Benen asks WHAT KIND OF QUESTION IS THAT?....

QOTD, Frank Rich: The once-lionized lifestyles of the rich and infamous were appallingly tacky. John Thain’s parchment trash can was merely the tip of the kitschy iceberg. The level of taste flaunted by America’s upper caste at the bubble’s height had less in common with the Medicis than, say, Uday and Qusay Hussein.

Aravosis: States cutting back on executions cuz it's just too darned expensive Only in America would we turn against capital punishment because it takes too much capital.

Orin Kerr, March 4, 2009 at 3:23pm]

John Yoo:

"Now that I'm not in the government, part of my role, because I have a certain amount of expertise, is to try to keep the government honest."

-- From an interview with the Orange County Register.

On the other hand, back when he was in government....

atrios on McCain Yelling At Clouds: One day I hope members of the press finally realize that McCain's a grumpy grandstanding know-nothing. I won't hold my breath for that moment, however.


Benen on ASSUMPTIONS....

When I was a teenager, I had certain misconceptions about politics and government. I assumed, for example, that members of Congress, whether I agreed with their policies or not, were necessarily very bright. After all, these folks are educated and well read. They attend policy briefings, hear expert testimony at committee hearings, and have staffers who help keep them informed on everything from the economy to foreign policy to constitutional law. It's not like voters would just send some misguided schmuck to serve as their voice in one of the most prestigious legislative bodies on the planet.

Needless to say, I didn't fully appreciate, at the time, how this process works.

I thought about this when I saw Matt Yglesias' item from yesterday, reflecting on Rep Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) twittering about how much he's enjoying "Atlas Shrugged." Matt commented:

Something I think most liberals don't understand is exactly how stupid many conservative leaders are. There is, yes, a condescending tendency to believe that no smart person could be on the right ideologically at all. That's dead wrong. There are plenty of bright people on the right. But the way their movement works, intelligence or understanding of politics and policy has no meaningful role in advancement. If anything, there's something of a negative correlation between knowing what you're talking about and being able to get ahead in right-wing politics.

...

... If a member of Congress -- not just some back-bencher, but a senator or a member of the House leadership -- says something seemingly provocative, a lot of people are predisposed to take it seriously. After all, he/she is in a position of authority. He/she helps shape the policies of the federal government. His/her opinion must have some value; I'm seeing it on television.

The underlying assumption is the same one I had in high school.

We talked earlier, for example, about House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) responding to an economic collapse by calling for a spending freeze. News outlets reported this straight -- as if it were a serious recommendation from a credible public figure. Some Americans probably heard the news and thought there might be something to it. After all, Boehner's the House Minority Leader. GOP lawmakers got together and picked him as their #1 guy. If Republicans re-claimed the majority, Boehner would be the Speaker of the House, and two heartbeats from the presidency.

Respectable figures are reluctant to say, out loud, "My God, what this man is saying is blisteringly stupid." Indeed, leading Republican officials -- Mitch McConnell, Jon Kyl, Mike Pence -- say all kinds of things that should be dismissed as transparent nonsense, but aren't. There must be something coherent about their ideas, the conventional thinking goes, by virtue of their offices. Their recommendations warrant responses -- and even deserve consideration at the negotiating table -- because they maintain positions of influence in government.

"Something I think most liberals don't understand is exactly how stupid many conservative leaders are." If only liberals weren't the only ones.

speaking of the stoopid ...
Benen asks WHAT KIND OF QUESTION IS THAT?.... (post copied in its entirety)

President Obama chatted with a couple of New York Times reporters aboard Air Force One yesterday, and the interview covered quite a bit of ground. I was taken aback, though, by the NYT approaching this nonsense in a serious way:

Q. The first six weeks have given people a glimpse of your spending priorities. Are you a socialist as some people have suggested?

A. You know, let's take a look at the budget -- the answer would be no.

Q. Is there anything wrong with saying yes?

A. Let's just take a look at what we've done....

Let me get this straight. Unhinged and hysterical Republicans have engaged in an absurd red scare, in large part because the White House supports a 39.6% top rate. The very idea that the president's agenda is similar to "socialism" is demonstrably ridiculous. So, given an opportunity to interview with president, the New York Times, arguably one of the world's most prestigious news outlets, asks, "Are you a socialist?"

Indeed, the reporters brought it up again soon after.

Q. Is there one word name for your philosophy? If you're not a socialist, are you a liberal? Are you progressive? One word?

A. No, I'm not going to engage in that.

During the presidential campaign, it was understandable, I suppose, to ask Candidate Obama to set the record straight about various right-wing memes. But for the paper of record to seriously inquire about the president and socialism lends credence to painfully stupid attacks.

As it turns out, after the interview was over, Obama called the Times to press the point further. ...

Obama: Just one thing I was thinking about as I was getting on the copter. It was hard for me to believe that you were entirely serious about that socialist question. I did think it might be useful to point out that it wasn't under me that we started buying a bunch of shares of banks. It wasn't on my watch. And it wasn't on my watch that we passed a massive new entitlement – the prescription drug plan without a source of funding. And so I think it's important just to note when you start hearing folks throw these words around that we've actually been operating in a way that has been entirely consistent with free-market principles and that some of the same folks who are throwing the word socialist around can't say the same.

Q. So who's watch are we talking about here?

A. Well, I just think it's clear by the time we got here, there already had been an enormous infusion of taxpayer money into the financial system. And the thing I constantly try to emphasize to people if that coming in, the market was doing fine, nobody would be happier than me to stay out of it. I have more than enough to do without having to worry the financial system. The fact that we've had to take these extraordinary measures and intervene is not an indication of my ideological preference, but an indication of the degree to which lax regulation and extravagant risk taking has precipitated a crisis.

"It was hard for me to believe that you were entirely serious about that socialist question." The president sounds a little annoyed. He should be. Sometimes our political discourse is very, very dumb, and journalists who should play a constructive role in making it better often make it worse.

• hilzoy Be Like Reagan And Thatcher! Soak The Rich!

  Possibly because of my immersion in posts about going Galt, I've read altogether too many blog posts and newspaper columns about the horrid, wealth-destroying, class-warfare-waging, socialist nightmare that is Barack Obama's tax policy. So I thought it might be a good idea to get a few basic facts on the table.

  Obama is not proposing to raise the personal income tax. He is proposing to allow the Bush tax cuts on families making over $250,000 a year to expire. The Republicans wrote that expiration into law to conceal to hide the costs of their tax cuts. Under the law they wrote, the top marginal tax rate will go up from 35% to 39.6% in 2011.

  If a top marginal tax rate of 39.6% is socialism, then there are a lot of socialists in the world. For instance, Japan, South Korea, Australia, along with a lot of the OECD: all have rates higher than Obama is proposing. (Note: I just chose some countries at random. I'm sure I could have found more.) No wonder the world economy is in trouble! There's socialism and class warfare everywhere you look!

  But it's even stranger than that. Did you know that Margaret Thatcher (pdf) declared war on the wealthy, a war so extreme it makes Obama's seem meek ...

  Likewise, Ronald Reagan was apparently a Class Warrior: for six of the eight years during which Reagan was President, the top tax bracket was 50%. It's a wonder anyone worked at all! In Reagan's defense, though, ...

  All in all, it seems as though we've been suffering through an awful lot of socialism and class warfare all over the world, much of it at the hands of people conservatives claim to admire. ...
  

• Jed L on more stoopid jounalism in Obama is (not) like Bush because...
  

  With every passing day, Barack Obama is more like George W. Bush...or so says Jackson Diehl, deputy editor of WaPo's editorial page. Seriously.

  Well, let's put it to the test:

  Obama is like Bush because: Obama's first move is always to reach out to everybody willing to participate in the process, no matter what party they belong to.

  Obama is like Bush because: Obama gives the political opposition every opportunity imaginable to avoid self-destruction.

  Obama is like Bush because: Obama made concessions to the GOP in the stimulus on taxes (42% of the bill was tax cuts) even though almost no Republicans supported the bill.

  Obama is like Bush because: Obama opposed the Iraq War from the beginning and is ending the war now that he is president.

  Obama is like Bush because: Obama opposed Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy from the beginning and .... and on and on.

Heather (C&L) on Real Time New Rules: Maher Lambastes GOP's Hatred of Government (video at link)

This is one of the better New Rules segments I've seen from Maher in a while. He ends it with channeling Michael Moore with his criticism of insurance companies in this diatribe on the Republicans and their anti-government rhetoric and love of the private sector.

Maher:The thing is that endless variety only exists because Americans pay taxes to a government which maintains roads, irrigates fields, over sees the electrical grid and everything else but enables the modern American supermarket to carry forty seven varieties of frozen breakfast pastries.

Of course it's easy to tear government down. Ronald Reagan used to say the nine most terrifying words in the English language were "I'm from the government and I'm here to help". But that was before "I'm Sarah Palin, now show me the launch codes".

You know the stimulus package was attacked as typical tax and spend, you know like repairing bridges is left wing stuff. Ooh there the liberals go again. Always wanting to get across the river.

Folks, the people are the government. The first responders who put out your fires. That's your government. The ranger who shoos pedophiles out of the bathroom. The postman who delivers your porn. I mean how stupid is it when people say "Oh yeah that's all we need. The federal government telling Detroit how to make cars, or Wells Fargo how to run a bank. You want them to look like the Post Office?"

Yeah. Actually. You mean..you mean the place that takes a note in my hand in L.A. on Monday and gives it to my sister in Jersey on Wednesday for forty two cents? Well let me be the first to say I would be thrilled if America's health care system was anywhere near as functional as the Post Office.

The truth is, recent years have made me much more wary of government doing the opposite. Of stepping aside and letting unregulated private enterprise run things it is plainly too greedy to trust with, like Wall Street, like rebuilding Iraq. Like the way Republicans always frame the health care debate by saying health care decisions should be made by doctors and patients, not government bureaucrats. Leaving out the fact that health decisions aren't made by doctors, patients or bureaucrats. They're made by insurance companies.

Insurance companies. Which are a lot like hospital gowns. Chances are your ass isn't covered.

Yglesias on The Excluded Option

Media Matters documents the fact that the view that the Obama administration’s stimulus package might have been too small was almost entirely excluded from TV news coverage of the debate, even though this was an opinion held by a large number of widely respected people. Indeed, subsequent news coverage has made it clear that people in the White House took this view very seriously but thought it was the better part of valor to avoid provoking too much sticker shock.

Unfortunately, this kind of thing can become a self-fulfilling prophesy. If the opinion that $800 billion wasn’t enough had been in wider circulation, then it might have been more possible for the White House’s apparent strategy of hoping that the congressional process would push the total size up to actually work.

• Krugman: One-sided debate
  

  One major sin of news coverage, especially on TV, is the way certain points of view just get excluded from consideration — even if many of the best-informed people hold those views. Most famously and disastrously, the case against invading Iraq was just not heard in the months before the war.

  And still it happens. According to the invaluable Media Matters, the idea that the Obama stimulus plan might be too small — a view held by many well-known economists — basically went unreported on broadcast news during the stimulus debate. Out of 59 broadcasts addressing the plan, only 3 mentioned concerns that the plan was inadequate. And it’s actually even worse than that: one of those three involved Harry Reid talking about longer-term goals on health and education — and one of the other two was me.

  Meanwhile, it’s rapidly becoming clear that yes, the plan was too small.

Drum on Counterparty Risk

What's going on with AIG? Just in the past few days the entire country has suddenly become outraged by the fact that much of the federal bailout money going to AIG is being used to pay off its creditors. Creditors, in this case, being people who bought insurance via credit default swaps and are now owed payment either for mortgage-backed securities that have gone bad or for increased collateral requirements caused by AIG's downgrade from AAA. And some of these creditors are other banks! And some of them are even foreign banks!!!

But look. Last year "counterparty risk" was practically crowned the phrase of the year. You couldn't swing a dead copy of the Wall Street Journal without coming across it. ...

So why is everyone suddenly acting as if we just discovered yesterday that bailout money is being used to pay off AIG's counterparties? And that this is some kind of scandal? Help me out here. I'm genuinely confused about why, after six months, this has suddenly become the populist outrage du jour.

The Cook Report: Getting Down To The Nitty-Gritty

...

Gallup polling showed that Obama started off with an extraordinarily high 41 percent approval rating among Republicans. After he had been in office a few weeks, that number drifted down to 27 percent, spiked to 42 percent after his speech, and is now 35 percent.

High job-approval ratings among members of the opposition party, while flattering, are usually quite fleeting and create artificially inflated overall ratings that aren't sustainable. The longer Obama is involved in the gritty details of governing, the less likely he is to regain his popularity among Republicans.

Obama's losing support among Republicans was to be expected. The group to watch is independents, who made up 30 percent of the sample in the Cook/RT poll and generally run around 36 percent in Gallup surveys. For a Democratic president, sequentially, losing ground among Republicans comes first, among independents second, and among Democrats last. Obama's numbers among independents have remained remarkably stable, averaging 62 percent in Gallup's first two weeks of tracking; 63 percent in the second two weeks; dropping to 54 percent during the February 21 to 23 survey; and then rising to 60 percent in the February 23 to March 1 polling.

The biggest thing driving Obama's numbers has been his nearly monolithic support among Democrats, who hold an 8-to-10-point advantage over Republicans in party identification. In annual compilations of those numbers by Gallup, what had been a 1-point GOP advantage in 2003 shifted to parity in 2004 and bulged to a Democratic advantage of 8 points last year. Thus, widespread approval among Democrats combined with a high Democratic advantage in party identification is a very potent combination for Obama.

One striking feature of recent polls is the breadth and strength of Obama's support among Americans ages 50 to 64, arguably the people most hurt by the stock market's nosedive. In the most recent Gallup Poll, the president's approval rating among those in this age group was higher than ever -- 65 percent -- and was second only to his support among the youngest voters. In the latest Cook/RT survey, Obama's backing among the 50-to-64 set was 68 percent, the highest of any age group. And 47 percent strongly approved of his performance -- again, the highest of any age group.

...

From Wilder's "Our Town" to venereal disease, this is classic Rich: Some Things Don’t Change in Grover’s Corners

“WHEREVER you come near the human race, there’s layers and layers of nonsense,” says the Stage Manager in Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town.” Those words were first heard by New York audiences in February 1938, as America continued to reel from hard times. The Times’s front page told of 100,000 auto workers protesting layoffs in Detroit and of a Republican official attacking the New Deal as “fascist.” Though no one was buying cars, F.D.R. had the gall to endorse a mammoth transcontinental highway construction program to put men back to work.
...
Retrieving that faith now requires extraordinary patience and optimism. We’re still working our way through the aftershocks of the orgy of irresponsibility and greed that brought America to this nadir. In his recent letter to shareholders, a chastened Warren Buffett likened our financial institutions’ recklessness to venereal disease. Even the innocent were infected because “it’s not just whom you sleep with” but also “whom they” — unnamed huge financial institutions — “are sleeping with,” he wrote. Indeed, our government is in the morally untenable position of rewarding the most promiscuous carrier of them all, A.I.G., with as much as $180 billion in taxpayers’ cash transfusions (so far) precisely because it can’t be disentangled from all the careless (and unidentified) trading partners sharing its infection.
...
... This aura of godliness also shielded the “legal” Madoffs at firms like Citibank and Goldman Sachs. They spread V.D. with esoteric derivatives, then hedged their wild gambles with A.I.G. “insurance” (credit-default swaps) that proved to be the most porous prophylactics in the history of finance.

The simplest explanation for why America’s reality got so distorted is the economic imbalance that Barack Obama now wants to remedy with policies that his critics deride as “socialist” (“fascist” can’t be far behind): the obscene widening of income inequality between the very rich and everyone else since the 1970s. “There is something wrong when we allow the playing field to be tilted so far in the favor of so few,” the president said in his budget message. He was calling for fundamental fairness, not class warfare. America hasn’t seen such gaping inequality since the Gilded Age and 1920s boom that preceded the Great Depression.

...

In one way, though, the remaining vestiges of the past decade’s excesses, whether they live on in the shouted sophistry of CNBC or in the ashes of Stanford’s castle, are useful. Seen in the cold light of our long hangover, they remind us that it was the America of the bubble that was aberrant and perverse, creating a new normal that wasn’t normal at all.

The true American faith endures in “Our Town.” The key word in its title is the collective “our,” just as “united” is the resonant note hit by the new president when saying the full name of the country. The notion that Americans must all rise and fall together is the ideal we still yearn to reclaim, and that a majority voted for in November. But how we get there from this economic graveyard is a challenge rapidly rivaling the one that faced Wilder’s audience in that dark late winter of 1938.