Friday, April 22, 2011

362 Extended recent blog posts from DIGBY

Literal Geniuses

by digby

This is infuriating, but its a fairly typical example of how the epistemological relativists on the right are able to convince people to destroy themselves and thank the Republicans for giving them the privilege. Our so-called "fact checkers" seem to be Rain Men.

If Democrats proposed to turn Medicare into a system that only provided free veterinary services to seniors, would Republicans be lying to say Dems wanted to "end Medicare," without including the caveat "as we know it"?

Of course not. But that's more or less the charge PolitiFact is leveling at Democrats over a new DCCC ad (below) which flatly charges Republicans with proposing to "end Medicare." The House GOP budget, which passed with all but two GOP votes over unanimous Democratic opposition, would over time replace the single-payer, government-run Medicare program with a different system that subsidizes private insurance plans for beneficiaries. Those subsidies would work like vouchers -- they would increase in value year-on-year at a much slower pace than the rate of the rise of health care costs, thus leaving seniors exposed to increasing costs as time goes on.

Republicans call this new health insurance system "Medicare." But it's a completely different program from today's Medicare. PolitiFact doesn't see it that way.

"But to say the Republicans voted to end Medicare, as the ad does, is a major exaggeration," PolitiFact writes. "All seniors would continue to be offered coverage under the proposal, and the program's budget would increase every year."

But that elides the fact that Medicare currently guarantees specific services, which the private insurers won't be bound to provide under the GOP plan. Indeed, the law President Lyndon Johnson signed in 1965 created a national health insurance system that entitled the elderly to have a defined array of health care services paid on their behalf by the government.


One of the problems is in the word "coverage." Politifact conflates insurance with health care and it isn't the same thing. Today, seniors have guaranteed health care, period. Ryan's plan says they will have a guaranteed voucher to purchase insurance. The difference between those two things is a chasm the size of the Grand Canyon and everyone knows it.

Politifact also goes far beyond its mandate by telling the Democrats the terms they are allowed to use. (They say it would be ok if they say "end Medicare as we know it.") Message approval isn't their job. Their job is to apply a thick-headed literalism to everything they see. And it makes them useless.

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Comments (31)
 
Tea Reflux

by digby


Yesterday, Think Progress reported that Paul Ryan was confronted by a constituent who complained about his plan to destroy Medicare. Apparently, Ryan's not the only one:

CHRISTMAN: Excuse me, I’d like to get something off my chest. And that is, you seem to think that because I’m not affected, I won’t care if my niece, my grandson, my child is affected. I do care. And what you’re doing with this Ryan budget is you’re taking Medicare and you’re changing it from a guaranteed health care system to one that is a voucher system where you throw seniors on the mercy of for-profit insurance companies. [...]

BARLETTA: Well, I won’t destroy Medicare, Medicare is going to be destroyed by itself. You’re….

CHRISTMAN: I have a great way for you…

CROWD: Let him talk….Sit down!…Let him talk! SIT DOWN!

MAN: I agree with her. And you know what? Why don’t you tell me to sit down?!

CROWD: SIT DOWN!

MAN: She’s an American citizen. … Why don’t you show some manners and shut your mouth and let her talk. … Why don’t you grow up and stop acting like a bunch of little boys?


The most amazing thing about this --- and as a member of the progressive movement it shames me to admit it --- this stuff is not orchestrated by the Democrats or liberal interest groups. We are, quite simply, too lame and too unorganized to do it. (I know this because there is a huge amount of kvetching going on behind the scenes about why the left can't get its act together on this.)

These are just plain old regular citizens going to the townhalls on their own and challenging the Roadmap to Hell. And they're doing it in spite of the media rending their garments and speaking in tongues about how the deficit is going to kill us all in our beds.

These Republicans should be concerned about this, but I suppose they will enlist their Tea Partiers to shout these dissenters down, and keep a lid on the problem. The voting booth, however, is private. (So far anyway.)
Comments (30)
 
Fine Centrist Whine

by digby

He's "doing the best he can":

Nick Clegg rounded on critics who "vilify" his party's role in coalition, insisting he is doing the "best I can" to shape government policies around Liberal Democrat values.
[...]

Clegg said those who argue that AV would lead to more coalitions and "broken promises", yet claim to want a "different kind of politics" where parties can work together in the national interest, "have to grow up a bit". "Compromise is not a betrayal," he said.

The Lib Dem leader, who has been lambasted for his party's U-turn on tuition fees and its position on the pace and scale of public spending cuts, said "difficult compromises" had to be made because the party had only 57 MPs out of 650.

"If people want more Liberal Democrat policies, the way to get them is to elect a majority Liberal Democrat government. That didn't happen," he said.

"In the meantime, I will continue to make what are sometimes difficult compromises, but ones which are always shaped as best I can by the liberal values I hold dear."

He criticised opponents on the left and right, saying: "You can't claim to stand for a new kind of politics, for a new kind of pluralism, and then vilify those who try to practise it."

Clegg described AV as a "simple update" to the electoral system, intended to give people more power and choice.

"It means all MPs will have to try to win the support of a majority of their constituents instead of relying on their core vote," he added.

"It means they will have to engage with people who are not their core supporters, listening to a wider range of views and bringing more people into the democratic process. It will help to reduce the complacency of MPs with jobs for life in safe seats.
[...]
"We aren't going to enter into a Maoist, perpetual revolution," he said. "This is a once in a blue moon opportunity to change the electoral system.

"It's completely wrong to somehow suggest this is a stepping stone for something else. This is the change and it should be considered only on those merits."


Without getting into the merits of the UK's AV vote (proportional representation) about which I don't know enough to comment, I bring this up to illustrate the similarity of rhetoric we hear from the Unity Pony and "Post-partisan" people in the US. Essentially, what is happening in Britain is the same thing that happened here, it's just that here we have two parties with three factions instead of three parties. But both countries have the left, the right and the centrists --- who align with the right and then whine to the left about how much it hurts them more than it hurts us and how they can't help it. Same old, same old.

I just bring this up as a bit of a cautionary tale to those who believe that our problems could be solved by a parliamentary system. Theoretically, it would be easier for the people to dissolve the government when they go too far. But as we've seen in Britain, it also makes it easier for them to go too far in the first place.

The problem is bigger than the political system. It's about the influence of Big Money and an economic belief system that serves them. And it's global.


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Comments (47)
 
Raising The Sunken Swiftboats

by digby


On the heels of the latest polling showing that a rather large majority of Republicans really want to believe that Barack Obama cannot possibly be a legitimate president, (vthis shouldn't come as any surprise (via email):

Donald Trump has been churning up the 2012 presidential race with his many
questions about Barack Obama's eligibility, and now a book, "Where's the Birth
Certificate? The Case That Barack Obama Is Not Eligible to Be President," by
two-time No. 1 New York Times best-selling author Jerome Corsi, is creating more
waves.

Today it was headlined on the Drudge Report, which declared, "The street date is
a LONG month away, and author Jerome Corsi, the man who torpedoed John Kerry's
presidential dreams with SWIFT BOAT, has gone underground and is holding his new
findings thisclose.

"'It's utterly devastating,' reveals a source close to the publisher. 'Obama may
learn things he didn't even know about himself!'" Drudge said.

Drudge wondered whether the president's attorneys will "attempt to interfere
with the book's distribution?" and whether the book will "finally - once and for
all - put an end to the growing controversy?"

The image of the book was seen on Rush Limbaugh's personal computer today as he
broadcast his top-rated radio program from his Florida studio.

Jerome Corsi's "Where's the Birth Certificate?" book can be partially seen
featured on the Drudge Report on Rush Limbaugh's computer as he broadcast his
radio show from South Florida Wednesday, April 20, 2011.

"The book results from three years of continuing research," Corsi said today. "I
traveled to Kenya and to Hawaii - I have hired private investigators and had the
help of inside sources in Kenya, Indonesia and Hawaii. The book will contain
startling new information, and the release of the book will be orchestrated
through WND with documents the public has never seen before."

Interest in the controversy has accelerated in recent months. There was Hawaii
Gov. Neil Abercrombie's famous pledge to find Barack Obama's birth certificate
and make it public to shut up the so-called "birthers."

The governor's quest raised national interest in the issue - especially when he
failed to produce the promised documentation. Members of Congress have raised
similar questions about Obama's eligibility, and state lawmakers are considering
plans to require documentation from presidential candidates.

Then came Trump out of the blue, asking questions WND's newsroom team has been
asking for the last two and a half years, raising the national debate to furious
new heights.

Now another shoe is ready to drop.

Joseph Farah, editor and chief executive officer of WND and WND Books, the
publisher of the book, declared, "Potentially, I believe this book is the
political endgame for Barack Obama."

"I don't see how he can be re-elected with hard questions and new evidence of
his ineligibility raised by the book. It's a game-changer - and the news media
blackout on this issue has now turned into a media feeding frenzy to cover their
negligent rear ends."


I'm sure the book is complete nonsense. But I'm afraid that Cokie's Law is in effect-- "it's out there." And that means we are probably in for a very, very stupid summer.

I doubt this will still be prominently on the menu in the fall of 2012 (although they'll certainly be serving it to those who want it.) But it's yet another example of how the right wing noise machine can churn out a bucket of tabloid offal disguised as news and the mainstream media cannot stop themselves from digging in.

Update: Aaaand... Breitbart's site goes all-in.


Update II: Oh fergawdsakes.

h/t to @tarkloon

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Comments (58)
 
Reaching an accord

by digby

I'm sure this will come as a big surprise, but Tom Coburn says the Gang of 6 isn't planning any major tax hikes:

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), a member of the Gang of Six group that is working on a plan to reduce the federal deficit, said that the group's three GOP members wouldn't sign on to an agreement that would raise taxes in a substantial way.

"There's no plan to have a significant tax hike on anyone," Coburn said on conservative talker Laura Ingraham's radio show. "I don't think there's any of the three of us who will embrace tax hikes."

Coburn has been working for months with Republican Sens. Saxby Chambliss (Ga.) and Mike Crapo (Idaho) and Democratic Sens. Dick Durbin (Ill.), Kent Conrad (N.D.) and Mark Warner (Va.) on a plan that's considered one of the best hopes for reaching an accord on deficit and debt reduction.

The plan is due to be released sometime in early May, and Coburn emphasized Thursday that the Gang of Six hadn't reached any agreement at this point.

But Republicans in the gang are under tremendous pressure from conservative groups to produce a plan that doesn't raise taxes, a policy maneuver that would be anathema to many on the right.

While Coburn said that the talks wouldn't yield any significant tax hike, he also said that didn't mean some Americans' tax burdens wouldn't rise.

The Oklahoma conservative suggested that the Gang of Six is examining a kind of tax reform similar to the type suggested by President Obama's fiscal commission, in which marginal rates are lowered but many tax credits are eliminated from the code.


Right. I'm sure those tax credits will all be the ones that have lobbyists defending them. After all, the last thing politicians need in an election year is money.

But don't worry, the president has promised to let the tax cuts expire on schedule right after the election, so it's not like tax hikes are off the table.


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Comments (34)

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

 
Lessons For Today

by digby

Here are two very important pieces of relevant information that are not well understood even by many liberals. The first is about the stale trope that the ratio of workers to retirees was once much much higher and has shrunk to an unforeseen, unsustainable level. The second is about the idea that patients are "consumers" who need to be making "smarter choices."


Scott Hochberg:

On Face the Nation this Sunday, Sen. Mark Warner was asked by host Bob Schieffer why his ‘Gang of Six’ would take on Social Security reform in their forthcoming budget proposal. His response reflected a commonly-held myth about Social Security’s history that greatly exaggerates the changes in the worker-to-retiree ratio between 1950 and today. Warner gave as his rationale the popular refrain that "part of this is just math: 16 workers for every one retiree 50 years ago, three workers for every retiree now."

Senator Warner is claiming that Social Security is less financially secure than in decades past because it no longer has a sustainable worker-to-retiree ratio. But this statement is highly misleading, and in fact it is a version of the same conservative spin that President Bush often used during his attempt to privatize the program.

In fact, the high ratio of workers to retirees in 1950 was an anomaly, which resulted from the larger number of workers that were incorporated into the program at the time, such as millions of farm workers and domestic workers. Furthermore, because the program was still relatively new, the first workers to contribute to the program had not yet started to collect benefits. To demonstrate how meaningless the 16:1 number it, consider this: Only five years later [in 1955], the worker-to-beneficiary ratio was halved to 8:1, and by 1975 it was down to what it is today. And just ten years earlier, in 1940, the ratio had been 149.5 workers for every one retiree!

The truth is that as the economy grows and technological innovation increases, fewer workers are needed to generate the same and higher levels of economic productivity. So long as the economy is growing, having even a 2:1 ratio of workers to retirees is sustainable. The worker-to-retiree ratio has been stable for almost forty years and has not failed to supply adequate levels of benefits.


It's not a math problem it's a politics problem.

Paul Krugman:

Medical care is an area in which crucial decisions — life and death decisions — must be made; yet making those decisions intelligently requires a vast amount of specialized knowledge; and often those decisions must also be made under conditions in which the patient is incapacitated, under severe stress, or needs action immediately, with no time for discussion, let alone comparison shopping.

That’s why we have medical ethics. That’s why doctors have traditionally both been viewed as something special and been expected to behave according to higher standards than the average professional. There’s a reason we have TV series about heroic doctors, while we don’t have TV series about heroic middle managers or heroic economists.

The idea that all this can be reduced to money — that doctors are just people selling services to consumers of health care — is, well, sickening. And the prevalence of this kind of language is a sign that something has gone very wrong not just with this discussion, but with our society’s values.



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Comments (62)
 
Don't Make Us Work Until We Die

by digby




I can't help but be reminded of this post from a couple of years ago:


CNN's week-end "money" show did a story on how the recession is affecting people in California. They interviewed an 84 year old waitress. That's right, an 84 year old waitress:
Professor Michael Shires: Right now it comes down to fear...

Thelma Guttierez: Fear for people like Mildred Copeland, who's 84 and still waiting tables after 34 years.

Shires: Unlike the recession in the early 90s that was driven by the collapse in aerospace, employees from all sectors of the economy feel like they're at risk of losing their jobs.

Guttierez: Already tens of thousands have lost their jobs this year. In February, unemployment in California reached 10.5 percent and going up.

Shires: most of the projections get us up somehwere around 12 percent between now and this time next year.

Guttierez: That translates to loss of nearly a million jobs in the golden state, according to economic forecasts.

84 year old Mildred Copeland (video) : Would you like hash browns or home fries?

Guttierez: Bad news for Mildred. She's eager to hold on to her job.

Mildred: You get to a time in your life where you say well, I can sit back and relax a little bit and not have to worry, but it's not like that.


Read on for the rest of the story.

Evidently, this is the new fate for many more of the elderly. Between raising the retirement age, skimping on the benefits, wage stagnation and economic wipe-outs like the Great Recession, young and old alike will be competing for all those low paying jobs. But since three and four generations will all have to live under the same roof, perhaps they can come up with some sort of job share concept so that they can work in shifts and someone will be at home to take care of the children. As long as it doesn't inconvenience the employer, of course.

Click here to find out about the rallies all over the country on April 27th and 28th. If there isn't one near you, join the Virtual Rally by taking a picture of yourself with your sign saying "Don't Make Us Work Until We Die" and email it to: virtualrally@socialsecurity-works.org with your City & State in the subject line.


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Comments (30)
 
Shhhh. Don't tell anyone

by digby


Discussing the fact that the GOP is sending a couple of political hacks to Obama's congressional deficit commission, Matt Yglesias makes a great observation:


You have a government set to steadily increase spending on autopilot as a result of demographic change and rising health care costs. And you have a Democratic President urging congress to enact spending cuts. But you have conservative politicians refusing to make a serious effort to reach an agreement out of some blend of taxophobia and fear of giving the President a win. The result, again, whether the right realizes it or not, is a gift to the wing of the Democratic Party that disagrees with Obama about the desirability of enacting spending cuts.


In my fantasies, not only would the Republicans block all these awful spending cuts, Obama would fix the medium term deficit entirely with one swipe of the pen in December of 2012 by vetoing the inevitable extension of all the Bush tax cuts and letting them expire. He would have already won his final election and could afford to take the heat.

Like I said, it's a fantasy: liberal governance. Sort of like unicorns.


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Comments (18)
 
The Ryan Express collides with common sense

by digby

Paul Ryan has been holding townhalls across his district. And guess what? His constituents aren't all that impressed with his Randy conservatism:

CONSTITUENT: The middle class is disappearing right now. During this time of prosperity, the top 1 percent was taking about 10 percent of the total annual income, but yet today we are fighting to not let the tax breaks for the wealthy expire? And we’re fighting to not raise the Social Security cap from $87,000? I think we’re wrong.
RYAN: A couple things. I don’t disagree with the premise of what you’re saying. The question is what’s the best way to do this. Is it to redistribute… (Crosstalk)
CONSTITUENT: You have to lower spending. But it’s a matter of there’s nothing wrong with taxing the top because it does not trickle down.
RYAN: We do tax the top. (Audience boos). Let’s remember, most of our jobs come from successful small businesses. Two-thirds of our jobs do. You got to remember, businesses pay taxes individually. So when you raise their tax rates to 44.8 percent, which is what the president is proposing, I would just fundamentally disagree. That is going to hurt job creation.



The GOP could easily capitulate on this and the only actual votes they would lose would be the top 5%. And maybe not even that since the aristocrats would still have to vote for someone regardless. But they won't. The anti-http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.giftax movement is a cult and they are zombies in its thrall.

But it sounds as though the public isn't buying it. It turns out that if you demand draconian spending cuts to cut the debt common sense says you should raise taxes on millionaires too. Go figure.


Update: if you'd like to help Ryan understand this, you can throw a couple of bucks this way.
Comments (38)
 
A Matter of Interpretation

by digby


These new polls (via TPM) showing Obama's approval rating slipping are probably irrelevant to anything concerning the 2012 race, but when you look at the numbers in the possible match-ups bewteen him and the motley GOP line-up, you have to feel a little bit of a chill. I doubt very seriously that he will have any real competition --- even the best GOP case of T-Paw or Daniels has "Mondale redux" written all over it.

But that doesn't mean these numbers are meaningless. The danger lies in how the Obama campaign and the Democrats interpret them (or use and an excuse to pass certain policies.) Do they see slippage as a sign that they haven't been accommodating enough? That they need to find more ways to "compromise" to be seen as "getting things done"? Or do they look at these numbers as a sign that they need to fight the Republicans harder on their extremist agenda?

Let's just say that the numbers probably indicate that they need to change something. The question is what they think they need to change.


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Comments (56)
 
"It's Scary!"

by digby

My latest in The Hill about why Democrats needn't negotiate.

But hey, everybody loves a kabuki dance of spring. And it does, at least, have some bearing on the epic argument about the role of government that's raging in this country. It would be nice, however, if the ones who are allegedly arguing for the activist government side actually seemed to believe it, but I guess you can't have everything.

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Comments (18)

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

 
Drowning In BullshitLink

by digby


This is interesting:

James B. Stewart made an appearance on the Today show this morning talking about the most famous cases of perjury that he's written about in his new book "Tangled Webs: How American Society Is Drowning In Lies."

What "Tangled Webs" examines is people at the pinnacle of their professions--Martha Stewart, Barry Bonds, Scooter Libby, people from Wall Street right up to the White House--"brazenly lying." They're role models, and their behavior trickles down to society. "Why do they lie," asks Stewart? "Because they think they can get away with it."
[...]
While James Stewart says there are no statistics showing an increase of lying, he feels it's an epidemic, happening at the highest levels and that as a society we've become too tolerant of lying in our homes and in the world. When you take an oath, you must tell the truth: "Our justice system depends on it."


Fascinating. And where do you suppose this all this lying started?

Maybe it was here:

The manifest failure of the month long assault on Hillary Clinton to yield evidence of wrongdoing was not ignored everywhere. New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis became the first important voice at his newspaper to break ranks. "Three years and innumerable investigations later," he wrote on January 15th, "Mrs Clinton has not been shown to have done anything wrong in Whitewater. One charge after another has evaporated."

Lewis compared D'Amato's performance to that of Senator Joseph R McCarthy during the anti-communist witch hunts of fifties. But Lewis noted one major difference. "On Whitewater the press seemed all too eager an accomplice of the accusers...

Still other celebrated journalists continued to predict the first lady's probable indictment as the election year began, most notably Pulitzer Prize winning author James B Stewart. Published by Simon and Shuster in 1996 to the accompaniment of a multimedia publicity campaign, Stewart's book Blood Sport claims to be the inside story of "the president and first lady as they really are." Set forth as a sweeping narrative, it includes dramatized scenes and imaginary dialog purporting to represent the innermost thoughts of individuals whom the author had in some cases never met, much less interviewed.

"Scenes that Mr Stewart could never have observed first hand," complained New York Times reviewer Michiko Kakutani, "are recounted from an omniscient viewpoint. Mr. Stewart rarely identifies the sources for such scenes not does he take into account the subjectivity and oftens self-serving nature of memory. The reader never knows whether the quotes Mr Stewart puts into the mouth of an individual... are from a first or second hand source."
-- The Hunting of the President, Conason and Lyons


You have to read the book for the full catalog of mistakes, errors of omission and downright lies in that hideous book. The idea that this guy is now rending his garments about Americans being a land of lies is pretty amazing. I guess he thinks he can "get away with it."

Rick Perlstein has coined a phrase "mendocracy" to describe how our elites have completely disavowed the very notion of honesty, even in fields like business and economics where one would assume that an agreement on the basic facts would be necessary to function. James B. Stewart is the walking proof of its existence.


h/t to bz
Comments (51)
 
The Tea Party sounds the alarm

by digby

In my email this morning:

Watch for Obama to “Steal” the 2012 Election

Obama, Holder, and their entire illicit crews should all be in prison. They are all criminals. Obama will receive at least $1 billion and possibly up to $2 billion from George Soros, foreign communist countries, and other criminal organizations to “buy” the election.

There definitely will be voter fraud going on throughout the 50 states but definitely to the greatest degree in “battleground states.” Watch for ballot box stuffing, phony votes, “fixing” of voting machines, voting illegal aliens, voter intimidation, and union thuggery going on before and on November 6, 2012.

We must keep a jaundiced eye on ACORN, The New Black Panthers, SEIU, and other such criminal organizations to implement Obama’s plan again to “steal” this election.

These criminals do not believe in freedom, liberty, and the American way of life. Harry Reid allegedly stole the 2010 senate election through voter fraud. Expect the worst in the 2012 election because it will happen. Remember, we are dealing with criminals bereft of any honesty or integrity. Vigilance!


They're really working themselves up. There's this too:

HOW IS RACIST BARACK OBAMA, WHO MAY NOT BE AN AMERICAN BORN CITIZEN, AND ERIC HOLDER, ANOTHER RACISTS, WHO HAS DISGRACED THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT, GET AWAY WITH BREAKING THESE CIVIL RIGHTS LAWS?

WHAT ABOUT THEIR TIES TO ACORN?

In Nevada, former Acorn executive Amy Busefink was convicted of voter fraud. In 2008, Acorn submitted 400,000 fraudulent voter applications in Nevada. Nevada only has a population of 2.6 million. That includes children, illegals and those who cannot vote. The real number of voters is substantially less than 2.6 million. Imagine what 400,000 fraudulent votes could do to an election?

400,000 was just the fraudulent voter registrations that were discovered. A close friend of Tea Party Nation recently told us, "In 2010, the left was test marketing a variety of voter fraud techniques. In 2012, they will use them everywhere to try and steal the election."

We cannot allow the election to be stolen. We are fighting back. On February 4-5 a special event will be held to help fight back against voter fraud.

What is the event? Read about it on Tea Party Nation.


Tea Party Nation founder Judson Phillips announced earlier that "voter fraud" was going to be their main issue going into 2012 and it's looking like he's being true to his promise.


*I've been getting a lot of stuff about Holder and Obama being racists lately, having something to do with an African coup and the new black panthers. Who knew?

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Comments (61)
 
Trump Chumps

by digby

I have been trying to avoid the silly Trump mania, but when I see something like this I just have to groan:



Really? We're going to start comparing this blow-dried media whore to the president? "Which one handles the press better?" "Which one is more fun?"

It's not enough that they are validating this Birther crap by letting this clown dominate the airwaves for weeks on end. Now they're going to compare his relationship with the media to the president of the United States. A president who got "testy" by the way when he got asked ikf he was born in Kenya.

I agree that this is likely to blow back on the Republicans over time as this looney tune drives all the GOP presidential contenders further over the cliff. But in the meantime, they have mainstreamed this idiotic Birther nonsense to such a degree that it's now become a "smell test" issue for the sizeable minority of people who are unhappy with government and don't pay attention to the details. All they know is that it's a "controversy" and since there is one, you have to wonder why the president hasn't put it to rest. They'll never know that it's a pack of totally illogical lies.

We watched this unfold in the 90s when every batshit rumor emanating from an Arkansas bait shop was given an airing and it didn't matter over the long haul that they were all eventually proven wrong because the damage had already been done. It's toxic and the media should have to answer for when they inject this poison into the body politic.

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Comments (41)
 
Durbin's Big Assignment

by digby

There's a lot of chatter today about Dick Durbin's insistence (along with Mark Warner's) on injecting Social Security into the debt debate even though it contributes nothing to the debt. (Howie had a particularly pungent response .)

But here's the thing. Ever since Durbin voted for the Catfood Commision report last December, it's been clear that he was going to be the designated "liberal" to validate this position. Last February, the Wall Street Journal reported on an early deficit meeting among the Senate Dems, in which it was clear that Social security was going to be used as a political football:

Top Senate Democrats tried to scotch efforts by Majority Whip Richard Durbin to include Social Security in comprehensive deficit-reduction negotiations, illustrating the challenge facing the bipartisan talks.

The discussion occurred during a closed-door White House meeting this week among negotiators including Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and Sen. Charles Schumer of New York, a key lieutenant.

President Barack Obama attended, although his contribution to the conversation couldn't be learned. Previously, the administration has offered general support for bipartisan debt-reduction talks.

The confrontation, as well as a flare-up on the right over taxes, illustrates the difficulty of reaching a deal on deficit-control legislation, and how fear of upsetting the party line on particular policies could trump the issue of controlling the debt.
[...]
Democratic interest groups have been gearing up for a fight on Social Security, and Messrs. Schumer and Reid don’t want to get in the way. On Friday, Edward Coyle, executive director of the liberal Alliance for Retired Americans, accused House Republicans of threatening Social Security with the spending cuts they are pressing for the current fiscal year. But negotiators appear to be holding firm.

“If Sen. Schumer is serious about fighting to protect Social Security from harmful cuts, he can join the large group of Members already doing that,” said a Senate official involved in the bipartisan negotiations. “But if he’s trying to use Social Security as an excuse to do nothing to reduce the deficit, he’s going to be pretty lonely.”

A spokesman for Mr. Schumer, Brian Fallon, said the senator “believes it is vital to rein in the deficit, but Social Security is not the nub of the problem, and focusing on it distracts from any serious effort to bring the budget into balance.”

The White House meeting Wednesday took place before The Wall Street Journal published an article Thursday detailing the Senate negotiations. The substance of the talks somewhat eased the concern of the Democratic leaders about Social Security, and gave Sen. Durbin some room to press forward, though without any commitment of support.

Aides familiar with the talks say Democratic leaders are willing to let them play out. A framework for deficit-cutting legislation could be circulated to a broader group of senators when they return early next month after a Presidents Day recess.

According to aides familiar with the bipartisan talks, Social Security is being treated gingerly. Under one proposal, lawmakers would be given two years to draft an overhaul to put the system on sounder financial footing. If that effort fails, Congress would be required to vote on the presidential debt commission’s Social Security plan, which would raise the amount of income subject to Social Security taxes, gradually raise the retirement age and slow the annual growth of benefits.
Obviously, I don't know the status of these various proposals today, but it's clear that one way or the other Social Security is going to be used as a bargaining chip in the coming negotiations. Durbin's job is to keep it on the table. And he is widely seen to be Obama's proxy in the Senate, so I imagine most people believe this has the president's blessing. (The fact that other proxies say the same thing, is also a clue.)

I'm increasingly wondering if the intention here is to keep Social Security on the table for the express purpose of allowing Obama to save it. (The fact that Ryan's plan didn't include it makes that possible.) Let's hope so anyway. Messing with it in this environment is bad on the merits and bad on the politics. But either way, it will keep the activist base scrambling for months spending huge amounts of energy to ensure that it doesn't get cut (which will have the salutary effect of keeping us from organizing on anything else.) And in the end, if the president saves it, we will be genuinely grateful and relieved. Sounds like a plan.

The only problem is that these negotiations tend to take on a life of their own and you never know exactly how they're going to come out. Moreover, it raises another question: what would the Republicans get in return?

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Debt Ceiling: The Musical

by digby

OMG! The sky is falling! At least according to Contessa Brewer and Melissa Francis on MSNBC, S&P issuing a warning that it might lower its outlook yesterday is the single greatest blow to American security since 9/11. Or something. Whatever it was, it was very, very, very important.

Except, you know, it wasn't. It was bullshit. The S&P has, at best, what you might call a spotty record when it comes to forecasting, seeing as it missed that little mortgage blip completely -- something which they are actually counted upon to do. But more importantly, as James Fallows points out here, they are making a political forecast, not an economic one and it's one that nobody needs S&P to make, so this "warning" is essentially meaningless. If the markets are so dumb that they need someone to point out that there's a big argument going on about the debt then I think we have much bigger problems.

Moreover, dday may be the only person in the nation who noticed this:

Moody’s threatened a credit downgrade in March 2010. It just so happened the political world was busy at that time waiting to see if Congress would pass the health care bill. Moody’s actually continued to make these threats for the better part of a year. So chalk up the interest in S&P to a) a slow news day, and b) a newfound concern with deficits in Washington. After all, the President just made a speech about it!

Judging by the media reaction, that's exactly the case. They are in the midst of a swoon I haven't seen since Lehman went under. Unfortunately, that was real and this isn't.

Dday also asks why S&P bothered with such an obvious observation and points to this article by Dean Baker, who wonders if S&P might just be angling for a payoff, something that shouldn't surprise anyone considering the behavior of all the big financial players over the last few years.

That certainly might be true. But I'm actually leaning more to the idea that the main reason is political rather than financial. I suspect they are playing their designated role in this spring's runaway hit, "Debt Ceiling: the Musical" a madcap Village romp in which everyone pretends they believe things they don't believe resulting in much confusion and wacky misunderstandings until the end where it turns out they were after the same things all along: huge spending cuts.

There are some tells:

The Obama administration is trying to enlist Wall Street executives in the debate over increasing the debt ceiling and convince congressional Republicans that a US default would be catastrophic for markets.
Tim Geithner, US Treasury secretary, has been leading the campaign for the White House, urging executives such as Vikram Pandit of Citigroup, Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan and Brian Moynihan of Bank of America, as well as top insurance industry executives, to point out the dangers of “walking up to the brink” on debt, according to an administration official.

Now it's possible that S&P was just doing its own thing and that it's completely unaffiliated with Wall Street's little performance on behalf of the Treasury, but let's just say it's a very big coincidence.

Unfortunately, for those of us who fear this debt ceiling "debate" is going to result in yet more draconian cuts, the White House and GOP response to S&Ps announcement is not reassuring. The Republicans came charging out of the gate demanding more spending cuts and tying them directly to the debt ceiling. The White House, by contrast, issued a very tepid response saying they are sure that the two sides will be able to work together to solve the debt crisis. I don't think you need to be Machiavelli to where this is going. Neither do you have to be a mind-reader to suspect that this is all playing out for a common purpose.


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Eric Foner's The Fiery Trial

by tristero

Eric Foner, author of The Fiery Trial, won the Pulitzer yesterday, something so incredibly well-deserved it would have been a crime against the genre of non-fiction if it hadn’t happened. The Fiery Trial transformed my ideas about what was important about that war. I can’t recommend it more highly for anyone even remotely interested either in the period or for insight into some of the main reasons this country is moving in such ominous directions today - and what to do about it.

The Fiery Trial is a “biography” of Lincoln’s changing views on slavery, on what Lincoln believed, how he and other Americans acted, and on how the momentous events of the Civil War caused both Lincoln and the Union to become ever more focused and committed to the most radical of radical ideas of the time: not only the freeing of all black men, women, and children “held to labor” but also the conferring upon them of equal rights as citizens of the United States, including the right to vote (for men; unfortunately, women’s suffrage would have to wait for the future). In part, Foner’s book seems to be a response to various revisionist historians of Lincoln and the period, for example Lerone Bennett’s Forced Into Glory which argued that Lincoln was in fact little different either in attitude or actions than other racists of that time (and now). Foner does not directly answer Bennett’s charge that Lincoln was a white supremacist; instead, he tells us, in meticulously fascinating detail, what Lincoln wrote, what he said, and what he did. Foner also describes, in equally absorbing detail, the (usually deplorable) racial attitudes of the United States in the first half of the 19th Century. It becomes quite clear that Lincoln’s fairly mainstream views changed in many ways, both significant and subtle, during the years before he became president and then changed dramatically as his presidency unfolded. Foner’s object is not to exonerate Lincoln of the charge of racism and indeed, the Lincoln that emerges from his book is sometimes dismayingly, inexcusably, on the wrong side of the issue, both rhetorically and politically. Indeed, the character of Foner’s Lincoln is exceedingly complex, much darker and far less consistent than the hagiographies. This Lincoln sometimes becomes deeply irritated, even angry when abolitionists bother him with what he considers trivial issues - such as what to do about the education of young freed slaves. And, of course, there is his twin obsessions with “gradual emancipation” - an oxymoron if ever there was one - and "colonization," which five minutes of serious thought would easily make clear to anyone that it could never happen, or at least not without a bloodbath that would make an “ethnic cleansing” seem downright antiseptic by comparison.

Foner’s emphasis is on Lincoln’s capacity to change, not only by focusing his mind more carefully on the legal and political issues of the time - and the Lincoln that we encounter in these pages is a true master of both - but also on a personal analysis of what his moral positions imply in terms of political action. Whether Foner intended it or not, I sensed that his Lincoln moved from being an essentially political man, who identified slavery as a major issue upon which he could build a career, to a moral leader who believed that he had a central role - but not a supreme role, in the sense of a dictator - to play in the task of freeing America’s enslaved blacks. The “gradual emancipation” Lincoln urged on the country was in fact his own, a gradual freeing of himself to act in increasing accord with the most “radical” abolitionists, but to do so always with extreme care. If this view of Lincoln is accurate, and for whatever little it’s worth, I think it is, it is still quite possible to brand Lincoln as a white supremacist, or a reactionary, or a ditherer, or many other things. The question is whether those charges are useful in understanding the unbelievably complex situation a man of Lincoln’s milieu faced back then, the options he considered practical, and the character of "the “animal himself” who Foner at the end of the book contrasts with his odious, thoroughly racist successor, Andrew Johnson.

The standard response to Bennett’s charge that Lincoln was a racist who reluctantly was forced into abolitionism - which Bennett asserts was the only moral position to take towards the evil of slavery - goes something like this: “That all may be true, but no abolitionist would have been elected in 1860. Lincoln, whatever his faults, did far more than any abolitionist could dream of doing, simply because his views, as disgraceful and wrong as they seem to us now, made him electable.”

Foner, carefully, and rather quietly, dismantles this argument. It is clear, after reading Foner’s book, that when he was elected, Lincoln was nothing remotely close to a stealth abolitionist. He was a career politician who, while surely sincere in his hatred of slavery, was not interested in abolishing it. He was focused primarily on two things: preserving the Union which meant, among other things, not extending slavery to the territories; and a career in politics in the upper echelons of the newly formed Republican party. In fact, Foner argues, the slaves, via their actions to free themselves; the military commanders who, under tremendous pressure, often hastily freed the slaves they encountered; and the abolitionists in their daily politicking in Washington and in the Northern press, created a cultural/political climate that all but forced Lincoln to probe far more carefully into the consequences of his somewhat jerry-rigged, contradictory, and essentially conventional moral opposition to slavery. It is to Lincoln’s credit that he proceeded to clarify, refine, and alter his ideas. Also, Lincoln was forced to consider equally carefully what he could and couldn’t do both within the political climate and, ultimately, within the United States’s legal framework. What emerges is a dynamic and surprisingly unpredictable picture of Lincoln acting within and on events, sometimes incredibly badly, often amazingly well. It makes for a very exciting read.

It would be a mistake to ignore Foner’s clear intent here, ie, his recasting of the relationship between a radical movement and a moderate/conservative president. Without saying so directly his obvious point is that if today’s “radicals” - who, like the radicals of the 1850’s, are not radical at all but merely sensible liberals - wish to transform the country and increase rather than restrict the growth of freedom, the potential is there. But it will require ceaseless agitation of our most “radical” positions - single payer, for example, which of course is hardly radical - in order to move the discourse in the direction we want. There is little to be gained in the current situation from the kinds of compromises we’ve recently seen because, as in Lincoln’s time, the crucial actions that move the country towards progressive goals lies at least as much in the activity of those who steer the political discourse as in the president. (It is eerie, by the way, to meet in Lincoln’s time many of the same arguments and same smears that are being deployed today - against Massachusetts, for example.)

This is certainly not a new notion, but to see it so clearly being played out within the context of Lincoln and the Civil War is one of the great pleasure of this remarkable, essential, instant classic of American history. I’m no expert as I’ve only read some 15 or 20 books on Lincoln and the Civil War in my life. But I can safely say that there few books out there that I’ve encountered on any subject that are so rich in detail and yet remain so thrilling, so pleasurable, and finally so profoundly transformative of the meanings of events I thought I understood fairly well but now realize hold far more potential for study and focused action than I thought.

I can’t urge you strongly enough to read The Fiery Trial.

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