracing our history and remembering the tragic events that made this country what it is today. But you know what? I live in New York. There are no 9/11 reenactors. No one would want to do that. That's because we find it genuinely horrifying. Civil War reenactors don't find the Civil War horrifying. They dig it. But maybe that feeling is passing.
(And yes, I know that there are reenactors of other wars, but this is the war that's most often reenacted by Americans.)
Is it possible that, apart from cost and time and the appeal of other distractions, the reason for the dropoff in interest in Civil War reennacting is that we're no longer fighting the Civil War? Or, at least, we won't be soon, because young people don't care?
Hard to know. Elsewhere on All Things Considered, we had an interview with National Journal's Ron Brownstein, who thinks our politics were actually becoming less racial until recent demographic changes reversed the trend:
Mr. RON BROWNSTEIN (National Journal): ... It's not only a phenomenon of Phoenix and Dallas and Miami. Iowa, Utah, Nebraska are seeing substantial increases in their minority population, particularly their Hispanic population. And all of these changes are most concentrated and forceful among the young.
... You have, as we've said before, an under 18 population, a giant millennial generation that is heavily non-white, soon to be majority non-white, and by and large, those families believe they need public investment, particularly in schools and health care, to help their kids ascend into the middle class.
On the other side, you have a aging baby boom generation that is preponderantly white. Eighty percent of American seniors are white.... That aging white baby boom has grown increasingly skeptical of government, increasingly resistant to paying taxes to fund government services.
And so you have each political coalition - I mean, this really is the core or the anchor of each political coalition now. The older white population is at the absolute center of the Republican coalition, especially the non-college, working-class part of it.
... I have felt, until recently, that in general, American politics today was less racialized than it was in the '70s and '80s. There were a series of very racially overt issues - affirmative action, bussing, crime, welfare - that really served to polarize the country along racial lines and lead to this realignment.
But in the '90s, under Bill Clinton, the welfare issue was largely taken off the table. The mend-it-don't-end-it reduced the toxicity of affirmative action as an issue. And crime went down nationally. George W. Bush did not really play in these waters, either. And so I kind of felt that, you know, roughly from say '92, post-Willie Horton, to 2008, we were in a less I think racially incendiary or explosive kind of political environment.
I think that is beginning to change again. It is moving or transmuting into this debate about the role of government, and I think many of these debates are now re-acquiring a kind of racial content to them, even if there is no racial language.
And I can point to one empirical fact on that. You know, we do a quarterly poll here called - at National Journal called the Heartland Monitor. The last one, we looked at how Americans feel about the changing diversity. And there is no question that whites who say they are troubled by the pace of racial change express conservative views on a whole series of other issues, particularly the role of government....
Of course, older right-wingers see racial changes and think "Government is evil!" because right-wing media propagandists for the rich -- who generally think government is evil, unless it's helping them -- make the connection between affirmative government and the rise of all those brown people.
So young people aren't sustaining interest in the Civil War. And old people are trying to finish fighting it once and for all, with a different ending.
Monday, July 04, 2011
IF YOU TRUST THE NEW YORK POST TO PREDICT VP PICKS, DON'T FORGET...
... um, this:
Still want to bet the rent money that this Post "exclusive" is accurate?
Obama to ask Cuomo to be 2012 running mate: sources
A Prominent Republican is joining a prominent Democrat in predicting that Gov. Cuomo will become President Obama's running mate for vice president next year.
Former New York GOP boss William Powers, credited with playing a key role in electing Rudy Giuliani mayor and George Pataki governor, was effusive in his praise of Cuomo's successes in the just-ended legislative session, and in his prediction of the freshman governor's political future.
"Andrew had a fabulous session. It was fabulous. A property-tax cap, ethics reform and, for Democrats, gay marriage," said Powers.
"I don't think there's any doubt Obama is going to pick him as his running mate. The president is in trouble and [Vice President Joseph] Biden doesn't bring anything to his ticket.
"The president will call him up later this year and say, 'Andrew, you have to do this for the good of the country.' What's Andrew going to say, 'No?'"
... Former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown earlier this year also predicted that Obama would pick Cuomo to replace Biden....
Why is this absurd? It's not just the fact that neither of these prognosticators would have the slightest idea what Obama is planning. It's also the fact that Obama is terrified to endorse gay marriage -- Obama won't do that, but he's going to pick the pol most associated with gay marriage as his running mate? And what does Cuomo bring to the ticket? He's going to help Obama win, um, New York? Where Obama's already beating Generic Republican by 23 points?
Ridiculous. But it's Murdoch, so no surprise there.
... um, this:
Still want to bet the rent money that this Post "exclusive" is accurate?
Obama to ask Cuomo to be 2012 running mate: sources
A Prominent Republican is joining a prominent Democrat in predicting that Gov. Cuomo will become President Obama's running mate for vice president next year.
Former New York GOP boss William Powers, credited with playing a key role in electing Rudy Giuliani mayor and George Pataki governor, was effusive in his praise of Cuomo's successes in the just-ended legislative session, and in his prediction of the freshman governor's political future.
"Andrew had a fabulous session. It was fabulous. A property-tax cap, ethics reform and, for Democrats, gay marriage," said Powers.
"I don't think there's any doubt Obama is going to pick him as his running mate. The president is in trouble and [Vice President Joseph] Biden doesn't bring anything to his ticket.
"The president will call him up later this year and say, 'Andrew, you have to do this for the good of the country.' What's Andrew going to say, 'No?'"
... Former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown earlier this year also predicted that Obama would pick Cuomo to replace Biden....
Why is this absurd? It's not just the fact that neither of these prognosticators would have the slightest idea what Obama is planning. It's also the fact that Obama is terrified to endorse gay marriage -- Obama won't do that, but he's going to pick the pol most associated with gay marriage as his running mate? And what does Cuomo bring to the ticket? He's going to help Obama win, um, New York? Where Obama's already beating Generic Republican by 23 points?
Ridiculous. But it's Murdoch, so no surprise there.
MAKING IT SO THAT A DEMOCRAT EISENHOWER REPUBLICAN REAGAN REPUBLICAN CAN'T GOVERN AS ONE
I think what's frustrating to me about Bill Clinton's remarks at the Aspen Ideas Festival isn't that he's stomping on what ought to be the Democrats' message (as Zandar says) so much as it is that he's clearly imagining that we still live in an America that's all but disappeared:
President Bill Clinton says the nation's corporate tax rate is "uncompetitive" and called for a lower rate as part of a "mega-deal" to raise the debt ceiling....
“... we've got an uncompetitive rate. We tax at 35 percent of income, although we only take about 23 percent. So we should cut the rate to 25 percent, or whatever's competitive, and eliminate a lot of the deductions so that we still get a fair amount, and there's not so much variance in what the corporations pay...."
What he's imagining is an element of a "grand bargain" that's essentially revenue-neutral but would strip away some inequities and imbalances. Obviously, he's talking about cosseting the only people in this society who aren't hurting right now, and obviously he's talking about something that wouldn't actually bring in extra revenue at a time when it's desperately needed, but in a sane political culture, what he's proposing might be one element of a resolution of these matters negotiated in good faith. And it might even be compatible with a demand for some other tax changes that actually would increase revenue, which Clinton says the White House should continue to demand.
The point, though, is that Clinton thinks we live a world of give-and-take. We don't, and everyone who sees clearly knows that. It sometimes seems as if we live in a country with two major parties -- Eisenhower Republicans and utterly crazy Republicans -- but what Clinton is hoping for (and President Obama also seems to be hoping for) isn't even Eisenhower Republicanism, it's Reagan Republicanism. Reagan raised taxes in the course of budget deals -- but even that is too far to the left for the modern Republican Party. And Clinton doesn't understand that.
You can tell Clinton is living in the past when you read some of his other remarks:
At another point, Clinton said about corporations: "When I was young, we were taught in law school that corporations were creatures of the state and had responsibilities to all their stakeholders -- their shareholders, their employees, their customers and the communities of which they were a part. Now, it's only shareholders. I think that's a pretty bad idea."
Yeah, you're right, Bill -- but that horse left the barn a long time ago (and part of its journey was on your watch).
And this is naive as well:
"But, y'know, I like the governors: I like Huntsman and Romney. Romney's a much better candidate than he was last time, because he's not apologizing for signing the health care bill. He's got another creative way of saying we oughta repeal Obamacare, but that's prob'ly the price of gettin' the nomination...."
Right -- I'm sure it's just to impress the base through the primary season. I'm sure, when and if he becomes president, he'll tack to the center. Just the way the last Republican president did.
Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick got some attention this past week for a Washington Post op-ed in which he recalled a Harvard reunion in 2003 at which Grover Norquist spoke:
... During his presentation, Norquist explained why he believed that there would be a permanent Republican majority in America.
One person interrupted, as I recall, and said, "C'mon, Grover, surely one day a Democrat will win the White House."
Norquist immediately replied: "We will make it so that a Democrat cannot govern as a Democrat."
We're way past that. Norquist and his ideological soul mates have made it so one can't govern -- or even legislate -- as a Reagan Republican.
I think what's frustrating to me about Bill Clinton's remarks at the Aspen Ideas Festival isn't that he's stomping on what ought to be the Democrats' message (as Zandar says) so much as it is that he's clearly imagining that we still live in an America that's all but disappeared:
President Bill Clinton says the nation's corporate tax rate is "uncompetitive" and called for a lower rate as part of a "mega-deal" to raise the debt ceiling....
“... we've got an uncompetitive rate. We tax at 35 percent of income, although we only take about 23 percent. So we should cut the rate to 25 percent, or whatever's competitive, and eliminate a lot of the deductions so that we still get a fair amount, and there's not so much variance in what the corporations pay...."
What he's imagining is an element of a "grand bargain" that's essentially revenue-neutral but would strip away some inequities and imbalances. Obviously, he's talking about cosseting the only people in this society who aren't hurting right now, and obviously he's talking about something that wouldn't actually bring in extra revenue at a time when it's desperately needed, but in a sane political culture, what he's proposing might be one element of a resolution of these matters negotiated in good faith. And it might even be compatible with a demand for some other tax changes that actually would increase revenue, which Clinton says the White House should continue to demand.
The point, though, is that Clinton thinks we live a world of give-and-take. We don't, and everyone who sees clearly knows that. It sometimes seems as if we live in a country with two major parties -- Eisenhower Republicans and utterly crazy Republicans -- but what Clinton is hoping for (and President Obama also seems to be hoping for) isn't even Eisenhower Republicanism, it's Reagan Republicanism. Reagan raised taxes in the course of budget deals -- but even that is too far to the left for the modern Republican Party. And Clinton doesn't understand that.
You can tell Clinton is living in the past when you read some of his other remarks:
At another point, Clinton said about corporations: "When I was young, we were taught in law school that corporations were creatures of the state and had responsibilities to all their stakeholders -- their shareholders, their employees, their customers and the communities of which they were a part. Now, it's only shareholders. I think that's a pretty bad idea."
Yeah, you're right, Bill -- but that horse left the barn a long time ago (and part of its journey was on your watch).
And this is naive as well:
"But, y'know, I like the governors: I like Huntsman and Romney. Romney's a much better candidate than he was last time, because he's not apologizing for signing the health care bill. He's got another creative way of saying we oughta repeal Obamacare, but that's prob'ly the price of gettin' the nomination...."
Right -- I'm sure it's just to impress the base through the primary season. I'm sure, when and if he becomes president, he'll tack to the center. Just the way the last Republican president did.
Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick got some attention this past week for a Washington Post op-ed in which he recalled a Harvard reunion in 2003 at which Grover Norquist spoke:
... During his presentation, Norquist explained why he believed that there would be a permanent Republican majority in America.
One person interrupted, as I recall, and said, "C'mon, Grover, surely one day a Democrat will win the White House."
Norquist immediately replied: "We will make it so that a Democrat cannot govern as a Democrat."
We're way past that. Norquist and his ideological soul mates have made it so one can't govern -- or even legislate -- as a Reagan Republican.
Sunday, July 03, 2011
AL QAEDA'S INADVERTENT TRICK SHOT
Roger Cohen, in a New York Times op-ed today, discussing 9/11:
New York has won again. It has come back. America has not....
The city has asserted its ability to come together. The "homeland," awful post-9/11 neologism, has not. America struggles still to rediscover its bearings and sense of direction. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, with their more than 6,000 U.S. dead, still take their toll. The "banksters," salvaged by tax dollars, get richer. Ordinary folk get poorer. Youth unemployment is at 24 percent. Corporations sit on their cash piles.
If New York is doing better than America, that's not because (as Cohen says elsewhere) it has habitually exhibited a "refusal to succumb." If New York is thriving, it's because we in New York have all your money. Or rather, they do -- the banksters.
Many people have said that 9/11 was a victory for Al Qaeda because America did precisely what Al Qaeda's leaders hoped America would do in reaction to the attacks. There's a lot of truth in that. But Al Qaeda attacked the World Trade Center in the hopes of doing serious harm to America's financial system -- and serious harm wasn't done to it. That's what won, to use Cohen's word.
And of course it won. For twenty years prior to 9/11, the plutocrats of America were hard at work establishing the premise that they should never pay for the consequences of their actions, and that in hard times of any kind they should never share any of the necessary sacrifices.
So Al Qaeda attacked the financial system, hoping to bring it and the rest of America down, and what happened instead was that the attacks helped to bring down America without bringing down the financial system. And when a weakened America faced an economic crisis a decade later, the country saved its financial system, and its rich people and rich corporations, and threw everyone else to the wolves.
So it's fair to say that Al Qaeda hit the financial system but sank only non-financial America, the way in pool you might hit the cueball into one ball and sink another, while the first one stays on the table. It's not quite what Al Qaeda had in mind, but it's an Al Qaeda victory. And if New York endures nonetheless -- or at least one rarefied part of New York -- that's at everyone else's expense.
Roger Cohen, in a New York Times op-ed today, discussing 9/11:
New York has won again. It has come back. America has not....
The city has asserted its ability to come together. The "homeland," awful post-9/11 neologism, has not. America struggles still to rediscover its bearings and sense of direction. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, with their more than 6,000 U.S. dead, still take their toll. The "banksters," salvaged by tax dollars, get richer. Ordinary folk get poorer. Youth unemployment is at 24 percent. Corporations sit on their cash piles.
If New York is doing better than America, that's not because (as Cohen says elsewhere) it has habitually exhibited a "refusal to succumb." If New York is thriving, it's because we in New York have all your money. Or rather, they do -- the banksters.
Many people have said that 9/11 was a victory for Al Qaeda because America did precisely what Al Qaeda's leaders hoped America would do in reaction to the attacks. There's a lot of truth in that. But Al Qaeda attacked the World Trade Center in the hopes of doing serious harm to America's financial system -- and serious harm wasn't done to it. That's what won, to use Cohen's word.
And of course it won. For twenty years prior to 9/11, the plutocrats of America were hard at work establishing the premise that they should never pay for the consequences of their actions, and that in hard times of any kind they should never share any of the necessary sacrifices.
So Al Qaeda attacked the financial system, hoping to bring it and the rest of America down, and what happened instead was that the attacks helped to bring down America without bringing down the financial system. And when a weakened America faced an economic crisis a decade later, the country saved its financial system, and its rich people and rich corporations, and threw everyone else to the wolves.
So it's fair to say that Al Qaeda hit the financial system but sank only non-financial America, the way in pool you might hit the cueball into one ball and sink another, while the first one stays on the table. It's not quite what Al Qaeda had in mind, but it's an Al Qaeda victory. And if New York endures nonetheless -- or at least one rarefied part of New York -- that's at everyone else's expense.
THE STORY OF DEMOCRACY, WITHOUT THE BORING STUFF ABOUT ORDINARY CITIZENS
This weekend, The New York Times has run three stories about Republican governors -- John Kasich of Ohio, Rick Perry of Texas, and Nikki Haley of South Carolina -- and they all seem to be written according to a formula. The formula says that it doesn't matter very much what the public thinks of a governor, or at least it doesn't matter what non-right-wing members of the public think; it also doesn't matter much what the likely consequences of the governor's actions are. All that matters is how well the governor did in dealings with the rest of the political class. Just win, baby! Then you're a great governor!
So we get this gushing profile of Kasich:
In Ohio, a New Governor Is Off to a Smooth Start
In Washington, Congress may still be fighting over the national budget, but in Ohio, where Republicans control the House, the Senate and the governor's office, the budget passage has been about as smooth as a knife through butter.
That is partly because Republicans kept tight party unity, voting together on bills that Democrats say are some of the most conservative the state has ever seen. But the driving force was Ohio's governor, John R. Kasich (pronounced KAY-sik), who has pressed his legislative agenda with remarkable success since his election in November.
On Thursday night, he signed his $56 billion budget into law, with few major changes from the version he had originally proposed and neatly ahead of a July 1 deadline....
In his five months in office, Mr. Kasich, a former congressman and Lehman Brothers executive, has established himself as a get-things-done governor who has expansive powers and is not afraid to use them.
"Inning after inning, the guy scored every round," said Gene Beaupre, a political science professor at Xavier University in Cincinnati. "I don'’t see where he lost anything in the budget game." ...
You would never know from this article that voters disapprove of Kasich's job performance, 49%-38%. You learn (in paragraph #15 of an 18-paragraph story) that there's a petition drive to overturn his signature piece of union-busting legislation, but you don't learn that the voters seeking to overturn in needed to collect 231,000 signatures and gathered nearly 1.3 million. All that matters is that he repeatedly says "Jump!" and the legislature says "How high?" That's all it takes to be off to a "smooth start."
Rick Perry's year has also been smooth, according to the Times, again with an awestruck quote from a poli-sci professor:
Gov. Rick Perry may or may not try to become the leader of what was once called the free world. In the meantime, he has cemented his reputation as one of the most powerful governors ever to walk the corridors of the Texas Capitol.
As the longest serving governor in state history, Mr. Perry has named more people to boards and commissions than any predecessor -- 5,495 at last count, Legislative Reference Library figures show -- allowing him to put his conservative stamp on every corner of state government.
The reach of his power, and his willingness to use it, have been most striking in the recently concluded sessions of the Texas Legislature, which gave Mr. Perry a fairly long wish-list of conservative reforms. If Mr. Perry does end up on the presidential campaign trail, he will be ticking them off like a pre-trip checklist. Curbs on abortion -- done. Lawsuit restrictions -- check. Staggering cuts to programs once seen as off-limits -- yes, yes and yes.
"Basically nobody has dominated the executive branch, that I'’m aware of, like Rick Perry has," said Jim Henson, a political scientist at the University of Texas at Austin. "It's a very different kind of governorship now. He's been there so long, and he’s effectively used the resources at his disposal." ...
Again, it doesn't matter that the guy's popularity is less than stellar -- one poll now shows he'd lose to President Obama in his own state. A fellow Republican is given space to complain that Perry's a bit too pro-pork, and we learn that "some Republicans worry there will be political fallout for supporting the first decline in overall public-education spending since at least 1949," and that a Democrat thinks teabaggers have led him by the nose -- but the vast majority of the article is about how manly and powerful the guy has been.
Nikki Haley, by contrast, has hit a few bumps in the road in South Carolina, according to the Times, -- again, almost exclusively defined in terms of how she works with fellow pols:
...the governor's strict approach to limiting spending hit a wall with lawmakers, who this week overrode most of the vetoes she issued on a $6 billion general fund budget.
Ms. Haley wanted to eliminate spending for the South Carolina Arts Commission and its public educational television system, money to pay for the state Republican presidential primary and some financing for education, economic development and tourism.
Some of the tension between the governor and members of the Legislature comes from a style of governing that can bypass the decorum that underscores much of political life in this stalwart of the Old South.
Ms. Haley kept political rivals off the guest list during an end-of-session barbecue at the Governor's Mansion that has traditionally been open to all lawmakers. She also began issuing report cards on legislators, prompting some to call her a schoolmarm.
And she tried to force the State Senate to return early from a break to get her way on a bill to change the way the state's administrative work is done, losing narrowly in the South Carolina Supreme Court. She viewed the fight as one against entrenched power. Some lawmakers saw it as a lesson in how not to play the game.
Many constituents were troubled by Ms. Haley's removal of Darla Moore, the most influential donor to the University of South Carolina, from the board of trustees. She replaced her with a campaign contributor....
The whole affair had even Ms. Haley's most-enamored Tea Party supporters shaking their heads....
All that matters here is what other powerful people think, and whether she wins. Unlike the manly men in Ohio and Texas, she doesn't win all the time. So even though she has actually has better approval ratings than Kasich (42%-41%), she's depicted as somewhat of a loser.
The consequences of what these people are doing barely register. All that matters to the Times is how they play the game.
This weekend, The New York Times has run three stories about Republican governors -- John Kasich of Ohio, Rick Perry of Texas, and Nikki Haley of South Carolina -- and they all seem to be written according to a formula. The formula says that it doesn't matter very much what the public thinks of a governor, or at least it doesn't matter what non-right-wing members of the public think; it also doesn't matter much what the likely consequences of the governor's actions are. All that matters is how well the governor did in dealings with the rest of the political class. Just win, baby! Then you're a great governor!
So we get this gushing profile of Kasich:
In Ohio, a New Governor Is Off to a Smooth Start
In Washington, Congress may still be fighting over the national budget, but in Ohio, where Republicans control the House, the Senate and the governor's office, the budget passage has been about as smooth as a knife through butter.
That is partly because Republicans kept tight party unity, voting together on bills that Democrats say are some of the most conservative the state has ever seen. But the driving force was Ohio's governor, John R. Kasich (pronounced KAY-sik), who has pressed his legislative agenda with remarkable success since his election in November.
On Thursday night, he signed his $56 billion budget into law, with few major changes from the version he had originally proposed and neatly ahead of a July 1 deadline....
In his five months in office, Mr. Kasich, a former congressman and Lehman Brothers executive, has established himself as a get-things-done governor who has expansive powers and is not afraid to use them.
"Inning after inning, the guy scored every round," said Gene Beaupre, a political science professor at Xavier University in Cincinnati. "I don'’t see where he lost anything in the budget game." ...
You would never know from this article that voters disapprove of Kasich's job performance, 49%-38%. You learn (in paragraph #15 of an 18-paragraph story) that there's a petition drive to overturn his signature piece of union-busting legislation, but you don't learn that the voters seeking to overturn in needed to collect 231,000 signatures and gathered nearly 1.3 million. All that matters is that he repeatedly says "Jump!" and the legislature says "How high?" That's all it takes to be off to a "smooth start."
Rick Perry's year has also been smooth, according to the Times, again with an awestruck quote from a poli-sci professor:
Gov. Rick Perry may or may not try to become the leader of what was once called the free world. In the meantime, he has cemented his reputation as one of the most powerful governors ever to walk the corridors of the Texas Capitol.
As the longest serving governor in state history, Mr. Perry has named more people to boards and commissions than any predecessor -- 5,495 at last count, Legislative Reference Library figures show -- allowing him to put his conservative stamp on every corner of state government.
The reach of his power, and his willingness to use it, have been most striking in the recently concluded sessions of the Texas Legislature, which gave Mr. Perry a fairly long wish-list of conservative reforms. If Mr. Perry does end up on the presidential campaign trail, he will be ticking them off like a pre-trip checklist. Curbs on abortion -- done. Lawsuit restrictions -- check. Staggering cuts to programs once seen as off-limits -- yes, yes and yes.
"Basically nobody has dominated the executive branch, that I'’m aware of, like Rick Perry has," said Jim Henson, a political scientist at the University of Texas at Austin. "It's a very different kind of governorship now. He's been there so long, and he’s effectively used the resources at his disposal." ...
Again, it doesn't matter that the guy's popularity is less than stellar -- one poll now shows he'd lose to President Obama in his own state. A fellow Republican is given space to complain that Perry's a bit too pro-pork, and we learn that "some Republicans worry there will be political fallout for supporting the first decline in overall public-education spending since at least 1949," and that a Democrat thinks teabaggers have led him by the nose -- but the vast majority of the article is about how manly and powerful the guy has been.
Nikki Haley, by contrast, has hit a few bumps in the road in South Carolina, according to the Times, -- again, almost exclusively defined in terms of how she works with fellow pols:
...the governor's strict approach to limiting spending hit a wall with lawmakers, who this week overrode most of the vetoes she issued on a $6 billion general fund budget.
Ms. Haley wanted to eliminate spending for the South Carolina Arts Commission and its public educational television system, money to pay for the state Republican presidential primary and some financing for education, economic development and tourism.
Some of the tension between the governor and members of the Legislature comes from a style of governing that can bypass the decorum that underscores much of political life in this stalwart of the Old South.
Ms. Haley kept political rivals off the guest list during an end-of-session barbecue at the Governor's Mansion that has traditionally been open to all lawmakers. She also began issuing report cards on legislators, prompting some to call her a schoolmarm.
And she tried to force the State Senate to return early from a break to get her way on a bill to change the way the state's administrative work is done, losing narrowly in the South Carolina Supreme Court. She viewed the fight as one against entrenched power. Some lawmakers saw it as a lesson in how not to play the game.
Many constituents were troubled by Ms. Haley's removal of Darla Moore, the most influential donor to the University of South Carolina, from the board of trustees. She replaced her with a campaign contributor....
The whole affair had even Ms. Haley's most-enamored Tea Party supporters shaking their heads....
All that matters here is what other powerful people think, and whether she wins. Unlike the manly men in Ohio and Texas, she doesn't win all the time. So even though she has actually has better approval ratings than Kasich (42%-41%), she's depicted as somewhat of a loser.
The consequences of what these people are doing barely register. All that matters to the Times is how they play the game.
Saturday, July 02, 2011
WHAT MAKES ANYONE THINK THE SENATE WILL EVER APPROVE ANOTHER OBAMA HIGH COURT PICK?
This AP story has some right-wingers' knickers in a twist:
Democrats and liberals have a nightmare vision of the Supreme Court's future: President Barack Obama is defeated for re-election next year and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, at 78 the oldest justice, soon finds her health will not allow her to continue on the bench.
The new Republican president appoints Ginsburg's successor, cementing conservative domination of the court, and soon the justices roll back decisions in favor of abortion rights and affirmative action.
But Ginsburg could retire now and allow Obama to name a like-minded successor whose confirmation would be in the hands of a Democratic-controlled Senate. "She has in her power the ability to prevent a real shift in the balance of power on the court," said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California at Irvine law school. "On the other hand, there's the personal. How do you decide to leave the United States Supreme Court?"
For now, Ginsburg's answer is, you don't.
There are few more indelicate questions to put to a Supreme Court justice, but Ginsburg has said gracefully, and with apparent good humor, that the president should not expect a retirement letter before 2015.
She will turn 82 that year, the same age Justice Louis Brandeis was when he left the court in 1939. Ginsburg, who is Jewish, has said she wants to emulate the court's first Jewish justice....
Omigod! Publicly urging Ginsburg to step down in the interest of ideas she believes in! Never mind the fact that she's hardly a wilting flower, and is clearly not being moved by any suggestions of an early retirement -- concern troll Don Surber writes a post with the harrumphy title "Today in liberal morality," while Ann Althouse is suddenly Ginsberg's best friend: "Wow! How much of this kind of moral pressure is being applied to the venerable Justice?"
Of course, it doesn't matter: There's no reason for Ginsburg to step down because Barack Obama isn't going to get another justice approved by the Senate, even if two justices resign, as has been suggested:
But some on the left say that the focus on the personal is misplaced. Ginsburg needs to put self-interest aside and act for the good of the issues they believe in, Harvard law professor Randall Kennedy wrote recently. Kennedy said 72-year-old Justice Stephen Breyer should leave, too.
I know, I know: Democrats have a Senate majority. There's a widespread belief that the filibuster-everything approach of modern Republicans has its limits, and that filibustering a Supreme Court sppointment is something that just isn't done, even now.
Really? If you believe that, I think you're naive. Remember, not long ago it was believed that Republicans would never play politics with the debt ceiling. Does anyone still think that?
I'm not sure Obama will ever get another justice onto the High Court, even if he's president for five more years -- that is, unless he appoints a justice a Republican president would appoint. Which, in the end, he probably will.
Which brings up a thought:
Sandra Day O'Connor announced her retirement in 2005 in part so she could take care of her ailing husband, John. Two months later, Chief Justice William Rehnquist died in office.
Meanwhile, John O'Connor's health declined much faster than his wife anticipated and he soon was living in a nursing home in Arizona. Would she have quit the court had she known what awaited?
In retirement, O'Connor has maintained a busy schedule, hearing cases on federal appeals courts as well as advocating for Alzheimer's funding, improved civics education and merit selection, rather than partisan election, of state judges.
O'Connor, now 81, also has said she that she regrets that some of her decisions have been "dismantled" by the Supreme Court. Justice Samuel Alito, who took her seat in 2006, has voted differently from O'Connor in key cases involving abortion rights, campaign finance and the use of race in governmental policies.
If President Obama gets another Court pick and (as I strongly suspect) his pick is blocked, and (as I also strongly suspect) the thugs in the GOP make clear that literally no liberal or moderate justice will be able to avoid a filibuster (just as no tax increase is acceptable now), then maybe at some point Obama should just try reappointing O'Connor. Would the Republicans filibuster her? I don't think they could. And sh might be the best we could do. I can't imagine that anyone I'd really want to see on the court wouldn't be filibustered.
This AP story has some right-wingers' knickers in a twist:
Democrats and liberals have a nightmare vision of the Supreme Court's future: President Barack Obama is defeated for re-election next year and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, at 78 the oldest justice, soon finds her health will not allow her to continue on the bench.
The new Republican president appoints Ginsburg's successor, cementing conservative domination of the court, and soon the justices roll back decisions in favor of abortion rights and affirmative action.
But Ginsburg could retire now and allow Obama to name a like-minded successor whose confirmation would be in the hands of a Democratic-controlled Senate. "She has in her power the ability to prevent a real shift in the balance of power on the court," said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California at Irvine law school. "On the other hand, there's the personal. How do you decide to leave the United States Supreme Court?"
For now, Ginsburg's answer is, you don't.
There are few more indelicate questions to put to a Supreme Court justice, but Ginsburg has said gracefully, and with apparent good humor, that the president should not expect a retirement letter before 2015.
She will turn 82 that year, the same age Justice Louis Brandeis was when he left the court in 1939. Ginsburg, who is Jewish, has said she wants to emulate the court's first Jewish justice....
Omigod! Publicly urging Ginsburg to step down in the interest of ideas she believes in! Never mind the fact that she's hardly a wilting flower, and is clearly not being moved by any suggestions of an early retirement -- concern troll Don Surber writes a post with the harrumphy title "Today in liberal morality," while Ann Althouse is suddenly Ginsberg's best friend: "Wow! How much of this kind of moral pressure is being applied to the venerable Justice?"
Of course, it doesn't matter: There's no reason for Ginsburg to step down because Barack Obama isn't going to get another justice approved by the Senate, even if two justices resign, as has been suggested:
But some on the left say that the focus on the personal is misplaced. Ginsburg needs to put self-interest aside and act for the good of the issues they believe in, Harvard law professor Randall Kennedy wrote recently. Kennedy said 72-year-old Justice Stephen Breyer should leave, too.
I know, I know: Democrats have a Senate majority. There's a widespread belief that the filibuster-everything approach of modern Republicans has its limits, and that filibustering a Supreme Court sppointment is something that just isn't done, even now.
Really? If you believe that, I think you're naive. Remember, not long ago it was believed that Republicans would never play politics with the debt ceiling. Does anyone still think that?
I'm not sure Obama will ever get another justice onto the High Court, even if he's president for five more years -- that is, unless he appoints a justice a Republican president would appoint. Which, in the end, he probably will.
Which brings up a thought:
Sandra Day O'Connor announced her retirement in 2005 in part so she could take care of her ailing husband, John. Two months later, Chief Justice William Rehnquist died in office.
Meanwhile, John O'Connor's health declined much faster than his wife anticipated and he soon was living in a nursing home in Arizona. Would she have quit the court had she known what awaited?
In retirement, O'Connor has maintained a busy schedule, hearing cases on federal appeals courts as well as advocating for Alzheimer's funding, improved civics education and merit selection, rather than partisan election, of state judges.
O'Connor, now 81, also has said she that she regrets that some of her decisions have been "dismantled" by the Supreme Court. Justice Samuel Alito, who took her seat in 2006, has voted differently from O'Connor in key cases involving abortion rights, campaign finance and the use of race in governmental policies.
If President Obama gets another Court pick and (as I strongly suspect) his pick is blocked, and (as I also strongly suspect) the thugs in the GOP make clear that literally no liberal or moderate justice will be able to avoid a filibuster (just as no tax increase is acceptable now), then maybe at some point Obama should just try reappointing O'Connor. Would the Republicans filibuster her? I don't think they could. And sh might be the best we could do. I can't imagine that anyone I'd really want to see on the court wouldn't be filibustered.
MURDOCH'S ANONYMOUS SOURCING UNDERGOES A NOT VERY SUBTLE SHIFT
I'm sure you already know about the many things authorities have learned, and reported to The New York Times, concerning Dominique Strauss-Kahn's accuser. One detail that would make this story satisfyingly tawdry for many observers doesn't show up in the accounts that appear in the Times -- but the New York Post goes where the Times won't, citing -- conveniently -- an anonymous source in its "EXCLUSIVE." And oh, hey -- the Post manages to take a shot at the right's Antichrist of the Year in the process:
Dominique Strauss-Kahn's accuser wasn't just a girl working at a hotel --- she was a working girl.
The Sofitel housekeeper who claims the former IMF boss sexually assaulted her in his room was doing double duty as a prostitute, collecting cash on the side from male guests, The Post has learned.
"There is information ... of her getting extraordinary tips, if you know what I mean. And it's not for bringing extra f--king towels," a source close to the defense investigation said yesterday.
The woman was allegedly purposely assigned to the Midtown hotel by her union because it knew she would bring in big bucks.
"When you're a chambermaid at Local 6, when you first get to the US, you start at the motels at JFK [Airport]. You don't start at the Sofitel," the source said. "There's a whole squad of people who saw her as an earner." ...
One bullet, two targets -- nice work, Rupert. Not only is she a filthy whore, but she's a filthy whore assigned to filthy whoredom by union thugs.
So, Rupe, I take it that this previous anonymously sourced "EXCLUSIVE" from your news empire is, um, inoperative?
Dominique Strauss-Kahn told a New York City hotel maid, "Don't you know who I am! Don't you know who I am?" while pinning her down during the alleged sexual assault, law enforcement sources close to the investigation told FoxNews.com.
... Sources told FoxNews.com that the 32-year-old African immigrant repeatedly told her alleged attacker, "Please, please stop. No!"
... Strauss-Kahn allegedly responded: "No, baby. Don't worry, you're not going to lose your job. Please, baby, don't worry," Strauss-Kahn responded, according to investigators. "Don't you know who I am? Don’t you know who I am?" ...
That, as I said at the time, was an attempt by the Murdoch media to invoke images of elitist/liberal/French privilege that the right-wing base associates with John Kerry (a favorite Kerry legend on the right involves his frequent alleged use of the phrase "Do you know who I am?" to get his way). Now that a real news organization has spoiled that narrative, I guess we have to go for union sleaze instead.
****
Oh, well -- at least Murdoch isn't accusing the housekeeper of engaging in a sexual 9/11, like this pseudonymous blogger at Robert Spencer's Jihad Watch:
This is not the first time a Muslim has tried to run an extortion racket against an 'infidel', with the only difference now being that the target was a very high-profile one. Many Muslims have long been noted for their intimate involvement in the criminal underworld, exploiting Westerners, running welfare scams, and in general 'parasiting' non Muslims and western society at every opportunity. The case against DSK appears to be but a recent and high-profile instance of 'stealth' or 'legal' jihad, when Muslims attempt to exploit the infidels' own laws for maximum advantage.
Why would a Muslim, and a 'pious, devout' one at that, be so adept and experienced at lying? Surely Islam has nothing to do with this woman's pathological lying, and nothing to do with her criminal attempts to extort money from a powerful, rich Jew. Of course.
As jihad-minded and Islamic supremacist Muslims continue to pour into the US and other Western countries, permitted to do so by clueless or complicit authorities, the next attempted shakedown (high profile or otherwise) is but a matter of time. What happened to Dominique Strauss-Kahn will eventually happen again.
Bloody hell.
As a member of an ethnic group perhaps most famous in this country precisely for "intimate involvement in the criminal underworld" -- Herman Cain's old pizza company is named for the title bestowed on heads of our crime syndicates -- I'm struck, more than anything, by the way one ethnic group after another has taken on the role of America's criminal class much as we've been the low-level scut workers; it's what we do on the way up the ladder in this country, although we white ethnics got up the ladder faster than the newer groups ever will, as far as I can tell.
With crime as with cleaning hotel rooms, I feel non-European ethnics are just doing work we don't want to do anymore. From the Times story:
The boyfriend in the Arizona detention center was another issue. He had been arrested while bartering counterfeit designer clothing from Manhattan’s Chinatown for marijuana in the Southwest, the well-placed law enforcement official said. Her lawyer said she did not know the man was "a drug dealer."
In the early twentieth century, that could have been an Italian immigrant and her acquaintances. And she might have been seen as an associate of anarchists, whereas she and her associates would just have been trying to hustle a buck, by fair means or foul. And if she'd been raped, she might have reacted the same way. And a fair number of us may be descendants or near relatives of people just like that.
I'm sure you already know about the many things authorities have learned, and reported to The New York Times, concerning Dominique Strauss-Kahn's accuser. One detail that would make this story satisfyingly tawdry for many observers doesn't show up in the accounts that appear in the Times -- but the New York Post goes where the Times won't, citing -- conveniently -- an anonymous source in its "EXCLUSIVE." And oh, hey -- the Post manages to take a shot at the right's Antichrist of the Year in the process:
Dominique Strauss-Kahn's accuser wasn't just a girl working at a hotel --- she was a working girl.
The Sofitel housekeeper who claims the former IMF boss sexually assaulted her in his room was doing double duty as a prostitute, collecting cash on the side from male guests, The Post has learned.
"There is information ... of her getting extraordinary tips, if you know what I mean. And it's not for bringing extra f--king towels," a source close to the defense investigation said yesterday.
The woman was allegedly purposely assigned to the Midtown hotel by her union because it knew she would bring in big bucks.
"When you're a chambermaid at Local 6, when you first get to the US, you start at the motels at JFK [Airport]. You don't start at the Sofitel," the source said. "There's a whole squad of people who saw her as an earner." ...
One bullet, two targets -- nice work, Rupert. Not only is she a filthy whore, but she's a filthy whore assigned to filthy whoredom by union thugs.
So, Rupe, I take it that this previous anonymously sourced "EXCLUSIVE" from your news empire is, um, inoperative?
Dominique Strauss-Kahn told a New York City hotel maid, "Don't you know who I am! Don't you know who I am?" while pinning her down during the alleged sexual assault, law enforcement sources close to the investigation told FoxNews.com.
... Sources told FoxNews.com that the 32-year-old African immigrant repeatedly told her alleged attacker, "Please, please stop. No!"
... Strauss-Kahn allegedly responded: "No, baby. Don't worry, you're not going to lose your job. Please, baby, don't worry," Strauss-Kahn responded, according to investigators. "Don't you know who I am? Don’t you know who I am?" ...
That, as I said at the time, was an attempt by the Murdoch media to invoke images of elitist/liberal/French privilege that the right-wing base associates with John Kerry (a favorite Kerry legend on the right involves his frequent alleged use of the phrase "Do you know who I am?" to get his way). Now that a real news organization has spoiled that narrative, I guess we have to go for union sleaze instead.
****
Oh, well -- at least Murdoch isn't accusing the housekeeper of engaging in a sexual 9/11, like this pseudonymous blogger at Robert Spencer's Jihad Watch:
This is not the first time a Muslim has tried to run an extortion racket against an 'infidel', with the only difference now being that the target was a very high-profile one. Many Muslims have long been noted for their intimate involvement in the criminal underworld, exploiting Westerners, running welfare scams, and in general 'parasiting' non Muslims and western society at every opportunity. The case against DSK appears to be but a recent and high-profile instance of 'stealth' or 'legal' jihad, when Muslims attempt to exploit the infidels' own laws for maximum advantage.
Why would a Muslim, and a 'pious, devout' one at that, be so adept and experienced at lying? Surely Islam has nothing to do with this woman's pathological lying, and nothing to do with her criminal attempts to extort money from a powerful, rich Jew. Of course.
As jihad-minded and Islamic supremacist Muslims continue to pour into the US and other Western countries, permitted to do so by clueless or complicit authorities, the next attempted shakedown (high profile or otherwise) is but a matter of time. What happened to Dominique Strauss-Kahn will eventually happen again.
Bloody hell.
As a member of an ethnic group perhaps most famous in this country precisely for "intimate involvement in the criminal underworld" -- Herman Cain's old pizza company is named for the title bestowed on heads of our crime syndicates -- I'm struck, more than anything, by the way one ethnic group after another has taken on the role of America's criminal class much as we've been the low-level scut workers; it's what we do on the way up the ladder in this country, although we white ethnics got up the ladder faster than the newer groups ever will, as far as I can tell.
With crime as with cleaning hotel rooms, I feel non-European ethnics are just doing work we don't want to do anymore. From the Times story:
The boyfriend in the Arizona detention center was another issue. He had been arrested while bartering counterfeit designer clothing from Manhattan’s Chinatown for marijuana in the Southwest, the well-placed law enforcement official said. Her lawyer said she did not know the man was "a drug dealer."
In the early twentieth century, that could have been an Italian immigrant and her acquaintances. And she might have been seen as an associate of anarchists, whereas she and her associates would just have been trying to hustle a buck, by fair means or foul. And if she'd been raped, she might have reacted the same way. And a fair number of us may be descendants or near relatives of people just like that.
Friday, July 01, 2011
THE FAILED-STATING OF AMERICA
Paul Krugman:
Many commentators remain complacent about the debt ceiling; the very gravity of the consequences if the ceiling isn't raised, they say, ensures that in the end politicians will do what must be done. But this complacency misses two important facts about the situation: the extremism of the modern G.O.P., and the urgent need for President Obama to draw a line in the sand against further extortion.
Jonathan Bernstein:
...what scares me is the strong possibility that a large percentage of Republicans in Congress have come to believe their own rhetoric about the debt limit: that somehow it just doesn't matter. That default is an acceptable option. What scares me is that epistemic closure among Republican leaders is very real, and very difficult to puncture.
It amazes me that people still have a hard time accepting the notion that Republicans really might force the U.S. government to default. But why wouldn't they? Because the idea is unacceptable? In reality, it jibes with all sorts of ideas that, in this society, are perfectly acceptable.
One of these is regime change. Virtually everyone in a position of political power in America believes it's acceptable to impose punitive sanctions on a dangerous regime, even if those sanctions cause suffering to the ordinary people on whose behalf they're said to be imposed. And virtually everyone believes it's acceptable to go to war to drive out regimes deemed unacceptable, even though, again, regime-change wars kill, injure, and displace the very people on whose behalf they're said to be fought. The belief is that even horrible pain caused to the population will be offset by the blessings of a new regime. That's basically what the Republicans believe about default (and union-stripping, and everything else they're doing these days). They just think nothing could be worse than the continued existence of the current regime, i.e., the balance of power between the rich and the rest of us that existed for much of the twentieth century, or what's left of it. No amount of pain is too much to make the upending of that balance of power worthwhile.
(Of course, by "worthwhile" they mean not that we'll all live in utopia, but rather that we'll live in a sink-or-swim world that's good for us because it punishes us mercilessly when we fail or stumble or are felled by circumstance. For the rich and powerful, by contrast, it's simply beneficial because it's, well beneficial.)
Also remember that right-wingers believe in the economic notion of "creative destruction": If a shop goes out of business, it's the marketplace cleansing the system of a laggard. What seems heartbreaking to liberal squishes is actually beneficial -- invariably.
And here's a more cynical reason that Republicans don't fear default: they clearly don't believe -- or at least their corporate masters clearly don't believe -- that it's necessarily worthwhile for America to have an economy that serves the majority of the population well. Most multinationals do their manufacturing in countries with small or nonexistent middle classes -- and as long as those regimes are stable, there doesn't seem to be much downside, right? Criminal gangs know this too -- whether in Sinaloa or Whitey Bulger's South Boston or the Baltimore of The Wire, criminal organizations don't feel the need to find a home base with good schools and parks and a thriving middle class. It's just the opposite, in fact. You can do quite well in a mini-failed state. And speaking of failed states, what was Al Qaeda looking for in the 1990s? Certainly not governmental stability -- a failed state is precisely what it needed to thrive, first in Sudan and then in Afghanistan. Our overlords may not accept that the last two examples form a good analogy, but the thinking is quite similar. So, with all this, why not destroy the broader economy and the middle class? What's the downside for the elites?
Paul Krugman:
Many commentators remain complacent about the debt ceiling; the very gravity of the consequences if the ceiling isn't raised, they say, ensures that in the end politicians will do what must be done. But this complacency misses two important facts about the situation: the extremism of the modern G.O.P., and the urgent need for President Obama to draw a line in the sand against further extortion.
Jonathan Bernstein:
...what scares me is the strong possibility that a large percentage of Republicans in Congress have come to believe their own rhetoric about the debt limit: that somehow it just doesn't matter. That default is an acceptable option. What scares me is that epistemic closure among Republican leaders is very real, and very difficult to puncture.
It amazes me that people still have a hard time accepting the notion that Republicans really might force the U.S. government to default. But why wouldn't they? Because the idea is unacceptable? In reality, it jibes with all sorts of ideas that, in this society, are perfectly acceptable.
One of these is regime change. Virtually everyone in a position of political power in America believes it's acceptable to impose punitive sanctions on a dangerous regime, even if those sanctions cause suffering to the ordinary people on whose behalf they're said to be imposed. And virtually everyone believes it's acceptable to go to war to drive out regimes deemed unacceptable, even though, again, regime-change wars kill, injure, and displace the very people on whose behalf they're said to be fought. The belief is that even horrible pain caused to the population will be offset by the blessings of a new regime. That's basically what the Republicans believe about default (and union-stripping, and everything else they're doing these days). They just think nothing could be worse than the continued existence of the current regime, i.e., the balance of power between the rich and the rest of us that existed for much of the twentieth century, or what's left of it. No amount of pain is too much to make the upending of that balance of power worthwhile.
(Of course, by "worthwhile" they mean not that we'll all live in utopia, but rather that we'll live in a sink-or-swim world that's good for us because it punishes us mercilessly when we fail or stumble or are felled by circumstance. For the rich and powerful, by contrast, it's simply beneficial because it's, well beneficial.)
Also remember that right-wingers believe in the economic notion of "creative destruction": If a shop goes out of business, it's the marketplace cleansing the system of a laggard. What seems heartbreaking to liberal squishes is actually beneficial -- invariably.
And here's a more cynical reason that Republicans don't fear default: they clearly don't believe -- or at least their corporate masters clearly don't believe -- that it's necessarily worthwhile for America to have an economy that serves the majority of the population well. Most multinationals do their manufacturing in countries with small or nonexistent middle classes -- and as long as those regimes are stable, there doesn't seem to be much downside, right? Criminal gangs know this too -- whether in Sinaloa or Whitey Bulger's South Boston or the Baltimore of The Wire, criminal organizations don't feel the need to find a home base with good schools and parks and a thriving middle class. It's just the opposite, in fact. You can do quite well in a mini-failed state. And speaking of failed states, what was Al Qaeda looking for in the 1990s? Certainly not governmental stability -- a failed state is precisely what it needed to thrive, first in Sudan and then in Afghanistan. Our overlords may not accept that the last two examples form a good analogy, but the thinking is quite similar. So, with all this, why not destroy the broader economy and the middle class? What's the downside for the elites?
LIBERAL FASCISTS TOOK AWAY MONICA CROWLEY'S FREEDOM NOT TO KNOW THAT DOUBLE CHEESEBURGERS ARE FATTENING
Well, we've known for a long time that whatever it is, if liberals are for it, Fox News is against it, but we learned yesterday from Ellen and Brian at NewsHounds that, for Neil Cavuto and frequent Fox commentator Monica Crowley, this extends tyo being objectively pro-salmonella:
On Tuesday (6/28/11), Your World with Neil Cavuto brought on Crowley to discuss the new PSA which advises cooks to separate raw chickens from vegetables on cutting boards and other utensils....
Both Crowley and Cavuto noted that the ad had been produced pro bono, without taxpayer dollars but that didn't stop her from whining that it was somehow a waste of money. "What this points to is the fact that the governments priorities are completely off the wall. We are in a severe debt crisis in this country. We've got a 14.3 and climbing net trillion dollar national debt. We've got a 1.65 (trillion dollar) annual deficit, and yet the government is running around making ads about not letting your veggies touch your chicken," Crowley said....
Right -- the odds are overwhelming that your commercially produced raw chicken will contain salmonella, campylobacter, or other dangerous pathogens, but it's horrible that the government wants to warn people not to spread those pathogens to, say, raw veggies being thrown into a salad -- it's up to the free market to do that! With warning labels on chicken pages in teeny tiny type. (Which are, um, government-mandated, but never mind.)
But the liberal fascism doesn't stop there. Crowley:
The other day, Neil, I was starving. I was walking down the street in New York, starving, and I hadn't eaten all day, and I went into a restaurant, and all the calorie counts are there, courtesy of New York City Government, New York State Government, the Feds are getting involved... and it was a complete buzzkill. I wanted a double-decker cheeseburger, and I ended up not getting it. This is the government saying, "We know better than you."
Yes, it's horrifying: The government actually forced Monica Crowley to learn that a double cheeseburger is high in calories! No, really! And then it forced her not to order something that was on the menu! Which it did by ... er, I'm not sure how it did that. But it did!
Well, we've known for a long time that whatever it is, if liberals are for it, Fox News is against it, but we learned yesterday from Ellen and Brian at NewsHounds that, for Neil Cavuto and frequent Fox commentator Monica Crowley, this extends tyo being objectively pro-salmonella:
On Tuesday (6/28/11), Your World with Neil Cavuto brought on Crowley to discuss the new PSA which advises cooks to separate raw chickens from vegetables on cutting boards and other utensils....
Both Crowley and Cavuto noted that the ad had been produced pro bono, without taxpayer dollars but that didn't stop her from whining that it was somehow a waste of money. "What this points to is the fact that the governments priorities are completely off the wall. We are in a severe debt crisis in this country. We've got a 14.3 and climbing net trillion dollar national debt. We've got a 1.65 (trillion dollar) annual deficit, and yet the government is running around making ads about not letting your veggies touch your chicken," Crowley said....
Right -- the odds are overwhelming that your commercially produced raw chicken will contain salmonella, campylobacter, or other dangerous pathogens, but it's horrible that the government wants to warn people not to spread those pathogens to, say, raw veggies being thrown into a salad -- it's up to the free market to do that! With warning labels on chicken pages in teeny tiny type. (Which are, um, government-mandated, but never mind.)
But the liberal fascism doesn't stop there. Crowley:
The other day, Neil, I was starving. I was walking down the street in New York, starving, and I hadn't eaten all day, and I went into a restaurant, and all the calorie counts are there, courtesy of New York City Government, New York State Government, the Feds are getting involved... and it was a complete buzzkill. I wanted a double-decker cheeseburger, and I ended up not getting it. This is the government saying, "We know better than you."
Yes, it's horrifying: The government actually forced Monica Crowley to learn that a double cheeseburger is high in calories! No, really! And then it forced her not to order something that was on the menu! Which it did by ... er, I'm not sure how it did that. But it did!
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