PRIVCORR

Post Truth

2010-11-16T11:59:00.000-05:00

Olbermann: False promise of objectivity proves truth superior to fact?

In a Special Comment, Countdown's Keith Olbermann discusses how the false god of objectivity in news reporting failed America in the lead up to the Iraq War, and points out that some of the most revered named in news were actually attacked in their times for being too partial in speaking truth to power.

Benen: THE POST-TRUTH ERA....

It's never been easier for Americans to keep up on current events and public affairs, but the persistent propensity for large swaths of the electorate to believe demonstrable falsehoods remains astounding.
I'm well aware of the structural problems that generated Republican gains in the midterms -- high unemployment means huge losses for the incumbent majority. But I'm also inclined to believe that our stunted discourse contributes to an environment in which facts are swiftly rejected.

Much, if not most, of the country believes President Obama raised taxes. And that he signed TARP into law. And that TARP money isn't being repaid. And that the economy contracted in 2010. And that the stimulus was wasteful and counter-productive. And that this current Congress did less than most. And that the Affordable Care Act constitutes "socialized medicine" and a "government takeover." And let's not even get started on the president's birthplace.

In a historical sense, it's not at all unusual for propagandists and provocateurs to spread lies, but we live in an era in which it's almost effortless for ignorance to spread like a cancer -- leading more people to believe more nonsense, faster and easier.

Andrew Sullivan had an item on this last week that bears repeating.

It seems to me that the last year or so in America's political culture has represented the triumph of untruth. And the untruth was propagated by a deliberate, simple and systemic campaign to kill Obama's presidency in its crib. Emergency measures in a near-unprecedented economic collapse - the bank bailout, the auto-bailout, the stimulus - were described by the right as ideological moves of choice, when they were, in fact, pragmatic moves of necessity. The increasingly effective isolation of Iran's regime - and destruction of its legitimacy from within - was portrayed as a function of Obama's weakness, rather than his strength. The health insurance reform -- almost identical to Romney's, to the right of the Clintons in 1993, costed to reduce the deficit, without a public option, and with millions more customers for the insurance and drug companies -- was turned into a socialist government take-over.
Every one of these moves could be criticized in many ways. What cannot be done honestly, in my view, is to create a narrative from all of them to describe Obama as an anti-American hyper-leftist, spending the US into oblivion. But since this seems to be the only shred of thinking left on the right (exacerbated by the justified flight of the educated classes from a party that is now openly contemptuous of learning), it became a familiar refrain -- pummeled into our heads day and night by talk radio and Fox. If you think I'm exaggerating, try the following thought experiment.

If a black Republican president had come in, helped turn around the banking and auto industries (at a small profit!), insured millions through the private sector while cutting Medicare, overseen a sharp decline in illegal immigration, ramped up the war in Afghanistan, reinstituted pay-as-you go in the Congress, set up a debt commission to offer hard choices for future debt reduction, and seen private sector job growth outstrip the public sector's in a slow but dogged recovery, somehow I don't think that Republican would be regarded as a socialist.

This is the era of the Big Lie, in other words, and it translates into a lot of little lies -- "death panels," "out-of-control" spending, "apologies for America" etc. -- designed to concoct a false narrative so simple and so familiar it actually succeeded in getting into people's minds in the midst of a brutal recession.

As we talked about a couple of weeks ago, this dynamic encourages more of what we've seen of late -- when dishonesty is rewarded, we'll hear more lies, not fewer.

The post-truth era can be disheartening.

The aftermath

2010-11-03T07:34:00.005-04:00

John Cole

No idea what is going on with the election other than that Russ Feingold, a civil libertarian hero, has lost. Maybe he could have used some help from those principled libertarians at Reason magazine, but they were too fucking busy attacking Cuomo to notice much of anything else.

Bob Barr endorsed Feingold. Matt Welch, Nick Gillespie, and other Koch stalwarts- not so much. They do have time for a farewell, though. Thanks for all the help, principled libertarians! Maybe a couple more smooth Nick Gillespie videos about Obamacare could have made the difference. Wait, what?

But don’t you dare call Reason magazine a bunch of ineffectual Koch stooges, though. Because then you are just OVER THE FUCKING LINE QUESTIONING THEIR INTEGRITY.

David Neiwert:

Right now, it's looking pretty damned grim in the House. But at least it's looking like the Senate is going to remain in Democratic hands.
We'll all talk about this more tomorrow, but I blame the geniuses in the Democratic Party -- both in the White House and elsewhere -- who failed to establish firmly the narrative after the election that needed to be hammered home daily and relentlessly and fearlessly: that Americans had repudiated conservative rule because it had manifestly proven itself a failure. Instead, Democrats thought "bipartisanship" was more important. Sure it was.

This clearly was The Fox Election. This was a political victory entirely engineered by a fake "news network" that in reality is a relentless and powerful right-wing propaganda machine. Democrats need to wake up and figure out how they're going to beat it.

mistermix on Some Sterling Analysis

I didn’t bother to stay up and watch last night’s trainwreck. It’s tough enough to click through the House maps this morning. That said, the message is obvious—it’s another disappointment from Obama:

Although I wonder just how bad it would have been if the White House didn’t do what White Houses always do and pretty much sit around and watch their Party lose, to preserve their precious Cult of the Leader? Changey.

Clearly, the biggest wave election since the 30’s could have been stopped by a little more bully pulpit.

Marshall: Palin A Loser

It makes sense to be pretty careful in judging how things will affect Sarah Palin. But there's a decent argument that this is not a great night for her. Think about if Sharron Angle and Christine O'Donnell hadn't won their primaries. There's a decent chance Dems would have lost the Senate tonight. That's a pretty big deal. She also made a late endorsement of John Raese in West Virginia. He got crushed. And perhaps most importantly, she went to war in a big way with her state's senior senator, Lisa Murkowski. She got her beat in the Republican primary. But now it's looking like Murkowski's quite likely to win as a write-in, which is usually pretty much impossible to pull off.

Don't get me wrong. I don't think Sarah Palin will be going anywhere soon. The problem for the GOP is that the people who love her -- and there are a lot of them in the GOP -- really love her. And this won't matter a bit to them. But this result is going to get a lot of talk in GOP circles. Because there's a plausible argument that she lost them the Senate.

kos:

Bennet has just taken the lead in Colorado. And with just Boulder (deep Blue) and a sliver of El Paso County (Colorado Springs) left to report (and maybe Arapahoe, though that looks like another AP glitch), this one stays Blue.

So thanks Teabaggers! Thanks to your efforts, we got to keep seats in Colorado, Nevada, and Delaware.

Thanks to your efforts, we'll have a 53-47 Senate, rather than a 50-50 one.

Heckuva job rescuing the Democrats from themselves!

Anne Laurie

Just got a press release from the self-proclaimed “pioneer [of] political direct mail”, who boasts that he “has been called “one of the creators of the modern conservative movement” (The Nation magazine), one of the “conservatives of the century” (The Washington Times), and one of 2008’s “top 25 influencers” among Republicans”“:

Manassas, Virginia – “Voters have given Republicans one more chance to get it right,” Richard A. Viguerie said today. “They are on probation, and if they mess up again, they won’t get another chance.”

“The last time the Republicans were in charge, they became the party of big spending, Big Government, and Big Business. They abandoned the philosophy of Ronald Reagan and cozied up to lobbyists and special interests. And they paid a price at the polls.

“This year, the Democrats under President Obama and Speaker Pelosi drove millions of voters right back into the arms of the Republicans. But if Republicans return to their bad habits – if they start working for K Street instead of Main Street – they will pay a terrible price. Tea Party voters and conservatives will turn them out in the 2012 primaries.

“People will say: Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice, and the Republican Party is dead,” Viguerie said.

The upcoming, ongoing battles between the common Republican careerists and the wackaloon true believers are going to make the internecine sniping between Obots and firebaggers look like a… garden fete.

I’m just a little giddy that my beloved Commonwealth of Massachusetts has stayed solidly Democratic. Incumbent Governor Patrick held off Charley Baker, aka “Mitt Romney with a functioning neocortex”, and Barney Frank defeated our own version of “Joe Miller Lite”. The local newsbots are already babbling about “the end of the Scott Brown effect”—Cosmo Boy is now reduced to another quirky swamp yankee anomaly, not the much-ballyhooed John-the-Baptist foretelling a new regime of Masshole Republicanism. I wonder what the 2011 version of those Watergate-era “Don’t Blame Us, We Voted for McGovern” bumperstickers will be?

BooMan:

It's a bloodbath in the House. However, that is not yet been proven to be the case in the Senate. It's still too early to say. Ohio looks pitiful in the House and Senate, but pretty good in the governor's race, which is the most important. My initial assessment is that we're getting killed in the midwest in any district that doesn't have a substantial number of racial minorities. This is basically what I feared based on the resiliency of the Birth Certificate "secret Muslim" crap. This is a culture war, and we just took a standing-eight count. There are some surprises for the Republicans though. They might lose the state house in South Carolina, and there are a couple of House seats that might fall that people weren't thinking about. Overall, though, we're going to be in pitched combat over the next two years, fighting off a pit bull of hate.

Dennis G.

This is a night of redemption for the politics of the Confederate Party. It is their second great redemption, the first one being the election of 1876. Like that election they needed to speak in code to win. Back then it was all about how slavery had nothing to do with the Civil War. Now it is all about masking racism in vague economic mumbo-jumbo.

Years ago the Confederate Party maven of code-speaking—Lee Atwater—taught the the gang how to cover up their meaning as they took over the Republican Party:

In 1981, during the first year of Mr. Reagan’s presidency, the late Lee Atwater gave an interview to a political science professor at Case Western Reserve University, explaining the evolution of the Southern strategy:
“You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘Nigger, nigger, nigger,’ ” said Atwater. “By 1968, you can’t say ‘nigger’ — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things, and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.”

After America foolishly elected a black man President, the gang had to kick it up a notch. They tried many new ways of screaming ‘nigger’ from socialist to screaming “I want my country back”.

But of all the undercover code words to scream ‘Nigger, nigger, nigger’, the best is “Center Right Nation”. All that really mens when decoded is “White Nation” and that is what tonight’s Confederate Party gains were all about. It is a story about the white supremacy movement in America reasserting itself.

Some will of course disagree—as pointing out the deep racism of this neo-Confederate movement is considered extremely rude—especially with the pundit gasbag class. So many feel that one must respect proper decorum when our Confederate ‘betters’ discuss their racism in code, but fuck that.

I sorta wish they had the balls to ditch the code and go with their heart, but Lee Atwater and generations of Confederate code talkers have taught them well. The next two years are going to be really special and if we want to understand the newly elected Republicans we will just have to learn the code.

Perhaps we need a new tag: “Center White Nation”.

Josh Marshall

Whatever the merits of Evan Bayh's arguments (in an oped in Wednesday's Times), given that he walked away from a winnable Senate seat and held on to a $10 million war chest that other Dems could have put to good use, I think what most Democrats would like from Evan Bayh right now is for him to shut up.

It's really not about his analysis. He just walked off the field in the middle of the game. Who can respect that? He just has no standing to talk.

None of the spin is true

2010-10-19T07:14:00.003-04:00

Media adopt Republican narratives for midterms

Rachel Maddow explodes the prevailing media explanations for the success of extreme right Republican candidates, proving that the election is not about such issues as the deficit or TARP.

Kevin Drum: Government Spending

Has government spending been skyrocketing ever since Comrade Obama took office? Karl Smith brings the data, and I overlay a red line in order to provide some added value:

In other words, government expenditures have grown about as fast for the past two years as they did during the Bush administration's final term. All the supposed tea party angst over spending and deficits is based on precisely nothing. Federal expenditures are about the same as they've always has been, while revenue has gone down and transfer payments have gone up because of the recession. We have been adding to the deficit, but it's because of the recession, not because spending has spiraled out of control.

So what should we do? Increasing spending quickly is hard, and in any case politically impossible at the moment. A payroll tax holiday is a popular choice for getting money into the hands of consumers quickly, but Karl has another idea:

Another option is a radical increase in the standard deduction. I believe in bold yet, simple measures and so I don’t see a problem with increasing it by a factor of ten. This accomplishes several goals.

First, it gets money into the hands of consumers. Its our helicopter drop.

Second, it avoids any debate later over whether this should be the new tax structure. No one is going to suggest that a standard deduction of 100K should last forever.

Now, doesn’t this run afoul of the permanent income hypothesis? If its temporary then people will save it, no? I am not so sure that the PIH holds in a recession like this. Unless we think that the massive phase shift we got in retail sales is because people suddenly downgraded their entire future income stream by 10% there is a scramble for liquidity going on here. This is precisely what we will help undo.

Interesting! I don't know if anyone has suggested this before, but it's the first time I've heard it. I'm also not sure if it's better or worse than a payroll tax holiday. Probably a bit worse, I think, since it wouldn't be as progressive and wouldn't get much money into the hands of the poor. If it were more politically palatable, however, I could live with it.

But I don't suppose it is. Republicans, after all, don't really believe in the recession. They only believe in reductions on top marginal tax rates — aka tax cuts for the rich — and this certainly doesn't accomplish that. So they'll just go on pretending that it's merely uncertainty over Obamacare among heartland small business owners that's responsible for the weak economy, not deleveraging or foreclosures or disinflation or weak consumer demand. And so those small business owners will go on suffering.

Krugman: Why Have Deficits Exploded?

For all those commenters saying that we must have had a surge in government spending — I mean, look at the deficit! — a simple picture:

Government spending has continued to rise more or less on its pre-crisis trend. Revenue has plunged, because the economy is deeply depressed.

Other questions?

Krugman: Even More On The Origins of the Deficit

I’ve thought of another way to present the data on GDP, spending by all levels of government, and taxes. Let’s look at trends in GDP, spending, and revenues over two periods — one designed to capture “normal” growth, the other the economic crisis.

For the first period, I look at trends from the business cycle peak in the first quarter of 2001 to the peak in the last quarter of 2007. This is a standard way of measuring economic trends, by the way, since business cycle peaks presumably measure the economy’s output at or near capacity. And yes, this means that I wrote this post in a fit of peaks.

For the second period, I use the quarters since that 2007 peak.

So here’s what you get:

Bureau of Economic Analysis

During the pre-crisis period, spending grew slightly faster than GDP — that’s Medicare plus the Bush wars — while revenue grew more slowly, presumably reflecting tax cuts.

What happened after the crisis? Spending continued to grow at roughly the same rate — a bulge in safety net programs, offset by budget-slashing at the state and local level. GDP stalled — which is why the ratio of spending to GDP rose. And revenue plunged, leading to big deficits.

But I’m sure that the usual suspects will find ways to keep believing that it’s all about runaway spending.

Total Hack

2010-10-04T17:00:00.003-04:00

Heather (C&L): Kurtz Shortens Maddow's Response to White House Praise - Leaves Out Part Where She Said She'd Still Hold Them Accountable

DOWNLOADS: (11)

PLAYS: (138)

Embed

All I can say about this is that Howard Kurtz is a hack. Kurtz pretends he's some arbiter of bias in the media, yet he chose to omit part of what Rachel Maddow said in response to some praise by the White House of herself and Keith Olbermann on MSNBC. Shame on you Howard. The end of her response was actually the most important part, which is where she said they can praise her all they want, but it won't keep her from doing reporting they may not be happy with.

Here's Kurtz's edited version of the clip.

KURTZ: But another cable network got a big wet kiss. Deputy Press Secretary Bill Burton talking about MSNBC: "If you're on the left, if you're somebody like Keith Olbermann or Rachel Maddow, or one of the folks who helps keeps our government honest and pushes and prods to make sure that folks are true to progressive values, then he (the president) thinks that those folks provide an invaluable service."

Rachel Maddow expressed her thanks.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RACHEL MADDOW, MSNBC: That was very nice. A nice personal -- very flattering, but it's also nice in the sense that in an election year, it is nice for liberals to hear someone from the Democratic- controlled White House talk about liberals without swearing at them.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ: So is this an attempt by the White House to make up with the so-called "professional left," and will attacks on Fox backfire?

And here's the entire transcript of the clip from Rachel's show.

MADDOW: The Democratic politics fairy came to visit us today. And the Democratic politics fairy brought us here at THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW two gifts. First, a White House spokesman today brought up on a gaggle on Air Force One the issue of those darn liberal cable news hosts on the MSNBC. But he brought us up in order to say something nice about us. This is a nice change.

Spokesman Bill Burton described COUNTDOWN and this program as, quote, “helping to keep our government honest and pushing and prodding to make sure that folks are true to progressive values.” Mr. Burton said the president, quote, “thinks that those folks provide an invaluable service.”

That was very nice. Nice personally. Of course, it‘s very flattering. But it‘s also nice in the sense that in an election year, it is nice for liberals to hear someone from the Democratic-controlled White House talk about liberals without swearing at them. None of that means, of course, that we will stop reporting the news in the way that sometimes makes the Democratically-controlled White House swear at us again, but still very nice.

Rachel Maddow has more journalistic integrity in her little finger than Kurtz does in his entire body. If he'd meant to do any honest reporting on what the White House said about Maddow and her response to that praise, he'd have included her entire statement in the video clip he showed his viewers.

digby:

Read this transcript with Milbank on Reliable Sources with Howard Kurtz trying with everything he has to help Beck avoid responsibility for his rhetoric. What's interesting about it is that Milbank is a Villager in extremely good standing and he is breaking the rules and being quite shrill about a Real American. It's obvious that Kurtz doesn't want him to go where he's going, but he's doing it anyway, in a pretty serious way, which is unusual in itself.

I'm guessing that the difference between them at this point is that Milbank has actually watched Beck.

MEDIA MATTERS: Milbank: Beck is "dangerous," gives "fringe conspiracy theories" a large audience

October 03, 2010 1:44 pm ET

From the October 3 edition of CNN's Reliable Sources:

KURTZ: Beck says a lot of inflammatory things. That's part of his style. You see him as peddling conspiracy theories and talking about Nazis a lot.

MILBANK: Yes. I think over his first 18 months, "Nazis" came up in his show 200 times, "fascists" another 200 times. Poor Goebbels only got two dozen mentions.

But that's a constant them, but it's also the floating of the fringe conspiracies. Even Bill O'Reilly has said he believes that Beck is successful because he's willing to take it about five steps further than O'Reilly is. And that is by going on "Fox & Friends" and saying, "I can't debunk the idea that our federal government, through FEMA, is operating concentration camps in Wyoming."

KURTZ: But he didn't endorse that, but you're saying he raised it.

MILBANK: He said, "I can't disprove it." Then a month later, he gets on the show and said, oh, actually, it turns out those were doctored photos from a North Korean prison.

KURTZ: So he corrected.

MILBANK: He corrected it a month later, after a rather violent incident related to that.

KURTZ: OK. Well, you talk about going too far, and maybe this is related to this.

There was a 2009 murder in Pittsburgh, and allegedly committed by a guy who believes that the New World Order and government are plotting against our citizens. You say in the book, "It goes a bit too far to blame Glenn Beck for this, but Beck's words are inspiring the fringe."

Now, isn't that guilt by association?

MILBANK: Well, except that the people who are committing these acts often mentioned Glenn Beck themselves. We had another case of a guy shooting at the cops out in San Francisco, attempted to blow up the Tides Foundation, which was mentioned on Beck's show.

KURTZ: But what if somebody committed a violent act and said, you know, I read Dana Milbank's columns and I really think -- I'm --

(CROSSTALK)

MILBANK: That's why I say it goes too far to hold him responsible for that. But when you have a guy who's taking, as the Anti-Defamation League says, these fringe conspiracy theories and giving them an audience of, I don't know, 10 million people a week on the radio, nearly three million a night on Fox News, you're elevating something that has always been on the fringe in American politics and putting it front and center. So while you can't be blamed for any individual act, it is evidence that he is disseminating a very dangerous doctrine.

KURTZ: You think he's dangerous?

MILBANK: Well, I think it's been manifestly true that he's dangerous, but he's very powerful as well.

KURTZ: You haven't proven that he's dangerous. You've proven that -- you've argued that he says a lot of things that you don't like.

MILBANK: Well, and when a man is frequently talking about Hitler and Nazis, and then you see the Tea Party rally with the same quotations of Tea Parties and Nazis, the one-world government, the United Nations taking over civilization, posters of Dachau, you have to say, where does all this come from and why is it suddenly out in the open?

So, yes, that's why I think it's dangerous.

KURTZ: So you mentioned his big audience. I mean, he gets a huge number in the afternoon on Fox, radio audience. So what makes him so popular? What do you make of the people who tune in for inspiration?

MILBANK: I think it is just that. I mean, in a country of 310 million people, two million watching him is not a huge number. But it's a huge number -- a small number of very passionate followers.

Now, I mean, I think some of this is he very cleverly speaks to -- he's a Mormon, very cleverly speaks in terms of Mormon prophesy and conspiracy theories. I think that generates some of his audience. And some of it is also out of fear.

He talks about the world is ending. People advertise for vegetable seeds on his show so you can keep it in a locked box, and when the apocalypse comes, you can plant it and grow vegetables in your back yard. He's pushing gold coins. So, his audience is very frightened people who really think the end is coming.

KURTZ: All right. I'll tune in to see whether he talks about Dana Milbank on his show this week.

Just watch it.

2010-10-01T07:09:00.002-04:00

Rachel on the end of democracy.

"like chum to sharks"

2010-09-29T11:59:00.002-04:00

Matt Taibbi: Tea & Crackers -- How corporate interests and Republican insiders built the Tea Party monster

This is an article from the October 15, 2010 issue of Rolling Stone.
It's taken three trips to Kentucky, but I'm finally getting my Tea Party epiphany exactly where you'd expect: at a Sarah Palin rally. The red-hot mama of American exceptionalism has flown in to speak at something called the National Quartet Convention in Louisville, a gospel-music hoedown in a giant convention center filled with thousands of elderly white Southerners. Palin — who earlier this morning held a closed-door fundraiser for Rand Paul, the Tea Party champion running for the U.S. Senate — is railing against a GOP establishment that has just seen Tea Partiers oust entrenched Republican hacks in Delaware and New York. The dingbat revolution, it seems, is nigh.

"We're shaking up the good ol' boys," Palin chortles, to the best applause her aging crowd can muster. She then issues an oft-repeated warning (her speeches are usually a tired succession of half-coherent one-liners dumped on ravenous audiences like chum to sharks) to Republican insiders who underestimated the power of the Tea Party Death Star. "Buck up," she says, "or stay in the truck."

Stay in what truck? I wonder. What the hell does that even mean?

Scanning the thousands of hopped-up faces in the crowd, I am immediately struck by two things. One is that there isn't a single black person here. The other is the truly awesome quantity of medical hardware: Seemingly every third person in the place is sucking oxygen from a tank or propping their giant atrophied glutes on motorized wheelchair-scooters. As Palin launches into her Ronald Reagan impression — "Government's not the solution! Government's the problem!" — the person sitting next to me leans over and explains.

"The scooters are because of Medicare," he whispers helpfully. "They have these commercials down here: 'You won't even have to pay for your scooter! Medicare will pay!' Practically everyone in Kentucky has one."

A hall full of elderly white people in Medicare-paid scooters, railing against government spending and imagining themselves revolutionaries as they cheer on the vice-presidential puppet hand-picked by the GOP establishment. If there exists a better snapshot of everything the Tea Party represents, I can't imagine it.

After Palin wraps up, I race to the parking lot in search of departing Medicare-motor-scooter conservatives. I come upon an elderly couple, Janice and David Wheelock, who are fairly itching to share their views.

"I'm anti-spending and anti-government," crows David, as scooter-bound Janice looks on. "The welfare state is out of control."

"OK," I say. "And what do you do for a living?"

"Me?" he says proudly. "Oh, I'm a property appraiser. Have been my whole life."

I frown. "Are either of you on Medicare?"

Silence: Then Janice, a nice enough woman, it seems, slowly raises her hand, offering a faint smile, as if to say, You got me!

"Let me get this straight," I say to David. "You've been picking up a check from the government for decades, as a tax assessor, and your wife is on Medicare. How can you complain about the welfare state?"

"Well," he says, "there's a lot of people on welfare who don't deserve it. Too many people are living off the government."

"But," I protest, "you live off the government. And have been your whole life!"

"Yeah," he says, "but I don't make very much." Vast forests have already been sacrificed to the public debate about the Tea Party: what it is, what it means, where it's going. But after lengthy study of the phenomenon, I've concluded that the whole miserable narrative boils down to one stark fact: They're full of shit. All of them. At the voter level, the Tea Party is a movement that purports to be furious about government spending — only the reality is that the vast majority of its members are former Bush supporters who yawned through two terms of record deficits and spent the past two electoral cycles frothing not about spending but about John Kerry's medals and Barack Obama's Sixties associations. The average Tea Partier is sincerely against government spending — with the exception of the money spent on them. In fact, their lack of embarrassment when it comes to collecting government largesse is key to understanding what this movement is all about — and nowhere do we see that dynamic as clearly as here in Kentucky, where Rand Paul is barreling toward the Senate with the aid of conservative icons like Palin.

Early in his campaign, Dr. Paul, the son of the uncompromising libertarian hero Ron Paul, denounced Medicare as "socialized medicine." But this spring, when confronted with the idea of reducing Medicare payments to doctors like himself — half of his patients are on Medicare — he balked. This candidate, a man ostensibly so against government power in all its forms that he wants to gut the Americans With Disabilities Act and abolish the departments of Education and Energy, was unwilling to reduce his own government compensation, for a very logical reason. "Physicians," he said, "should be allowed to make a comfortable living."

Those of us who might have expected Paul's purist followers to abandon him in droves have been disappointed; Paul is now the clear favorite to win in November. Ha, ha, you thought we actually gave a shit about spending, joke's on you. That's because the Tea Party doesn't really care about issues — it's about something deep down and psychological, something that can't be answered by political compromise or fundamental changes in policy. At root, the Tea Party is nothing more than a them-versus-us thing. They know who they are, and they know who we are ("radical leftists" is the term they prefer), and they're coming for us on Election Day, no matter what we do — and, it would seem, no matter what their own leaders like Rand Paul do.

In the Tea Party narrative, victory at the polls means a new American revolution, one that will "take our country back" from everyone they disapprove of. But what they don't realize is, there's a catch: This is America, and we have an entrenched oligarchical system in place that insulates us all from any meaningful political change. The Tea Party today is being pitched in the media as this great threat to the GOP; in reality, the Tea Party is the GOP. What few elements of the movement aren't yet under the control of the Republican Party soon will be, and even if a few genuine Tea Party candidates sneak through, it's only a matter of time before the uprising as a whole gets castrated, just like every grass-roots movement does in this country. Its leaders will be bought off and sucked into the two-party bureaucracy, where its platform will be whittled down until the only things left are those that the GOP's campaign contributors want anyway: top-bracket tax breaks, free trade and financial deregulation.

The rest of it — the sweeping cuts to federal spending, the clampdown on bailouts, the rollback of Roe v. Wade — will die on the vine as one Tea Party leader after another gets seduced by the Republican Party and retrained for the revolutionary cause of voting down taxes for Goldman Sachs executives. It's all on display here in Kentucky, the unofficial capital of the Tea Party movement, where, ha, ha, the joke turns out to be on them: Rand Paul, their hero, is a fake.

Think Progress: TenMillionVoters.Com: Newt Launches Tea Party Campaign To Stop ‘Radical, Secular Socialist Machine’ »

With the incendiary claim that the Obama presidency is the greatest threat the American people have ever faced, Newt Gingrich has launched a massively funded effort to mobilize ten million conservative voters this November. In an online video promoting the “Power of 10” campaign by his American Solutions for Winning the Future (ASWF) 527 group, Gingrich rails against the “genuinely radical, secular socialist machine” of the “Obama-Pelosi-Reid team” who “simply run over the beliefs and values of the American people.” Images of Tea Party rallies and the right-wing enemies list — Michael Moore, Sean Penn, and Katie Couric — scroll by as Gingrich pleads for “we the American people” to “go all out”:

You know, I don’t remember any time in American history where we had such a threat to our basic way of life: A genuinely radical, secular socialist machine ramming things through with no regard for American values or the beliefs of the American people.

Watch it:

American Solutions for Winning the Future is bankrolled by a cadre of the right-wing billionaires and oil and coal companies who put George W. Bush into office and destroyed the national economy.

Read more about Newt Gingrich’s ASWF at the Wonk Room.

Hell on Earth

2010-09-28T12:30:00.003-04:00

QOTD: Dennis G.

This core myth—that the American Government is the enemy—is at the heart of the rhetoric, talking points, spin and bullshit of wingnutopia these days. It is an old-time core belief of the Confederacy as well. The recently released ‘pledge’ is a document anchored in a Confederate understanding of how America should function. So is the question of taxes or health care reform or infrastructure spending or education or protecting workers or whatever. Time and time again the effort is to replace the notion that a central government is a legitimate center of power with a belief that each state has the right to do whatever it wants to do regardless of any Federal mandates (unless of course a State wants to do something that might threaten a Confederate power base like free slaves or fight climate change). This notion that the central government must be kept weak is rooted in an elitist understanding of Liberty—the Confederate belief that Constitutional Liberty is based on protection of property and not based on individual rights. For some reason, the concept of individual Liberty fills Confederates—old and neo—with a sense of dread.

Benen: A 'UNILATERAL DECISION TO END LEGISLATIVE ACTIVITY IN THE SENATE'

Stan Collender speculated over the weekend that Senate Republicans may very well try to shut down the pre-adjournment legislative schedule, and possibly even try to shut down the government, this week. As it turns out, Collender was onto something. Roll Call reports on a new GOP scheme that the newspaper accurately describes as "remarkable."
Sen. Jim DeMint warned his colleagues Monday night that he would place a hold on all legislation that has not been "hot-lined" by the chamber or has not been cleared by his office before the close of business Tuesday. [...]
Traditionally, the Senate passes noncontroversial measures by unanimous consent at the end of most workdays, a process known as hot-lining. DeMint, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) and others have fought against the practice for years and have dedicated staff members to reviewing bills that are to be hot-lined.

As a result, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) have generally given DeMint, Coburn and others time to review legislation before proceeding with unanimous consent agreements.

But in a terse e-mail sent to all 100 Senate chiefs of staff Monday evening, Steering Committee Chief of Staff Bret Bernhardt warned that DeMint would place a hold on any legislation that had not been hot-lined or been cleared by his office before the close of business Tuesday.

Roll Call added that aides from both parties were "stunned" by DeMint's stunt, which effectively amounts to "a unilateral decision to end legislative activity in the Senate." If he doesn't personally approve of a measure, DeMint will kill it.

The Senate is still coming to terms with the practical implications, since the chamber was set to adjourn anyway on Thursday. But the Senate is set to consider, among other things, a "cloture motion to begin debate on a continuing resolution to keep the government funded when the new fiscal year begins Oct. 1."

In other words, senators may have to scramble to craft "a stopgap spending measure to keep the government operating past Sept. 30," and the death of several "non-controversial bills that both parties are looking to clear before Election Day."

David Dayen has more on DeMint's "one-man government shutdown," including some procedural insights from David Waldman.

Heather (C&L): Republicans Block Oil Spill Commission From Having Subpeona Powers

The Republicans really just have no shame. The Democrats asked for unanimous consent in the Senate to pass legislation that would give the BP Oil Spill Commission subpoena power -- and surprise, surprise! Guess who stood up for them and objected? Wingnut Teabagger King Jim DeMint. Republicans don't want BP executives or any of the rest of them to have to testify under oath.

I'd be surprised if that commission was going to yield any news we haven't already heard anyway from those executives who did nothing but stonewall the last time they testified before a Congressional committee, but it looks like the Republicans don't want to take any chances and assure the committee will be toothless.

Sullivan: The Foundation Obama Has Already Quietly Built, Ctd

David Hume, from the right, agrees with Andrew Sprung that President Obama has already won regardless of what happens in November:

After the likely losses in the fall the pundits will talk about what Obama needs to do to win back the nation, etc. But the fact is that he’s already changed the nation, by shifting healthcare policy in a direction broadly consonant with liberal Democratic values. That’s really what matters, and what will echo down through the generations. The Democratic victories of 2006 will be forgotten very soon, and to some extent those of 2008 will be too. But the policies enacted by the Congress of 2008 will impact us in our day to day lives for generations. They already are.

I don’t begrudge the Republicans their exultation after their likely victory in November. But this isn’t professional sports, it’s more than just a game, and it’s even more than just an avenue for professional advancement and self-glorification. Winning isn’t everything; it’s just a vanity which appeals to our baser animal instincts.

That's ignoring financial re-regulation, the isolation of Iran, and the social revolutions on marijuana and marriage equality that have accelerated under his watch. I think the debt commission may be the next substantive, long-term victory (I certainly hope so). Then there is the way in which GOP victories will come at the expense of profound alienation by Latinos, and the abandonment of the GOP by the professionel elites, recoiling from the party of Palin, Beck and O'Donnell.

Benen: HOUSE GOP PREPARES ANTI-CLIMATE CRUSADE

A couple of months ago, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) the main thing House Republicans should focus on, if they take back the majority, is launching endless investigations. "I think that all we should do is issue subpoenas and have one hearing after another, and expose all the nonsense that has gone on," she said in July.
In context, Bachmann was largely referring to the White House, but some of her House colleagues intend to pursue a very similar course, and include global warming among the "nonsense."

One leading far-right Republican said last week that attacking science would be near the top of his to-do list.

The House's top Republican watchdog is planning to launch an investigation into international climate data if he takes the helm of the chamber's oversight panel next year.
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), the ranking member of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said a probe of the "Climategate" scandal will top his environmental agenda if the Republicans take over the House next year and he gets the chairmanship. [...]

Investigative panels in Britain and the United States have since cleared researchers of any wrongdoing, but some Republican lawmakers remain unconvinced.

Jim Sensenbrenner, meanwhile, is prepared to play the role of Tweedledee to Issa's Tweedledum.

Most House Republicans envision killing Nancy Pelosi's special global warming committee if they claw their way back into the majority this November.
But one senior GOP lawmaker has another idea in mind: sweet revenge.

Wisconsin Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner wants to keep the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming alive so it can investigate climate science and police President Barack Obama's green policies.

The Politico piece suggests there may be some simmering intra-party hostility between the two right-wing lawmakers -- they each want to take the lead in going after science and environmental policy -- but the point is they're both going to be launching anti-climate crusades.

When we think about what to expect from House Republicans when it comes to investigations, we tend to think of comparisons to Clinton-era witch-hunts. And to be sure, we're very likely to see exactly that -- as Paul Krugman recently noted, "[W]e'll be having hearings over accusations of corruption on the part of Michelle Obama's hairdresser, janitors at the Treasury, and Larry Summers's doctor's dog."

But it's also worth remembering that when the GOP isn't making up nonsense about the White House, it'll be holding ridiculous hearings and launching baseless investigations into other far-right obsessions, too.

Dennis G: Gimmie that old-time tactic…

The overlap between the modern self-described “conservative” movement (from teatards to wingnuts to blowhards to GOPers) and the old Confederate movement from 150 years ago is stunning. Especially when one digs into the framing, memes, rhetoric and philosophical underpinnings of both movements. This is really just the latest iteration of a movement in America that can not accept defeat and that does not believe in any compromise. It is a movement that offers the rest of us only a choice between capitulation or gridlock. And it is a movement that keeps the threat of violence at hand to intimidate folks to meet their endless demands.

The biggest shared element between the Teatard/Wingnut denizens of the modern ~~Republican~~ Confederate Party is the tactic of “NO”. The firm dedication to only offer the rest of the Nation a binary choice between capitulation or gridlock, complete surrender or violence (“Nice Country you have here, it would be a shame if anything were to happen to it…”). This is the golden thread that connects this neo-Confederate movement to their real Founding Fathers of 1860.

In 1859 the Confederates had won a series of major political battles through a tactic of always rejecting any compromise short of absolute capitulation to their demands. From time to time a ‘compromise’ was accepted by the Confederates, but before the ink was dry on any agreement they moved the bar and demanded a fresh capitulation as the price to end their latest temper tantrum. Through their control of the Supreme Court they had basically won the right to extend slavery to any territory of the United States and still there were Democrats and old Whigs throughout the North who favored more capitulations thinly disguised as compromise. Finally a majority had enough of this shit and elected Lincoln. The Confederates had a hissy fit and went out and then the War came.

Before 1860 there were decades of Confederates demanding an endless series of capitulations from the rest of the Country. Early on, back in the 1820s through the 1850s, they mostly threatened the Nation with gridlock (unless you were black, lived in Kansas or were an Abolitionist Senator from Massachusetts—then it was violence). Decade after decade, almost every story in American politics could be boiled down to a tale of the rest of the Country finding a way to compromise with Confederate extremists and their never ending series of demands. Through it all, time and time again, it came down to a choice: surrender or gridlock, capitulation or violence. This is the go-to Confederate tactic of “NO”. And this is still the core tactic of the current crop of neo-Confederates who once again are tying to hold this Nation hostage to the demands of their rich fantasy lives.

The Teatard/Wingnut rhetoric about the Founding Father and the Constitution is NOT an American reading of history, instead it is a Confederate understanding of history firmly rooted in Confederate rhetoric, philosophy and framing. Of course owning up to their Confederate roots might get some bad press, so it must be hidden. “Confederacy” is the name of their movement that does not dare to reveal itself and so they cover up their Confederate roots as best they can—going to crazy leaps of logic and twists of history to pretend that their old-time CSA values are actually USA values. And yet they can not hide from themselves. The old Confederate arguments and tactics keep bubbling to the surface.
the rest of this essay is at the link.

Benen: PENCE'S CONFUSION KNOWS NO BOUNDS

I'm always glad when Matt Yglesias writes about House Republican Conference Chairman Mike Pence (R-Ind.). The well deserved repulsion just bleeds through the screen.
Last year, Matt had an item that explained "Mike Pence is a moron, and any movement that would hold the guy up as a hero is bankrupt.... I would refer you to this post from September about the earth-shattering ignorance and stupidity of Mike Pence.... [I]t's really staggering. In my admittedly brief experience talking to him, his inability to grasp the basic contours of policy question was obvious and overwhelming."

Today, Matt flags another Pence gem, reminding us that the House GOP Conference Chairman "gives every indication of being genuinely stupid."

GRETA VAN SUSTEREN: Why can't we [sell health insurance across state lines]?
MIKE PENCE: Well, it's really lost on me. I remember having a conversation with former senator Tom Daschle, who was really instrumental in the crafting and passage Obamcare, saying we couldn't sell insurance across state lines because it would be a "race to the bottom." Well, I gotta tell you, I think a lot of small business owners out there would like a race to the bottom -- on prices.

Even after a lengthy debate on this, Mike Pence still doesn't have the foggiest idea what he's talking about. When he says this issue is "really lost on me," that's clearly the truth.

We've been through this enough times that even a House Republican should be able to understand it. Different states regulate insurers in different ways, with restrictions ranging from strict to weak. As the GOP sees it, the model can and should follow the credit card industry standards -- let all the major insurers cluster in one state where the standards are barely existent.

It's why this idea is generally characterized as promoting a "race to the bottom." Insurers would be told that they can set up shop in a state and write the rules to the industry's liking. The industry would go with the state that offered the sweetest deal -- which is to say, the worst, weakest, most lax oversight with the fewest restrictions -- and before long, it would be consumers' only choice. Why? Because every major insurer would move to that state, leaving Americans with no other coverage to buy.

The insurance, under this approach, would probably be cheaper. It will also be awful. Pence may not care -- you and I already pay for his health insurance and that of his family -- and may even see this as preferable to the status quo, but the rest of us would suffer.

In the Affordable Care Act, President Obama offers a better approach, which allows insurers to sell coverage across state lines, just so long as they meet minimum federal standards. It's these standards that prevent the race to the bottom. When Obama offered this as a compromise a year ago to Republicans, they balked, insisting that minimum standards would mean federal regulations imposed on insurance companies. And we can't have that because it would mean government looking out for consumers, which is, you know, bad. Or something.

Democrats included the provision in the new law anyway, and insurers in states willing to operate under minimum standards can, in fact, sell coverage across state lines. (When Greta Van Susteren asks why we can't do this, she apparently doesn't know what the law says, either.)

Unfortunately for Pence, policy tutoring isn't covered in any plan, and profound ignorance is considered a pre-existing condition.

Yglesias: Poor People Are Much Poorer Than You Think

Via Tim Noah, a striking chart from Daniel Ariely and Michael I. Norton’s paper (PDF) “Building a Better America One Wealth Quintile at a Time”:

Actual represents the actual distribution of wealth. Estimated is what people think the distribution of wealth is. I agree with Noah that the methodology that generated the “ideal” numbers is a bit odd so I’ll ignore it.

Both Noah and Ariely & Norton focus on what this shows us about the top twenty percent, but I don’t think that’s news. We already know from polling that the median voter supports “soak the rich” tax policies far beyond what the right people who run the Democratic Party are prepared to propose. What’s interesting here is the extent to which the public vastly overestimates the prosperity of lower-income Americans. The public thinks the 4th quintile has more money than the median quintile actually has. And the public thinks the 5th quintile has vastly more wealth than it really has.

You can easily see how this could have a giant distorting effect on our politics. Poor Americans are simply much, much, much needier than people realize and this is naturally going to lead to an undue slighting of their interests.

Benen: KRISTOL OFFERS A PREVIEW OF WHAT'S TO COME

When it comes to journalistic standards, policy understanding, political prognostications, and basic human decency, I don't consider Bill Kristol an especially credible figure. But his sources in Republican politics tend to be pretty solid, so when he talks about what Americans expect from the GOP next year, it's worth taking him at least a little seriously.
Here, for example, was an exchange on "Fox News Sunday" yesterday about the widely-panned "Pledge with America" pseudo-agenda presented Thursday by House Republican leaders.

KRISTOL: It's a step on the way to boldness. I mean, seriously, if a power drunk, inebriated, big government-loving Democratic Party is driving the car off the cliff, the first responsibility is to put on the brakes. I think the Republicans are absolutely right about that. Stop the bad policies, go back to 2008 levels of discretionary spending, that's a pretty big cut, as you pointed out in your interview with Republican leaders. That's a pretty big cut in current discretionary spending.
WALLACE: Nothing about earmarks, nothing about entitlements.

KRISTOL: There are not gonna be earmarks next year. They can't get all their caucus to agree to it now, but if Republicans take the House, there will be such sentiment of the Tea Party nation that they will not, in my view, do earmarks. They will really cut discretionary spending. Paul Ryan will lay down the budget on April 1st, 2011, as chairman of the Budget Committee, that will address entitlements. They're being reasonable; they're being bold in a reasonable way.

First, "putting on the brakes" when Democrats are finally dragging the car out of the ditch Republicans left us in seems like a bad idea. At the risk of straining the metaphor, if hitting the gas helped end the recession and started adding jobs again, why would Republicans want to slam on the brakes?

Second, going "back to 2008 levels of discretionary spending" would lead to drastic cuts to education and essential public services -- the kind of cuts that would hurt working families at a time when the economy is already struggling.

Third, if there are "not gonna be earmarks next year," there's no reason why GOP leaders felt compelled to leave this out of their plan.

And fourth, if Paul Ryan "addresses entitlements," he's going to slash Social Security and Medicare with devastating consequences. That's his plan -- he's put in writing.

Kristol might as well been offering a testimonial on behalf of Democrats -- vote GOP in November and the country will go back to Bush-era economic policies, coupled with drastic cuts to education, Social Security, and Medicare. That's not some liberal making the case; that's Bill Kristol telling Fox News how it's going to be.

Democrats miss the national forest for the local trees

Rachel Maddow notes that while Republican candidates like Christine O'Donnel and Joe Miller have made their campaigns national, raising money through Fox News and other national outlets, their Democratic counterparts are running small, local races.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Greg Sargent

* The GOP's massive midterm advantage: Important read of the morning: The Associated Press fleshes out the details of the lopsided, six-to-one edge right wing groups enjoy over the left as they flood the midterm elections with outside cash.

Key takeaway: While the huge amount of right-wing money is making up for the fundraising lag of the GOP party committees, it's also forcing Dem committees to spend more money earlier that they'd hoped to keep stockpiled for the final stretch. Read the whole thing.

* But those poor billionaires and corporations are just terrified of the left's wrath: Former RNC chair Ed Gillespie, a leader of non-transparent efforts to flood the midterm elections with corporate cash, says conservative donors deserve to remain anonymous so they can avoid persecution from the left.

* Another Senate race in play? A new Quinnipiac poll finds wrestling exec Linda McMahon rapidly closing the gap with Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal in the race for a seat that national Dems assumed was safe. And Taegan Goddard notes that multiple other polls show the same.

But: In a sign of how worried the Blumenthal camp is about the come-from-behind narrative, his campaign rushes out a polling memo insisting he has a 12-point lead.

* Are things looking up for Dems in the House? Chris Cillizza explains why Dems are quietly growing a bit more optimistic.

One thing I would add: Dems argue that they are fielding stronger, better-prepared candidates than the GOP in multiple districts, an edge that would not register in national generic ballot matchup polling and could assert itself in a district-by-district sense when voters begin focusing on their choices in earnest.

* Takedown of the day: "Profiles in timidity." The New York Times edit board skewers skittish Congressional Dems for punting on the Bush tax cut vote -- and, crucially, whacks Dems for blaming their own spinelessness on the obstructionism of those mean and nasty Republicans.

* Special bonus takedown of the day: Kathleen Sebelius takes to the pages of the Wall Street Journal to skewer the ludicrous right-wing assault on her earlier demand that insurance companies avoid unjustified rate increases, which right wingers likened to "Soviet tyranny" and "thuggery."

* Random question: If the liberal groups staging a big rally on the Mall this Saturday get decent turnout, will it get anywhere near the coverage routinely lavished on Tea Party rallies that fall well short of turnout goals? No, there won't be any outsized three-corner hats or batsh*t insane signs, but still...

GOP candidate pines for robber baron days

Rachel Maddow reports on West Virginia Republican Senate nominee John Raese's pride at having inherited his wealth and his desire to return to an era of worker exploitation.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Benen: THE TALKING POINT I'M STILL WAITING TO HEAR

On "This Week" yesterday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said we can't raise anyone's taxes "in the middle of a recession." He liked the phrase so much, McConnell used it four times during the interview.
It's a weak argument. For one thing, we're not in the middle of a recession. For another, most economists agree that allowing the wealthy to start paying Clinton-era top marginal rates again would have little, if any, effect on the economy. (In recent decades, both Reagan and Clinton raised taxes during difficult economic times, and both saw the economy grow soon after.)

But putting all of that aside, there's one talking point that happens be true, but which is seldom repeated: we shouldn't cut spending during difficult economic times, either. The flip side -- tax increases during tough times is outrageous -- is ubiquitous, but this talking point is generally nowhere to be found.

I found this exchange between McConnell and Christiane Amanpour both fascinating and painful.

AMANPOUR: [T]here's also this huge thing that the people of the United States are worried about, and that is the deficit.... and keeping the tax cuts will add trillions to that. And let me ask you this. According to Howard Gleckman at the Tax Policy Center -- let's see what he's just written -- "McConnell would have to abolish all the rest of the government to get a balance by 2020, everything. No more national parks, no more NIH, no more highway construction, no more homeland security, oh, and no more Congress."
MCCONNELL: Let me tell you how I'd reduce the deficit. There are two things you need to do. Number one, you need to get spending down, and number two, we need to get the economy going.

In McConnell's mind, taking money out of the economy during a difficult time would make the economy stronger. And why does he think that makes sense? He didn't say, but he went on to argue:

MCCONNELL: Everything that's happened in the last year-and-a-half has been to pump up the government. We borrowed stimulus money. We spent it to hire new federal government workers. We sent it down to states so they would not have to lay off state workers. You have to get the economy going.

I realize McConnell's understanding of this is limited, but it's really not that complicated. We used public resources to create millions of jobs, and save many more workers who would have been laid off. They, in turn, had money to spend and invest, which then contributed to broader growth. It's why the economy started growing last year, and why the economy has added 763,000 private-sector jobs just this year.

As McConnell sees it, the U.S. economy would be better off if those millions of Americans had lost their jobs, and not had income to spend. That's how we "get the economy going."

I realize there are Americans who find this persuasive. I have no idea why.

from the comments:
I heard Limbaugh just last week "explaining" again how cutting taxes increases revenues. The mother of all zombie lies and there are enough people who believe it to keed McConnell and his ilk in government jobs for the rest of their lives.
Posted by: martin on September 27, 2010 at 9:07 AM

What digby & Rachel said . . .

2010-09-25T13:03:00.002-04:00

Digby: NY Times Miss Manners Hints At Truth

The New York Times features an interesting story this morning about a move across teh country to remove judges by people who don't like their decisions:

After the State Supreme Court here stunned the nation by making this the first state in the heartland to allow same-sex marriage, Iowa braced for its sleepy judicial elections to turn into referendums on gay marriage.

The three Supreme Court justices on the ballot this year are indeed the targets of a well-financed campaign to oust them. But the effort has less to do with undoing same-sex marriage — which will remain even if the judges do not — than sending a broader message far beyond this state’s borders: voters can remove judges whose opinions they dislike.

Around the country, judicial elections that were designed to be as apolitical as possible are suddenly as contentious as any another race.

In Kansas, anti-abortion activists are seeking to recall a justice. In Illinois, business interests are campaigning against the chief justice after a case that removed a cap on malpractice liability, prompting him to run a television ad that opens with the declaration, “I am not a politician.” And a conservative group called Clear the Bench Colorado is citing a host of decisions in seeking to oust the full slate of justices on the ballot there, urging voters, “Be a citizen, not a subject.”

It goes on to point out that the laws many of them were using were designed to remove corrupt or incompetent judges but are now being used to send a message that judges who do not adhere to certain views will be kicked out of office.

It also points out that there is big money involved, with the campaigns being underwritten by corporate interests and wealthy Christian groups.

But they forgot to connect the dots in this story. Do you notice something that all these cases around the country have in common? Yes, I knew that you could -- they are all being waged by right wingers. This "trend" is decidedly one-sided, run by a minority faction in America who have decided that their interpretation of the laws and the constitution will be imposed upon everyone.

Far be it for me to suggest that intimidating judges and replacing ones you don't like with social conservatives might be just a little bit theocratic and surely nobody can believe thatcorporate sponsored removal campaigns are designed to make it impossible for moderate or conservative judges to compete against business friendly judges. It would be very impolite to point any of that out, which is why, I'm sure that the New York Times didn't bother to do it.

They simply left some little hints for the discerning reader to sift through:

Brian S. Brown, executive director of the National Organization for Marriage, which has spent $230,000 on television ads criticizing the Iowa judges, said he understood that removing the three judges would not change the same-sex marriage ruling. (It was a unanimous ruling by the state’s seven justices.) But Mr. Brown said he hoped the judges’ ouster would help prevent similar rulings elsewhere by making judges around the nation aware that their jobs are on the line.

“It sends a powerful message,” he said, “That if justices go outside the bounds of their oaths, if the justices go outside the bounds of the U.S. and state constitutions they’re going to be held accountable.”

Bob Vander Plaats, who made opposition to same-sex marriage a centerpiece of his unsuccessful run for governor in Iowa, is leading the ouster campaign on behalf of the political arm of the American Family Association, a conservative Christian organization based in Tupelo, Miss.

“My bigger fear isn’t about injecting politics into judicial retention elections. The bigger fear is that we don’t hold them in check,” he said, warning that gun and property rights could be at risk.

Make of that what you will dear reader. But never say that the NY Times stooped to the level of shrill bloggers who suggest that the far right might have a radical agenda. Let no one say that the old Gray Lady is anything but well mannered.

DADT opponents find ally in Constitution

Jonathan Turley, Constitutional law professor at George Washington University Law School, talks with Rachel Maddow about Friday's ruling against "Don't ask, don't tell, the Witt standard, and the recent space of gay rights wins in court cases around the country.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Billionaires pump money into GOP campaigns

Rachel Maddow shares a report that 91 percent of the money contributed to a Republican group tied to Karl Rove came from just three billionaires. Chris Hayes of The Nation magazine joins to discuss the drastic inequality in income and influence in America.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

What Rachel said ....

2010-09-23T08:07:00.000-04:00

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Sigh.

2010-09-22T11:59:00.008-04:00

Krugman: Who You Gonna Believe?

I went through my mail today, and got the usual batch of letters declaring that I’m wrong about everything, and that we should do the opposite of anything I say. Hey, it’s a free country.

But I found myself wondering, as I often do, about the determination with which people believe pundits who please them ideologically, no matter how wrong they have repeatedly been — wrong in ways that, if you believed them, cost you money.

Suppose you had spent the last five years actually believing what you read from the usual suspects — the WSJ opinion pages, National Review, right-wing economists, etc.. Here’s what would have happened:

In 2006 you would have believed that there was no housing bubble.

In 2007 you would have believed that the troubles of subprime couldn’t possibly spread to the financial system as a whole.

In 2008 you would have believed that we weren’t in a recession — and that the failure of Lehman was unlikely to have bad consequences for the real economy.

In 2009 you would have believed that high inflation was just around the corner.

At the beginning of 2010 you would have believed that sky-high interest rates were just around the corner.

Now, we all make mistakes and get things wrong — although it’s striking how often the trolls on this blog feel the need to accuse yours truly of saying things I didn’t. But after this string of errors, wouldn’t you at least begin to suspect that the people you find congenial have a fundamentally wrong-headed view of how the world works?

Guess not.

Ezra Klein: Obama on corporate advertising

The president's most recent radio address was focused on the aftermath of the Citizens United decision and the Republican filibuster against the Disclose Act that would force corporations to take responsibility for their political advertisements. But it ends on an oddly plaintive, almost fearful, note:

What is clear is that Congress has a responsibility to act. But the truth is, any law will come too late to prevent the damage that has already been done this election season. That is why, any time you see an attack ad by one of these shadowy groups, you should ask yourself, who is paying for this ad? Is it the health insurance lobby? The oil industry? The credit card companies?
But more than that, you can make sure that the tens of millions of dollars spent on misleading ads do not drown out your voice. Because no matter how many ads they run – no matter how many elections they try to buy – the power to determine the fate of this country doesn’t lie in their hands. It lies in yours. It’s up to all of us to defend that most basic American principle of a government of, by, and for the people. What’s at stake is not just an election. It’s our democracy itself.

A lot more people will see ads funded by corporations this November than will ever hear or read a word of this radio address.

Benen: THE DRIVE TO BREAK FROM FORCED NEUTRALITY

Peter Goodman, who's been a rising star at the New York Times, covering the economy and business news, agreed this week to leave the paper and sign on with the Huffington Post. Goodman's move, a coup for the online outlet, is a reminder about just how serious a media powerhouse HuffPost is becoming.
But what seemed especially interesting about this wasn't the transition, but rather, the motivation behind it. Goodman chatted with Howard Kurtz about his reasoning.

"For me it's a chance to write with a point of view," Goodman says in an interview. "It's sort of the age of the columnist. With the dysfunctional political system, old conventional notions of fairness make it hard to tell readers directly what's going on. This is a chance for me to explore solutions in my economic reporting."
Goodman, who spent a decade at The Washington Post before his three years at the Times, says he will still rely on facts and not engage in "ranting." And while he was happy at the newspaper, he says, he found he was engaged in "almost a process of laundering my own views, through the tried-and-true technique of dinging someone at some think tank to say what you want to tell the reader."

It's been one of the most glaring flaws in major American media for far too long -- news outlets can tell the public about a story, but they won't tell the public's who's right. Every story has to offer he-said/she-said coverage, and every view has to be treated as entirely legitimate. ("Republicans today said two plus two equals five; Democrats and mathematicians disagree.")

To tell news consumers about a controversy is fine. To tell news consumers who's objectively correct is to be "biased."

For the public that wants to know who's right, and not just who's talking, it creates a vacuum filled by online outlets. For journalists who want to "tell readers directly what's going on," it creates an incentive to abandon news organizations that demand forced neutrality.

brooklynbadboy (Dkos): The wrong way to answer Ms. Velma Hart

First Read noted something that was obvious to me watching the President's town hall:

What was captivating about yesterday’s CNBC town hall with President Obama is that it gave voice -- from real people -- to the reason why his party faces the possibility of big losses on Election Day, which is now exactly six weeks away. That reason: His supporters aren’t fired up right now. “Quite frankly, I'm exhausted,” said one questioner. “Exhausted of defending you, defending your administration, defending the man for change I voted for, and deeply disappointed with where we are right now.”

That "deeply disappointed" person is one Ms. Velma Hart, who is an executive at the veterans service organization AMVETS. Ms. Hart is from what what most of us would say is the most loyal demographic of the base Obama voter: A middle class African-American mother of two, military veteran, wife, mainline protestant from the metropolitan East Coast.

Here she is at the town hall:

At the end, she said:

Quite frankly, Mr. President, I need you to answer this honestly: Is this my new reality?

If I may paraphrase, "is this as good as we're gonna get from you?"

Obama responded:

"As I said before, times are tough for everybody. So, I understand your frustration."

The President then went on note a "whole host of things that do make your life better."

Wrong answer, sir.

Don't go telling Ms. Hart all what you've done for her when she is telling you "I can't feel it." Instead, you need to assert strongly where all these things you are doing are going to take the country. Ms. Hart wants strong action that makes a real, and immediate difference. And by action, she means action that is going to restore her faith in the American Dream: that you can work hard (direct federal hiring), play by the rules (regulate Wall Street), do right by your family (fix the housing market), be proud of your work and America (fair trade), and retire with dignity and respect (no catfood commission).

She said to The New York Post:

"You can have all the hope in the world, but it has to be backed by action. It's been a long time since I had to make decisions about grocery purchases," she said.

Her oldest daughter, Christa, is preparing to go to college next fall and the $50,000 a year in expenses are deeply worrying her.

Hart said the accomplishments Obama rattled off don't help her with a home that has lost half its value, diminished retirement savings, a rising cost of living and stagnant wages.

Make no mistake, Ms. Hart isn't about to go and vote Republican. She remains, and I join her in this, a strong supporter of the President:

Ms. Hart, I think, personifies the enthusiasm gap. Base Democratic voters like her, and I'm sure many Democratic leaning independents, aren't teabaggers. They are people who simply expect this President to tackle the short term as well as the long term problems. If it isn't going to happen, or if they don't believe in the hope of it happening, they're going to stay home this November.

Pushing hard for a middle class tax cut (sigh), is nice. Getting a Christmas card from someone at work is also nice. What would really fire up the base is coming out swinging with an aggressive agenda for next year that includes direct, immediate action on the housing crisis, unemployment, and retirement. Bread and butter Democratic stuff. Tell America where this country is headed and how we are going to get there. That is how you put the GOP on the spot. Tell the story of what they are for (as this front page has advocated all year), and contrast it with where Democratic government will take us. Paint a picture of two American futures, and make sure ours is better. That how to get people like Ms. Hart fired up to win this damn election.

Ms. Hart said it best:

Quite frankly, I thought that my question would set the platform for a response that would almost be, I don't know, whimsical, magical, very powerful. On the fact that he does believe he's made progress, I know he's made progress. The issue for me is that I'm not certain that the progress is being felt deeply enough. And that is where I'm looking for the bang for the buck.

I couldn't agree more.

John Cole: The GOP Gay Outreach Continues at Top Speed

You stay classy, wingnuts:

I’ve just gotten off the phone with Atlanta Journal-Constitution political writer Jim Gallaway who says that Sen. Saxby Chambliss has confirmed that the “All faggots must die” comment left here on JMG earlier today did indeed come from his Atlanta office. Galloway reports that Chambliss told him his office is conducting an internal investigation.

The entire GOP is motivated by hate, fear, and greed.

*** Update ***

From the comments:

To be fair, it’s probably a staffer.

Of course it was a staffer. Chambliss was busy in the well of the Senate, the “world’s greatest deliberative body,” doing the official gay bashing as he voted against DADT.

Bellantoni (TPM): Al Franken Chokes Up Over Don't Ask, Don't Tell

Shortly after Senate Republicans and two Democrats blocked a vote to repeal Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Sen. Al Franken gave an impassioned speech on the Senate floor.

Franken (D-MN) told a story about one of his trips to entertain the troops when he was a comedian, and started to choke up over the people who told him they were gay. You can watch him get emotional as he tells the story below.

Franken said the year was 2006 and it came at a time when the military had a tough time recruiting. He said they gave waivers for just about everything at the time.

"If you ask every man and woman on that base, who would you rather have standing to your right, standing to your left, that gay man or that gay woman who has been serving with you the last year, or somebody comes in here with a moral waiver and those troops who had moral waivers, many of them served very honorably and bravely, or some with a cognitive waiver, many of those flourished in the military and are doing great things," Franken said.

He added: "All gay and lesbian service members want to be able to serve. Instead, people are getting kicked out of the military. People who don't need any moral waiver, people who don't need standards lowered for them in order to serve. People who are patriotic and courageous and who have vital, irreplaceable skills."

Franken said the ban "makes no sense."

"It is foolish, it is unjust and we must end it," he said.

Read his statement in full here.

Sullivan: The Race Card, Refreshed

Patrick Buchanan plays it in an unexpected way, denigrating president Obama for failing to give black Americans preferential treatment:

[W]hile conservatives always get one of their own on every national ticket, and all of their own on the Supreme Court, African-Americans seem to settle for a few back-of-the-bus Cabinet seats. Say what you will about the right. But if their party took them for granted the way Democratic presidents take black constituents for granted in plum appointments, there’d be a whole lot of shakin’ going on.

Of course, if Obama ever did give blacks preferential treatment, Buchanan would be the first one to seize on the matter in the most demagogic way imaginable. And insofar as Democrats do take black constituents for granted, it is due in no small part to the fact that those constituents are powerfully averse to voting for the party of Pat Buchanan, who has replaced the outright racism of his early career with a new affinity, suddenly shared by so many on the right, for race-baiting.

John Cole: I’ll Let You Do The Math

Here are two posts, one from Greg Sargent, one from TPM. Read them, and then weep. Sargent:

If this new poll conducted for the labor powerhouse SEIU doesn’t persuade Dems to hold a vote on extending the middle class tax cuts, then nothing will.
The toplines of the poll, which were first reported by Alex Burns, are striking enough: In seven core battleground states, a big majority, 62 percent, favor extending the middle class tax cuts while letting the high end cuts expire. That’s exactly what Dems are mulling a vote on.

TPM:

Could it really be true that the House is going to adjourn this week and doing nothing on taxes at all? That, of course, would deprive all congressional Democrats of a galvanizing issue and also allow the Republicans to argue that all Democrats had “raised taxes” on everyone. I have a hard time believing this is more than an unfounded rumor. But it would be a good way to knock 10 or 20 more seats out of next years House Democratic caucus.

It doesn’t exactly take Nostra-goddamn-damus to figure out what the gang that can’t shoot straight (unless the gun is pointed at their head) is going to do here, does it? I mean, it’s obvious. Of course they’ll adjourn without doing anything.

from the comments:
Tsulagi

Of course they’ll adjourn without doing anything.

You don’t see the big picture. If Dems schedule a vote on extending tax cuts for $250k and under while letting cuts over that expire, Rs will get mad at them and call them names. There’s nothing they can do. Isn’t that the mantra?

Sullivan: The Stoppable Sarah Palin, Ctd

Douthat discounts Palin:

It is extremely unlikely that the political landscape in the winter and spring of 2012 will resemble the political landscape in the autumn of 2010. Even setting aside the unpredictability of economic developments, foreign-policy crises, and everything else that could shift the ground beneath our feet, the reality of having a more empowered Republican Party in Washington and a weaker President Obama in the White House will almost certainly work profound changes on the country’s mood — and yes, in the mood of the Republican base as well. (It’s hard to be quite so fired up and furious about socialism when Washington is mired in gridlock, and it’s hard to be quite so outraged at RINO perfidy when you’ve kicked a lot of the RINOs out of office.)

The temper of conservative politics in the fall of 1994, the off-year election cycle that most resembles this one (it was a year, as Rich Lowry notes, when a former homeless man defeated the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee), bore little resemblance to the temper of conservative politics in 1996, when Bob Dole cruised to the Republican nomination over more base-pleasing candidates like Pat Buchanan and Phil Gramm.

Ross may be right, but I think he ignores just how much more radical the GOP base has become since 1994, how enraged they have become over the years by what they see as condescension and betrayal by their own elites, and the rise of Fox News and the Malkin/Reynolds blogosphere and Levin-style talk radio. I also think that the people to whom Palin appeals will be as economically distressed in 2012 as they are now, since their jobs are overwhelmingly the ones that are gone for ever.
Ross has fed and ridden this tiger for a while now. He cannot pretend it's a pussycat any more.

It's Monday.

2010-09-20T11:30:00.009-04:00

Kurtz: Inspires Confidence

White House strenuously denies NYT report that it is considering getting aggressive about winning the midterm elections.

Ezra Klein: The difference between the parties

The fight over 1099 reform is one of the best case studies of the differences between Republicans and Democrats that we've seen this year.

Quick background: 1099 reform deals with a tax change in the health-care bill. The provision seeks to recoup taxes that small businesses should currently be paying but aren't. The problem is that the mechanism would mean a lot of paperwork. Enough, actually, that it's probably worth scrapping it. But that means you need to make up $17 billion.

Republicans wanted to do that by cutting public-health subsidies for the poor. Democrats said no. Democrats wanted to do it by cutting subsidies for oil and gas companies. Republicans said no. Democrats came up with another way to do it, this time by closing a tax loophole that allows hedge-fund managers to be taxed at a much lower rate than people in other professions. Republicans don't like this, either.

I really don't understand the vision of the economy, or of need in general, where it makes more sense to cut public-health spending than treat the income of hedge-fund managers like the income of, say, small-business owners. Is there some reason we want lots more people to enter the hedge-fund industry? Or that government should be directly subsidizing oil and gas production? I can at least understand the rationale for public-health programs. That sort of collective action is something you need government to organize. The presence of generous financial incentives for entering the hedge fund industry really isn't.

Drum: A Simple Look At Income Inequality

Will Wilkinson is unimpressed with Tim Noah's recent series on growing income inequality. He cites several recent pieces of research to suggest that, in fact, inequality hasn't been growing as fast as we think:

Robert Gordon, an economist from Northwestern University....reports that improved use of income datasets "shows that there was no increase of inequality after 1993 in the bottom 99 percent of the population, and can be entirely explained by the behavior of income in the top 1 percent."....Christian Broda and John Romalis find that "the relative prices of low-quality products that are consumed disproportionately by low-income consumers have been falling over this period. This fact implies that measured against the prices of products that poorer consumers actually buy, their 'real' incomes have been rising steadily."....Using an updated price index, Christian Broda, Ephraim Leibtag, and David Weinstein find that the real wages at the 10th percentile increased by 30 percent from 1979 to 2005.

There's long been a cottage industry in efforts to show that income inequality isn't as bad as the raw numbers say it is. Until recently, the most popular tactic was to insist that we should look at consumption instead of income. This was mostly just an attempt at misdirection, but in any case the great credit bubble and bust has made it plain that a lot of recent middle class consumption was fueled by refi and charge card binges that ended disastrously. If anything, this strengthens the case of those who say that income matters after all, so we don't hear this argument much anymore.

But there are plenty of others. We're measuring inflation wrong. Cheap plasma TVs and Chicken McNuggets have made the life of the poor better than you'd think by just looking at their earnings. The whole thing is just a statistical artifact of the 1986 tax reform bill. The composition of households has changed, so household income goes farther than it used to. Income distribution looks better if you count government transfers. Etc. etc. etc.

There are bits and pieces of truth to some of these things, but for the most part they don't really address income inequality at all. They just move the spotlight to something else. Are households smaller than before? Yes, which is why I usually prefer to look at statistics for individuals. Have consumption patterns changed? Maybe so, and taking that into account in an effort to get a handle on the actual lived experience of the poor/working/middle classes is an interesting exercise. Is CPI the right inflation measure? I prefer it, but it's an arguable point.

But regardless of the answers to all these questions, there's still the raw fact that the flow of money in America has changed dramatically over the past few decades. That's why one of my favorite charts is the one on the right. It's updated from the older version that I posted a couple of days ago, and the data comes from an annual CBO report that shows the share of total earnings going to various income levels.

It's not perfect, but it's pretty good. Since it shows income shares, inflation measures don't matter. It doesn't try to measure consumption, it just measures who the money is going to. It includes pensions and government transfers. It accounts for reporting changes due to the 1986 tax reform bill. And it uses tax data to get a cleaner look at the top of the income distribution.

(Drawbacks: It doesn't include healthcare benefits, which would change the shape of the curves slightly. And it uses households as its unit of account. That's not the way I like to look at things, but it's pretty standard in the field.)

If you look at the raw CBO figures, they show that a full tenth of the national income has shifted since 1979 to the top 1% of the country. The bottom quintiles have each given up a bit more than two percentage points each, and that adds up to 10% of all earnings. That 10% has flowed almost entirely to the very tippy top of the income ladder.

Is the middle class worse off because of this? Of course they are. Income matters even if plasma TVs are cheaper than they used to be or if CPI mismeasures middle class consumption or if average households now contain 2.6 members instead of 2.7. If this massive income shift hadn't happened, middle class earnings would be higher, they'd be able to buy more stuff, and they probably wouldn't be in debt as much. And the top 1% wouldn't have quite so much idle cash lying around to do stupid things with.

This income shift is real. We can debate its effects all day long, but it's real. The super rich have a much bigger piece of the pie than they used to, and that means a smaller piece of the pie for all the rest of us. You can decide for yourself if you think this is something we should just shrug our shoulders about and accept.

Benen: A COMPELLING CASE

There was an interesting item in The Hill last night noting that White House officials, most notably President Obama and Vice President Biden, are "concerned that liberals disappointed with Obama's policies might stay home this November," and are taking steps they hope will prevent a disaster.
Adding Elizabeth Warren to the president's team might help, and it probably wasn't a coincidence that when Biden raised his profile, he was sure to spend quite a bit of time with Rachel Maddow. Indeed, during the interview, he specifically told "our progressive base... you should not stay home." The V.P. added, "You better get energized, because the consequences are serious for the outcome of the things we care most about."

The next question, then, is how to get the left energized before the well-documented enthusiasm gap moves Congress sharply to the far-right. In the midst of a campaign, there are generally two choices, energize the base by: (a) pointing to a record of accomplishment or (b) pointing out the radical qualities of the other side. Republicans are excelling exclusively on the latter; for Dems it's more complicated.

The majority party shouldn't have too much trouble reminding the Democratic rank-and-file about the threat posed by radicalized Republicans -- by nominating so many hysterical extremists, the GOP has made that task easier. Besides, as we continue to struggle with crises left over from the Bush/Cheney era, the stench of Republican failure is still very much in the air.

But what about the record of the last 20 months? I've long believed, and continue to believe, that there's a chasm between perceptions and reality when it comes to the White House's policy accomplishments. Ezra Klein had an item the other day that rang true to me, and I hope he won't mind if I quote it at length.

The White House held a conference call today for Elizabeth Warren and various bloggers and writers. Most of it was what you'd expect, but Warren did mention that Rep. Barney Frank once told her that getting a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was a "pipe dream."
I think some people will see that as a mark against Frank, but he was right, at least judging by Washington's record over the previous 20 or 30 years. In fact, a lot of the Obama administration's accomplishments were pipe dreams.

A near-universal health-care system? Why would Obama and the Democrats succeed when Truman, Nixon, Carter, and Clinton had all failed, and politicians as adept as FDR and LBJ refused to even make the attempt? They've seen the numbers, right? The health-care industry is bigger now, and richer, and there are no more liberal Republicans. There's no way.

A $787 billion stimulus? Yes, it was too small. But everything Washington does is always too small. And within the confines of that stimulus, the Obama administration and the Democrats in Congress managed to make a host of long-term investments that would've been considered huge accomplishments in any other context, but are largely unknown inside this one. Huge investments in green energy, in health information technology, in high-speed rail, in universal broadband, in medical research, in infrastructure. The Making Work Pay tax cut. The Race to the Top education reform program. No recent president has invested in the country on anything like that level.

If voters who backed Obama two years ago are prepared to make an evaluation based on accomplishments, and decide whether to vote in 2010 accordingly, the White House has a compelling case to make, the popularity of these successes notwithstanding.

As unsatisfying as it seems to grade on a curve, it's worth noting that while Obama took office with sky-high expectations, he was also against the backdrop of a country that was practically in free fall. Arguably no president in American history started his first day with a list like this: the Great Recession, two deadly wars, a jobs crisis, a massive deficit and budget mess, crushing debt, a health care system in shambles, a climate crisis, an ineffective energy policy, an equally ineffective immigration policy, a housing crisis, the U.S. auto industry on the verge of collapse, a mess at Gitmo, a severely tarnished global reputation, an executive branch damaged by corruption, incompetence, and mismanagement, and an angry, deeply divided electorate.

The president was told to clean all of this up, quickly, without the benefit of a minority party willing to play a constructive role. And just to make things really interesting, Obama was also told that for the first time in the history of the United States, every initiative he came up with would need mandatory supermajorities just to pass the Senate.

And despite all of this, what have seen? The Affordable Care Act, the Recovery Act, Wall Street reform, student loan reform, Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, new regulation of the credit card industry, new regulation of the tobacco industry, a national service bill, expanded stem-cell research, nuclear arms deal with Russia, a new global nonproliferation initiative, the Hate Crimes Prevention Act, and the most sweeping land-protection act in 15 years.

But what about the unpopularity of the Democratic successes? Why are Democrats understandably reluctant to run on the most successful two years of policymaking in decades?

The White House's message machine has often fallen far short of late, but part of me thinks the pitch at this point should go something like this: we were moving in the wrong direction, but we've made some unpopular moves to get back on track.

It's like a recovery from a serious illness -- you feel miserable, the medicine tastes awful, and the shots hurt. You're left frustrated, weak, and maybe even embarrassed. The physical therapy and recovery process takes too long and leaves you wondering if it's even worth it.

But it is. Recovery happens. It wasn't pleasant, and the illness wasn't your fault, but you make progress and you get better, even if there are times when that seems that's unlikely.

Getting back on your feet and thriving again may seem like a "pipe dream," but once the toughest moves are behind you, real progress lies ahead -- that is, unless you decide to go back to the quacks who got you sick in the first place.

John Cole: Where Have They Been

If this is true, this is just gross political incompetence at the White House political division:

President Obama’s political advisers, looking for ways to help Democrats and alter the course of the midterm elections in the final weeks, are considering a range of ideas, including national advertisements, to cast the Republican Party as all but taken over by Tea Party extremists, people involved in the discussion said.
White House and Congressional Democratic strategists are trying to energize dispirited Democratic voters over the coming six weeks, in hopes of limiting the party’s losses and keeping control of the House and Senate. The strategists see openings to exploit after a string of Tea Party successes split Republicans in a number of states, culminating last week with developments that scrambled Senate races in Delaware and Alaska.

“We need to get out the message that it’s now really dangerous to re-empower the Republican Party,” said one Democratic strategist who has spoken with White House advisers but requested anonymity to discuss private strategy talks.

Apparently, the only places left on earth where they do not realize that the tea party is a GOP operation are Fox News and the White House.

Krugman: The Angry Rich

Anger is sweeping America. True, this white-hot rage is a minority phenomenon, not something that characterizes most of our fellow citizens. But the angry minority is angry indeed, consisting of people who feel that things to which they are entitled are being taken away. And they’re out for revenge.

No, I’m not talking about the Tea Partiers. I’m talking about the rich.

These are terrible times for many people in this country. Poverty, especially acute poverty, has soared in the economic slump; millions of people have lost their homes. Young people can’t find jobs; laid-off 50-somethings fear that they’ll never work again.

Yet if you want to find real political rage — the kind of rage that makes people compare President Obama to Hitler, or accuse him of treason — you won’t find it among these suffering Americans. You’ll find it instead among the very privileged, people who don’t have to worry about losing their jobs, their homes, or their health insurance, but who are outraged, outraged, at the thought of paying modestly higher taxes.

The rage of the rich has been building ever since Mr. Obama took office. At first, however, it was largely confined to Wall Street. Thus when New York magazine published an article titled “The Wail Of the 1%,” it was talking about financial wheeler-dealers whose firms had been bailed out with taxpayer funds, but were furious at suggestions that the price of these bailouts should include temporary limits on bonuses. When the billionaire Stephen Schwarzman compared an Obama proposal to the Nazi invasion of Poland, the proposal in question would have closed a tax loophole that specifically benefits fund managers like him.

Now, however, as decision time looms for the fate of the Bush tax cuts — will top tax rates go back to Clinton-era levels? — the rage of the rich has broadened, and also in some ways changed its character.

For one thing, craziness has gone mainstream. It’s one thing when a billionaire rants at a dinner event. It’s another when Forbes magazine runs a cover story alleging that the president of the United States is deliberately trying to bring America down as part of his Kenyan, “anticolonialist” agenda, that “the U.S. is being ruled according to the dreams of a Luo tribesman of the 1950s.” When it comes to defending the interests of the rich, it seems, the normal rules of civilized (and rational) discourse no longer apply.

At the same time, self-pity among the privileged has become acceptable, even fashionable.

Tax-cut advocates used to pretend that they were mainly concerned about helping typical American families. Even tax breaks for the rich were justified in terms of trickle-down economics, the claim that lower taxes at the top would make the economy stronger for everyone.

These days, however, tax-cutters are hardly even trying to make the trickle-down case. Yes, Republicans are pushing the line that raising taxes at the top would hurt small businesses, but their hearts don’t really seem in it. Instead, it has become common to hear vehement denials that people making $400,000 or $500,000 a year are rich. I mean, look at the expenses of people in that income class — the property taxes they have to pay on their expensive houses, the cost of sending their kids to elite private schools, and so on. Why, they can barely make ends meet.

And among the undeniably rich, a belligerent sense of entitlement has taken hold: it’s their money, and they have the right to keep it. “Taxes are what we pay for civilized society,” said Oliver Wendell Holmes — but that was a long time ago.

The spectacle of high-income Americans, the world’s luckiest people, wallowing in self-pity and self-righteousness would be funny, except for one thing: they may well get their way. Never mind the $700 billion price tag for extending the high-end tax breaks: virtually all Republicans and some Democrats are rushing to the aid of the oppressed affluent.

You see, the rich are different from you and me: they have more influence. It’s partly a matter of campaign contributions, but it’s also a matter of social pressure, since politicians spend a lot of time hanging out with the wealthy. So when the rich face the prospect of paying an extra 3 or 4 percent of their income in taxes, politicians feel their pain — feel it much more acutely, it’s clear, than they feel the pain of families who are losing their jobs, their houses, and their hopes.

And when the tax fight is over, one way or another, you can be sure that the people currently defending the incomes of the elite will go back to demanding cuts in Social Security and aid to the unemployed. America must make hard choices, they’ll say; we all have to be willing to make sacrifices.

But when they say “we,” they mean “you.” Sacrifice is for the little people.

John Cole: Poor Little Rich Boys

This piece, titled “The Rage of the Privileged Class,” is guaranteed to give your blood pressure a good bump:

As the hue and cry to return the money grew, the traders had thought that Liddy would stand up for them. The ruddy-faced, 63-year-old former Allstate CEO, who had been installed by Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson in September, was, if not exactly one of them, at least someone who understood the rules of the game as it had been played—and who understood what they were entitled to under those rules, even if those rules were unspoken. In AIG’s glory years, executives like Joseph Cassano, the former head of financial products, took home more than $300 million. That was the kind of money you couldn’t talk about.
But as Andrew Cuomo stoked public outrage by threatening to release the names of the bonus recipients, it became clear that the game was changing. When AIG employees had arrived at their desks that morning, they found a memo from Liddy asking them to return 50 percent of the money. The number infuriated many of the traders. Why 50 percent? It seemed to be picked out of a hat. The money had been promised, was the feeling. A sacred principle was at stake, along with, not incidentally, their millions.

We’re talking about people at a company which, without considerable taxpayer largesse, would cease to exist. They would be getting nothing. They would not even have jobs. But the idea of giving back just half their “bonuses” when their company was a stinking shitpile costing hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars- that was just too much for them. There was a “sacred” principle at stake. It gets worse:

“No offense to Middle America, but if someone went to Columbia or Wharton, [even if] their company is a fumbling, mismanaged bank, why should they all of a sudden be paid the same as the guy down the block who delivers restaurant supplies for Sysco out of a huge, shiny truck?” e-mails an irate Citigroup executive to a colleague.
“I’m not giving to charity this year!” one hedge-fund analyst shouts into the phone, when I ask about Obama’s planned tax increases. “When people ask me for money, I tell them, ‘If you want me to give you money, send a letter to my senator asking for my taxes to be lowered.’ I feel so much less generous right now. If I have to adopt twenty poor families, I want a thank-you note and an update on their lives. At least Sally Struthers gives you an update.”

Ladies and Gentlemen, there you have it- Freedom Fonzarelli’s “producers.”

Benen: GINGRICH DEMANDS LEGISLATION TO ADDRESS IMAGINARY THREAT

Remember, as far as the media establishment goes, disgraced former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) is a "visionary" worthy of respect, despite his frequent slips into madness.
[P]erhaps the former House Speaker's loudest applause [at the Values Voter Summit] came when he weighed in on the controversial Islamic center and Mosque proposed to be built near Ground Zero, declaring, "We as Americans don't have to tolerate people who are supportive of violence against us, building something at the site of the violence."
"This is not about religious liberty, if they want to build that mosque in the South Bronx, frankly they need the jobs," he continued. "But I am totally opposed to any effort to impose Sharia on the United States, and we should have a federal law that says under no circumstance, in any jurisdiction in the United States, will Sharia be used in any court to apply to any judgment made about American law."

Note the classic non-sequitur -- converting a clothing store into a community center, in Newt's twisted mind, is part of an effort to impose Sharia on the United States. At least, that is, what he wants his easily-confused audience to believe.

But I'm especially impressed with the legislation Gingrich wants to see. To hear him tell it, we need a law to prevent U.S. courts from basing rulings on Sharia. Are there any U.S. courts doing this? Well, no. Have there ever been any U.S. courts doing this? Nope, not one. Is there any evidence at all to suggest U.S. courts might ever do this? Not even a little. This is the talking point of fringe, unhinged radicals.

But Gingrich wants a law anyway. I was disappointed he didn't also call for a federal law that says, under no circumstances, will Bigfoot be allowed to run for Congress. Also, unicorns must not be permitted to roam the streets, and flying saucers must not land within 100 yards of a school. We must think of the children, you know.

The disgraced former Speaker added that the Democrats' "secular socialist machine" is comparable to "radical Islamists," and that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius relies on "the spirit of Soviet tyranny."
Major media outlets, however, have no qualms about considering Gingrich a credible, mainstream figure.
TPM Reader NR ... adds:
I know it's obscure and hidden in the voluminous federal law and Supreme Court Decisions so possibly Newt would have missed it, but there is already fairly well established federal law making it illegal to impose Sharia law on the United States. After an exhaustive search, I found this:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

Benen: NOT READY FOR PRIME TIME -- OR SUNDAY MORNING

In May, right-wing ophthalmologist Rand Paul, shortly after winning Kentucky's Republican Senate primary, agreed to appear on "Meet the Press." Upon realizing the candidate might be asked to explain his extremist ideology, the Rand campaign quickly walked away from the commitment.
Four months later, right-wing activist Christine O'Donnell, shortly after winning Delaware's Republican Senate primary, agreed to appear on "Face the Nation" and "Fox News Sunday." And wouldn't you know it, after realizing O'Donnell may be asked about her witchcraft-dabbling, gay-hating, anti-masturbation-crusading, delusion-sharing background, the Republican nominee discovered she has other plans tomorrow.

Yes, just one day before her scheduled appearances, O'Donnell backed out.

Campaign spokeswoman Diana Banister cited scheduling conflicts and said O'Donnell needed to return to Delaware for commitments to church events and afternoon picnic with Republicans in a key county where she has solid backing.
"Tomorrow the priorities are back in Delaware," Banister said. "Those are people who supported her, who were very helpful to her in the campaign, and she feels obligated to be there and thank them."

The campaign spokesperson added, "We felt really bad."

Of course.

It's one thing to duck "Face the Nation"; Bob Schieffer leans to the right, but he's a media professional who would have asked real questions. But O'Donnell also bailed on Fox News, suggesting either she, her team, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, or some combination of the three aren't even confident in her ability to handle questions from a Republican cable network.

Noting recent examples -- Palin, Angle, et al -- David Kurtz added, "It's become a staple of the tea party candidacy. You make a big splash onto the national stage then quickly retreat from any press scrutiny because you are so unprepared and ill-equipped for the rigors of the job that tough questions will expose you as the charlatan you are."

It's worth noting that Chris Coons, the sane candidate who's on track to defeat Christine O'Donnell, hasn't been invited onto any of the Sunday shows, even after her cancellations. Imagine that.

What Booman said ...

2010-09-16T12:30:00.001-04:00

Three from Booman

A Video Election

I love Nate Silver and I think his analysis isn't just the best in the business...he's got the business to himself. But there is one problem, and that is that he's relying on polls. He'll tell you all the limitations of his analysis because he's totally honest and has complete integrity, but there are still limitations. If you have bad or meaningless input, the output won't be much better. That's why this insight from Josh Kraushaar is important:

This should be a golden age of political prognostication. Any armchair strategist with an Internet connection can get loads of insider information and blog or tweet their viewpoints. Congressional polling, once a true commodity because few media firms commissioned it regularly, has proliferated, with numerous start-up pollsters releasing data that's eaten up on a daily basis by junkies.
But amid all the information, I'm finding that we've lost a lot of old-fashioned common sense in evaluating and understanding races. We've become beholden to numbers, any numbers, at the expense of states' and districts' fundamental characteristics and candidates' and campaigns' own unique qualities.
Do you remember how one advertisement from Joe Sestak crashed Arlen Specter's poll numbers and effectively ended his career? That was somewhat predictable. Maybe we couldn't anticipate the exact ad, or that it would be so devastating, but we knew that Specter had glaring weaknesses that could and would be exploited by any halfway competent campaign. But you couldn't predict that Specter would lose based on polls that came out before the campaign was truly engaged.
We know that the recent Republican nominees have real weaknesses. They've said and done things that are embarrassing, or hard to justify, or that they will now disavow (effectively flip-flopping). Their positions are out of the mainstream, and their personal histories are often checkered. They've lied on tape and in print. They've embellished their resumes. One of them has even sent around links to images of bestiality by email. Most of the impact of these weaknesses is not being seen in current polling data because the public has not yet been exposed to media that discusses it.
I believe that this election is going to be another YouTube election. And private citizens using their creative powers to make viral videos are going to be an extremely important part of our success. George Allen called someone 'macaca.' We have dozens of macaca moments to choose from in this election cycle. We need to get to work.
Polls right now show important warning signs, but they mean little when you consider what that campaign is actually going to look like. If you are fair-minded, there aren't more than two or three Senate races that can be called even. Our candidates totally outclass their candidates. That's going to show. But we need to do our part in this. So, I hope Jed Lewison is getting ready. I hope there are dozens of unknown Jed Lewisons waiting to emerge with new creative video.

Stupid Harry Reid

Harry Reid is about as popular as an antibiotic-resistant case of chlamydia, so I fail to see why he thinks it is helpful to repeatedly refer to Delaware senate candidate Chris Coons as 'my pet.'

"I'm going to be very honest with you — Chris Coons, everybody knows him in the Democratic caucus. He's my pet. He's my favorite candidate," Reid said.
"Let me tell you about him: A graduate of Yale Divinity School. Yale Law School. A two-time national debate champion. He represents two-thirds of the state now, in an elected capacity. I don't know if you've ever seen him or heard him speak, but he is a dynamic speaker. I don't mean loud or long; he's a communicator. So that's how I feel about Delaware. I've always thought Chris Coons is going to win. I told him that and I tried to get him to run. I'm glad he's running. I just think the world of him. He's my pet."
Coons is probably going to win this race in a walk, but Reid just handed O'Donnell a giant baseball bat she'll use to make sure that Coons has his man-pants on.

Stupid Evan Bayh

I'll be glad to see Evan Bayh go because he's basically a moron. His political worldview is so lazy and conventional that he spews nonsense like this:

Q: What is the state of your political party?
A: It’s momentarily very strong. It’s not common for a party to control the White House and both Houses of Congress. But I think that the election this November is going to be a very difficult one for the Democratic Party. I think the Republicans are going to score big gains. And it’s largely because we’ve lost the independents, and that's largely over deficit and debt. And so there’s a natural tendency for any group, when they’re riding high, to overreach and I think the most progressive elements in the Democratic Party have and are about to be rebuked by the public.
And the irony of that is the cause that gets hurt the most when the liberals overreach is the liberal agenda, because they play into the hands of the conservative Republicans. And it’s an unfortunate fact, but it is a fact. The last election, the base of the Republican Party is just bigger than the base of the Democratic Party by about 10 percent.
The only way progressive Democrats have a role in governing in this country is if they make common cause [with] moderates — otherwise, numerically, it’s just not going to work out. They have not embraced that perspective.
Part of this I agree with, unfortunately. The Republican base probably is a bit larger than the Democratic base. And the public really is mad about deficits and the debt. But Bayh says the Democrats are going to be rebuked for liberal overreach and for creating new debt. That's the most simplistic nonsense. All we have to do is imagine what the economy would look like if the Democrats hadn't injected nearly a trillion dollars of stimulus into it, bailed out the auto industry, and stabilized the financial market and sector. In other words, if we hadn't increased the debt, we'd really be in a world of hurt. So, we aren't going to get punished for doing something necessary, we're going to get punished because jackasses like Evan Bayh refuse to explain how the Republicans created this mess and what we've done to clean it up. You can blame the media or the Democrats or the president or the opposition, but the problem is a failure of communication and not some kind of liberal overreach.
It's pretty obvious that liberals have not gotten what they advocated on a whole host of subjects, from the size of the stimulus, to the public option, to the shape of the Wall Street reforms, to the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell and DOMA, to the closure of Guantanamo, to the policy on Afghanistan. It's hard to argue that the Democrats would be worse off with lower unemployment, a more popular health care bill, and stronger Wall Street regulation.
I can't really think of any area where the Democrats have fully embraced the liberal position, let alone pushed it at the expense of the moderate wing of the party.
Think about the next part:

Q: What is it like to be a moderate in the Senate? And what role do they play in politics?
A: The moderates are the key to getting anything done, because most of the time in the Senate you need 60 votes. We’re in a rare moment now where the Democratic Party has close to 60 votes. But usually it’s far short of that and so you have to get four or five or six members of the other party to agree to get anything done.
This is precisely right. And what does that mean? It means that everything we've done for the last year and nine months has had to pass Evan Bayh's sniff-test and (for all but three months of that time) the sniff-test of at least one Republican. And what does that mean? It means that Evan Bayh considers himself guilty of liberal overreach.
Or, it means he's a dunderhead.

Warren!

2010-09-16T09:10:00.001-04:00

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Benen: ELIZABETH WARREN TO JOIN OBAMA TEAM

It's been difficult keeping up with the rumors in recent weeks about Elizabeth Warren and her possible role in the Obama administration. Atrios joked the other day, after a Fox News report that Warren would be the interim head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, "Went to bed, Warren interim. Woke up, she wasn't. Went for a walk, now she is again."
And soon after, Fox News retracted its report and she wasn't again.

As of this morning, however, we finally know with confidence what's going to happen. ABC's Jake Tapper broke the story last night, reporting that President Obama will name Elizabeth Warren to "a special position reporting to both him and to the Treasury Department," tasked with heading the effort to get the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau -- which was Warren's idea -- up and running.

There are lingering questions about the details, but Tapper's report has been widely confirmed.

The decision, which Mr. Obama is to announce this week, would allow Ms. Warren, a Harvard law professor, to effectively run the new agency without having to go through a potentially contentious confirmation battle in the Senate. The creation of the bureau is a centerpiece of the Wall Street financial overhaul that Mr. Obama signed in July.
Ms. Warren will be named an assistant to the president, a designation that is held by senior White House staff members, including Rahm Emanuel, the chief of staff. She will also be a special adviser to the Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, and report jointly to Mr. Obama and Mr. Geithner. The financial regulation law delegated to the Treasury Department the powers of the bureau until a permanent director was appointed and confirmed by the Senate to a five-year term.

This looks like very positive news. Warren is one of the nation's leading consumer advocates and experts on bankruptcy law, and has drawn fire from conservatives precisely because she's so effective in going after abusive corporate practices.

Why not just appoint her to head the commission? The White House came to believe that the Senate's dysfunction would leave Warren in limbo for months, if not longer, leaving her unable to work and the consumer-protection agency unable to function. (And if the Senate ultimately killed her nomination, it would set back the process even more.) The approach the president chose allows Warren to have the authority to start making a difference right away.

It's probably premature to draw hard conclusions until the official announcement is made and more details are available, but this isn't necessarily a mushy, split-the-difference compromise; at least it doesn't have to be if the White House does it right. Indeed, this is very likely news Warren backers should celebrate -- she'll be in a position to shape the CFPB the right way, and effectively serve as its functioning chief for quite a while. At some point down the road, the president may go ahead and nominate Warren to formally head the agency anyway.

Ideally, of course, these circuitous tactics wouldn't be necessary. The White House could nominate an overwhelmingly qualified official to a key post, and the Senate would vote on her nomination. But as Annie Lowery reminds us, the "confirmation process is broken," forcing the administration to get creative. It's bad for the country and our system of government when unprecedented Republican tactics make a branch of government this dysfunctional.

But until there's meaningful Senate reform, workarounds are necessary. In Warren's case, the solution appears to be a good one.

Anne Laurie: Two Worthy Candidates

The NYTimes is reporting that “Warren [Will] Unofficially Lead Consumer Agency“:

Elizabeth Warren, who conceived of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, will oversee its establishment as an assistant to President Obama, an official briefed on the decision said Wednesday evening.

The decision, which Mr. Obama is to announce this week, would allow Ms. Warren, a Harvard law professor, to effectively run the new agency without having to go through a potentially contentious confirmation battle in the Senate…

Ms. Warren will be named an assistant to the president, a designation that is held by senior White House staff members, including Rahm Emanuel, the chief of staff. She will also be a special adviser to the Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, and report jointly to Mr. Obama and Mr. Geithner. The financial regulation law delegated to the Treasury Department the powers of the bureau until a permanent director was appointed and confirmed by the Senate to a five-year term.

The decision does not preclude the possibility that Ms. Warren could eventually be named director, and at the least, she would play a pivotal role in deciding whom to appoint to the job, according to the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity so as not to pre-empt the formal announcement…

And Gail Collins sends her new column from Anchorage:

... Scott McAdams, the Democratic candidate, is introducing himself to the voters. This will take some time because McAdams’s big claim to fame is being mayor of Sitka, a town of 8,700 with no road access…

The mayor’s big adventure began when it was Sitka’s turn to hold the Democratic state convention this year and the delegates were looking under every rock, melting glacier and sleeping walrus for a respectable candidate to face Murkowski. Voilà! A star was born, sort of. For weeks, McAdams ran in obscurity with no staff and a budget adequate to cover a meal for four at Red Lobster. Then the Tea Party struck, and now he’s Mr. Smith, trying to go to Washington…

The national Democratic establishment has been ignoring McAdams. So many crazy Tea Party candidates to take advantage of, so little time. If places like the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee forgot about Alaska before this week, they must be totally distracted now that the Republicans in Delaware have decided to nominate a woman who won’t tell anybody where she lives because she’s afraid her political enemies will come and hide in the bushes.

McAdams may be an imperfect candidate, but he’s also an extremely inexpensive one. An Alaskan political campaign costs less than a tenth of one in big-media states like Florida and New York. He could probably run a competitive race for a million dollars, which is about the equivalent in California of Barbara Boxer’s postage budget.

McAdams is one of the choices on Balloon Juice’s very own ActBlue page, in case you want to show him a little monetary love. Maybe, in honor of the pinnipeds seeking refugee from global warming, we can call it “Walrusbombing“?

a "paranoid psychotic episode"

2010-09-15T12:30:00.008-04:00

Atrios:

I don't believe all (or even most) Republicans are anti-sex, science denying, theocratic freaks, but I do believe that significant numbers of them who don't really believe these things are happy to embrace this stuff and candidates who embrace this stuff because they think that it pisses of liberals. Pissing off liberals is the great uniter.

Sully: The Spawn Of Palin

I wonder if this doesn't represent some kind of tipping point for the right, the moment their asinine, vacuous Palinist blather really did meet the reality of this country's profound problems and the need to confront them rather than escape into a fantasy world of cultural paranoia, religious extremism and neurotic nationalism.
I thought it would get worse before it got better. It has happened more quickly and more drastically than I imagined. We went from the obvious fact that Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck are farcical comic figures to the notion that they are the de facto leaders of a once-great political party. We've now seen the vile propaganda of Dinesh D'Souza embraced by Newt Gingrich, an Arizona candidate seeing headless bodies, and a victorious unelectable Delaware candidate who, among other things, opposes masturbation.

Matthew Norman: From the US comes a nasty whiff

Sarah Palin has a serious, instinctive gift for connecting with the bemused and the credulous that it would be folly to underestimate

The misfortunes of others being the greatest solace in gloomy, scary times, God bless the United States of America! However alarming the fiscal situation over here, however nerve-jangling the anticipation of the forthcoming Spending Review and its impact of industrial relations, however wretched the prospect of the low level civil unrest that follows the scapegoating of the deprived by the wealthy, glancing across the Atlantic cannot fail to raise the spirits.
Exactly what is unfolding there remains hard to identify even for those better placed by geography, experience and intellect than your columnist. But even at this remove it is apparent that America is suffering some kind of paranoid psychotic episode.
The evidence is rich and varied, and extends beyond that crazy old scrote who never quite got round to burning the Koran in Florida, or even that canard du jour about the "Ground Zero Mosque" which, to the blissful unconcern of Fox News and those bamboozled into confusing it with a broadcaster of news, is neither a mosque, of course, nor scheduled for construction at Ground Zero. Hint at the resurgence in Islamophobia that fell dormant surprisingly soon after 9/11 though they might, these conflated outrages paint an imprecise picture.
More instructive, I think, is a political story which may at first strike you as on the irrelevant side of parochial. Seldom in a British newspaper do we read of Delaware, the second smallest state of the union, about which many of us know nothing other than that it provides the title and first line of a catchily imbecilic song, "What Did Delaware (Boys, What Did Delaware)?"
In the old days, she wore a brand New Jersey. But times have changed, and today she may have swapped that pristine woollen garment for a straitjacket. With the mid-term elections for Congress due in November, many voters in the primary for Republican senatorial candidate have plumped for somebody even they, Tea Party chimps though they are, know cannot conceivably win.
Nurturer-in-chief of this suicidal instinct, inevitably, is Sarah Palin, the Jimmy Jones of the Grand Old Party. Buoyed by a spectacularly destructive Vanity Fair portrait quoting her weeping over her own inadequacy to cope with the demands of governing Alaska, Palin flirts ever more openly with running for the far less challenging position of president. Those who snort derisively at her chances of winning the GOP nomination in any field containing better informed and more articulate rivals than might be found in a Petri dish may find in Delaware a compelling vignette.
That primary was held yesterday, and the result is unknown at the time of writing. Yet even if the Republican establishment candidate, a moderate Congressman called Mike Castle, defeated his Palin-endorsed, Tea Party Express opponent Christine O'Donnell, the fact that the outcome was in doubt to the last alone tells its tale.
In opinion polls matching them against Democratic candidate Chris Coons, Mr Castle wins by a mile and Ms O'Donnell loses by further still. No wonder the Democrats have been "salivating" at the notion of facing the latter, and the Republican establishment quaking at the prospect of her victory obliterating the party in a state not given to the fear-stoking nastery that makes the Tea Party such an impressive tribute act to the late Joe McCarthy.
This grassroots movement, so crudely but skilfully seeded and propagated by Palin and her sidekick Glenn Beck, would rather lose a national election with a candidate who precisely mirrors its prejudices than win it by supporting one who does not. Such fearsome integrity may yet propel Palin to the presidential nomination. No one, herself included, has a clear idea whether she intends to run against Obama in 2012, although the superficial signs – first noted almost a year ago when she dined and prayed with Billy Graham; more obvious now from the love she is lavishing on Iowa, the first state to choose its presidential candidates – suggest she does.
The danger she represents has little to do with her chances of becoming president. In a general election, at least according to all current polling, she could no more beat a Stalinist llama than Barack Obama. The vast majority of Americans are not wilfully stupid, however much it assuages our classical British insecurities to believe so.
But even a small minority of Americans becomes a loud and petrifying force when amplified by the pernicious megaphone that is Mr Murdoch's Fox network. It is as the figurehead of the Tea Party, and personification of the racism that is spreading throughout the United States, where almost one on five Americans now believes Obama is a Muslim, that she is a clear and present danger.
The woman whose claim to have the requisite foreign policy experience for becoming vice-president rested solely on having kept look-out for encroaching Russian jets from the porch of her Wasilla home cannot be mistaken for an intellectual giantess, but she has a serious, instinctive gift for connecting with the bemused and credulous that it would be folly to underestimate. Intuitively she understands how to stoke baseless fears – wickedly, brilliantly, she coined the phrase "death panels" regarding Obamacare – as all ambitious rabble-rousers of the ultra far right must.
She will never lead the free world. But as the most useful idiot available to those powerfully entrenched reactionary forces to whom Republican politicians are no more than conduits to persuading Americans to vote against own their own economic interests, she is priceless.
Watching the Tea Party crush centrist Republicans in race after race regardless of the damage this will do the GOP in November, noting the fanaticism at the rallies headlined by Palin and Beck, and recalling from his own childhood the power of crazed but charismatic rhetoric over a middle class grown poor and confused in Wehrmacht Germany, Noam Chomsky sniffs fascism on the breeze.
If that sounds hysterical, please God that it is. But something dark and hateful is stirring in America, and it seems certain to grow as long as unemployment and poverty persist. On Inauguration Day some 20 months ago it felt almost like a curse not to be American. Today it feels quite a blessing to be British.

Peter Fenn Democratic media consultant :

Poor Republicans. They are beginning to resemble the bar scene from Star Wars. They are purging the conservative voices in their party who have any sort of pragmatic perspective and substituting true kooks. These are not just candidates with hard right views -- they took over the Republican Party in the late '70s and early '80s -- these are candidates who, as the Republican chair in Delaware put it, don't deserve to be dog catcher. Serious ethics issues. No record of accomplishment. Little of any substance on the issues. They are, pure and simple, vessels for anger and unbridled simplicity. The Grand Old Party is fast devouring itself. Political tsunamis do wash up a lot of dead fish on the beach -- it happened when Republicans captured 12 Senate seats in 1980. It appears to be happening again, only worse.

Marshall: Rove Pummeled in Lord o' Flies Style Smackdown

After shattering Sean Hannity's world last night by saying that Christine O'Donnell is nuts, Karl Rove is now being treated to a web-wide rightwing smackdown for talking smack about O'Donnell.

Benen: A PARTY REAPS WHAT IT SOWS

Congressional Republicans haven't played a constructive role in policymaking over the last couple of years, in part because they disagree so strongly with Democrats, but there's more to it than that. They've also boxed themselves in -- after a party condemns a president as an illegitimate Communist intent on destroying on America, the party has left itself very little room for compromise.
Indeed, based on its own larger attack strategy, how can the GOP be expected to find common ground with a policy agenda it considers un-American? It's how we go from the GOP agreeing with 80% of the Democratic health care plan to the GOP considering the same plan "Armageddon." Republicans have positioned themselves in such a way as to make working with those who may disagree with them largely impossible.

But this dynamic is not limited to policymaking. Jon Chait explained overnight how this attitude -- the GOP have characterized their efforts as "a twilight struggle to save the last vestiges of the Republic" -- applies to campaign politics.

The premise of all these pleas for [Mike Castle in Delaware's Republican Senate primary] was extremely sensible: this is politics. Sometimes you move the ball forward, sometimes the other team moves it forward. Sometimes you make compromises in order to get ahead.
But the Republican base has been taught not to think this way. This isn't just politics, remember? This is a twilight struggle for freedom. And Mike Castle didn't just cast a couple bad votes. He acquiesced in a sinister plan to undermine capitalism. How could they ever support a candidate like that?

Quite right. These voters have been told by their party not to compromise or settle for partial victories. There's just too much at stake, they're told. Evil forces are trying to take your country away.

Easily misled and manipulated people bought into this rhetoric. They've come to believe it's their responsibility to elect radical ideologues who'll save us from impending doom. Sensible people with last names like Castle, Crist, Specter, Bennett, Murkowski, and Inglis were insufficiently right-wing, so they were cast aside.

These activists have been fed red meat that's been tainted without their knowledge -- and now those who did the tainting are frustrated when the activists end up sick.

There's a limit to this, of course. Republicans are still poised to have an exceptionally good election cycle, and many of the lunatic candidates who've won primaries without the party's backing are very likely to win anyway.

But stepping, even after the GOP's expected gains, Republicans' carefully-executed strategy will leave them with (a) fewer wins than they would have had; (b) a smaller, more extreme party; (c) a base that's been taught to reject any and all compromises; and (d) a party incapable of governing effectively.

As I said earlier, Frankenstein didn't like his monster very much, but he still had to live with the consequences.

Aravosis: Anti-masturbation activist wins GOP Senate primary in Delaware

As Joe mentioned earlier, an anti-Masturbation activist just won the Republican US Senate primary in Delaware. Ironically, she's a Teabagger. All jokes aside, this is what the Republican party has come to. Their US Senate nominees now include anti-masturbation activists. The party has been taken over by the far-right fringe, and as Joe and I wrote a while back, that's all well and good until the Democrats screw up to the point that the voters replace them with whoever is available, regardless of how nutty.

Anne Laurie:Watching the Clown Car Empty

One of the small consolations of getting ringside seats to the Teabagger/Confederate Party implosion is that Charles P. Pierce will be doing a weekly series for Esquire’s Politics blog:

There is a real danger in overthinking what happened in Delaware on Tuesday night, which is not something of which the winner of the state’s GOP senatorial primary ever has been accused…

... Christine O’Donnell is a sideshow freak.

Seriously now, she was a crackpot when she rose on primary morning, and she’s a crackpot now, and she will be a crackpot whether she wins or loses in November. She no more belongs in the Senate of the United States today than she did the day she was born. That 30,000-odd primates in Delaware thinks she belongs there is their problem. If enough people in Delaware come to think so, then she becomes our problem.

O’Donnell is a creature of an age in which politics have no meaning beyond performance art. She is the Creature From The Green Room, with no apparent public career beyond being available whenever some teenage booker from the cable shows needed someone to say something reliably stupid… Her resume is so thin as to be opaque, and a lot of it seems to be a lie. She seems to be something of a deadbeat, and “U.S. Senator” seems to be her idea of an entry-level position. This morning, she stands one step away from the job…

She is what politics produces when you turn them into a game show and the coverage of them over to a generation of high-technology racetrack touts. She is what you get when political journalism reduces politics to numbers on a scoreboard, divorcing them from the real world consequences of what are increasingly seen as cute little eccentric decisions.

She is what politics produces when we abandon self-government for self-gratification. And that’s the real obvious irony in her victory on Tuesday night, and the only thing about it that truly matters. Christine O’Donnell’s campaign is a successful exercise in angry, misfit masturbation, with as little to do with the deadly problems this country faces as some guy wanking in the balcony of a grindhouse has to do with Romeo and Juliet.

Dave Weigel has a “Requiem for Mike Castle“:

I’m from Delaware, born in 1981, and can not remember a time when Mike Castle wasn’t being elected to something…There are two parties here: the party that does what the banks and DuPont wants, and the party that loses. Castle was the undisputed leader of the first party.

... There are tens of thousands of Delawareans who were expecting to vote for Mike Castle who are now given a choice between their workmanlike county executive, Chris Coons, and a woman who spent two weeks on the cover of the News Journal for stories about her trouble paying college fees, her lawsuit against her former employer ISI, her appearance in a MTV special about abstinence, etc, and etc, and etc. She got such rough treatment from the paper that she stopped talking to it…

[O’Donnell’s] victory was only possible because, for the first time, political donors and activists from outside our little state picked a target, froze it, and polarized it. But the message I am getting tonight is clear—neither the state GOP nor the NRSC will spend any resources on O’Donnell. Mike Castle could win in Delaware, and she can’t. I’d amend that slightly: No one like O’Donnell, a pure ideological candidate, has won a statewide race in Delaware in modern times. Maybe she’ll be the first! But the most likely scenario is that a shocked Delaware electorate elevates Coons to the U.S. Senate while waiting to see if it can give Castle another crack at statewide office in 2012. It’s what we’re used to.

And just so we don’t become too fixated on the latest shiny political object, Alex Pareene at Salon reminds us about August’s Flavor-of-the-Month Repub Nutball: “Rand Paul doesn’t understand how budgets, the Senate, math work.”

Positively Medieval

2010-09-14T07:31:00.001-04:00

Think Progress: REPORT: Grand Old Deniers — Nearly All GOP Senate Candidates Deny Global Warming

A comprehensive Wonk Room survey of the Republican candidates for the U.S. Senate finds that nearly all dispute the scientific consensus that the United States must act to fight global warming pollution. Remarkably, of the dozens of Republicans vying for the 37 Senate seats in the 2010 election, only one — Rep. Mike Castle of Delaware — supports strong climate action. Even former climate advocates Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and Rep. Mark Kirk (R-IL) now toe the science-doubting party line. If Castle loses his primary on Tuesday to Tea Party candidate Christine O’Donnell, the GOP slate will be unanimous in opposition to a green economy.
Many of the Senate candidates are signatories of the Koch Industries’ Americans For Prosperity No Climate Tax pledge and the FreedomWorks Contract From America. The second plank of the Contract From America is to “Reject Cap & Trade: Stop costly new regulations that would increase unemployment, raise consumer prices, and weaken the nation’s global competitiveness with virtually no impact on global temperatures.” In reality, a carbon cap-and-trade market — by rewarding work instead of pollution — would increase jobs, lower electricity bills, restore American competitiveness, and forestall a climate catastrophe.

Overwhelmingly, the Republican candidates not only oppose action to limit global warming pollution, they question the validity of climate science. Here are a few quotes drawn from the Wonk Room report:

Gov. John Boozman, Arkansas:

“Well I think that we’ve got perhaps climate change going on. The question is what’s causing it. Is man causing it, or, you know, is this a cycle that happens throughout the years, throughout the ages. And you can look back some of the previous times when there was no industrialization, you had these different ages, ice ages, and things warming and things. That’s the question.” [KTHV Little Rock, 3/10]

Rep. Roy Blunt, Missouri:

“There isn’t any real science to say we are altering the climate path of the earth.” [Human Events, 4/29/09]

Rep. Rob Portman, Ohio:

“When you analyze all the data, there is a warming trend according to science,” he said. “But the jury is out on the degree of how much is manmade.” [Columbus Dispatch, 7/25/10]

Jim Huffman, Oregon:

He casts doubt on scientists’ findings about global warming. It’s “rooted in some fairly vague science,” he says. “There are a lot of studies out there that offer alternative explanations for global climate variations.” Huffman opposes a cap and trade system to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, largely because it will be too expensive. He argues that it’s more realistic to adapt to climate change than disrupt peoples’ lives trying to prevent it. If some island nations become uninhabitable, he says, “I think that’s a tragedy, but we can adapt to that.”[Portland Tribune, 9/2/10]

To recap: 97% of climate experts agree humans are causing global warming, but 97% of GOP Senate candidates disagree.

See the comprehensive listing of all 37 races at the Wonk Room.

Think Progress: Study: ‘People Who Matter’ To Sunday Talk Shows Are ‘White, Male, Senior, and Republican’

NBC’s Meet the Press, CBS’s Face the Nation, Fox News Sunday, CNN’s State of the Union, and ABC’s This Week are the five major Sunday talk shows that aim to bring “a diverse group of voices” that “reflect the cultural, economic, and political landscape” of the U.S. However, according to a new study published by George Mason University School of Law this month, the Congressional guests featured in 2009 were anything but diverse, failing not only to represent the demographics of the American population but also the diversity of Congress. In fact, according to the study, the congressional voice was disproportionately represented by one type of guest in 2009: “white, male, senior, and Republican”:
“In 2009 the talk shows told us (by their selection of Congressional guests) that the people who matter are disproportionately white, male, senior and Republican — disproportionate not just when compared to the American population overall, but also when compared to the population of Congress itself,” concluded a study published this month in The Green Bag, a quarterly journal supported by the George Mason University School of Law.

The study, of the five network Sunday shows from February to December 2009, found that while 14.6 percent of members of Congress were minorities, just 2.5 percent of the Congressional TV guests were minorities; and that while 16.9 percent of members were female, 13.5 percent of the guests were female.

The study also singled out “the 49 white, male U.S. senators in office six-plus years” who represented 9.2 percent of the Congressional populace, but 61.4 percent of the TV guests.
This Week’s executive producer Ian Cameron explains that “bookings are dictated by the news and newsmakers” and “few of those newsmakers in top leadership positions are women or members of minorities.” In reviewing 2009, he noted that the guests relevant to the most prevalent issues were “white and mostly men.” According to the study, the top guests were Republican Sens. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), John McCain (R-AZ), and Jon Kyl (R-AZ). The Republican leadership “appeared on these shows a total of 43 times” while Democratic Leadership, including the first female Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), “appeared only 11 times.” And 2010 is shaping up to be more of the same, with McConnell “again leading the pack – appearing 10 times on Sunday shows – a rate even higher than he achieved in 2009.”

Crazy People

2010-09-13T11:59:00.005-04:00

Kurtz (TPM): The Peretz 'Apology'

The New Republic's Martin Peretz apologies for writing that Muslims don't deserve the protections of the First Amendment, but stands by his claim that Muslims don't value human life.

Fallows: A Harsh Thing I Should Have Said (Martin Peretz Dept)

Usually you regret the harsh things you say more than the harsh things you decide not to say. At least, that's how it usually turns out for me.

Here's an exception. Earlier this week I wrote an item about an incredible instance of public bigotry in the American intelligentsia. I decided not to push the "publish" button, because -- well, I didn't need to say it. Other people were pointing out the bigotry. I had no special standing as attitude-cop in this case.

But Nicholas Kristof's column today makes me realize I was wrong. The upsurge in expressed hostility toward Muslims -- not toward extremists or terrorists but toward adherents of a religion as a group -- creates an American moment that isn't going to look good in historical retrospect. The people indulging in this kind of group-bias speech deserve to be called out.

Kristof has called out one of the people I had in mind: Martin Peretz, listed as editor in chief of the New Republic, someone I have known very slightly since the days when he was a young professor at Harvard and I was a student. What he wrote, which the younger version of himself would have excoriated, was this:
>> [F]rankly, Muslim life is cheap, most notably to Muslims. And among those Muslims led by the Imam Rauf [of the NYC "mosque" project] there is hardly one who has raised a fuss about the routine and random bloodshed that defines their brotherhood. So, yes, I wonder whether I need honor these people and pretend that they are worthy of the privileges of the First Amendment which I have in my gut the sense that they will abuse. <<
What's the point in piling on now, when these words have been so roundly condemned in so many quarters? Here is part of what I meant to say last week:
>> Martin Peretz's stated complaint about mainstream Muslims is that they don't step up to condemn egregious acts by people who could be considered "their own." Let's apply that logic here. Around the world, Martin Peretz would be seen as one of "our own," for people in the press and at his magazine. He is an American, and a prominent member of the media. So by his standards, we should raise our voices to say about one of "our own," this is wrong. Rather than seeming to condone the sentiments through silence, or to grant their author a pass because of his connections and standing, we should, again, say: This is wrong, and un-American. Anyone saying such things does not speak for "us." <<
I can't at the moment think of another mainstream publication whose editor-in-chief has expressed similar sentiments -- whether about Muslims or blacks or Jews or women or any other class -- and not had to apologize or step down. Or a national political figure: compare this with Trent Lott's objectively milder statement about Strom Thurmond, which cost him his job in the Senate leadership. Peretz can of course say whatever he wants. It's a free country, and he is entitled to the "privileges" of the First Amendment, much as I might think he is abusing them here. But Nicholas Kristof has set an example of people stepping up to say: That's him, not us. This representative of "us" is entitled to say what he chooses, but we think he's wrong, and on this he does not speak for us.

John Cole: Nothing New

Adding to my point that there is really nothing new to the hatred bubbling inside the mind of Marty Peretz and it is curious that some people are only now calling him on it, here is a piece from Jack Shafer pointing out that Peretz has not really kept his feelings about Arabs a secret.

The piece is from 1991. This year’s freshman class in colleges across the country was not even born, and Peretz was getting his hate on.

Marshall: Trainwreck A'Comin'

Delaware is not normally where you go for exciting politics. It's a small state, totally dominated for most of the last three or four decades by three or four guys who keep getting reelected, except when they trade one of the state's four major offices and get elected again. Mike Castle's been getting elected for about thirty years. He was Governor. Then the state's sole Representative since 1993. And now he's trading up to be Senator. That's just how things work in Delaware.

Until about a month ago.

Now it looks like he's about to get rocked by totally wild-eyed Tea Partier Christine O'Donnell. She's the one who says it's not enough to be abstinent. You have to eliminate sexual desire entirely. Which suggests she's what you'd call an aspirational politician rather than a realist.

First The Tea Party Express started pouring in money for her. Then Palin endorsed her. Then this morning the Weekly Standard unloaded this hatchet-job on her. And now PPP has just released a poll showing her 3 points ahead of Mike Castle.

In any other year, you'd probably be safe seeing that as basically a tie race and figuring Castle's machine strength could pull it out for him. But after Murkowski, maybe not.

And all that wasn't enough, tonight the Tea Party Express (one of the more cash-n-carry of the national Tea Party groups) released a statement calling for the firing of the head of the state Republican party.

The Tea Party Express (website: www.TeaPartyExpress.org) is joining with a coalition of Delaware Republicans and conservative activists in calling for the immediate resignation or termination of Delaware Republican Party Chairman, Tom Ross.
"Tom Ross must resign within the next 24 hours or face immediate termination," declared Amy Kremer, Chairman of the Tea Party Express.

"As Mike Castle's chief advocate, Mr. Ross has trashed Republican candidates, beliefs and principles, and shown a complete lack of character or integrity. He is a walking disaster who has brought irreparable harm to the Republican Party.

"Can you imagine the mess Tom Ross will have created when he is Delaware Republican Party Chairman on Tuesday night when Christine O'Donnell becomes the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate? It's unacceptable, and Tom Ross must quit or be fired immediately.

"Mike Castle should be ashamed of himself for conspiring with Mr. Ross to attack fellow Republicans and conservative activists, all in the process of dishonoring the principles of the Republican Party platform that he was entrusted to represent and is supposed to advocate for," Kremer said.

You can read the rest here.

DougJ adds:
I almost feel bad rooting against Castle, because I do respect his record of public service and because O’Donnell’s “unmanly” attacks were shameful, but the entertainment potential here if off the charts.

Adam Serwer: Forbes Embraces Birtherism Lite.

Sometimes it's best to think of racism as intellectual laziness. That is, it reflects a failure to evaluate people for who they actually are, because its easier to slip them into a familiar, predetermined category that doesn't upset other related conclusions a person might have come to as a result. For whatever reason, elements of the right have chosen not to evaluate Barack Obama based on his actions or his policies, but through the kind of post-modern literary interpretation that wouldn't make it through the vetting process of a freshman bong circle at Wesleyan. In these retellings of Obama's personal history, the president's life is an epic, Marxist, sinister version of a Joseph Campbell style heroic journey, with its hero ultimately falling, like Anakin Skywalker, to the dark side of the force.

Emerging from his sinecure as president of a small religious college in New York, Dinesh D'Souza, who has been laundering the racism of the right through an "intellectual" filter since his days at Dartmouth, gets back to where his career began. In an essay for Forbes, he concludes that the animating philosophy of the president is "Kenyan anti-colonialism." The purpose of the essay is to synthesize the most idiotic conservative criticisms of Obama into one handy term:

It may seem incredible to suggest that the anticolonial ideology of Barack Obama Sr. is espoused by his son, the President of the United States. That is what I am saying. From a very young age and through his formative years, Obama learned to see America as a force for global domination and destruction. He came to view America's military as an instrument of neocolonial occupation. He adopted his father's position that capitalism and free markets are code words for economic plunder. Obama grew to perceive the rich as an oppressive class, a kind of neocolonial power within America. In his worldview, profits are a measure of how effectively you have ripped off the rest of society, and America's power in the world is a measure of how selfishly it consumes the globe's resources and how ruthlessly it bullies and dominates the rest of the planet.
For Obama, the solutions are simple. He must work to wring the neocolonialism out of America and the West. And here is where our anticolonial understanding of Obama really takes off, because it provides a vital key to explaining not only his major policy actions but also the little details that no other theory can adequately account for.

This is birtherism with big words. This is the witchdoctor sign without photoshop, WorldNetDaily without the exclamation points. D'Souza doesn't need to stare at Obama's birth certificate for hours to come to the same conclusion as the birthers, which is that the president is a foreigner. But neither is "Kenyan anti-colonialism" a superficial term. At once, it engages all the racialized elements of the conservative critique of Obama--not just that having an African father means he isn't really an American, but that his inner life consists of a deep anger towards white people, and the office of the presidency is merely the means to secure a collective payback. It also manages to nod in the direction of another conservative racist meme, that having a black president makes the United States somehow analagous to African third-world countries run by bloodthirsty despots. Newt Gingrich took a break from his clownish Islamophobia this weekend to embrace this idiocy, and drew a much harsher reaction, in part because we're still so silly about race in this country that we're still disarmed when a person of color makes a blatantly racist argument.
Some people have already asked how an American like D'Souza disparages anti-colonialism, but it's simple really: African self-determination is seen by many in the West, particularly conservatives, as a tragic in comparison to the idealized "stability" of white rule. "Kenyan anti-colonialism" manages to say at once, Obama is a black, incompetent despot who is out for revenge against whites, and who will destroy the country in the process. This is profoundly racist on its face. Yet it's the cover story in Forbes magazine.

Of course, it isn't just racist, but idiotic. D'Souza's grasp of policy is shallow as a puddle of piss in a dark alley, but it's safe to say that someone self-identifying as an "anti-colonialist" would not be escalating an American war in central Asia or claiming the authority to use the entire planet as a target range for flying robots armed with cruise missiles.

If Obama is a Kenyan anti-colonialist for supporting financial regulation, than Scott Brown is a Kenyan anti-colonialist. If Obama is a Kenyan anti-colonialist for supporting the proposed Islamic community center near Ground Zero, then Michael Bloomberg is a Kenyan anti-colonialist. If Obama is a Kenyan anti-Colonialist for supporting health care insurance reform, then Ben Nelson is a Kenyan anti-colonialist. The Center for American Progress is a Kenyan anti-colonialist think tank, MoveOn is a Kenyan anti-colonialist advocacy organization, and Peter Orszag is a Kenyan anti-colonialist intellectual.

All of which to say is there's no need to parse the ethnic origins or political philosophies of Obama's parents to understand the ideology of Barack Obama. He is a center-left Democrat who supports mainstream Democratic policies. But some conservatives don't want to talk about policy. They are unable to engage an argument with liberalism on substantive terms, they know only argument by epithet. They want to talk about the fact that our blackety black president is blackety black. It has been two years since a black man was elected president of the United States, and for a group of conservatives clinging to their cultural superiority, this was a moment of apocalyptic existential crisis, a moment that refuted all they had come to know and understand about themselves, about black people, and about this country. D'Souza is writing for them, the same kind of audience he has always written for.

Sully: Quote For The Day

"If Obama is a Kenyan anti-colonialist for supporting financial regulation, than Scott Brown is a Kenyan anti-colonialist. If Obama is a Kenyan anti-colonialist for supporting the proposed Islamic community center near Ground Zero, then Michael Bloomberg is a Kenyan anti-colonialist. If Obama is a Kenyan anti-Colonialist for supporting health care insurance reform, then Ben Nelson is a Kenyan anti-colonialist. The Center for American Progress is a Kenyan anti-colonialist think tank, MoveOn is a Kenyan anti-colonialist advocacy organization, and Peter Orszag is a Kenyan anti-colonialist intellectual," - Adam Serwer.
For that matter, if Obama wants to return to Clinton-era tax rates, does that make Clinton a Kenyan anti-colonialist? If Obama wants access to private health-care insurance, while Richard Nixon backed a far more expansive program, does that make Nixon a Ugandan Marxist? Once you unpack all this, especially when you consider the multiple crises that Obama had to handle when he came to office - and the extraordinary moderation he has shown throughout (infuriating those to his left) - you realize just how base this kind of "critique" is.
It is pure white cultural identity politics - now touted by a man who once made a mini-career by attacking identity politics. And it is on the cover of fricking Forbes! And fully endorsed by Newt Gingrich.
I suspected that on the right, things would get much worse before they got any better. I under-estimated the plunge toward nihilism and hate.

Sully: Quote For The Day II

"Overreaction is the Terrorist’s Friend: Even in major cases like this, the terrorist’s real weapon is fear and hysteria. Overreacting will play into their hands," - Glenn Reynolds, September 11, 2001.
Watching Instapundit's descent through those years to his current position is a poignant example of how our emotions have destroyed our reason in the years since. I do not exempt myself from this. But I have tried to regain some perspective and make amends for some of my over-reaction.
And yet now, especially, that unreason seems to have taken an almost pathological turn. It is as if America is intent on destroying itself, its civil society, its fiscal future, and its next generation in an endless fit of mutual recrimination, neurotic nationalism, and religious division.

Three from Steve.

2010-09-12T10:12:00.002-04:00

Three from Steven Benen.

WHEN GINGRICH LOSES HIS MIND

Obama Derangement Syndrome can take some strange people to some strange places. Disgraced former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), in all his pseudo-intellectual glory, has become so enveloped in his own garbage, he appears to have suffered some kind of severe head trauma.
Gingrich's trip to Crazy Town began quite a while, but in recent months, his unbridled hatred of the president has pushed him to the point of sputtering, incoherent rage. Earlier in this summer, Gingrich insisted that Obama and his allies represent "as great a threat to America as Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union once did."

Ol' Newt seems to be getting more worked up as time goes on.

Citing a recent Forbes article by Dinesh D'Souza, former House speaker Newt Gingrich tells National Review Online that President Obama may follow a "Kenyan, anti-colonial" worldview.
Gingrich says that D'Souza has made a "stunning insight" into Obama's behavior -- the "most profound insight I have read in the last six years about Barack Obama."

"What if [Obama] is so outside our comprehension, that only if you understand Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior, can you begin to piece together [his actions]?" Gingrich asks. "That is the most accurate, predictive model for his behavior."

"This is a person who is fundamentally out of touch with how the world works, who happened to have played a wonderful con, as a result of which he is now president," Gingrich tells us.

"I think he worked very hard at being a person who is normal, reasonable, moderate, bipartisan, transparent, accommodating -- none of which was true," Gingrich continues. "In the Alinksy tradition, he was being the person he needed to be in order to achieve the position he needed to achieve . . . He was authentically dishonest."

Gingrich appears to have been inspired by D'Souza, perhaps best known for writing an entire book arguing that terrorists are right about the problems with American culture. Osama bin Laden and other dangerous Islamic radicals believe the U.S. is too secular, too permissive, too diverse, too free, and too tolerant -- and D'Souza concluded that they're absolutely correct. Indeed, D'Souza went so far as to argue that liberal Americans are at least partially to blame for 9/11 -- the left invited the attacks by reinforcing the beliefs al Qaeda had about the United States.

In one particularly memorable episode of "The Colbert Report," D'Souza conceded that he finds some of the critiques from radical, anti-American extremists persuasive.

And now that D'Souza has crafted some new twisted theory -- the president, the argument goes, is executing an anti-colonial agenda pushed by his father -- Gingrich's twisted little mind has concluded that the "Kenyan, anti-colonial" worldview makes perfect sense.

I care about this, not because Gingrich is a lunatic, but because Republicans and the media establishment continue to treat Gingrich as a sane, credible visionary. I think it's fair to say most reasonable people would charitably describe his attacks on America's leaders as idiocy, but the problem is, it won't make any difference.

Given the way the political establishment is "wired" for Republicans, there simply aren't any consequences for this kind of abject stupidity. In the first year of the Obama administration, the most frequent guest on "Meet the Press" was Newt Gingrich. Despite having left office more than a decade ago in disgrace, he remains a leading figure welcome in polite society.
There's literally nothing the man can say to lose his platform to spew nonsense.

HOW THEY SPENT THEIR SATURDAY

Depending on one's perspective, there was very likely an event honoring the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks yesterday offering an appealing message. There was, for example, a ceremony at the Pentagon, where President Obama appealed to American ideals.
"[T]he highest honor we can pay those we lost, indeed our greatest weapon in this ongoing war, is to do what our adversaries fear the most -- to stay true to who we are, as Americans; to renew our sense of common purpose; to say that we define the character of our country, and we will not let the acts of some small band of murderers who slaughter the innocent and cower in caves distort who we are. [...]
"Those who attacked us sought to demoralize us, divide us, to deprive us of the very unity, the very ideals, that make America America -- those qualities that have made us a beacon of freedom and hope to billions around the world. Today we declare once more we will never hand them that victory. As Americans, we will keep alive the virtues and values that make us who we are and who we must always be.

"For our cause is just. Our spirit is strong. Our resolve is unwavering."

About 200 miles north, one could hear a very different message.

In downtown Manhattan today, about 1,500 people gathered to protest the planned Park51 Islamic center near Ground Zero. Speakers assured the crowd that it's not that they're intolerant, because this isn't about tolerance, exactly -- but so what if it is, because Islam is intolerant? Or something. [...]
Ralliers carried signs like "No Bloomosque, No Obamosque, No Victory Mosque," and frequently broke out into chants of "No more mosque," "No-Bama," and even "USA."

Unhinged conservatives will do what unhinged conservatives do, and their pro-hate message is neither new nor interesting. What did some relevant, however, was just how small the size of the right-wing crowd turned out to be. Jillian Rayfield's TPM report quoted local law enforcement, which put the figure at 1,500. The NYT had a slightly higher estimate at 2,000. (When Fox News tells viewers 17 gajillion people were there, please be skeptical.)

As offensive as the rally was, the modest turnout is heartening. Organizers intended to bus people in from across the country, to take a bold stand on 9/11 against Muslims, the White House, religious liberty, and the conversion of closed clothing stores. Organizers also had plenty of leading hateful figures speaking to attendees, to help boost attendance.

And in the largest city in the country, they managed to maybe pull 2,000 people together.

BOEHNER GETS BY WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM HIS LOBBYISTS

John Boehner first gained national notoriety in 1996, when the chain-smoking conservative congressman, shortly before a key vote, walked the House floor distributing checks from tobacco industry lobbyists. Boehner, an up-and-coming member of the GOP leadership at the time, later acknowledged that his money-distribution scheme didn't "look good."
But that didn't stop the Ohio Republican from forging close, almost inseparable, connections to Washington's lobbyists. As Americans just start getting to know the dim-witted man who's likely to be the next House Speaker, perhaps no trait is more important to Boehner's persona than his love of lobbyists.

He maintains especially tight ties with a circle of lobbyists and former aides representing some of the nation's biggest businesses, including Goldman Sachs, Google, Citigroup, R. J. Reynolds, MillerCoors and UPS.
They have contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to his campaigns, provided him with rides on their corporate jets, socialized with him at luxury golf resorts and waterfront bashes and are now leading fund-raising efforts for his Boehner for Speaker campaign, which is soliciting checks of up to $37,800 each, the maximum allowed.

To a certain extent, this isn't new.. When Congress worked on a jobs bill, Boehner and congressional Republicans huddled with corporate lobbyists. When work on Wall Street reform got underway, Boehner and congressional Republicans huddled with industry lobbyists. When Congress worked on health care reform, Boehner and congressional Republicans huddled with insurance lobbyists. When an energy/climate bill started advancing, Republicans huddled with energy lobbyists.

But arguably no one in Washington better epitomizes this borderline-caricature than Boehner -- who literally meets in smoke-filled rooms to scheme with powerful lobbyists.

While many lawmakers in each party have networks of donors, lobbyists and former aides who now represent corporate interests, Mr. Boehner's ties seem especially deep. His clique of friends and current and former staff members even has a nickname on Capitol Hill, Boehner Land. The members of this inner circle said their association with Mr. Boehner translates into open access to him and his staff.

It's the kind of scenario Americans claim not to like -- a powerful politician has put together a network of lobbyists, some of whom are his former aides, who reward him with campaign cash. The politician in turn gives them unrivaled access and does their bidding on the Hill. The whole gang likes to golf, smoke, and drink together, and dash off to beautiful locales on corporate jets.

It just screams "man of the people," doesn't it?

There's a very real chance that voters aren't bothered by any of this. For all the faux-populism of Tea Partiers and alleged disgust throughout the electorate for business as usual, many Americans seem to have developed quite a tolerance for the blurred line between politicians and lobbyists. In Indiana, I thought Dan Coats (R) might have trouble running for the Senate as a corporate lobbyist, but voters don't seem to care. Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (R) hopes to parlay his career as a corporate lobbyist into a likely presidential campaign, and few seem to find the idea silly.

Perhaps it's just a sign of the times, then, that the congressman who serves as King of Boehner Land would become Speaker of the House at a time when Americans at least pretend to want the opposite.

When crazy goes mainstream

2010-09-10T11:59:00.003-04:00

digby: The "M" Word

Josh Marshall caught an exchange with Andrea Mitchell and James Zogby this morning that made my blood boil. The church of the savvy is full of foolish and hideous dogma, but the parts that insist you ignore the forest for the trees are the most frustrating.

This is one of them:
Speaking just now on MSNBC James Zogby made a very good point -- and pressed Andrea Mitchell on it. His point was that sure, this Pastor Jones fool is one guy, who's managed to get worldwide attention for his stunt. But you cannot separate him, as I noted below, from the whole climate of hate speech and anti-Muslim agitation from the Newt Gingriches and the Sarah Palins and the rest of them.

At that point, Mitchell jumped in and said, wait, Palin said she disagrees with the Koran burning. To which Zogby replied, something to the effect of 'C'mon'. And that's just the right reply. This is the standard approach of race haters and demagogues. They keep stirring the pot, churning out demonizing rhetoric and hate speech. Then some marginal figure does something nuts and suddenly ... oh, wait, I didn't mean burn Korans. Where'd you get that idea from? We were just saying that Islam is a violent, anti-American religion and that American Muslims should stop building their mosques and focus on apologizing for 9/11 and maybe get out of America. But burn the Koran? No way.
It's also important to note the context: this didn't happen during the first eight years after 9/11 when George W. Bush was in the White House. The drumbeat of hatred for the secret Muslim African American socialist Democrat in the White House who's selling out the country to the terrorists goes hand in hand with the general Muslim bashing. It's all part of the same thing.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

digby: Laying Out The Case

In case you were wondering what kind of fever dreams the wingnuts were planning to bring to life if they gain a majority, here's what one of my emailers sent today. I think you can see where Sharron Angle and thsoe people at the tea party rallies are getting their kookier ideas:
"The Case for Impeachment: Why Barack Hussein Obama Should be Impeached to Save America" by Steven Baldwin covers all of these issues and more in making its arguments.

"This is the beginning of the end for the United States unless the people exercise their precious remaining liberties and stand and demand that their elected representatives impeach this president before further mortal damage is inflicted upon America," the report concludes.

The author explains that the Founding Fathers enshrined the impeachment clause into the United States Constitution because they feared that a president intent on subverting the very principles upon which the American experiment was built would someday rise to power.

"Despite all the checks and balances and obstacles they put in place, the Founders knew a determined cabal could still gain control of all three branches of government and wield this consolidation of power to dismantle our cherished constitutional principles, and eradicate the freedoms that generations of Americans sacriﬁced their lives to preserve," he writes.

"Make no mistake: That day is now upon us."

In "The Case for Impeachment," Baldwin, a senior research fellow at the Western Journalism Center, says the issue of impeachment "is no longer a laughing matter."

"With the economy continuing to implode, the coming collapse of the dollar, high unemployment rates, the government takeover of entire industries, the administration's weak and naive response to the worldwide jihadist threat, and the ongoing frontal assault on our Judeo-Christian heritage, the impeachment option is one that can no longer be ignored," he finds.

Impeachment, after all, is based on "high crimes and misdemeanors," an "old English common law phrase which, in the 1600s, meant negligence, abuse of power, and abuse of trust," the report says.

"Not only has the Obama administration promoted dangerous and unsustainable policies, but it has also engaged in corrupt and illegal activities such as bribery, a crime the Founders specifically cited as an impeachable offense. Moreover, this report details numerous instances of Obama lying to the American people, a pattern which clearly indicates a character defect that in itself endangers America. Given this, we believe impeachment is necessary for the future survival of America," says the report.

Among the factors Americans should consider:

* Obama's violations of federal campaign and ethics laws, including the offers from his administration to Democratic U.S. Rep. Joe Sestak, who reported he was offered a high-ranking government job to drop his opposition in the Pennsylvania Senate primary to sitting Sen. Arlen Specter.

* Obama's effort "to persuade the [Illinois] governor to fill the vacated Senate seat with his longtime adviser Valerie Jarrett."

* Suggestions from Obama's own Federal Election Commission documentation that he got at least $33.8 million for his campaign from disallowed foreign contributions, including 520 contributions from interests in Iran as well as $30,000 from the Hamas-controlled Gaza area.

* Obama's administration decision to drop a case that prosecutors already had won against "black nationalist thugs" who were seen on video apparently intimidating voters during the 2008 election.

* Obama fired an inspector general, Gerald Walpin, after he exposed corruption linked to one of Obama's buddies, Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson.
* The president's system of rewarding supporters has come under question. The report confirms more than 70 individuals who raised $50,000 or more for Obama "have been rewarded with ambassadorships or high ranking jobs."

The report documents how Obama's actions even may have endangered Americans by "treating the war on terrorism as a criminal matter and downplaying the war on terrorism."

"This attitude has manifested itself in a number of ways: Obama's casual attitude may have encouraged domestic terrorist attacks, such as the November 5, 2009, Ft. Hood shooting by Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan that left thirteen American military personnel dead."

His Department of Homeland Security also has "described veterans and other law-abiding Americans [as] 'rightwing extremists,'" the report says.

Further, the report explains how the U.S. State Department gave a grant to the Al-Quds television network, owned by the terrorist group Hamas, and invited them to the U.S. to produce a propaganda film.

Samantha Power, who once referred to the U.S. presence in Iraq as an "occupation" even as she favored sending troops to Israel to forcibly impose a Palestinian state, was appointed by Obama to the National Security Council, the report says.

And the report reveals how rapper Jay-Z and Beyonce were photographed sitting around the "Situation Room" – the confidential White House location filled with top secret communications equipment that allows the tracking of terror threats worldwide.

Access to the room normally requires a high security clearance level.

"Many of Obama's actions, if they do not flat-out violate the Constitution, certainly undermine the spirit and intent of the Constitution as envisioned by our Founding Fathers," the report explains.

And his fiscal policies "are causing unprecedented damage to America's financial health and to our reputation abroad."

The president even has changed history to remove Christian references, the report explains.

"In his 2010 Easter greeting message, Obama quoted from a sermon given by a military pastor on Iwo Jima in 1945. However, he removed passages dealing with Christian doctrine – like Christ's resurrection – in order to make the quote appealing to all religions, even though Easter is NOT a multicultural event; it's a Christian event. Obama altered a great historical quote in order to serve his multicultural worldview. Apparently he is embarrassed by America’s Christian heritage."

The report also has extensive sections on Democrats' new health-care law and what it means, as well as immigration.

"President Barack Obama has proven to be incompetent, reckless, deceitful, and naive when it comes to making economic decisions and protecting America’s security interests. His history of corruption, power-grabbing, and misleading the American people have created a pattern we believe jeopardizes America," the report says.

"This report reveals a pattern that demonstrates Obama is constantly engaging in actions that reflect a hard-left ideology antithetical to America's founding principles. ... Obama is clearly dismissive of America’s constitutional principles and obviously dislikes the role America plays in the world. He dislikes our Judeo-Christian heritage and detests America's historical allies.

"Less than halfway through his first term, Obama has done more damage to America than any previous president in history. Some of the damage can be repaired; some can't. Some of his policies will haunt generations to come," the report says. "It's time for the American people to rise up and demand Congress impeach him."

Did you know that there are over 80 members of Congress who are SELF- PROCLAIMED Socialists, Communists or Socialist Sympathizers?

Did you know that 70 of these members of Congress actually hold (or have held) membership in the Democratic Socialists of America... the American arm of Socialists International?

Did you know that 11 of the 20 standing committees in the House of Representatives are chaired by members of this radical group?

Did you know that up until the time she assumed the Office of Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi was the chairman of this group?

And did you know that, up until the time he assumed (some say usurped) the office of President of the United States, Barack Obama was a member of this radical group?

It's not a conspiracy theory... in fact, it's not even an open secret. The plain and simple fact of the matter is that this radical group of Representatives and Senators have caucused openly in the United States Congress since 1991... but the Mainstream Media has never bothered to tell you about this group.
It seems thin to me, but once you've impeached a president over a blowjob, I think the threshold is probably pretty low.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

What Obama said & Broder heard.

2010-09-09T11:59:00.001-04:00

Steve Benen: THE PRESIDENT'S POIGNANT ONE-TWO PUNCH

Watching President Obama's speech just outside Cleveland yesterday, something seemed a little different.

The president has a habit of going out of his way -- perhaps even too far -- to give his detractors and opponents the benefit of the doubt. He'll characterize Republicans -- whom he'll often just call "some in Congress" or "the minority" -- as sincere but mistaken. He'll try to emphasize areas of agreement with his critics, and point to issues where he'd like to see bipartisan support.

Yesterday, however, the president's speech suggested that, at least for now, he's tired of unrequited outreach. This was a speech in which Obama talked about Republicans the way Republicans talk about him -- only his case had the advantage of being true.

Much has been made of the fact that the president mentioned House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) by name, eight times. That was clearly a departure from the norm, and may have had something to do with Obama speaking in Ohio.

But the larger significance of the speech was the president carefully and thoroughly taking apart Boehner's party's discredited economic vision. In the process, Obama presented the electorate with a very clear choice for the short-term and long-term future. The New York Times editorial board argued it took the president "too long to engage this debate." Perhaps. But there can be little doubt that he's fighting hard now.

E.J. Dionne Jr. did a nice job describing the context of the White House push.

Until Obama's Labor Day speech in Milwaukee and his statement of principles Wednesday near Cleveland, it was not clear how much heart he had in the fight or whether he would ever offer a comprehensive argument for the advantage of his party's approach.
In the absence of a coherent case, Republicans were winning by default on a wave of protest votes. Without this new effort at self-definition, Obama was a blur: a socialist to conservatives, a sellout to some progressives, and a disappointment to younger Americans who wondered what happened to the ebullient, hopeful guy they voted for.

That's why the Milwaukee-Cleveland one-two punch mattered. The first speech showed Obama could fight and enjoy himself in the process. The second speech spelled out why he has chosen to do battle.... Suddenly, there's a point to this election. Obama is late to this game, but at least he's finally playing it.

If you missed it, I think the speech is well worth watching. I have no idea if it's too late, or if the necessary number of voters are even willing to listen. But if you've been waiting for the president to take the fight to the GOP with the passion evident in 2008, wait no more.

Steve Benen: BRODER'S MIDDLE IS A STRANGE PLACE

Over the weekend, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said President Obama could only "survive" politically if he chooses to "come back to the middle." It's already obvious that this will be the accepted conventional wisdom, if it isn't already, within the political establishment: Dems shouldn't have been so darn liberal.

Cue David Broder.

Nov. 2 is likely to be marked as the official start of Phase Two of the Obama presidency, but in some respects, the turn to the right that will mark his tenure became visible in this first week in September.

In an odd twist, Broder considers the president's speeches in Wisconsin and Ohio as evidence of a new, more conservative approach. That, in and of itself, is a rather odd take -- nearly everyone who heard those speeches came away with the impression that Obama was more partisan than usual, more populist than usual, and more combative about fighting with the GOP over economic policy than usual.

Broder, however, saw a move to the right because the president proposed tax incentives that Republicans might like. It's an odd analysis -- Obama called for new infrastructure investment (liberal), demanded that tax breaks for the rich expire on schedule (liberal), and categorically rejected the entire Republican vision of economic policy (liberal). Broder sees the same speeches and thinks "liberals in his party" will disapprove, and that Obama's new ideas represent "the kind of tax reform Republicans can love." Given the responses to the two speeches -- Dems are largely impressed, the GOP isn't -- that seems backwards.

What's more, Broder also believes the public has soured on the administration's economic policies because of "mushrooming deficits." That seems mistaken, too -- the public's frustrations, according to all available evidence, have far less to do with deficits than an unemployment rate near 10%. Broder may be principally concerned about the deficit, but the jobs crisis is almost certainly more on the minds of Americans in general.

But the larger point is the key here -- Broder expects the president to "turn to the right." It's the kind of analysis that will dominate the political establishment after the midterms, and it's going to be entirely wrong.

Obama already is and has been in "the middle." It's what led to a smaller and less effective stimulus; it's what led to a more moderate health care reform bill; it's what produced a less ambitious Wall Street reform package. The president has sought to compromise, over and over again, with a comically right-wing GOP that's not only refused to meet him half-way on literally anything, but at times seems intent on undermining national progress purely for partisan gain.

The wait for columns on Republicans moving to the middle, meanwhile, continues.

Pushing the Narrative

2010-09-08T11:59:00.012-04:00

QOTD, TeaBaggerSmith, in response to "What exactly are they 'angry' about? What has the Democratic majority actually done to make them so angry?"

I'm mad as hell that I live in a country where a negro can be President, my future tax dollars are spent on infrastructure, a great company like BP get's painted as a monster, and government thinks I need to pay for health insurance when I could just go to the ER for free.

GOP candidates: poor sports or political disarray? Rachel Maddow notes the unwillingness of Republican candidates who lose in primary elections to endorse their opponents to unite toward a common political cause.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

mistermix: Just the Narrative, Ma’am

From the headline (“Obama Against a Compromise on Extension of Bush Tax Cuts“) to the horse race frame and conventional wisdom narrative, this Times front-page article is a pure distillation of the stupid analysis we’re going to see for the next two months:

WASHINGTON — President Obama on Wednesday will make clear that he opposes any compromise that would extend the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy beyond this year, officials said, adding a populist twist to an election-season economic package that is otherwise designed to entice support from big businesses and their Republican allies.
Mr. Obama’s opposition to allowing the high-end tax cuts to remain in place for even another year or two would be the signal many Congressional Democrats have been awaiting as they prepare for a showdown with Republicans on the issue and ends speculation that the White House might be open to an extension. Democrats say only the president can rally wavering lawmakers who, amid the party’s weakened poll numbers, feel increasingly vulnerable to Republican attacks if they let the top rates lapse at the end of this year as scheduled.
It is not clear that Mr. Obama can prevail given his own diminished popularity, the tepid economic recovery and the divisions within his party. But by proposing to extend the rates for the 98 percent of households with income below $250,000 for couples and $200,000 for individuals — and insisting that federal income tax rates in 2011 go back to their pre-2001 levels for income above those cutoffs — he intends to cast the issue as a choice between supporting the middle class or giving breaks to the wealthy.

Perhaps I’m just a partisan to point this out, but since when is it a “compromise” to give Republicans everything they want, why is it a dirty word (“populism”) to let tax cuts on the rich expire, and can we ever have a mention of Obama’s “diminished popularity” that points out that it still beats other recent presidents facing recessions in their first term?

More importantly, if the new narrative is that everything Obama proposes after Labor Day merits the adjective “election-season”, where has the DC media been for the past 18 months? We’ve had a record level of obstruction from Republicans in hopes that they’d be able to kill or water down the Democrats’ legislative agenda. For the GOP, every day has been the day before election day, yet now we’re supposed to discount the next two months of the Obama administration’s proposals as “election-season” politics.

Steve Benen adds:
Good for him (Obama). The White House plan will be identical to the one he promised to pursue during the campaign -- rates for households making less than $250,000 a year (98% of the country) would stay at the lower rate, while the top 2% would go back to the Clinton-era rates.

I don't doubt that Republicans will be apoplectic -- fighting for tax breaks for the wealthy is just part of their DNA -- but they should keep a few things in mind. The first is that the Republican approach isn't exactly popular -- the latest Newsweek poll found only 38% of the country wants to extend all of the Bush-era tax rates. A recent CBS News poll put the figure even lower, at 36%.

Second, remember that Obama is basically just following the plan as set by Republicans themselves. When Bush and the congressional GOP passed these cuts, Republicans set them to expire at the end of 2010. The president will go along with keeping the lower rates on the middle class, but in light of deficit concerns, can't justify the lower rates for the rich.

Third, if Republicans were serious about their own fiscal priorities, they'd try to find a way to pay for the $680 billion cost of keeping these breaks for the wealthy. So far, they've refused to even try.

Fourth, the number one talking point today will be that this tax policy will hurt small businesses. It's not true.

As for the bigger picture, I'm glad to see a more assertive president stepping up on this. Obama's prepared to let Republicans fight for the wealthy with tax cuts the country can't afford, while he makes his case for the middle class.

It's good policy and good politics.

Benen: SO MUCH FOR THE GREAT GALLUP FREAK-OUT

Last week, Gallup's generic-ballot tracking poll showed Republicans leading Democrats by 10, 51% to 41%. It was billed as the GOP's biggest Gallup lead in the history of humanity, and the results generated massive media attention, including a stand-alone Washington Post piece on page A2. It was iron-clad evidence, we were told, of impending Democratic doom.
I strongly recommended caution -- Gallup's generic-ballot tracking poll has been erratic and unreliable. Both parties had built up big leads in recent months, only to see them quickly disappear, for no apparent reason. I made the case that inconsistent polls with bizarre swings are necessarily suspect, but the media had its narrative -- the GOP tsunami is coming -- and couldn't be bothered to consider whether the Gallup poll had merit.

Wouldn't you know it, a week later, that massive, unprecedented, world-changing lead Republicans enjoyed is gone. The new Gallup numbers show the GOP losing five points and Dems gaining five points, leaving the parties tied at 46%. Is there any coherent rationale to explain a 10-point swing in Dems' favor over the last week? Of course not.

Just to be perfectly clear, I don't consider this evidence of a surge in Democratic support, and Dems who rejoice at this poll are making the same mistake Republicans and reporters made last week. The point is Gallup's generic-ballot tracking poll just isn't telling us anything useful, no matter which party likes the results in any given week.

What's more annoying, though, is the media double-standard. After the vast news coverage last week's Gallup numbers received, it's striking to see how little outlets care this week. I'm still looking for the headline that reads "Resurgent Dems close gap against GOP" in a major daily, but can't seem to find it.

Indeed, take Chris Cillizza, for example. Last week, the Gallup generic ballot was the lead story in his "Morning Fix" column, and he devoted more than 500 words to the results. Today, Cillizza's "Morning Fix" column doesn't mention the new Gallup results at all.

When the media culture decides poll results that Republicans like are more newsworthy than results Democrats like, there's a problem.

Sargent: The Morning Plum

* Framing the fall: The big question: Will even the starkest framing of the elections enable Dems to cut through public anger over the economy, and persuade voters that they face a choice between giving current policies a chance to work and restoring Bush policies that ran the economy into the ground?

Can Dems re-nationalize the elections on their own terms, when the sputtering recovery has already framed the story the GOP's way?

President Obama and DNC chair Tim Kaine are set to give big speeches today -- a double-barreled effort to take back the storyline as we head into the final eight weeks of the midterm elections. Kaine will repeatedly hammer away at the "choice" idea.

"On Election Day, it will be Americans' turn to choose. They can choose Republicans who drove our country into a ditch," Kaine will say. "Or they can choose Democrats who are helping us climb out of that ditch. Who have taken the bold actions necessary to repair the damage caused by nearly a decade of failed Republican leadership."

* And: Obama will bring a personal tone to his speech in Cleveland today, discussing his own family's economic hardships even as he takes a hard shot at Speaker-in-waiting John Boehner.

White House communications chief Dan Pfeiffer previews Obama's attack on Boehner, arguing that the GOP has "no new ideas, just the same philosophy we tried for the last decade and which led to the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression."

* But again, here's the rub: The problem is that there's simply no evidence that voters buy the claim that a vote for today's GOP is a vote to return to Bush. The question is whether this will change, now that Dems are kicking into high gear and voters are focusing harder on the choice before them.

* Drawing a line in the sand: In his speech today, Obama will also insist that we must not flinch from letting the Bush tax cuts for the rich expire -- this year. No "compromises."

So here's the question about this: Are we now going to see eight weeks of aggressive populism from the White House, and will it enable Dems to re-nationalize the elections on their own terms?

* Boehner to White House: Please continue elevating me: You'll be startled to hear that Boehner's office says they're loving the White House strategy of elevating Boehner as the face of the Bad Old GOP, sensing White House "panic."

* "Ground Zero mosque" Imam will reveal financial backers: Feisal Abdul Rauf, not backing down, makes the case for his plan to build the Islamic center, adding: "We will clearly identify all of our financial backers."

That should prove deeply disappointing, er, reassuring, to the right.

* Yes, Dems were right to pursue health care reform: Jonathan Chait skewers the absurd notion that Dems would have been better off politically if they had abandoned a major campaign promise.

* Media greets Gallup poll with crickets: Steve Benen wonders why the Gallup poll showing the GOP up 10 points got so much more attention than yesterday's survey showing a tie.

* DCCC to media: Can we let the voters decide the midterms? DCCC spox Jennifer Crider cites the Gallup poll in an email to reporters: "With eight weeks until Election Day, Republicans and beltway pundits may want to hold off on calling the race for the House before voters cast their ballots."

Oh, come on. If professional Beltway prognosticators refrain from predicting a GOP takeover, they won't get any media attention! Everyone in D.C. knows exactly how this works, and everyone just plays along anyway.

from the comments, bernielatham:
I talk to dozens of people from around the country every day who come into my store and your notion here isn't validated by those conversations (yes, my wife thinks I shouldn't talk politics but she's from Texas and I've learned that it's prudent to do the reverse of what Texans believe).

The overwhelming sentiment I hear has two components: 1) worry about the suffering and uncertainties re economy and 2) that Republicans have gone nuts. I've found all of this (few exceptions) very encouraging.

Greg's and Benen's notes re the more recent Gallup polling really points to the effective manipulation of media and media narrative by conservatives. They do this very well because 1) they play to win, 2) they are very well funded, 3) they have the lion's share of marketing knowledge, and 4) as a consequence of the above, they have built the institutions in and around the media to manipulate narrative.

But you don't have to just suck all this in and succumb to the "reality" that is posited in this narrative-creation enterprise. A fundamental and important aspect of the game here is to not merely galvanize the conservative base but to dispirit the liberal/progressive base - for the obvious electoral consequences.

Just a reminder.
...
I really ought to ad here the perspective that arises if one imagines ANY other individual presently occupying the WH and what he/she might have done or might do in the face of what this President faces in terms of real world situations and in terms of purposeful obstruction of all things all the time. Would another person in the WH face a less utterly cynical opposition? Not a chance.

And then, given that perspective, consider the policy accomplishments that have been achieved even in the face of all this.
This is an exceptional fellow. He does not however (and you ought to be happy as hell about this) move forward on the perfect wings of whispers from God. He's a very smart guy who is working very hard to keep the US from falling into the abyss. Weigh his intentions and his honesty against those of Boehner or Palin or Gingrich.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Pearlstein: The bleak truth about unemployment

Somewhere between the rantings of the Republican right, which is peddling the nonsense that excessive government spending is to blame for high unemployment, and the Democratic left, which clings to the false hope that another helping of fiscal stimulus is all that is needed to get millions of Americans permanently back to work, is this stubborn reality:

The loss of 8 million jobs reflects problems that are largely structural, not cyclical, which means they won't be brought back by fiddling with a magic dial in Washington that controls how much the government spends.

When I say that the problems are structural, I mean something more than what labor economists refer to when they talk about the mismatch between the skills of the people who of are out of work and the skills needed for the jobs that are being created - although that certainly seems to be a factor.

Since 2007, the manufacturing and construction sectors have each lost 2 million jobs, with finance, hospitality and retailing accounting for 2 million more. Those categories alone account for three-quarters of the nation's job losses, and while a fraction of those jobs might return as the economy recovers, it will be a long time before automakers or home builders or investment banks or retailers see the sales numbers they had at the height of the biggest credit bubble the world has ever seen. Some of those laid-off workers may have been in this country illegally and have now returned home, but most will be looking not only for new jobs but also new careers.

In other cases, the mismatch has more to do with geography than skill - the businesses with jobs are in one place, and the people with the necessary skills in another. But with many Americans living in homes they cannot sell, or can sell only at a price less than the value of the mortgages they took out to buy them, the willingness and ability of workers to move to a new city have been noticeably diminished.

One telltale sign of this mismatch is the number of job openings and the length of time it takes to fill them. As Narayana Kocherlakota, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, noted in a recent speech, those numbers have been going up over the last year, not down, as you would expect. Another sign, he said, was the widening gap in unemployment rates between the states with the highest rates and those with the lowest. Before the recession, it was just over four percentage points; now it is more than six.

The structural problems, however, go well beyond these mismatches. The reason there were 8 million additional jobs back in 2007 is that demand for goods and services was artificially - and unsustainably - inflated by cheap, plentiful credit. Between 2002 and 2007, household debt was increasing at the torrid pace of more than 10 percent annually, while business debt and the debt of state and local governments was growing at an average of 9 percent. Much of that money was used to finance present consumption.

Now all that has reversed. Household debt is shrinking at a rate of 2.4 percent per year as the savings rate has risen from nearly zero to more than 5 percent. Meanwhile, business debt declined 2.5 percent last year and is now flat, as is the case for state and local governments.

All that deleveraging and living within our means is obviously a good thing in the long run. But what it means for the economy in the short run is that neither the excess consumption nor the jobs it supported are coming back. During the past two years, the federal government has been actively trying to take up some of the slack by going on a borrowing-and-spending binge of its own. But continuing on that path is also unsustainable - certainly politically, and probably economically as well. And once federal deficits begin to decline next year, we'll have yet another drag on economic growth and employment.

At this point, there is only one clear path out of the unemployment box we have created for ourselves.

Right now, the United States is running a trade deficit that is likely to reach $450 billion this year. That's down considerably from the $750 billion at the height of the economic bubble, but still more than a wealthy advanced economy should have. Bringing it down - either by producing more of what we consume (fewer imports) or more of what other countries consume (more exports) - represents the path toward sustainable, long-term job creation.

The problem with that strategy is that for the past two decades we have allowed our industrial and technological base to deteriorate as talent and capital were grossly misallocated toward other sectors of the economy, even as other countries were able to attract the investment, the technology and the know-how to serve the U.S. and global markets.

For a time, none of this seemed to matter because we were consuming so much that we were able to support job creation at home as well as overseas. But now that the debt-fueled consumption binge is over, we find that we don't have the companies, the workers or the competitive products to replace the stuff we now import or expand our share of export markets. Even when we do, our companies are disadvantaged by an overvalued currency or unfair trading practices.

As Daniel Gros, director of the Centre for European Policy Studies, wrote this month for Project Syndicate, a wonderful new economics Web site: "It is relatively easy to manage a structural shift out of manufacturing during a real-estate boom, but it is much more difficult to re-establish a competitive manufacturing sector once it has been lost."

A structural shift toward exports and import substitution," Gros warns, "will be difficult and time consuming." He might have added that it will also be expensive, requiring sustained investment by government and industry, and internationally disruptive, requiring a much tougher line with trading partners that consistently tilt the playing field in their favor.

In this election season, the politicians who are really serious about creating jobs and bringing down unemployment won't be the ones screaming about tax cuts, or stimulus or some imagined government takeover of the economy. They'll be the ones talking about how to make the American economy competitive again.

Michael Moore: Happy Fuckin' Labor Day!

Dear Rahm Emanuel:

Happy Fuckin' Labor Day! I read this week that — according to a new book by Steven Rattner, your administration's former "Car Czar" — during White House meetings about how to save the tens of thousands of jobs that would be lost if GM and Chrysler collapsed, your response was, "Fuck the UAW!"

Now, I can't believe you actually said that. Maybe Rattner got confused because you drop a lot of F-bombs, or maybe your assistant was trying to order lunch and you said (to Rattner) "Fuck you" and then to your assistant "A&W, no fries."

Or maybe you did mean Fuck the UAW. If so, let me give you a little fucking lesson (a lesson I happen to know because my fucking uncle was in the sit-down strike that founded the fucking UAW).

Before there were unions, there was no middle class. Working people didn't get to send their kids to college, few were able to own their own fucking home, nobody could take a fucking day off for a funeral or a sick day or they might lose their fucking job.

Then working people organized themselves into unions. The bosses and the companies fucking hated that. In fact, they were often overheard to say, "Fuck the UAW!!!" That's because the UAW had beaten one of the world's biggest industrial corporations when they won their battle on February 11, 1937, 44 days after they'd taken over the GM factories in Flint. Inspired by their victory, workers struck almost every other fucking industry, and union after union was born. Had World War II not begun and had FDR not died, there would have been an economic revolution that would have given everyone — everyone — a fucking decent life.

Nonetheless labor unions did create a middle class for the majority (even companies that didn't have unions were forced to pay at or near union wages in order to attract a workforce) and that middle class built a great country and a good life. You see, Rahm, when people earn a fucking good wage, they spend it on stuff, which then creates more good paying jobs, and then the middle class grows fucking big. Did you know that back when I was a kid if you had a parent making a union wage, only one parent had to work?! And they were home by 3 or 4pm, 5:30 at the latest! We had dinner together! Dad had four weeks paid vacation. We all had free health and dental care. And anyone with decent grades went to college and it didn't fucking bankrupt them. (And if you ever used the F-word, the nuns would straighten you out in ways that even you couldn't bear to hear about).

Then a Republican fired all the air traffic controllers, a Democrat gave us NAFTA and millions of jobs were moved overseas (hey, didn't you work in that White House, too? "Fuck the UAW, baby!"). Unions got scared and beaten down, a frat boy became president and, like a drunk out of control, spent all our fucking money and our children's money, too. Fuck.

And now your assistant's grandma has to work at fucking McDonald's. Ask her for pictures of what the middle class life used to look like. It was effing cool! I'll bet grandma doesn't say "Fuck the UAW!"

Hey, don't get me wrong, Rahm. I fucking like you. You single-handedly got the House returned to the Dems in 2006. But you and your boss better do something fucking quick to put people back to work. How 'bout making it a crime to take an American job and move it out of the country? In other words, treat it as if It were a fucking national treasure like you would if someone stole the Declaration of Independence out of the National Archives or some poacher stole eggs out of the nest of an America bald eagle.

Or how 'bout arresting some of those Wall Street guys who fucking stole our money, the money that ran the American economy. Now that would take some fucking guts.

And maybe, just maybe, that one act of real guts might save your ass come November 2nd.

Oh, I can just hear you now: "Fuck Michael Moore!" No problem. But Fuck the UAW? How 'bout if I just leave off the ‘A’ and the ‘W’?

Yours,
Michael Moore

What Steve said ...

2010-09-04T09:18:00.000-04:00

Benen: MAKING THE ENTHUSIASM GAP LESS ABSTRACT

Public Policy Polling's Tom Jensen had a fascinating item yesterday that's worth pondering.
If the folks planning to turn out this year matched the 2008 electorate:
- Alex Sink running for Governor in Florida and Alexi Giannoulias running for the Senate in Illinois would have double digit leads.

- Elaine Marshall running for Senate in North Carolina and Pat Quinn running for Governor in Illinois would have small leads instead of trailing.

- Ted Strickland running for Governor in Ohio, Lee Fisher running for Senate in Ohio, Joe Sestak running for Senate in Pennsylvania, and Robin Carnahan running for Senate in Missouri would all be within three points rather than trailing by 7-10 as they do now.

Jensen characterizes the enthusiasm gap as really being the be-all, end-all variable this cycle. There's little evidence of Republicans getting more popular, but there's ample evidence that Democrats aren't inclined to turnout on Election Day. The result is "races that would otherwise be lean Democratic into toss ups, turning toss ups into leaning Republican, and turning leaning Republican into solid Republican."

Much has been written about how we reached this point, but Adam Serwer's summary today sounds about right to me.

I'd chalk it up a few things: the administration and Democrats in general being timid about defending themselves and their policies, a general sense that key liberal priorities were compromised on or abandoned, and the failure to get the economy moving again. What most people are seeing and hearing is that Democratic Party leaders are failing, which doesn't exactly make people want to come out and vote for them, let alone make phone calls and knock on doors.

If you're reading this blog, you're probably significantly more engaged than the typical voter, so other examples -- Robert Gibbs' comments about the "professional left," the defeat of the public option, annoyance with Rahm Emanuel in general, frustration on judicial nominees, the administration's disappointing record on civil liberties in the context of national security -- likely come to mind to explain progressive disillusionment. But like Adam, I suspect these developments are noticed in far more detail among actively engaged voters, and occur under the radar of folks in general, most of whom don't keep up on current events at the granular level.

Of course, if Adam's assessment is correct, and I think it is, then there's just not much to be done between now and November. Major liberal initiatives are highly unlikely to be approved over the next 59 days, and the economy almost certainly won't see dramatic improvements. A party goes into an election season with the broader circumstances it has, not the broader circumstances it wants or wishes to have at a later time.

But there's one aspect of this that I struggle to wrap my head around. In campaign politics, there's always been one major drawback to playing exclusively to the base, and it has nothing to do with alienating the "middle." It's the risk of a backlash from the other side. If Republicans, for example, cater exclusively to the desires of right-wing lunatics, rank-and-file Democratic voters will see this and think, "Hey, I'm starting to feel more motivated all the time...." At least, that's the theory.

In practice, that doesn't seem to be happening. The GOP is going exclusively with a base-mobilization tack, even going so far as to drive Republican moderates out of the party altogether, and yet, the Democratic base isn't responding in kind. I'm tempted to think the most radicalized Republican Party in generations would alone be enough to bring Democrats out to the polls in droves.

And yet, if polls pointing to the enthusiasm gap are accurate, the collective response from the Dem base is, "Meh."

Benen: THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT

There was a front-page piece in the New York Times yesterday, which seemed to suggest that Democrats, on top of all their other election-season troubles, are losing one of the party's key group of supporters: young people. Relying on research from the Pew Research Center, the NYT reported that "fewer younger voters see themselves as Democrats."
The college vote is up for grabs this year — to an extent that would have seemed unlikely two years ago, when a generation of young people seemed to swoon over Barack Obama.
Though many students are liberals on social issues, the economic reality of a weak job market has taken a toll on their loyalties: far fewer 18- to 29-year-olds now identify themselves as Democrats compared with 2008.

As it turns out, it depends on how one defines "far."

Way down in the story, the NYT gets to the data: younger voters' identification with Dems "peaked at 62 percent in July 2008." The newest data puts the number at 57 percent.

Paul Waldman's reaction seemed like the sensible one.

Well now. That doesn't seem so dramatic anymore, does it? In the heart of a presidential campaign in which the Democrat, a dynamic young candidate, would go on to whip the Republican, a crotchety old candidate, the proportion of young people identifying as Democrats peaked at 62 percent. And now, with the economy in the toilet, the president's approval ratings in the 40s, and Democrats facing huge losses in November, that number has plummeted all the way to ... 57 percent.

What's more, party I.D. notwithstanding, the same data shows younger voters are more socially progressive and less anti-government than other age groups. That's not a sign of trouble for Dems; it's the opposite.

Now all Democrats have to do is figure out how to get these younger voters to care about the midterm elections.

Why won't the White House listen?

2010-09-03T12:30:00.004-04:00

Just about everyone is screaming at the White House that they need to push a big economic recovery bill. The policy and the politics are obvious, but the WH seems to think that forcing the republicans to vote against something good that has no chance of passing due to their intransigence is a waste of time and just not serious. Do they really not understand politics? Really?

QOTD, Atrios:

It's incredible to me that genius political strategists think that what voters really want are tepid and timid half measures.

Booman: Some Friendly Advice

I don't know if David Axelrod will see this, but maybe he will. He says the following:

"We'll continue to do everything we can, understanding that recovery will require persistent effort. There are no silver bullets," senior Obama adviser David Axelrod said in an interview Thursday. "At the same time, we have to make clear our ideas and theirs, and the fact that the Washington Republicans, having helped create this recession, have attempted to block our every effort to deal with it."
Here is my advice. Stop defending what you've done on the economy. Do not say that the stimulus was big enough. Do not say that no one realized how badly the economy had been damaged. Focus like a laser on the second part of your statement. The Republicans created this recession and they have obstructed every effort to fix it. That's your message. Stick to it.
And, what would help is having an actual fight on the Senate floor over a bill that would fix the economy. I know you're going to lose the fight and that a bunch of Democrats are going to side with the Republicans. Don't worry about that. Show people that you're fighting for their jobs and that the Republicans are not. If you want to change the dynamic, this is the only way to do it.

Krugman: Op-Ed Columnist - The Real Story - NYTimes.com

Next week, President Obama is scheduled to propose new measures to boost the economy. I hope they’re bold and substantive, since the Republicans will oppose him regardless — if he came out for motherhood, the G.O.P. would declare motherhood un-American. So he should put them on the spot for standing in the way of real action.

But let’s put politics aside and talk about what we’ve actually learned about economic policy over the past 20 months.

When Mr. Obama first proposed $800 billion in fiscal stimulus, there were two groups of critics. Both argued that unemployment would stay high — but for very different reasons.

One group — the group that got almost all the attention — declared that the stimulus was much too large, and would lead to disaster. If you were, say, reading The Wall Street Journal’s opinion pages in early 2009, you would have been repeatedly informed that the Obama plan would lead to skyrocketing interest rates and soaring inflation.

The other group, which included yours truly, warned that the plan was much too small given the economic forecasts then available. As I pointed out in February 2009, the Congressional Budget Office was predicting a $2.9 trillion hole in the economy over the next two years; an $800 billion program, partly consisting of tax cuts that would have happened anyway, just wasn’t up to the task of filling that hole.

Critics in the second camp were particularly worried about what would happen this year, since the stimulus would have its maximum effect on growth in late 2009 then gradually fade out. Last year, many of us were already warning that the economy might stall in the second half of 2010.

So what actually happened? The administration’s optimistic forecast was wrong, but which group of pessimists was right about the reasons for that error?

Start with interest rates. Those who said the stimulus was too big predicted sharply rising rates. When rates rose in early 2009, The Wall Street Journal published an editorial titled “The Bond Vigilantes: The disciplinarians of U.S. policy makers return.” The editorial declared that it was all about fear of deficits, and concluded, “When in doubt, bet on the markets.”

But those who said the stimulus was too small argued that temporary deficits weren’t a problem as long as the economy remained depressed; we were awash in savings with nowhere to go. Interest rates, we said, would fluctuate with optimism or pessimism about future growth, not with government borrowing.

When in doubt, bet on the markets. The 10-year bond rate was over 3.7 percent when The Journal published that editorial; it’s under 2.7 percent now.

What about inflation? Amid the inflation hysteria of early 2009, the inadequate-stimulus critics pointed out that inflation always falls during sustained periods of high unemployment, and that this time should be no different. Sure enough, key measures of inflation have fallen from more than 2 percent before the economic crisis to 1 percent or less now, and Japanese-style deflation is looking like a real possibility.

Meanwhile, the timing of recent economic growth strongly supports the notion that stimulus does, indeed, boost the economy: growth accelerated last year, as the stimulus reached its predicted peak impact, but has fallen off — just as some of us feared — as the stimulus has faded.

Oh, and don’t tell me that Germany proves that austerity, not stimulus, is the way to go. Germany actually did quite a lot of stimulus — the austerity is all in the future. Also, it never had a housing bubble that burst. And with all that, German G.D.P. is still further below its precrisis peak than American G.D.P. True, Germany has done better in terms of employment — but that’s because strong unions and government policy have prevented American-style mass layoffs.

The actual lessons of 2009-2010, then, are that scare stories about stimulus are wrong, and that stimulus works when it is applied. But it wasn’t applied on a sufficient scale. And we need another round.

I know that getting that round is unlikely: Republicans and conservative Democrats won’t stand for it. And if, as expected, the G.O.P. wins big in November, this will be widely regarded as a vindication of the anti-stimulus position. Mr. Obama, we’ll be told, moved too far to the left, and his Keynesian economic doctrine was proved wrong.

But politics determines who has the power, not who has the truth. The economic theory behind the Obama stimulus has passed the test of recent events with flying colors; unfortunately, Mr. Obama, for whatever reason — yes, I’m aware that there were political constraints — initially offered a plan that was much too cautious given the scale of the economy’s problems.

So, as I said, here’s hoping that Mr. Obama goes big next week. If he does, he’ll have the facts on his side.

Steve Benen adds:
I have to admit, as disconcerting as it is to see the political winds blowing in the wrong direction, arguably the most frustrating thing about Republican impending successes in the midterms is the perverse rewards for those who were the most wrong.

At a moment of crisis, conservatives made a series of predictions, assessments, and guarantees -- all of which turned out to be hopelessly backwards. Rewarding the confused only encourages more confusion, while punishing those who were right only encourages worse policymaking.

Benen: MIXED SIGNALS

With the economy struggling to break out of its funk, many are asking what, if anything, the White House intends to do next. Reading the tea leaves is proving to be a bit of a challenge.
ABC News reported last week that leading officials had no intention of pushing significant new proposals, beyond what's already on the table. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this week that leading officials are actually considering a sizeable new package.

A few days later, President Obama's outgoing chief economist said what the economy needs is more stimulus. This was immediately followed by President Obama's press secretary saying that "some big, new stimulus plan is not in the offing."

As of this morning, the Washington Post has a front-page piece suggesting a stimulus-esque tax-cut package is receiving "serious" consideration.

With just two months until the November elections, the White House is seriously weighing a package of business tax breaks - potentially worth hundreds of billions of dollars - to spur hiring and combat Republican charges that Democratic tax policies hurt small businesses, according to people with knowledge of the deliberations.
Among the options under consideration are a temporary payroll-tax holiday and a permanent extension of the now-expired research-and-development tax credit, which rewards companies that conduct research into new technologies within the United States. [...]

More spending on infrastructure, particularly transportation projects, is also under discussion. But it would be easier for a package composed purely of tax cuts to "avoid the stain of a 'bailout' or 'stimulus' label," said one official familiar with the talks, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the deliberations were private.

Great, the most effective policy in boosting the economy doesn't sound good, so it's more likely we'll see proposals touting less effective measures.

Given the mixed signals of late, it's worth noting that Politico has a report similar to the Post's, explaining that administration officials are "mulling a raft of emergency fixes to stimulate the economy before the midterms, including an extension of the research and development tax credit and new infrastructure spending."

It's hard to evaluate any of these ideas without more details, and for that matter, no matter what the White House recommends, Congress' inability to function makes progress unlikely for the foreseeable future.

That said, it's at least somewhat encouraging to see a shift away from "everything's on track, so just be patient." Moreover, there's obviously real political salience to even just having the debate -- with two months before the midterms, it's worth having the two parties fight over how to help the economy grow. If Republicans intend to kill every proposal the White House offers, that should matter to voters, too.

The Post's report concluded that President Obama "could roll out additional measures as soon as next week." Stay tuned.

digby: Message: They Care

This NY Times story says that the youth vote for Democrats is dwindling because of the economy. I think this quote is very telling:
“There’s a vibe,” he said on a recent afternoon, while pumping weights at the gym. “Right now it seems like Republicans just care a lot more than Democrats.”
I get that. They do seem like they care more.

Those who are paying close attention realize that they either care more about destroying the socialist/Muslim menace or they care more about taking back the power they so recently lost. But either way, they do appear to give a damn. The Democrats, on the other hand, rather than coming out with their guns blazing at those who have made it impossible for them to fix these problems seem content with trying to convince people that it isn't as bad as they think it is.

You know --- like when your friend tries to convince you that you shouldn't be upset about something you are upset about. It's annoying. And you realize very quickly that they just don't want to hear about it anymore. That's how the Democrats seem right now --- that they are sick of hearing about it.

Serwer: The false 'liberal overreach' narrative

Michael Scherer, who generally writes good stuff, succumbs fully to village fever here:

It's not as if the White House didn't see this coming. After a meeting in December 2008 about the severity of the economic crisis, Axelrod pulled Obama aside. He recalls saying, "Enjoy these great poll numbers you have, because two years from now, they are not going to look anything like this." But even as Obama aides were aware of a growing disconnect, it didn't seem to worry their boss. Instead, the ambitious legislative goals usually trumped other priorities. Both in the original stimulus package and then in the health care and energy measures, the White House ceded most of its clout to the liberal lions who controlled the Democratic majorities in the House and Senate. That maneuver helped assure passage of reforms, but it also confirmed some of the worst fears about how Washington works. "I'd rather be a one-term President and do big things than a two-term President and just do small things," he told his team after Republican Scott Brown was elected Senator in liberal Massachusetts and some in the Administration suggested pulling back on health reform.

This isn't even a remotely accurate reading of recent history. Liberals wanted a bigger stimulus package and more infrastructure spending, the moderate Republicans in a position to kill the bill wanted a smaller package and more tax cuts. With health care, liberals wanted a (popular) public option, centrist Democrats in the Senate arbitrarily decided that it was more important to make liberals unhappy than to have a more fiscally responsible and effective health-care bill. In the House, liberals agreed to stronger restrictions on abortion then they wanted to appease the pro-life faction led by Bart Stupak.

With both bills, the point of leverage was somewhere in the center right, not on the left. Which is why liberals ended up making concessions, leaving Democrats feeling more ambivalent about their legislative victories than they should have been.

Furthermore, as an empirical matter, it's clear that it was compromising with Republican centrists by making the stimulus smaller that is hurting Obama and the Democrats now. As Jonathan Cohn points out today, had the stimulus been twice as big, "unemployment would have been more than a full percentage point lower than it is today. And it would be heading down faster." And the Democrats poll numbers would look substantially better.

"Liberal overreach" is a beltway rule of thumb, and in a country where more people identify as conservative than liberal, it's sure to be a crowd-pleaser. But that doesn't mean it's accurate. Liberals didn't "overreach;" they didn't reach far enough. They didn't reach far enough in part because they were unwilling or unable to counter silly beltway narratives of "liberal overreach" with empirical evidence. And now Democrats are paying the price, not just with Americans who are angry about the economy, but with their own frustrated, demoralized base.

No good choices

2010-08-30T20:55:00.001-04:00

Booman: Wrong Answer

This is not good enough:

Asked if the stimulus bill was too small, [White House press secretary Robert] Gibbs says: "I think it makes sense to step back just for a second. ... Nobody had, in January of 2009, a sufficient grasp of ... what we were facing." He adds that any stimulus was "unlikely to fill" the hole the financial meltdown created.
"What the Recovery Act did was prevent us from sliding even into a deeper recession with greater economic contraction, with greater job loss than we have experienced because of it," he says.
This answer has the dubious distinction of being erroneous and stupid. Plenty of people had a sufficient grasp of the situation to recommend a much bigger stimulus bill. The no one could have predicted line of argument is not a political winner under any circumstances but it really stinks when it isn't true.
Now, the best answer here may not have been the most truthful one, which is that Congress wasn't offering a significantly bigger stimulus, but it is now clear that it is not going to be enough to significantly bring down high unemployment. Rather than looking helpless, the administration should just start making the argument that we have a choice between prolonged high unemployment or another big stimulus package. Make the election a referendum on that choice.
Setting aside that his delivery was uncharacteristically terrible, the president's statement on the economy today was pretty pathetic.
This ain't getting it done on any level.

E.D.Kain: Why I am Not a Conservative

Short answer: When I think about the GOP retaking Congress I get cold sweats and flashbacks of 2000-2008. Ditto that for the prospect of say, Newt Gingrich sitting in The Oval Office. The only Republicans who are at all honest – like Gary Johnson who has really good civil liberties bona fides – would A) never win and B) are really way too economically conservative for me. So yeah, Republicans taking back Congress in a couple months is just bad news as far as I’m concerned.

This graph, for instance, really frightens me:

I’m really flabbergasted by the lack of enthusiasm on the part of Democrats. It’s not so much that the Democrats are offering anything particularly exciting to the voters (though they have passed a few major pieces of legislation, you know!) but that the alternative just seems so unabashedly awful…can’t Democrats at least mobilize opposition to the opposition?

Okay so that’s the short answer.

Long answer after the fold…

It’s certainly been a change of pace and perspective for me to blog here at Balloon Juice, and one I’m profoundly grateful to John for. I’ve been drifting leftward for quite a while now (from dissident conservative to fed-up libertarian to, more recently, pro-market liberal with libertarian and especially civil libertarian streaks) – so drifting leftward, but on uncertain feet. And one weakness of my blogging style and perhaps of the habits I’ve gotten into blogging at The League of Ordinary Gentlemen, is that I’ve been able to walk this particular ideological tightrope past the point of its usefulness. The ‘pox on both your houses’ style really is sort of annoying after a while even if it is unintentional and even if it is due to honest doubt rather than an attempt to please everyone. Certainly it’s nothing to build one’s political philosophy upon. And quite frankly, the pushback I’ve gotten in the comments about having it both ways is fair, and it’s gotten me thinking – a lot – about picking a side. How you frame your argument and who you frame it for matters. Picking sides matters.

So I will. I no longer have any desire to be considered a conservative – and no longer consider myself one (I do have a somewhat anti-modernist streak, for instance, which I blame on all the fantasy literature I read as a child but which is more a sort of romanticism than anything very political. I recall as a child being quite depressed by the thought that no matter how far I walked in any direction from my home I would inevitably come up against a paved road. How this translates into right vs. left is another matter though it does make me a strong supporter of localism and buying locally and so forth.)

I’ll vote Democrat this fall and I’ll almost certainly vote Democrat in 2012. If I’d been a Senator last year I would have voted for the HCR bill. The Democratic Party has its flaws but at least it cares about governance, at least Democrats try to make the world a less harsh, more egalitarian place even when sometimes their policies backfire or are simply wrong to begin with. And liberalism generally is just more serious an endeavor than conservatism is. More wonky, more beholden to, you know, data and facts.

I have always voted Democrat in any case, even as a self-described conservative, and remain pro-gay-marriage, anti-war, anti-torture, and against the drug war, against the security state, against crony capitalism. It’s not my politics so much that have undergone a change lately (though they have as well), but my thoughts on who I should and should not align myself with, and why this is important

Conservative politics don’t even lend themselves all that well to conservative ends to begin with.

For instance, I’d say the generous maternity leave in Sweden or Germany is far more in line with a belief in the importance of family than our lack of any policy to that effect. If being pro-family is conservative then I guess I’m conservative in that way – but I think ‘family’ should include committed gay couples. If wanting a stable fiscal future is conservative, then again I suppose that describes me. But we can’t simply cut spending down to the marrow to achieve this, nor should we. Slashing taxes at all costs is not fiscally conservative. Raising them is much more so – and conservatives are by and large too irresponsible to even countenance this. Only a very few are considering cutting defense spending to help balance the budget. And indeed, there are a very few very smart, honest, hopeful thinkers on the right who I admire a great deal but they are only a very few. And not movers and shakers in any case. On the libertarian front – or the liberal-tarian front at least – I see much more hope.

I also share a good deal more cultural affinity with the left, broadly speaking, than with the right and my cultural politics have always reflected this. I watch Colbert and the Daily Show and almost never turn the channel to Fox News. I listen to NPR. I hang out mostly with liberals. I have very liberal views on most social issues. I still believe in the importance of decentralized power structures, checks and balances, and in not placing too much faith in the state – but again, these are positions that are perfectly acceptable on the left in ways that my belief in gay marriage or higher taxes or non-interventionist foreign policy are simply not acceptable on the right.

Furthermore, while I think there’s a great deal of merit to competition (one reason I really liked Ron Wyden’s healthcare plan!), free markets, economic liberalism and so forth I find the fetishization of low taxes among the right and among many American libertarians more than a bit silly. I favor investment in public health, public transit and infrastructure, and in the welfare system generally rather than some vague bare-boned state. Sure, there’s problems with all sorts of government programs, with some public sector unions, etc. but at least liberals seem open to tackling these problems. At least within the big tent of liberalism there is room to disagree.

I’ve noted before that I don’t think free markets are sustainable without a broad and sturdy welfare state to support them. Theoretically, sure – anything is possible – but the fact is markets fail and must fail to be effective as a system, and very real people pay the price – not because they are lazy, or because they are lacking enough rugged individualism, but because life can be hard, and it is much harder for those people who lack strong family or community support. Ultimately, the highest price is paid by those who can afford it least. We need to craft a society where that price is not so high – and I think we can use markets and the welfare state to achieve this, much as they have done in northern Europe (though undoubtedly our version will be unique and we can, on the way, learn from their mistakes). I don’t see many conservatives taking these questions seriously, and even the most progressive-minded conservatives out there, I fear, are placing their hopes in the wrong coalition.

I don’t feel at home in that coalition, personally, and it’s high time to bid it adieu.

Booman: It's The Stupid, Stupid

This awesome post by Steve Benen is a good starting point for rebutting this piece of shit Wall Street Journal op-ed by James Taranto. Taranto tries to explain why, in his eyes, liberal elites find Americans (meaning Tea Partiers and know-nothing conservatives) revolting.

What is the nature of this contempt? In part it is the snobbery of the cognitive elite, exemplified by a recent New York Times Web column by Timothy Egan called "Building a Nation of Know-Nothings"--or by the viciousness directed at Sarah Palin, whose folksy demeanor and state-college background seem terribly déclassé not just to liberals but to a good number of conservatives in places like New York City.
In more cerebral moments, the elitists of the left invoke a kind of Marxism Lite to explain away opinions and values that run counter to their own. Thus Barack Obama's notorious remark to the effect that economic deprivation embitters the proles, so that they cling to guns and religion.
It's hard to get more elite than Wall Street. The firms there don't hire people with the educational background of Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, or Sarah Palin. So, it's a little rich for Taranto to lecture us about snobbery from the pages of the Wall Street Journal. But it's been a part of the financial elites' playbook forever to rail against the elitism of the left as they play on the prejudices, insecurities, and fears of the 'proles.' This isn't a Marxist-lite argument. There's no obvious reason why a Manhattan investment banker would share the social values of the Hill People of Appalachia or the religious fundamentalists of the Bible Belt. In truth, they don't share their values. They just pretend to. And, in difficult financial times, it's historically indisputable that financially insecure people flock to leaders who offer scapegoats and pat solutions. Unless you think demagoguery thrives during financial booms, there shouldn't be any debate about this.
But the reason that liberals (and not just our elites) are revolted by the Tea Partiers is well explained by Steve Benen. When we try to take their arguments seriously, those arguments vanish into thin air. They have no logical consistency. Once you scratch the surface of their calls for liberty and freedom and following the Founding Fathers, it turns out that there is no 'there' there. Because their policy prescriptions (insofar as they are ever articulated) are either counter-factual or extraordinarily radical, it is impossible to engage Tea Partiers in intellectual debate or enter into any kind of negotiation with them.
When your idea of religious freedom is to ban mosques, how can we take you seriously? It's not that the Tea Partiers' concerns are illegitimate, it's that their entire movement is a nebula of formless angst. What is it that is bringing people out to protest at this particular moment in time? The budget deficit? The budget deficit ballooned under the previous president and these Tea Partiers didn't express any dismay.
It's true that economic conditions have declined, and that probably explains part of the Tea Party phenomenon. But the main thing that changed is that a Democrat became president, and that president is black. That president has an unusual biography and a foreign-sounding name. The reason liberals are quick to throw around accusations of racism, homophobia, Islamophobia, and xenophobia is because the heart of Republican resistance to Obama has been based in attacks on black institutions like ACORN, on court rulings related to gay marriage, on manufactured outrages like the deceit that PARK51 is being proposed for ground zero, and on Latino immigration. The rest of the Tea Party/conservative opposition lacks credibility because they didn't oppose deficit spending or warrantless surveillance or Medicare Part D or No Child Left Behind when those those policies were carried out by a Republican. Big government is therefore not the reason that Tea Partiers have taken to the streets.
As Benen notes, there are normally ideas behind mass movements, but the Tea Party doesn't have ideas. What they have are outlets for channeling racial, economic, and cultural insecurity into traditional conservative tropes.
The anti-intellectualism of Tea Partiers (exemplified by the lazy Sarah Palin) is one of its core features, in part, because logic cannot co-exist in the same galaxy with their arguments. But just because someone is revolted by anti-intellectualism doesn't make your a liberal. Or, maybe it does. The Republicans seem to have been replaced by the idiocracy.

Sigh.

2010-08-27T12:40:00.002-04:00

John Cole: Folding Like a Cheap Suit

Clowns:

With the economy rapidly weakening, some senior Democrats are having second thoughts about raising taxes on the nation’s wealthiest families and are pressing party leaders to consider extending the full array of Bush administration tax cuts, at least through next year.
This rethinking comes barely a month after Democrats trumpeted plans to stage a high-stakes battle over taxes in the final weeks before the November congressional elections.

The Bush tax cuts are set to expire in December. Republicans are pushing to extend them all, while President Obama has forcefully argued that the country cannot afford to keep tax breaks on income over $250,000 a year for families and $200,000 a year for individuals.

But a growing cadre of Democrats – alarmed by evidence that the recovery is losing steam and fearful of wounding conservative Democrats in a tough election year – are advocating a plan that would permanently extend tax cuts benefiting the middle class while renewing breaks for the wealthy through 2011, senior Democratic aides said.

Awesome strategery, Democrats. Extend tax cuts that do nothing to stimulate the economy and de facto cede the argument about tax cuts helping the economy, get blamed for the deficit costs of those tax cuts as more evidence of the free-spending liberals, continue the growth in income inequality and the distribution of wealth concentrated at the top of the tiers, leave less money available to engage in worthy projects, and demoralize your base while throwing a bone to people who are NEVER EVER EVER going to vote for you.

I hate being a Democrat.

Benen: GETTING 'OUT THERE' ISN'T ENOUGH

Economic growth in the second quarter (April through June) was initially estimated to be pretty weak. This morning, the figure was revised downward -- from 2.4% to 1.6%. It's not only evidence of anemic growth, it points to a trend moving in the wrong direction, after two stronger quarters preceding it.
What's more, it's discouraging news that comes on top of other discouraging news. Just over the last couple of weeks, the reports on home sales were awful, and recovery in the manufacturing sector is also stalling.

On Wednesday, President Obama organized a conference call with his top economic advisers, reportedly considering "the next steps to keep the economy growing." But the White House agenda in the short term is not focused specifically on the economy -- on Sunday, Obama will be in New Orleans for the 5th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, and on Tuesday, the president will deliver an Oval Office address on the war in Iraq. Later in the week, the focus will be on Middle East peace talks.

A White House official told ABC's Jake Tapper, "We know he needs to be out there to talk about the economy next week. We haven't yet figured out the way he's going to do that."

I think the sentiment is only partially true. A White House focus on the economy certainly makes sense, and "figuring out" a way to convey that to the public seems wise.

But getting Obama "out there to talk about the economy" isn't necessarily the answer -- that is, unless the president has something new to say. By all accounts, he doesn't.

The White House is pushing its $30 billion small business lending initiative and other measures to stimulate economic growth, such as the elimination of capital gains taxes for small business investments. But advisers say there is little appetite on Capitol Hill for any new spending programs, and limited time in the congressional calendar, suggesting that they feel there aren't any more major initiatives the administration will push in further attempts to revise the sputtering economy.

And that, I fear, is the problem.

The president can get "out there to talk about the economy," and he has a reasonable message to offer -- his policies prevented a catastrophe, created millions of jobs, and made economic growth possible. Had Republicans been in charge at the moment of crisis last year, the evidence is incontrovertible that we'd be in a much worse place.

But the message is also underwhelming. Obama is right, as a factual matter, to tout his economic successes, but in terms of real-world implications, it's wholly unpersuasive to struggling, anxiety-ridden Americans.

I don't want to see the president "out there to talk about the economy"; I want him out there with an ambitious agenda to improve the economy. He won't do that, however, because Republicans won't allow a vote on additional recovery efforts, and panicky Dems thinks voters will punish them for trying to do what works.

I guess that leaves the Fed?

Joan McCarter (Dkos): CBO: Repealing Medicare portions of health law would increase deficit by $455 billion

Of course, since Republicans don't actually care about the deficit, they just like to use it as a bogeyman, this letter from the CBO [pdf] (via the Wonk Room won't make them stop screaming "REPEAL!!!"

On balance, the two laws’ health care and revenue provisions are estimated to reduce the projected deficit in 2020 by $28 billion, and the education provisions of the Reconciliation Act are estimated to reduce the projected deficit in 2020 by $2 billion. [...]

Finally, you asked what the net deficit impact would be if certain provisions of PPACA and the Reconciliation Act that were estimated to generate net savings were eliminated—specifically, those which were originally estimated to generate a net reduction in mandatory outlays of $455 billion over the 2010–2019 period. The estimate of $455 billion mentioned in your letter represents the net effects of many provisions. Some of those provisions generated savings for Medicare, Medicaid, or the Children’s Health Insurance Program, and some generated costs. If those provisions were repealed, CBO estimates that there would be an increase in deficits similar to its original estimate of $455 billion in net savings over that period.

The "you" the CBO is responding to is Sen. Mike Crapo (R-ID), who must have thought that if he asked just one more time, the CBO would give him a pony in the form of the health law not reducing the deficit. It's really rather remarkable--the CBO originally said, make these changes and save $455 billion--did Crapo really think that repealing those provisions wouldn't then cost $455 billion? Sometimes the CBO must get very frustrated by the letters they get from Congress.

Igor Volsky adds:

If they were to repeal the law, Republicans would have replace it with something that makes up for the deficit increases (assuming, of course that they will still care about the deficits) and helps slow the growth rate in the Medicare program. The GOP’s old leadership backed plan and its reliance on medical malpractice reform as a money saver won’t be enough.

They don't care about the deficit. They don't care about trying to control the costs of the absolutely essential Medicare and Medicaid and CHIP, to keep them healthy and effective. And they sure as hell don't have a plan for making the nation's health care system work.

What Booman said .....

2010-08-27T08:06:00.002-04:00

This series of posts are all from Booman at The Booman Tribune.

Know Thy Enemy

Hey, Matt Taibbi seems to have finally wised up about the biggest threat facing our country, which isn't, by the way, that we've suddenly become ruled by a bunch of powerful corporate interests.

I'm beginning to wonder why effective boycotts against these hate-media channels, and particularly Fox, haven’t been organized yet. Why not just pick out one Fox advertiser at random and make an example out of it? How about Subaru and their unintentionally comic “Love” slogan? I actually like their cars, but what the fuck? How about Pep Boys and that annoying logo of theirs? Just to prove that it can be done, I’d like to see at least one firm get blown out of business as a consequence of financially supporting the network that is telling America that its black president wants to kill white babies. Isn't that at least the first move here? It's beginning to strike me that sitting by and doing nothing about this madness is not a terribly responsible way to behave.
Well, yes, it is all fine and dandy to be disappointed that our bought-and-sold Congress isn't particularly dedicated to jailing their financial benefactors, but it is kind of a misallocation of resources to focus exclusively on those shortcomings when a nativist, xenophobic, homophobic movement is poised to make tremendous political gains in our county. The biggest blind spot on the left isn't a failure to recognize foreign enemies, it's a failure to recognize domestic ones. When people on the left begin to understand the nature of the beast that Barack Obama defeated, hopefully, they will begin to marshall their energy towards keeping that beast down instead of arguing about why we haven't reached Scandinavian levels of progressivism in the last twenty months.
Obama's coalition is still the majority and the future of this country. And maintaining that coalition, including its centrist elements, is still our only bulwark against a new form of fascism based in racial, religious, and jingoistic values.

Understanding Conservatism

E.J. Dionne says that the Republicans are experiencing an 'insurrection.' At least metaphorically, maybe they are. Most people are understandably viewing this as a kind cyclical right-wing reaction to both a Democratic president (who happens to be black) and a severe economic downturn, but Dionne makes an important additional point.

The agitation among Republicans is not surprising, given the trauma of the final years of George W. Bush's presidency. After heavy losses in 2006 and 2008, it was natural that GOP loyalists would seek a new direction.
A party that suffers consecutive beatdowns at the polls needs to retool and reevaluate its assumptions and priorities. The party leadership isn't doing that, so the voters are doing it for them. But they're doing it in a very interesting way. Our eyes are colored by the years 1995-2009, when the Republicans were either ascendant in Congress, held the White House, or both. But this little historical window is misleading. Conservative ideology grew over time. It's incubative period began in 1933, when a second consecutive landslide election brought Franklin Roosevelt to power. From 1933 to 1995, the Republicans controlled the House for four years (1947-48 and 1953-54) and the Senate for ten (1947-48, 1953-54, and 1981-1987). In the entire post-war era, the Republicans only controlled both houses of Congress twice, and each time they were thrown out at the first opportunity. Forty years elapsed (1955-1995) without the Republicans once controlling the House of Representatives. This is an absolutely crucial fact to know if you want to understand the modern Republican Party. Their childhood and adolescence were completed with almost no experience in actual governing in Congress. They were an almost uninterrupted opposition.
This is why a conservative movement began to grow outside the Republican Party. Actual Republican elected officials still had to legislate and they often had a Republican president (Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford, and Reagan) to work with. But because the Republicans never had control of the legislative product, their base came to see Congress as an enemy and their legislation as somehow illegitimate. This feeling was extended to the Supreme Court during the Earl Warren era. As a result, conservative ideology cannot easily adapt to actually being in power and having to fund the various agencies and programs of the government. It isn't surprising that in their first term in power (1995-1996) they shut down the government rather than agree to a Democratic president's budget. And it won't be surprising if this happens the next time the Republicans gain control of one of the houses of Congress.
The Republican base is extremely hostile to the federal government and, particularly, to federal appropriations which are unrelated to national security. You can see this quite clearly by looking at the makeup of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Four of the Republican appropriators are retiring, two have been defeated in primaries, one is a former Democrat, and one recently lost badly in her gubernatorial bid. Additionally, Arlen Specter was forced out of the party. Ordinarily, landing a seat on the Appropriations Committee is considered a boon that allows you to funnel money back to your state and makes you too valuable to replace. But that didn't prove true for Arlen Specter, Bob Bennett, or Lisa Murkowski. These legislators were Republicans but they didn't subscribe to the conservative ideology that all federal activity is suspect, illegitimate, or even unconstitutional. So, they're gone.
From 2003 to 2007, the Republicans controlled everything in Washington but they didn't know what to do with the power. They funded the agencies of government much like a Democratic congress would have done (albeit, with much different priorities) and allowed budget deficits to rise to out of control levels. This wasn't what conservative ideology called for. It was, in essence, a betrayal. But conservative ideology is not reality-based; it's oppositionally-based. It has no governing philosophy, but, instead, a grouping of rationalizations for why federal governance is bad.
What's going on with the Tea Partiers is that they are trying to force the GOP to take conservative ideology seriously and to have them act based on the implications of that ideology. And because that ideology sees the federal government as basically illegitimate, you are seeing calls to repeal amendments from the 14th (establishing birthright citizenship), the 16th (creating an income tax), the 17th (providing for direct elections of senators), and the 19th (establishing female suffrage). It's also why you see opposition to Social Security and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which provided for desegregated public facilities. Some of this is simply based in racism, but the ideological component is arguably just as important.
Because of this anti-federal government ideology, the Republicans cannot govern the country without either violating their espoused principles or simply shutting the place down. You can't shut down the government for any substantial period of time, so the Republicans will consistently violate their own principles once empowered in Congress. Instead of abolishing the Department of Education, they give us No Child Left Behind. Instead of letting Medicare wither on the vine, they give us a massive subsidized prescription drug benefit. And when they try to follow through on their radical ideology (for example, by privatizing Social Security), they are quickly thrown out of office.
People keep asking the Republicans to offer a positive agenda and they keep promising to provide one, but they can't because modern conservatism does not know of any positive role for the federal government. The few Republicans who try to legislate are now being drummed out of the party.
So, call it an insurrection if you want, but it's not the GOP who is besieged. It's the entire federal government (and, therefore, the country) that is under assault. The post-war consensus was never agreed to by conservatives. And they're coming to try to uproot eighty years of legislating history. That they won't succeed doesn't mean that we want to witness them try.

Understanding Wingnuts

Steve Benen:

I've long looked for consistency -- intellectual, moral, ethical -- among opponents of stem-cell research, and I've never found any. If someone believes a fertilized egg that has grown to a few dozen cells is a full-fledged human being, deserving of the full protection of the law, then IVF would constitute nightmarish science. Conservatives would be compelled to protest at fertility clinics, and condemn families that try to have babies through the procedure. After all, the IVF process is designed to include discarded embryos.
But no one is making that argument. There's a high degree of comfort level with discarding embryos at fertility clinics, but intense conservative opposition to medical research involving embryos that offer the promise of life-saving science. I've never understood this.
Of course it doesn't make sense. These people are religious whackadoodles. When a religious argument is tremendously unpopular politically, what happens is that the politicians bend the religious principles. That's why, for wingnuts, it's murder to have an abortion unless the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest. Logically, it would still be murder, but that's not politically viable. Likewise, if destroying an embryo is murder when you use it for research, it is also murder when you don't implant it in a womb and throw it in a hazardous waste bin. But no political party wants to ban fertility treatments, so you get this kind of nonsense. The religious conservatives hold absolutist views on complex moral issues that are rendered absurd when cast in a politically viable context.

Lunchtime Readings

2010-08-26T12:30:00.000-04:00

Rayfield (TPM): Daily Show's Aasif Mandvi: Peaceful Muslims In TN Ruining It For The Rest Of Us

Daily Show correspondent Aasif Mandvi was on the scene in Tennessee to report on local opposition to a planned mosque in Murfreesboro. "Opponents say building a mosque two blocks from Ground Zero is simply too close," Mandvi said. "But did you know that 18,000 blocks is also too close?"

Mandvi found out that there was already a mosque in the town that had been there for about 30 years. So he asked a local Muslim woman: "Thirty years? What is taking so long? I mean, let's go people. I mean, you're not a sleeper cell. You're a comatose cell!"

When she contended that all they want is a place to worship, Mandvi replied: "A few good apples like you could really ruin it for the rest of us, you know that?"

Watch:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Tennessee No Evil

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show Full Episodes

Political Humor

Tea Party

Egan (NYT): Building a Nation of Know-Nothings

Having shed much of his dignity, core convictions and reputation for straight talk, Senator John McCain won his primary on Tuesday against the flat-earth wing of his party. Now McCain can go search for his lost character, which was last on display late in his 2008 campaign for president.

Remember the moment: a woman with matted hair and a shaky voice rose to express her doubts about Barack Obama. “I have read about him,” she said, “and he’s not — he’s an Arab.”

McCain was quick to knock down the lie. “No, ma’am,” he said, “he’s a decent family man, a citizen.”

That ill-informed woman — her head stuffed with fabrications that could be disproved by a pre-schooler — now makes up a representative third or more of the Republican party. It’s not just that 47 percent of Republicans believe the lie that Obama is a Muslim, or that 27 percent in the party doubt that the president of the United States is a citizen. But fully half of them believe falsely that the big bailout of banks and insurance companies under TARP was enacted by Obama, and not by President Bush.

Take a look at Tuesday night’s box score in the baseball game between New York and Toronto. The Yankees won, 11-5. Now look at the weather summary, showing a high of 71 for New York. The score and temperature are not subject to debate.

Yet a president’s birthday or whether he was even in the White House on the day TARP was passed are apparently open questions. A growing segment of the party poised to take control of Congress has bought into denial of the basic truths of Barack Obama’s life. What’s more, this astonishing level of willful ignorance has come about largely by design, and has been aided by a press afraid to call out the primary architects of the lies.

The Democrats may deserve to lose in November. They have been terrible at trying to explain who they stand for and the larger goal of their governance. But if they lose, it should be because their policies are unpopular or ill-conceived — not because millions of people believe a lie.

In the much-discussed Pew poll reporting the spike in ignorance, those who believe Obama to be Muslim say they got their information from the media. But no reputable news agency — that is, fact-based, one that corrects its errors quickly — has spread such inaccuracies.

Stephen Lovekin/Getty Images Rush Limbaugh

So where is this “media?” Two sources, and they are — no surprise here — the usual suspects. The first, of course, is Rush Limbaugh, who claims the largest radio audience in the land among the microphone demagogues, and his word is Biblical among Republicans. A few quick examples of the Limbaugh method:

“Tomorrow is Obama’s birthday — not that we’ve seen any proof of that,” he said on Aug. 3. “They tell us Aug. 4 is the birthday; we haven’t seen any proof of that.”

Of course, there is proof as clear as that baseball box score. Look here, www.factcheck.org, for starters, one of many places posting Obama’s Hawaiian birth certificate.

On the Muslim deception, Limbaugh has sprinkled lie dust all over the place. “Obama says he’s a Christian, but where’s the evidence?” he said on Aug. 19. He has repeatedly called the president “imam Obama,” and said, “I’m just throwing things out there, folks, because people are questioning his Christianity.”

You see how he works. He drops in suggestions, hints, notes that “people are questioning” things. The design is to make Obama un-American. Then he says it’s a tweak, a provocation. He says this as a preemptive way to keep the press from calling him out. And it works; long profiles of Limbaugh have largely gone easy on him.

Once Limbaugh has planted a lie, a prominent politician can pick it up, with little nuance. So, over the weekend, Kim Lehman, one of Iowa’s two Republican National Committee members, went public with doubts on Obama’s Christianity. Of course, she was not condemned by party leaders.

It’s curious, also, that any felon, drug addict, or recovering hedonist can loudly proclaim a sudden embrace of Jesus and be welcomed without doubt by leaders of the religious right. But a thoughtful Christian like Obama is still distrusted.

“I am a devout Christian,” Obama told Christianity Today in 2008. “I believe in the redemptive death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.” That’s not enough, apparently, for Rev. Franklin Graham, the partisan son of the great evangelical leader, who said last week that Obama was “born a Muslim because of the religious seed passed on from his father.”

Actually, he was born from two non-practicing parents, and his Kenyan father was absent for all of his upbringing. Obama came to his Christianity like millions of people, through searching and questioning.

Finally, there is Fox News, whose parent company has given $1 million to Republican causes this year but still masquerades as a legitimate source of news. Their chat and opinion programs spread innuendo daily. The founder of Politifact, another nonpartisan referee to the daily rumble, said two of the site’s five most popular items on its Truth-o-meter are corrections of Glenn Beck.

Beck tosses off enough half-truths in a month to keep Politifact working overtime. Of late, he has gone after Michelle Obama, whose vacation in Spain was “just for her and approximately 40 of her friends.” Limbaugh had a similar line, saying the First Lady “is taking 40 of her best friends and leasing 60 rooms at a five-star hotel — paid for by you.”

The White House said Michelle Obama and her daughter Sasha were accompanied by just a few friends — and they paid their own costs. But, wink, wink, the damage is done. He’s Muslim and foreign. She’s living the luxe life on your dime. They don’t even have to mention race. The code words do it for them.

Climate-change denial is a special category all its own. Once on the fringe, dismissal of scientific consensus is now an article of faith among leading Republicans, again taking their cue from Limbaugh and Fox.

It would be nice to dismiss the stupid things that Americans believe as harmless, the price of having such a large, messy democracy. Plenty of hate-filled partisans swore that Abraham Lincoln was a Catholic and Franklin Roosevelt was a Jew. So what if one-in-five believe the sun revolves around the earth, or aren’t sure from which country the United States gained its independence?

But false belief in weapons of mass-destruction led the United States to a trillion-dollar war. And trust in rising home value as a truism as reliable as a sunrise was a major contributor to the catastrophic collapse of the economy. At its worst extreme, a culture of misinformation can produce something like Iran, which is run by a Holocaust denier.

It’s one thing to forget the past, with predictable consequences, as the favorite aphorism goes. But what about those who refuse to comprehend the present?

Katrina vanden Heuvel (WaPost):Citizens United aftershocks

What are the consequences of the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision allowing corporations "unlimited spending in pursuit of political ends"? The world of campaign finance is new, confusing -- and very alarming.

Corporate groups are already using the ruling to raise lots of cash. Consider the recent work of a consortium of coal companies in West Virginia and Kentucky, including Massey Energy -- owner of the Upper Big Branch Mine where 29 miners were killed in April -- which is attempting to target "anti-coal" Democrats this fall.

In a letter to various coal concerns, Roger Nicholson, senior vice president and general counsel at International Coal Group, said, "With the recent Supreme Court ruling, we are in a position to be able to take corporate positions that were not previously available in allowing our voices to be heard. A number of coal industry representatives recently have been considering developing a 527 entity with the purpose of attempting to defeat anti-coal incumbents in select races, as well as elect pro-coal candidates running for certain open seats. We're requesting your consideration as to whether your company would be willing to meet to discuss a significant commitment to such an effort."

Among the interesting things about this is that 527 groups were relatively free to accept and spend cash even before Citizens United, but -- whether by confusion about the law, strategy among corporate fundraisers or both -- the decision might catalyze all manner of new corporate spending, anyway. Of course, 527's face looser rules, too. "As a result of Citizens United, 527's can now use corporate money to run TV ads within 60 days of the election, and can say anything they want about the candidate," says Joseph Sandler, former general counsel of the Democratic National Committee. "That's a big difference."

But corporations might want to think twice before jumping deeper into political races, attracting more attention in the process. According to a new Survey USA poll, 77 percent of all voters -- including 70 percent of Republicans and 73 percent of independents -- view corporate election spending as an attempt to bribe politicians rather than an expression of free speech that should not be limited.

Target is learning this the hard way. It donated $150,000 to Minnesota Forward, a group channeling funds to Minnesota Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer -- known for his opposition to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights. As a result, the company now faces a consumer boycott and angry institutional shareholders who have asked for a "comprehensive review" of Target's political donation process. Best Buy also donated $100,000 to the group and is facing similar calls for a boycott.

Still, what we are seeing are just the initial stages of what will result in, among other things, a flood of corporate campaign cash. Conservative groups, such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Karl Rove-backed American Crossroads, are gearing up to spend $300 million to hammer Democratic candidates in 2010, according to a Democratic Party memo obtained by The Washington Post. And chief executives are in "wait-and-see" mode when it comes to direct political spending, according to a former counsel to the Federal Election Commission.

There is no way private citizens can match the resources available to corporations to make their voices heard. That's why a public backlash against the Citizens United decision is so critical. Progressives -- galvanized by the brazen activism of the court -- have responded by organizing around a far-reaching pro-democracy platform and have already scored some important wins.

Under pressure from New York City public advocate Bill de Blasio , Goldman Sachs said it would refrain from spending corporate funds on "electioneering communications." Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo pledged to follow suit. De Blasio has also created an online Corporate Spending Tracker, which displays the electoral spending policies and contact information for the 100 largest companies in America.

MoveOn has also embarked on what it calls its "most ambitious campaign ever" -- focused on overturning the court's decision through a constitutional amendment and passing the Fair Elections Now Act, which would bar participating congressional candidates from accepting contributions larger than $100 and allow them to run honest campaigns with a blend of small donations and public funds. (The Nation, of which I am the editor and publisher, is a coalition partner in this campaign.) Right now, the campaign is pursuing a goal of getting 100 members of Congress and candidates to sign a pledge endorsing this agenda before the congressional recess ends on Sept. 10.

Passing the Disclose Act -- which was recently defeated by yet another Republican filibuster -- would be a modest step in the right direction; it requires corporations to show how they spend money in elections. But the deep reforms needed to truly put democracy back in the hands of the people will require a long and tough-minded struggle by all small-d democrats.

In the mean time, corporations are free to do a lot more than just donate to less-regulated 527's. They have a blank check. As President Obama noted in his most recent weekly address, the Citizens United decision "allows big corporations to . . . buy millions of dollars worth of TV ads -- and worst of all, they don't even have to reveal who is actually paying for them. You don't know if it's a foreign-controlled corporation. You don't know if it's BP. You don't know if it's a big insurance company or a Wall Street bank. A group can hide behind a phony name like 'Citizens for a Better Future,' even if a more accurate name would be 'Corporations for Weaker Oversight.' "

Benen: QUOTE OF THE DAY

Rep. John Fleming (R) of Louisiana was campaigning alongside Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) this week, speaking to a Republican women's group near Shreveport. Fleming did his best to frame the midterm elections in a very specific way.
"We have two competing world views here and there is no way that we can reach across the aisle -- one is going to have to win," said Rep. John Fleming, R-La. [...]
"We are either going to go down the socialist road and become like Western Europe and create, I guess really a godless society, an atheist society. Or we're going to continue down the other pathway where we believe in freedom of speech, individual liberties and that we remain a Christian nation.

"So we're going to have to solve that argument before we can once again reach across and work together on things."

There's all kinds of fascinating angles to this remarkable nonsense, but let's not some of the highlights.

First, for all the talk from pundits that Democrats need to do much more to reach out and compromise with congressional Republicans, Fleming's wildly foolish comments are a reminder that there's just not much Dems can do with the modern-day GOP.

Second, there's nothing in the Democratic agenda that calls for an "atheist society"; Western Europe is filled with countries that have official state churches; and it doesn't make any sense to simultaneously claim to protect "individual liberties" and a "Christian nation." The United States separates church from state. Fleming may want a Christian-style theocracy -- maybe an Iran for the West -- but that's just not how Americans do things.

And finally, Fleming was campaigning with David Vitter. Voters are supposed to chose righteousness, by backing the right-wing politician who hires prostitutes?

Postscript: Brian Beutler notes that the godless Democratic heathens have nominated David Melville to run against Fleming in November. Melville is a Methodist pastor.

Update: A friend emails: "Would Vitter be subjected to stoning in Fleming's Christian nation?"

Benen: FEAR CAN (AND SHOULD) BE A POWERFUL MOTIVATOR

The lead Politico story this morning reports on the borderline-panic among leading Democrats about the midterm elections. It's not a pretty picture.
Top Democrats are growing markedly more pessimistic about holding the House, privately conceding that the summertime economic and political recovery they were banking on will not likely materialize by Election Day.
In conversations with more than two dozen party insiders, most of whom requested anonymity to speak candidly about the state of play, Democrats in and out of Washington say they are increasingly alarmed about the economic and polling data they have seen in recent weeks.

Hopes earlier this year that economic conditions would noticeably improve by the fall have given way to a discouraging reality. Dems thought to be in relatively "safe" districts are now seen as vulnerable. The article quoted an unidentified Democratic pollster saying the party's House majority is "probably gone."

The dread is not universal -- some leading party strategists said the crushing pessimism is mostly "inside-the-beltway chatter" -- and the campaign committees are taking steps to help mitigate losses. Politico added, "Republicans have been out-raised and out-spent at the national level and in many of the key races."

But it's nevertheless safe to say that the political winds are picking up, and they're not at the Democrats' backs.

None of this, however, is new. Indeed, many of us could have sketched out the entire article in our heads before reading it. The question the Politico didn't get to is what Democrats plan to do about their predicament.

The article said there are competing strategies about the elections, but Dems "mostly agree there are few good options beyond grinding it out in each individual race."

There may be limited "good options," but there are options. For example there are Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, and Dems could use the limited legislative calendar to push strong bills -- job creation, small businesses, repealing "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," energy -- that voters might like, and which might motivate the Democratic base to turn out.

Sure, Republicans will oppose everything, and will very likely prevent votes in the Senate. But there's nothing wrong with putting up a fight, showing voters the party's priorities, forcing the GOP to cast tough votes shortly before an election, and giving the party something to be excited about.

It's better than hoping for the best.

Jonathan Bernstein: Ideology, Groups, and Impulses

I have to warn you -- this might be a bit rambling. And it's not exactly definitive, either (especially towards the bottom of this very long post; among other things, I'm not as up on some relevant literatures are I should be). Take this, perhaps, as a different way of thinking about some ideas, ideology, and other such things, rather than something I'm going to assert is the correct way of looking at those things. That said...

There's been a bunch of interesting comments recently around the blogs concerning the general topic of ideology. Matt Yglesias did an item in which he noted that he's for deregulation of various things, but that it doesn't make him feel as if he's a conservative on those issues. For a two paragraph post, he really started something, with Conor Friedersdorf using it to take a(nother, and completely justified) swipe at Mark Levin (with a follow-up), and then Adam Serwer got in on it, first making the Chait-esque point (but see Kevin Drum) that American liberals don't believe in big government the way that American movement conservatives believe in small government, and then making what I think is the better point that American movement conservatives don't really believe in small government in that way, either -- they believe in small government rhetoric, but in reality are happy to support government intervention in support of other important goals. Yglesias also posted recently about what he sees as a possible decrease in ideological politics around the world (except, in his view, the US).

There's a lot in here. For one thing, Yglesias says that his "impression is that politics wasn’t especially “ideologically” before the late 18-th century," and also talks about (in the post linked first above) how "The “left-wing” position is to be against this stuff—to be on the side of the people and against the forces of privilege." But those things are connected, and in my view, mostly irrelevant to 21st century politics, or at least 21st century American politics. "Left" and "right" (as Yglesias I'm sure knows) come from a specific place and time: from the French Revolution. Indeed, to vastly oversimplify something on which I'm not an expert anyway, it's not wrong to say that "left" and "right" began as simply attitudes towards the French Revolution, for or against. This did, indeed, put the "left" on the side of the people -- against the Crown, against nobility, and at least in France, against the Church. This translated reasonably well to the rest of Europe during the 19th century, when politics was really involved in whether "the people" would or would not rule.

However, and this gets back a bit to what I was talking about recently, once you have a democratic republic, it's not clear that "left" and "right" mean anything -- because as the constitution-makers of revolutionary and post-revolutionary Americans discovered after 1776 and through the 1780s, in a democratic republic there's only people. One of the problems they had to deal with was that Montesquieu said that you're supposed to have different branches of government representing different estates within the nation -- but in America, there was only one estate, so what powers were there to balance? Of course, Madison's brilliant solution (as he describes in Federalist 51) is to balance the people against each other, thus creating more, not less, power.

OK, but...we do in the US have people who call themselves liberals and conservatives, and we have "left" and "right" in other democracies even though it's not about support for or opposition to the French Revolution, so what is it about? The answer is not at all easy, at least in my view. One way to talk about ideology, the way that public opinion researchers tend to think about it, is just about knowing which issues are supposed to go together -- so that if you support, oh, gun control and abortion rights, you might know you're also supposed to support more government spending on education and oppose the war in Iraq. By that measure, Americans tend not to be ideological in general, although people who know a lot and care a lot about politics, people like Yglesias and Friedersdorf and Serwer and me and you (since you're not reading on into such a long post on this blog unless you're way high on the scale of political awareness), do tend to be far more ideological by that measure. Then there's what Friedersdorf refers to a couple of times in his discussion, first principles. It could be the case that there are deep principles at stake between American liberals and movement conservatives, and that positions on specific issues of public policy flow logically from those principles. Friedersdorf seems to think that's the case, and I'd guess that most people do. I don't, for the most part. Unfortunately, while it is I think an empirical question, it's also (in my view) an impossible one to get at. At any rate, that might be going on.

Let me propose a third way to look at it, either in addition to or instead of either just grouping issue positions together because you know they sort that way in our politics, or issue positions deriving from first principles: groups, and impulses.

Groups: we belong to groups, and in those groups we form alliances with other groups, often through political parties -- which are, in addition, one of the types of groups to which we might join. These groups, as groups, hold positions on issues of public policy, sometimes out of self-interest, sometimes out of custom or habit. We tend to adopt the positions of the groups with which we identify, or with which our groups are allied, or which leaders of those groups profess publicly. Then we go back and find justifications for why that basket of issue positions go together. That's not a bad thing -- even those of us who think self-interest in politics is perfectly fine also believe that it's both natural and healthy for political actors to (at least sometimes) express their self-interest in the context of principles that everyone else can recognize as public spirited.

So to some extent, looked at this way, ideologies are the residue of the connections we make between policies we already support, although then its also true that those connections might also influence us and others as we make other choices about who to ally ourselves with, and what new positions to adopt.

But I think that's only part of it; I do think that there's something authentically different between liberals and conservatives, at least some of the time, and at least in some cases. If not first principles, though, perhaps we can call them impulses. To me, the liberal impulse is basically: We Can Do Better. And the conservative impulse? Don't Make It Worse. Liberals, or perhaps all of us when we're inspired by the liberal impulse, look around and see a variety of problems and available resources and want to alleviate pain and suffering; they want to solve problems. Conservatives, or perhaps all us us when we're inspired by the conservative impulse, remember all the cases of noble intentions gone awry, the cases of unintended consequences, the cases in which problems seemed terribly severe but then they seemingly melted away without anyone, and certainly not everyone collectively, trying to address them. Liberals appreciate the promise of the future; conservatives appreciate how rickety the accomplishments of the present are, and how easily what we think is safe can be destroyed.

I don't know; reading back, that seems a bit on the trite side to me. My real point is that to dress these things up as ideologies, and in that in most cases "first principles" have little to do with our approach to public policy preferences, even among the most politically sophisticated who are most likely to conform to our political parties' platforms and to therefore poll as ideological, is to miss something important. So I'm not saying that either the "sorting issues" or the "first principles" way of looking at ideology is wrong; I'm just saying that the groups-plus-impulses approach may (also) help us understand what's going on.

"leaving an actual mark"

2010-08-25T11:59:00.014-04:00

John Cole: Let the Fluffing Begin

So now that McCain has won his primary and no longer needs to cater to the wingnuts, how long before the beltway press begins to rehab his image? Who will be the first out of the gate with a “That’s the McCain I knew” piece?

My money is on either Halperin or Milbank.

mistermix: The Pains of Being Pure at Heart

Via the comments, here’s the story of a real American, who’s fighting for his and his community’s freedom from the yoke of oppressive taxation:

Doug Knox retired with his wife to a small ranch outside of Alturas. His driveway is lined with American and Confederate flags, and he is single-handedly leading the opposition to the parcel tax with radio and television ads.
“If it costs me $10,000 to $15,000, I’m willing to do it,” Knox says. “Because I do not believe that throwing money at a problem is the way to go it, and put it on the backs of the taxpayers.” But even the staunchly conservative county supervisors—who’ve come under fire for creating the crisis—admit the parcel tax may be the only choice.

That parcel tax will be used to finance the county hospital:

But it’s no exaggeration to say that the county hospital in Alturas — even with its limited services — is a lifeline to the people who live here. The closest full-service hospitals are hours away, and the nearby medical centers over the mountains are often unreachable during winter storms.

If the tax vote does succeed, we can only hope that Knox will challenge it in court to protect the Constitutional right of Modoc County residents to die in the back of an ambulance stuck in a snowstorm.

Barbara Morrill (DK): CNN goes for the racist's point of view on Park51

As the traditional media continues to flog the story about opposition to ~~building a mosque at ground zero~~ turning a Burlington Coat Factory in lower Manhattan into a community center, CNN decided that giving a known racist airtime to voice his deep thoughts on the subject was a good idea:

In an interview with CNN's Jeff Simon, [former Tea Party Express spokesman Mark] Williams said he's on a new mission when it comes to the Cordoba House -- he told Simon he will "personally commit myself to coming up with funding" for what he called a "mirror image" of Cordoba built in Mecca "that would be dedicated to showcasing American values."

"How about we reinforce the peaceful, moderate nature that Islam claims to be and how about we have an Uncle Sam center to introduce people to the understanding of human rights?" Williams told CNN.

The right to build such a building would be all it takes for Williams to "drop his opposition to Park51," he told the network.

Mr. Williams raised an interesting question. Others might be, why should zoning decisions made in New York City need a clearance from an out-of-work teabagger from Texas? Or, why does someone's support for tolerance and freedom of religion in America hinge on an imaginary building in one of the world's most repressive regimes? Or, most importantly, why is CNN giving a platform to this nitwit?

Publius (AmBlog): David Cay Johnston on the Bush tax cuts

Countdown had a nice Bush tax cuts segment, including an interview with David Cay Johnston (this guy). Johnston is always very clear and very specific. (I'm including the whole piece, including the lead-in bit from Meet the Press. The Johnston interview starts at 3:58.)

So from Johnston we learn:
The Bush tax cuts were financed with $2.4 trillion in borrowed money.

Interest alone on that: All income taxes paid in January & February of this year. (That's 1/6th, if you got through grade school math.)

Right now, Small Business needs domestic demand, not tax cuts, to be profitable.
Which prompts me to ask, does Big Business need domestic demand? Because the rich are doing everything they can to kill it, and when the subject is money, those folks aren't stupid. (That's not a facetious question, by the way; it's worth pursuing. Do the rich still need the U.S. consumer?)

About that "relentless questioning" by David Gregory, I have the same media curiosity I had before. Assuming Gregory's not off the reservation, it seems he's busting Boehner's chops because:
The fix is in to kill the Big Boy tax cuts, and this is his piece of it; or
The fix is in to extend the tax cuts, and he's burnishing populist cred in spite of that.
Either way, he's leaving an actual mark on GOP chops — not something you normally see on the Sunday talks.

Terrific segment.
Boehner, Republicans' burden?

Jonathan Alter, Newsweek senior editor and columnist, talks with Rachel Maddow about whether a newly assertive John Boehner is an asset or a liability to the Republican Party.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Chris in Paris (AmBlog): UK austerity programs hit the poor the most

Surely nobody thought the rich bankers who caused the financial meltdown would foot the bill, did they? Besides, poor families with kids are already too busy making ends meet to find time to voice their opposition and it's not as though they have the spare cash to throw at political parties to plead their case. If the GOP wins in November we should expect to see a lot more out of them that will look much like this. Wall Street has been sending cash to the Republicans who are revving up their engines, preparing to throw more handouts and tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans.

So does anyone still like Nick Clegg? Somehow he makes Blair sound honest and sincere and that's no easy task. The Guardian:
In a direct challenge to Treasury claims that the package of spending cuts and tax increases announced in June was fair, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said welfare cuts meant working families on the lowest incomes – particularly those with children – were the biggest losers.

The IFS said it had always been sceptical about Osborne's claim that the budget was "progressive" but added that this instant judgment had been reinforced by a study of proposed changes to housing benefit, disability allowances and tax credits due to come in between now and 2015.

Passing judgment that is likely to make uncomfortable reading for the Liberal Democrats, the IFS concluded: "Once all of the benefit cuts are considered, the tax and benefit changes announced in the emergency budget are clearly regressive as, on average, they hit the poorest households more than those in the upper middle of the income distribution in cash, let alone percentage, terms."

Krugman: Orwell And Social Security

I have to say, after Bush’s Social Security scheme collapsed five years ago, I never thought I’d be back over the same old ground so soon.

But Social Security is actually a key testing ground — it’s the place where you really see what people are after, and also get a sense of whether they’re at all honest about what they’re trying to do.

So: Pat Toomey supports replacing much of Social Security with a system of private accounts, but denies that this is privatization — and denounces those who use the term:

I’ve never said I favor privatizing Social Security. It’s a very misleading — it’s an intentionally misleading term. And it is used by those who try to use it as a pejorative to scare people

Oh, my. Back in the 1990s the Cato Institute had something called The Project on Social Security Privatization, which issued papers like this one from Martin Feldstein: Privatizing Social Security: The $10 Trillion Opportunity.

Then the right discovered that “privatization” polled badly. And suddenly, the term was a liberal plot — hey, we never said we’d do that.

Wait, it gets worse: Cato not only renamed its project, but it went back through the web site, trying to purge references to privatization. Bush also tried to deny that he had ever used the word. More here.

And here we go again. So remember who originally called privatization privatization: the privatizers, that’s who.

Anti-choice Virginia A.G. makes de facto law with dirty tricks

Tarina Keene, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice in Virginia, talks with Rachel Maddow about back door tricks Virginia attorney general Ken Cuccinelli is hoping to use to get around the law and shut down women's health clinics and discourage women from exercising their right to abortion services.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

This guy is a conservative, but literally the opposite of Cuccinelli.
E.D. Kain: Limited government can still be Big Government

One of the things that first drew me to conservatism and by extension libertarianism was the concept of limited government. Now, oftentimes people conflate the concept of limited government with small government. I don’t think the two are the same. And one of the things that’s pushed me away from both conservatism and ideological libertarianism (as opposed to the neoclassical liberalism that I’m working with these days) is that I don’t think many conservative policies lead to limited government (and libertarian policies often just serve to bolster conservative policies despite whatever good intentions). No, conservative politicking too often leads to small government in terms of size* but not limited government in terms of scope.

See, I’m all for big government. I’m perfectly comfortable with a very distributive tax system, with a very progressive tax code, with big government expenditures on things like high-speed rail and other infrastructure projects, with a robust private labor movement, etc. What worries me is not the size of government, the rate of taxation or any of that – indeed, I’ve argued before that for a free market society to truly function, for a liberal economy to be as liberal and free as possible, the state will need to provide a generous and constant welfare net. So sign me up for big government. If…

...we can also manage to limit the scope of said government. Scope is key, whether we’re talking about our bedrooms or our digital privacy or our ability to practice religion freely, build mosques, or say stupid hateful nonsense about other people. Let’s limit the ability of our government to create monopolies, to work in cahoots with big corporations to quash competition and hurt consumers. And let’s limit the power of the state to make war, to construct secret prisons, to torture our prisoners, to spy on or assassinate our own citizens. There’s plenty of evil a government can do whether it’s big or small. Limited government – as far as I’m concerned – has nothing to do with the size of the state, the tax rate, or the sorts of welfare programs we construct.

The point is we need a government that is not too top-down, not too much invested in our day to day lives, not too powerful or centralized – but rather a government that provides the support systems that keep people on their feet, keep kids from going hungry or people who lose their jobs from also losing their homes and healthcare, that helps enforce health and safety and environmental standards without placing undue burden on the working class.

If that’s all very meta, I apologize. I just read this passage from Kevin Drum and it got me thinking:
It’s useful to know where you can find political allies. If you can find liberals who favor charter schools, less regulation of small businesses, and an end to Fannie Mae, that’s well and good. But that’s 10% or less of my worldview. I also favor high marginal tax rates on the rich, national healthcare, full funding for Social Security, more spending on early childhood education, stiff regulations on the financial industry, robust environmental rules, a strong labor movement, a cap-and-trade regime to reduce carbon emissions, a major assault on income inequality, more and better public transit, and plenty of other lefty ambitions that I won’t bother to list. If we could do all that without a bigger state, that would be fine. But we can’t. When it’s all said and done, if we lived in Drum World I figure combined government expenditures would be 40-45% of GDP and the funding source for all that would be strongly progressive. “Statist” is an obviously provocative (and usually puerile) way to frame this, but really, it’s not all that far off the mark. It wouldn’t be tyranny, any more than Sweden is a tyranny, but it would certainly be a world in which the American state was quite a bit bigger than it is now.

Honestly, I’m not that opposed to anything Drum lists here, but there’s this nagging voice in the back of my mind that keeps saying – okay, in Sweden this might not be tyranny, but this is America we’re talking about. I know the politicians here. I know we can march off to war with Iraq unprovoked, can start a whole new culture war over whether drowning people in order to gain intelligence should be termed ‘torture’. Maybe we should strive to be more like Sweden, but we have a long ways to go before I trust our government to be both big and limited at the same time. Then again, I don’t trust it to be small and limited either.
Though often as not we see contracted private services replace government functions rather than any real dismantling of the state. See Will Wilkinson on so-called privatized prisons for more on this. I think privatized prisons are a very bad idea by the way.

Benen: THE LINGERING CONSEQUENCES OF E COLI CONSERVATISM

You've likely heard about the egg recall that's currently underway, in the wake of at least 1,300 salmonella-related illnesses spanning 22 states over the summer. The Washington Post noted this week that the outbreak highlights the need to fix "the holes in the country's food safety net."
As we learn more about the story, we see that the salmonella problems stem from an uninspected producer in Iowa, with a record of health, safety, labor, and other violations that go back 20 years. Democrats in Washington are nearing approval of a new food-safety bill, but Jonathan Cohn takes a closer look this morning at pending egg regulations, which have been lingering for quite a while.

Cohn notes that the "saga of these standards seems like a case study in how conservative politics and conservative politicians have weakened federal regulation, exposing the public to greater health risks."

It begins ... with the administration of Ronald Reagan. Convinced that excessive regulation was stifling American innovation and imposing unnecessary costs on the public, Reagan's team changed the way government makes rules.
Prior to the 1980s, agencies like the FDA had authority to finalize regulations on their own. Reagan changed that, forcing agencies to submit all regulations to the Office of Management and Budget, which cast a more skeptical eye on anything that would require the government or business to spend more money. The regulatory process slowed down and, in many cases, the people in charge of it became more skittish.

Clinton didn't share Reagan's antipathy to regulation. Prodded by consumer advocates and more liberal Democrats, his administration announced its intention to impose new safety requirements on the egg industry. But that happened in 1999, a year before Clinton left office. When George W. Bush succeeded him, the administration's posture reverted to its 1980s version.

Like Reagan, Bush was skeptical of government interference in the market. And, like Reagan, he appointed officials sympathetic to businesses that wanted to avoid the cost of complying with new federal rules. It was not until 2004, five years after Clinton had proposed the new egg rules, that the Bush Administration issued actual regulatory language. And by 2009, when Bush left office, the administration still had not finalized the rule.

William Hubbard, who was associate FDA commissioner from 1991 until 2005, told Cohn the Bush White House simply wouldn't let the FDA act, because Bush's team was "very hostile to regulation."

This isn't quite new -- we've seen related outbreaks a little too often in recent years, and much of it stems from insufficient government safeguards. Relevant companies are doing what the industry is expected to do -- exploiting loopholes to cut corners and save costs -- but if policymakers simply let the free market guide the food-safety process, the results include the salmonella illnesses we're seeing now.

The answer, then, is a political one -- federal officials need to intervene to do what American consumers cannot do for themselves, in this case, imposing stricter safety regulations. For all the Republican hatred of government regulation -- "I don't want Obama's hands in my eggs!" -- recent developments should turn the anti-government crusade on its head.

A few years ago, Rick Perlstein coined the phrase "E. Coli Conservatism." The importance of rejecting that ideology keeps getting stronger.

Booman: Huge Upset in Alaska

It looks like Sarah Palin got the scalp she wanted most:

U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski is battling for her political life this morning against Republican primary challenger Joe Miller, the Tea Party-backed candidate who had a slim lead as ballots continued to be counted overnight. Miller, a Fairbanks attorney, led from when the first returns came in Tuesday night, and was on the verge of pulling off one of the biggest election upsets ever in Alaska. With 84 percent of Alaska's precincts reporting around 2 a.m., Miller had 45,188 votes to 42,633 for Murkowski.
Joe Miller is promising something unprecedented for an Alaskan politician. He's promising to kill off the federal spending that Alaskans depend on for their livelihood. The recently departed Ted Stevens made his entire career on hauling federal appropriations back to Alaska. His best friend was the long-time Democratic senator from Hawai'i, Daniel Inouye. They bonded over their shared mission to build their relatively new states economically. Now, suddenly, the Alaskan Republican Party has gone 180 degrees in the opposite direction and embraced the tea bag.
While it seemed unthinkable yesterday, there is now the prospect of Alaska having two Democratic senators. Whether Democratic nominee and mayor of Sitka Scott McAdams can capitalize on the schism on the right will depend on how angry Murkowski's supporters are with Sarah Palin and the outside influence of the Tea Party Express. Early indications are that feelings are raw.

Murkowski on Tuesday night took a shot at Palin, saying that when Palin resigned as governor last summer she said she would use her new national role to help out Alaska.
"I think she's out for her own self-interest. I don't think she's out for Alaska's interest," Murkowski said as she waited at her campaign headquarters for results to come in...
...Murkowski criticized Miller's campaign tactics, including the use of robo-calls. "It doesn't feel like it was a campaign that was run by Alaskans," Murkowski said on Tuesday night.
Despite the Tea Party's heavy investment and influence, abortion also played a major role in Murkowski's (seeming) defeat.

Murkowski's pro-choice stance is a particularly sore point, one that Miller supporters hammered her on.
Tuesday's primary election also included Ballot Measure 2, which would require parents to be notified before their teens age 17 and younger received an abortion. Miller said he thinks that brought out voters who supported him over Murkowski, even though she supported the ballot measure as well.
"The Prop. 2 supporters were our supporters, largely. ... Frankly I think the pro-life vote was important," Miller said on Tuesday night.
Of course, you wouldn't have known that Murkowski was pro-choice since she supported the parental notification ballot measure and voted against the confirmation of both Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. Even so, Murkowski was what passes for a moderate Republican these days. Her biggest problem was probably the same thing that killed off Utah senator Bob Bennett's career. She is an appropriator who understands how the federal government functions and who takes responsibility for funding its agencies. At a time when the Republican Party is in full-minority opposition, there is no valid use of federal dollars in the minds of most GOP base voters. Of course, the second they have to take responsibility for funding the government again, all this bullshit rhetoric will be gone as fast as Dick Cheney can say that deficits don't matter.
This result reinvigorates Sarah Palin's profile, bolsters the Tea Baggers, sends a warning shot against even modest cooperation with the Democrats, and wipes out one of the few Republicans willing to vote with the Democrats at least some of the time. It's bad all around. It's bad for Alaska. Murkowski recently became the Ranking Member on the Energy and Commerce Committee, a position of great possible benefit to Alaska's economy. Now their senior senator will be freshman backbencher Mark Begich. Alaska hasn't been this bereft of seniority in living memory.
But this could open the way for Scott McAdams if he can successfully reach out to Murkowski's people. We shall see.

digby: Boring Boehner

I have to give it to Boehner. His speech today was almost elegant in its pompous vapidity. He's got a real gift for saying absolutely nothing with the careless aplomb of an empty playboy years past his prime.

Unfortunately, he's actually a thoroughly corrupt tool of corporate interests who wields great power over millions of people and as the potential speaker of the House his actions are of much greater interest than his shallow rhetoric.

Blue America and its partner Americans for America responded to his dull remarks with its latest ad set to start running tomorrow morning. His actions speak much louder than his words:

A big tip 'o the hat to Dan Manatt and his creative team at Americans for America for turning that ad around immediately upon hearing Boehner's plodding words this morning. But for the millions of Americans who are suffering because of Republican policies that created their problems and Republican obstructionism that's keeping anyone from solving them, it would be very hard to find inspiration in such drivel.

Update: Howie adds:

Notice this DNC ad below, which I like a lot. They used it yesterday-- while Justin Coussoule was racking up endorsements from Tim Ryan (D-OH), Steve Filner (D-CA) and the Congressional Progressive Caucus-- to ask for money: "Boehner's horrible; he's going to eat your children; send us your money." But not a world about Boehner having an opponent. But he does; it's Justin Coussoule and you can donate towards electing him and defeating Boehner right here. Remember, when Boehner is shrieking "Where are the jobs, Mr. President," it isn't the DCCC or DNC telling voters in southwestern Ohio that it was Boehner who engineered the 2008 no-strings-attached Wall Street bailout; it's Justin Coussoule. And it isn't the DNC or the DCCC telling voters in Ohio that the trade policies, like NAFTA, that Boehner has been pushing for two decades explains where the jobs are; it's Justin Coussoule. Let's help him.

.

Awesome!

2010-08-24T07:47:00.000-04:00

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c

The Parent Company Trap

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show Full Episodes

Political Humor

Tea Party