Hullabaloo

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

 
Welcome To His Nightmare

by digby

I get that the administration may not feel that it can anger the intelligence community or the military by pursuing wrongdoing in the GWOT years under Bush. Ok, they don't want those headaches and fear that all the patriotic spooks and soldiers will refuse to do their jobs and allow Americans to be killed if there's even the slightest chance they could be held accountable for illegal acts. Right. Fine.

But I really wish someone could explain this ongoing Kafkaesque nightmare to me:

When the Obama Administration argued in a filing earlier this month that the Supreme Court should not consider an appeal by Don Siegelman, the former Alabama governor wasn't surprised, even though the Obama filing maintained the Bush-era stance in Siegelman's controversial corruption case.

"There's really been no substantial change in the heart of the Department of Justice from the Bush-Rove Department of Justice," Siegelman tells TPMmuckraker in an interview.

Siegelman, a Democrat, served roughly nine months in prison after his 2006 bribery conviction. He was ordered released pending appeal in March 2008. The case, which has been dogged by allegations of politicization and prosecutorial misconduct -- including links to Karl Rove -- centers on what the government called a pay-to-play scheme in which Siegelman appointed a large donor to a state regulatory board.

Siegelman has asked the Supreme Court to consider the definition of bribery, arguing that he merely engaged in routine political transactions. But, in the Nov. 13 filing that raised Siegelman's hackles, Obama's solicitor general argued that "corrupt intent" had been established in the trial.

While Solicitor General Elena Kagan was appointed by Obama, Siegelman says the DOJ staffers who are giving advice and making decisions on his case are the same people who were at the department under Bush. "The people who have been writing the briefs for the government are the same people who were involved in the prosecution," he says.

The filing by the DOJ is a sign that the Obama Administration intends to stay the course in the case, despite entreaties to review it, including a letter from 75 former state attorneys general.

What am I missing here? I realize that this is the most egregious case of DOJ political involvement during the Bush years and the one that most closely involves Rove since Alabama was his personal stomping ground. But is the Obama Justice department really not even having disinterested parties reviewing this case? Are they so afraid of being "partisan" that they are actually taking Rove's side in a monumental miscarriage of justice? If that's true, it's absolutely appalling.

This was a partisan prosecution designed purely to destroy a political opponent and install a member of the president's party into office. It was allegedly engineered from the White House. There is nothing that could be more corrupting to democracy than something like that. Presidents have been asked to resign for similar things. To let that go is a grave, grave mistake.


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digby 11/25/2009 07:00:00 PM |

 
White House Punk

by digby

Among all the stories I've read today about White House state dinners, this has to be the one I enjoyed the most. Howie Klein:

My secretary buzzes me to say the White House is on the phone. "Is that that damn Daisy doing an imitation of President Clinton," I asked. "No, no," she said, "it's the office of the White Houses social director." Skeptical, I picked it up. I was listening to an advance CD of the next Chris Isaak album, Speak of the Devil and was totally engrossed in "Don't Get So Down On Yourself" at that moment. The voice at the other end of the phone told me President Clinton had asked her to call me and request my assistance in arranging for Lou Rawls to come to the White House. Lou Rawls? I have nothing to do with Lou Rawls. But the President said I did so there was no getting around it. "You sure he doesn't want to meet Joni Mitchell again," I asked. No, Lou Rawls. I checked the old rosters and asked the old timers but Lou Rawls had never been on the Reprise label or the Warner Bros label. I called the White House back but they weren't buying it. Apparently, if a president says so, it's so. "Wait," detective Klein asks; "what's this all about?" The president wanted Lou Rawls to perform at a state dinner and he said I was the man who can arrange it. "Hmmm... who's being honored with a state dinner?" It was a secret. "Give me a hint." It turned out she let slip that it was Vaclav Havel, the President of the Czech Republic. I guess there would be no way to get Bedich Smetana but as soon as he mentioned Havel, I understood exactly what President Clinton wanted-- and delivered. Havel and Lou Reed, a Reprise artist and a friend of mine, had such a powerful bond that Havel actually credited him with being part of the inspiration for the Velvet Revolution that freed Czechoslovakia from Soviet domination.

So a month or so later I was on the reception line cracking up President Clinton with an off-color joke and then sitting in the East Room next to Dick Lugar who was dancing in his seat to a red hot performance of Dirty Blvd.

You must read on ...

I thought the dinner last night looked as if it must have been very nice. I was particularly impressed that they served a mostly vegetarian dinner for a vegetarian foreign dignitary and that they used some of the produce from the White House garden. Freepers and teabaggers see that as another example of Obama showing the world that the US is no longer a manly, macho, bloody meat eating empire, thus proving that the terrorists have won. (And then he pardoned that turkey too, the wimp!) I think it shows good manners and sets a fine example.

To hell with the critics.

And along those lines, here's a neat idea from here in the People's Republic of Santa Monica for people who like to eat from their own gardens but live in apartments. And if you can't do that, there's this, the wonderful Santa Monica Farmer's Market, where I bought all manner of delicious, sustainable, Turkey Day fixins. Lucky me.



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digby 11/25/2009 05:00:00 PM |

 
The Producers

by digby


In case anyone is not clear on what right wing populism really is and how it's manifested itself over the years, read this great piece by Dave Niewert. Here's an excerpt which homes in on what right wing populism really is:

A giveaway moment came during Sean Hannity's April 15 evening "Tea Party" broadcast from Atlanta, when he brought in a live feed from the Rick and Bubba Tea Tantrum in Alabama:

Hannity: And I'm going to tell you one other thing: When did we ever get to a point in America where, we're nearly at the point where fifty percent of Americans don't pay anything in taxes! Nothing!

[Crowd boos]

Rick: The numbers out are just astounding that, that, how much that the very top taxpayers actually pay. I feel like these taxpayers are disenfranchised. I want them to have a share of the burden just like they have a share of the vote.

That's right -- it's the wealthy top percentage of the country that needs a tax break. After all, they are the one Obama's targeting, right? So at least they're being upfront about just who "the taxpayers" are whose interests they're out marching to defend.

You could find similar sentiments on the right only the month before, in mid-March, when it was revealed that executives at the insurance giant AIG – which had just been the recipient of a massive government bailout – continued to pay themselves multimillion-dollar bonuses with bailout money. This spurred a loud round of protest, mostly from liberals and labor groups angry about the abuse of taxpayer dollars.

But Rush Limbaugh defended the bonuses, telling his radio audience: "A lynch mob is expanding: the peasants with their pitchforks surrounding the corporate headquarters of AIG, demanding heads. Death threats are pouring in. All of this being ginned up by the Obama administration." Glenn Beck had a similar rant on his Fox show: “What I really, really don’t like here is the idea that we are willing to give in to mob rule. And that’s what this is: The mob in Washington getting everybody all – I mean, the only thing they haven’t said is, ‘Bring out the monster!’ It’s mob rule! They are attempting to void legally binding contracts.”

This kind of obeisance to the captains of industry and their utrammeled right to make profits at the expense of everyone else is a phenomenon known as Producerism, which is a hallmark of right-wing populism. It's accurately defined in Wikipedia as:

a syncretic ideology of populist economic nationalism which holds that the productive forces of society - the ordinary worker, the small businessman, and the entrepreneur, are being held back by parasitical elements at both the top and bottom of the social structure.

... Producerism sees society's strength being "drained from both ends"--from the top by the machinations of globalized financial capital and the large, politically connected corporations which together conspire to restrict free enterprise, avoid taxes and destroy the fortunes of the honest businessman, and from the bottom by members of the underclass and illegal immigrants whose reliance on welfare and government benefits drains the strength of the nation. Consequently, nativist rhetoric is central to modern Producerism (Kazin, Berlet & Lyons). Illegal immigrants are viewed as a threat to the prosperity of the middle class, a drain on social services, and as a vanguard of globalization that threatens to destroy national identities and sovereignty. Some advocates of producerism go further, taking a similar position on legal immigration.

In the United States, Producerists are distrustful of both major political parties. The Republican Party is rejected for its support of corrupt Big Business and the Democratic Party for its advocacy of the unproductive lazy waiting for their entitlement handouts (Kazin, Stock, Berlet & Lyons).

I think they tend to make their judgments about the upper and lower classes based as much on tribalism as anything else. (Recall that the populist hero Ross Perot was a billionaire who made his fortune from government contracts -- but he sounded like a good old boy.) These things never play themselves out exactly the same ways but the fundamental appeals remain the same. The upper levels of society usually find a way to pull the strings and control these people, but the more vulnerable often suffer quite a bit at their hands.

Neiwert's piece is a very important primer for those of us who are trying to understand where this Palin-Beck teabag phenomenon comes from and how it relates to other right wing philosophies like Randism and militarism. At the end of the day it all translates into ugly know-nothingism that lashes out at everyone but the adherents themselves, who see themselves as the defenders of the Real America.

I get the impulse and I feel the same frustrations. But their solutions are always worse than the problems they seek to solve.


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digby 11/25/2009 03:00:00 PM |

 
Bad Bargain

by digby

In case you were wondering if the Pete Peterson Foundation was happy about the Obama administration coming around to the idea that deficit reduction is more important than anything in the whole wide world in all circumstances, here's their giddy press release:

“We are pleased to read in today’s Wall Street Journal that the Obama Administration is giving serious consideration to establishing a special commission to addressing our nation's large and growing structural deficits and debt burdens. Employing such an extraordinary approach that engages the American people with the truth and the tough choices and will make a range of social insurance, other spending and tax-related recommendations for action by the Congress is essential.

“Based on recent public opinion polls commissioned by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, an overwhelming majority of the American people support the need for a special commission. Our foundation will release the results of our latest public opinion survey on Monday, November 30.

“America’s debt and deficit crises deepen with each passing day. A properly structured bipartisan commission would engage the American people about the true financial condition of our country and the need for a range of comprehensive reforms. This commission can lay the groundwork for the ‘grand bargain’ President Obama has said he wants to achieve during his presidency.

Do you think that the administration believes that just because Obama sets up a bipartisan commission to gut badly needed social programs that they won't be blamed?
That Republicans will stand shoulder to shoulder with the president and accept responsibility for cutting spending and taxes in a time of economic insecurity the likes of which people haven't seen in over half a century? Sure they will.

In case anybody has failed to grasp that this is a political project, they really need to read up on good old Pete and his "bipartisan" pals. (There's much more here on Peterson and co.)

People got very angry with me for being critical of Obama's rhetoric about a "Grand Bargain" before the inauguration. But I was chilled to the bone when I heard that people in the new White House were entertaining some notions of Obama doing an "only Nixon could go to China" play with so-called entitlement spending in the midst of a financial crisis. I can't conceive of anything more politically unwise and less likely to result in any kind of positive policy outcome at this moment.

Democrats have done this before. Clinton left an unprecedented surplus which was designed to pay for social security and it was promptly squandered by Bush on unnecessary tax cuts for Pete Peterson and his rich friends. You will not recall any outcry about that from the deficit scolds because there weren't any. Indeed, Alan Greenspan told everyone that these surpluses were bad for the economy and needed to be rebated to wealthy people as soon as possible lest calamity reign.

The lesson is clear. Democrats don't get rewarded for "righteous" bipartisan gestures. They get impeached. And to dream that the American people will somehow reward the president for putting in place mechanisms for lowering the deficit is delusional. People don't even know what the deficit is, they just think it's a symbol of bad governance. Putting us on the road to "entitlement" destruction won't change their opinion if they still see signs of .... bad governance. It has no real meaning to real people. Personally hurting financially and believing that their futures are in jeopardy does have real meaning --- and the Republicans will make sure they know who to blame for it.


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digby 11/25/2009 01:00:00 PM |

 
Thanksgiving For Mankind

by digby


Since today is the 150th anniversary of the publication of one of the most important books in human history it would be appropriate to listen to some excerpts of Richard Einhorn's oratorio "The Origin", on the life and work of Charles Darwin.

A Great Tree (excerpt) from Bill Morrison on Vimeo.

Includes SUNY Oswego Festival and Community choruses, Eastern European vocal ensemble KITKA, Jacqueline Horner, soprano, and Eric Johnson, bass. Supported by grants from the New York State Music Fund, National Endowment for the Arts and Energy. Recorded by WCNY.


For those of you who may not know, Richard Einhorn is none other than my fellow blogger tristero. Seems he dabbles on the side as a world class composer.



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digby 11/25/2009 11:00:00 AM |

 
Being A Jerk Isn't Illegal

by digby

Here's a heartening little story for the day before Thanksgiving:

The City of Pittsburgh has agreed to pay $50,000 to a man who sued after being issued a disorderly conduct citation for gesturing offensively at a police officer.

The settlement, in which the city also agreed to retrain its officers in the limits of disorderly conduct law, was reached with Dave Hackbart, 35, after research undertaken by his lawyers found that police citations for swearing or offensive gestures were common here.

From March 2005 to July 2009, the research found, Pittsburgh officers cited 198 people for disorderly conduct on the basis of that sort of behavior, even though the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has consistently found such citations unlawful on free speech grounds.

“Hopefully we’ll send a message to other police officers across the state, where this is a consistent problem, that this is not legal,” said Sara J. Rose, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, which helped represent Mr. Hackbart in a federal civil rights lawsuit against the city.

Now, it is very, very unwise to insult the police. You are looking for trouble and they may very well be motivated to find some for you. But the insult itself is not illegal in this country --- citizens of a free country are not required by law to automatically treat government officials with deference and respect --- and the culture that says they are is an authoritarian one.

It's very telling that these officers have to be repeatedly trained to understand this. They have tough jobs, and are given all sorts of special privileges and powers because of it. But they should not be under the illusion that their powers and privileges extend to requiring that citizens treat them politely.

Evidently, many of them are, however:

Gay attorney Pepin Tuma was pushed, called a "faggot," and arrested in Washington, D.C., Sunday because he made fun of the police.

Tuma was with two friends, also attorneys, discussing the recent arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. when he said aloud "I hate the police."

A police officer then charged "40 to 50 feet" toward the men and pushed him against a transformer box, Tuma told the Washington Blade . "As Officer [J.] Culp moved me toward a police cruiser, he told me to just 'shut up, faggot,'" he said.

One witness, D.C. attorney Luke Platzer, was reportedly asked by an officer to give a statement that Tuma was resisting arrest in a disorderly way. He refused, saying he saw no physical resistance by Tuma.

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It's also this mentality that leads to so many of these unnecessary tasing incidents --- the police feel insulted or get impatient with someone who is arguing with them and shoot them full of electricity to make it stop. They don't seem to understand that the power of the law does not extend to protecting their sensibilities and ego.

It's a terribly difficult job, I get that, and often they have nothing but bad choices in volatile situations. But police officers have a lot of discretionary power and having a deep and fundamental understanding of their role in a free society is absolutely necessary in order for them to use it wisely. After the vast expansion of the police state in the last decade, there are an awful lot more prisons and police agencies in this country, many of them with overlapping jurisdictions and incentives (and permission) to get tough. It's more important than ever to make this stuff very clear.


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digby 11/25/2009 09:30:00 AM |

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

 
QOTD

by digby

Kevin Drum:

I remain pessimistic on the ability of Congress to rein in the financial community in any serious way. They just don't have the power.

At least in anything other than a purely theoretical sense.


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digby 11/24/2009 09:30:00 PM |

 
Projection Project

by digby


Rush shared his philosophy of life with his listeners today in words that were simple and true:

If you live in the universe of lies, the last thing that you are governed by is the truth. The last thing you are governed by is reality. The only thing that matters to you is the advancement of your political agenda. And you tell yourself in the universe of lies that your agenda is so important the world will not survive without it and therefore you can lie, cheat, steal, destroy whoever you have to to get your agenda done because your opponents are evil, and in fighting evil, anything goes. There are no rules when you're in a fight with the devil.

He pretended that this was a description of liberalism, but that's silly of course. His conviction and passion on the subject shine through with every word. He sounds exactly like the true believer he is.

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digby 11/24/2009 07:30:00 PM |

 
Which Public Option?

by digby

Here's an interesting analysis of where the public stands on the public option per the recent Quinnipiac poll from November 9-16. John Sides looked drilled down into the data to see how people felt about the various permutations that are being floated by the Senate:

The graph shows that supporters of the public option are relatively evenly divided between supporting a pure public option and supporting a public option with either a trigger or opt-out provision. Opponents of the public option are evenly divided about the opt-out, but tend to oppose the trigger.

Thus, about one-third of the sample supports the “pure” public option. A slightly smaller group, roughly 30%, supports a “qualified” public option that features either an opt-out provision or a trigger. About 20% of the public oppose the option, but would support it with an opt-out provision. Thirteen percent oppose it but would support it with a trigger. Finally, there is a “diehard” group of public option opponents, who are about 20-25% of the population.

There is grist for both supporters and opponents of the public option in these findings. Supporters could take heart that about 75-80% of the sample supports some sort of public option — at least given how these various proposals are described by Quinnipiac. Opponents could take heart that only about a third of respondents supports the pure public option.

It's almost impossible to see why the Senate wouldn't want to at least pass the public option with the opt-out with those numbers. Maybe they truly are afraid of teabag hysteria, but it seems way overblown to me. The 25% of hard core public option haters are hard core health reform haters. it's pointless to worry about them.

Of course, these results probably don't reflect the views of insurance company CEOs which is a far more important constituency than mere voters. If you weigh the numbers the way the Four Corporatists of the Apocalypse do, it's 95% against any kind of public option.

Sides notes that the hypothetical "median voter" and the hypothetical "median Senator" both support the public option. It seems worth noting in that case, that not one Republican Senator can be described as "median." I think that says something don't you?


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digby 11/24/2009 06:00:00 PM |

 
Usury For Dummies

by digby

Frontline tonight should be good:

As credit card companies face rising public anger, new regulation from Washington and a potential perfect storm of economic bad news, FRONTLINE correspondent Lowell Bergman examines the future of the massive consumer loan industry and its impact on a fragile national economy. In a joint project with The New York Times, Bergman and the Times talk to industry insiders, lobbyists, politicians and consumer advocates as they square off over new regulation and the possible creation of a consumer finance protection agency. How are the credit, debit and pre-paid card industries repositioning themselves to maintain high profits under the new rules? The stakes couldn't be higher as many fear the consumer loan industry could be at the center of the next crisis.

I continue to believe this is a huge problem and a huge opportunity for Democrats to place themselves as the voice of populist reform. While the teabaggers screech hysterically about FEMA Camps and "hundred year plans," the progressives could actually be doing something tangible and important for actual humans.

"I think this new Pew report says it all." --Lowell Bergman, correspondent for the FRONTLINE/New York Times joint report The Card Game, airing November 24th.

One hundred percent of credit cards offered online by the leading bank card issuers continue to include practices that will be outlawed once legislation passed in May takes effect next year, according to a new report by the Pew Health Group's Safe Credit Cards Project. The report also found that advertised credit card interest rates rose an average of 20 percent in the first two quarters of 2009, even as banks' cost of lending declined. With the Federal Reserve currently developing rules to ensure penalty charges are "reasonable and proportional" as required under the Credit CARD Act, the report also includes policy recommendations for regulators.

Key findings of the report show that:

-- 99.7 percent of bank cards allowed issuers to increase interest rates on outstanding balances -- a jump from 93 percent in December;

-- 95 percent of bank cards permitted issuers to apply payments in a way the Federal Reserve found likely to cause substantial financial injury to consumers; and

-- 90 percent of bank cards had penalty rate hikes with the vast majority imposed by "hair triggers" of one or two late payments in a year

It's a scandal that people are talking about everywhere but on television and in the papers.


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digby 11/24/2009 04:30:00 PM |

 
Truth And Consequences

by digby

This must-read report in the New England Journal Of Medicine lays out the facts about the cost to society in lost lives, productivity and money for failing to assure that everyone is covered by health insurance. And the costs of treating them late in preventable emergency situations is far, far higher than it would otherwise be. This should be obvious, but it's not.

The conservatives frame this problem in contradictory terms, arguing both that people ARE covered and that it will cost us too much to cover them. They further insist that people shouldn't be allowed to free ride on the system, that there should be no mandate to buy insurance and that any government administered health system is an infringement of their freedom. But these various ideas are just a smokescreen.

It's quite obvious that what they truly believe is that people who don't have insurance should not be allowed to get health care and that if they get sick they should be allowed to die unless they can find some charity or raise the money. There's no other way to reconcile their beliefs.

If conservatives believe this, they should say so instead of framing the issues in terms of whether or not we're going to "young and dynamic" vs "middle aged and secure" as David Brooks deceptively does in his column this morning. If you think that people who don't have health insurance (or the means to pay cash) should be barred from getting medical treatment, then you should be willing to make that argument up front. I would guess that there are more than few people in this country who believe just that. People who have insurance.


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digby 11/24/2009 03:00:00 PM |

 
Abort, abort

by digby

Uh Oh. They're on to our cunning plan.

Damn. How long will it take to activate our next sleeper?


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digby 11/24/2009 01:30:00 PM |

 
Effective Subversion

by digby

James Fallows at the Atlantic wrote a series on the president's trip to Asia that is well worth reading, especially if you would like a little more insight than "OMG! He Bowed, he Bowed!"

I don't know if the following is correct, but I'd really like to believe it is:

Here is how it looked to a foreigner who has just written me -- a person who has lived in China for two decades, still does business there, and speaks Mandarin:

"I've been monitoring the China internet in the wake of the town hall and, based on my observations of these things over the years I'm very much leaning toward the White House insider's view -- that the reach was vast and deep, in the many millions or tens of millions, though not necessarily entirely positive. But the comment from President Obama that I think will have the most impact inside the firewall was not the one about US principles that you quoted in your followups. It was this one:

'Now, I should tell you, I should be honest, as President of the United States, there are times where I wish information didn't flow so freely because then I wouldn't have to listen to people criticizing me all the time. I think people naturally are -- when they're in positions of power sometimes thinks, oh, how could that person say that about me, or that's irresponsible, or -- but the truth is that because in the United States information is free, and I have a lot of critics in the United States who can say all kinds of things about me, I actually think that that makes our democracy stronger and it makes me a better leader because it forces me to hear opinions that I don't want to hear. It forces me to examine what I'm doing on a day-to-day basis to see, am I really doing the very best that I could be doing for the people of the United States.'

Wow! As a resident of China for two decades and a Mandarin-speaking China-watcher for three decades, I can say without any doubt that those words will resonate far more deeply -- and potentially more "subversively" or "destabilizingly" -- than any overt thumb-in-the-eye hectoring that any foreigner or foreign leader might muster, in public or private. Those words are ***precisely*** the kind that Zhongnanhai [Chinese term equivalent to "the Kremlin"] fears the most, and rightly so."

It's very hard to know what to make of trips like this, but if Obama could make that point in a way that resonates then good for him.


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digby 11/24/2009 12:00:00 PM |

 
Job One

by digby

John Maynard Keynes can stop rolling over in his grave for a couple of minutes:

On a conference call today with economists who blog and folks who blog on the economy, Speaker Pelosi sought to bridge the gap between progressive proponents of public investment to create jobs, and right-leaning Democrats touting austerity for immediate deficit reduction, by saying: "We will never have deficit reduction without job creation."

The Speaker statement is grounded on the notion that without a growing economy that creates jobs and expands the nation's tax base, the deficit cannot be tamed over the long-term.

Yes indeed.

Now if someone could take the time to explain that deficits aren't causing unemployment and recession, that would be very helpful. Unfortunately, the owners of America have spent a lot of money persuading people that their problems are all caused by government spending and taxing rich people and in order to get the economy moving again the government needs to pull in its belt and cut taxes. It's going to take a lot to deprogram them.


Update: More on the conference call.


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digby 11/24/2009 10:30:00 AM |

 
Hire The Hitman

by digby


Evidently Michael Steele has been miffed that he didn't get enough credit for the GOPs sweeping takeover of American politics in the November elections (well, except for the congressional seats which all went to Democrats)so he forced out the RNC spokesman for some reason. But the spokesman has been replaced by a heavyweight:

The Republican National Committee has hired Alex Castellanos, a long-time political strategist and GOP consultant, as an adviser.

Castellanos has been described (according to his National Media biography) as the "father of the attack ad." He's best known for a racially-charged ad he made in 1990 for racist former Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.). The ad, called "Hands," featured a pair of white hands crumbling a job-rejection while the narrator said, "You needed that job. You were the best qualified. But they had to give it to a minority, because of a racial quota. Is that really fair?" More recently, Castellanos has taken the lead in crafting an anti-health care reform message for congressional Republicans.

But that doesn't really do him justice. He's had so more "successes." I'm sure you'll recall this one:

During the heated 2000 U.S. presidential campaign season, Castellanos produced an ad for the Republican National Committee attempting to discredit the prescription drug plan policy offered by U.S. Democratic Party presidential nominee and then-Vice President Al Gore.[4] Alongside images of Gore, the ad showed the word "RATS" for a split second, before the complete word "bureaucrats" appeared on-screen.

And after he became a talking head, he showed his inherent class and dignity with this:

CNN senior legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin noted on the May 20 edition of CNN's The Situation Room that "[t]here was a column in The New York Times not too long ago where it talked about some of the humor in the campaign, and the punch line was a line that was -- that Hillary Clinton was a 'white bitch.' " Moments later ... CNN political contributor Alex Castellanos interrupted, asserting, "And some women, by the way, are named that and it's accurate

He's the right guy to advise the new GOP on message. He is in perfect sync with the reactionary, bigoted, macho neanderthals that make up the rump Republicans. Excellent choice.

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digby 11/24/2009 09:00:00 AM |

Monday, November 23, 2009

 
Wow

by digby

hoookay.

Neiwert has more.
digby 11/23/2009 08:30:00 PM |

 
Yellow Peril

by digby

Chris Hayes went to China:

As Barack Obama touched down in China, the American press seemed to settle on a single story line. The president, wrote the New York Times, will be "assuming the role of profligate spender coming to pay his respects to his banker." And the Wall Street Journal highlighted "China's Blunt Talk for Obama," about US economic policy and the "nervousness" expressed by Chinese leaders that "huge U.S. budget deficits will weaken the dollar and slash the value of China's massive foreign-currency holdings."

The karmic symmetry of this state of affairs makes for an appealing fable. The once mighty United States, which for decades used the IMF to impose its will on the domestic policies of developing countries across the globe, is brought low by its profligacy and forced to beg sufferance from the miserly Chinese.

But just a few days here in Shanghai (on a trip sponsored by the China-United States Exchange Association) has convinced me it's bullshit and the Chinese know it.

"There's an old Chinese saying," Yang Jiemian, president of the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies, told me. "If you borrow a hundred dollars, you are borrower; if you borrow a million dollars, you are not borrower." There's an English version of this, which is a bit zippier--"When you owe $100,000, the bank owns you. When you owe $100 million, you own the bank"--and it aptly describes the US relationship with China, which holds approximately 70 percent of its 2.3 trillion foreign reserves in dollars.

He goes on to explain just how co-dependent the two countries are and very astutely answers the biggest question out there. Why in the hell is this country ginning up the yellow peril again?

The answer to that, I think, is politics. It's increasingly clear that China has replaced the bond market as the nebulous specter that fiscal hawks will use to justify domestic austerity. In the 1990s Bill Clinton was persuaded by Robert Rubin and others that the deficits he inherited required him to abandon any extension of the welfare state, lest interest rates go through the roof and the economy into the tank. He was urged to balance the budget, which he did, prompting James Carville to quip: "I used to think if there was reincarnation, I wanted to come back as the president or the pope or a .400 baseball hitter. But now I want to come back as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody."

Of course, we still have a bond market, but the fiscal hawks don't talk much about it these days. That's because despite all the borrowing, interest rates remain low. So instead, fiscal hawks have attempted to outsource their browbeating to the Chinese, often referred to as our "biggest creditor," even though China holds only 22 percent of foreign-held US Treasury securities. (The majority is held domestically.) In June Illinois Republican Mark Kirk bragged during a talk at the Center for Strategic and International Studies that on a recent trip to China he'd told Chinese officials that "the budget numbers that the US government had put forward should not be believed. The Congress is actually gonna spend quite a bit more than what's in the budget, and the healthcare bill probably being the lead driver of additional spending by the Congress." This bizarre bit of self-sabotage makes sense only if you recognize that Kirk is hoping that panicking the Chinese will boomerang back to the States and whack Obama's domestic agenda.

Got nihilism?

Hayes points out that elites of both countries are playing with populist fire by refusing to deal with their respective problems properly and that following the advice of the wrecking crew is exactly the wrong thing to do (as usual.)

Read the whole thing, it's short. And then send it to Saturday Night Live which inexplicably turned itself into Larry Kudlow's press flack this week-end.



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digby 11/23/2009 06:30:00 PM |

 
Independent Elders And The Deficit

by digby

I'm listening to Matthews, Fineman and Cook obsess about the "independents" as if this is the first time they've ever noticed them. (Oy -- "independents" are the new "values voters.")

Fineman points out that the crosstabs on the new Gallup poll shows that Obama is doing fine with younger independents up to about age 55 but has lost all those over 55 who are obsessed with the deficit. Here's how Matthews and company explain what's going on:

Matthews: So it's interesting, what's hurt the president is two things, just to get the policy problem, or the people around him, there's two concerns people have, people who read the papers and the older people especially who have the time to do that, worried about money, because they're trying to keep it.They're worried about the debt. They're worried about deficits growing. People who are in their earning years, people who are 40 and 30, 25 out there and are trying to make a buck, those people are worried about jobs.

Here's the conflict, the rub if you will. If the president goes out and spends more money to create jobs, he runs up the deficit. If he holds back and makes the deficit conscious people happy, no more jobs. So he has to decide who he wants to appeal to in the next year, right?

If you're Larry Summers and Rahm Emmanuel, and Joe Biden, they're sitting around advising the president, "Mr President, you have to make up your mind here. You have to decide if you're going with the working people, 30 or 40 years old who are trying to make a buck, or worry about the older people." If you're just talking in terms of politics. ..

Charlie Cook: Clearly there's a squeeze play going on. Do something about the economy and jobs vs don't aggravate the deficit.Don't expand the...

Matthews: Which way are they leaning now? I think they're leaning towards doing nothing.

Cook: Well, I'm not sure which is doing nothing ...

Matthews: not creating jobs by spending money

Cook: Well the thing is, if you're just looking at it politically, old people vote midterm elections and young people don't.

Matthews: Therefore, worry about the deficit.

Cook: In a midterm election if you only cared about politics that would be it

Fineman: But the complicating part of that is that you want your hardcore base to come out in a midterm election and that's why Barack Obama ..

Matthews: Older white people tend to vote Republican ...

Fineman: So that's why he's focusing on trying to get this healthcare bill passed. The problem is that as he focuses on it, older Americans are scared about cuts in Medicare which the Republicans are talking about extensively. And they're worried about the deficit.

And the wealthy deficit scolds who come out from under the bed anytime someone wants to do anything but kill people and cut taxes are .... what? Concerned senior citizens? Please. To leave out the people who are spending billions to keep the government from delivering anything of value to its citizens is malpractice. (Here's James Galbraith today on that subject.)

But Matthews is fundamentally correct in his simplistic assessment of the electorate. The older white people don't like government spending and the younger people are desperate for it. But why is it that these older Americans, of all people, would be so worried about the deficit? They won't, after all, be here when the bill comes due. While they may say that they care about future generations, you'd think that watching their own children struggle in their peak earning years and lose their dream of a successful future (and watching their grandkids have to leave school because they can't afford the 32% hike in their tuition) would tug just a teeny bit at their allegedly generous heart strings.

Let's face it. A good number of them are just conservatives who never liked Obama and just believe in their guts that he and the tax and spend hippies are going to give their Medicare to the blacks and Mexicans. But a lot of other older people just feel vulnerable and alone and mistrust what they see as hyperactive, neglectful youngsters who are driving the world into chaos. They are excellent targets for con artists, scammers and demagogues --- and at this point conservatives are pretty much defined by those terms. There is no greater elder scam than to trouble them with unfounded fears of deficit forecasts and social security shortfalls decades in the future. (You should see the horrible mail these old people get from the right wingers.)

But where else are the Republicans going to get voters? Young people think they're clowns. Racial and ethnic minorities know very well they hate them. Women can't stand them. The only place they have to go is to those among the frightened older population who they can con into believing that the black president is trying to kill them. No other demographic out there beyond their crazy base believes anything they say.

But the fallacy of Matthews' and Cooks' argument is that Obama could possibly appease these people by "addressing" the deficit. As Krugman pointed out a while back:

[T]here are very good odds that even if Obama exhibited iron fiscal discipline, voters wouldn’t notice. There’s a remarkable, depressing paper by Achen and Bartels that includes an analysis of voter views of the deficit in 1996 — by which time the huge deficit that Bill Clinton inherited had been drastically reduced. Here’s what voters thought they knew:

Yep: after one of the biggest moves toward budget balance in history, a majority of Republicans, and a plurality of all voters, believed that deficits had increased.

Not to put too fine a point on it: if Obama succeeded in reducing the deficit, would Fox News or the Washington Times report it?

No. And the minute they did, the Republicans would start caterwauling about tax cuts and "it's yer muneee" and some greenspan figure would sagely tell everyone that surpluses will kill the economy the whole thing would start all over again anyway. That's the big scam.

The deficit scolds are not sincere (and the average Joes out there who fret over them are either deluded or lying.) It not just the Peter Petersons, but also the Larry Summers, Bob Rubin people who are always finding new rationales for the same ends. The people pulling the strings are the ones who have a direct, personal stake in keeping the government weak and disrespected and the deficit cudgel is just one of many weapons in their large arsenal. It sure isn't poor old people who stand to gain anything by "deficit reduction."

Unsurprisingly, the whole Village has, overnight, worked itself into a slobbering tizzy over deficits, just as the administration is contemplating how to deal with the massive, growing unemployment problem. Who could have predicted such a thing?


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digby 11/23/2009 04:30:00 PM |

 
Stooges

by digby

In the course of a typically enjoyable email exchange with my pal Jonathan Schwartz about whether or not sociopaths inevitably inhabit the corridors of power he sent me this extremely interesting post of his from a while back on the occasion of the death of Margaret Hassan the famous aid worker who was kidnapped and killed by some horrible assholes in Iraq. It was an awful thing and brought Jonathan to muse on the sociopathic tendencies among us and to quote what he calls the THE GREATEST DESCRIPTION OF POLITICS EVER WRITTEN:

From High Weirdness by Mail by Rev. Ivan Stang:

There are three kinds of people -- I call them Larrys, Curlys, and Moes. The Larrys don't even know that there are three types; if they're told, it's an abstraction, because they cannot imagine anything beyond Larry-ness. The Curlys know about it, and recognize the pecking order, but find ways of living with it cheerfully...for they are the imaginative, creative ones. The Moes not only know about it, but exploit and perpetuate it.

The naive, pleasant believers of all kinds are Larrys -- ineffectual, well-meaning do-gooders destined always to be victims, often without once guessing their status. Like sheep, they don't want to hear the unpleasant legends about "the slaughterhouse"; they trust the strange two-legged beings who feed them. The artists, unsung scientific geniuses, political writers, and earnest disciples of the stranger cults are Curlys -- engaging, original, accident-prone but full of life, intuitively aware of the Moe forces plotting against them and trying to fight back. They can never defeat the Moes, however, without BECOMING Moes, which is impossible for a true Curly.

The Moes, then, are the fanatics, the ranters, the cult gurus, the Uri Gellers AND the Debunkers; they are the Resistance Leaders and the Ruling Class Bankers. They hate each other, but only because they want to control ALL the Larrys and Curlys themselves. They don't actually enjoy their dominance; it's simply part of their nature. Nor are they less foolish for the fact that they make the decisions. They suffer a chronic paranoia that is unknown to their less demanding underlings. Larrys and Curlys die in wars started by rival Moes -- the Larrys willingly, the Curlys with great regret. Concepts like "Hell" and "Sin" were invented by Moes to keep Larrys in line; the Larrys in turn, being far more numerous, exert social pressures on the Curly minority to also obey...mainly so the Larrys won't feel like suckers.

The Moes also invent myths, like that of the "Grouchos, Harpos, Chicos, and Zeppos," to throw the more rebellious Curlys off their trail and keep them unsure of the real situations. [When the Curly's finally die of overwork, the Moes find that they cannot live in an all-Larry world; they select special Larry's and vainly try to mold them into False Curlys...but it isn't the same.]

I am a Moe, though not a particularly powerful one; that is why I know these things, and it is also why I dare to tell you -- for most of you will think it's just a funny joke. A few will know it is the truth, but will fight far harder against my Moe enemies than you will against me, a relatively harmless Moe. My fellow Moes -- enemies and uneasy SubGenius allies alike -- will know what I'm REALLY saying, and chuckle in appreciation while plotting my downfall. In vain. ALL in VAIN, boy.

Jonathan thinks that Larrys are sleeping Curlys, which is kind of nice. I'm quite sure that among a certain sub-set of highly superior holier-than-thou commentators it's an article of faith that all Curlys are just slightly more fashionable Larrys.

But, on some level, I think most people probably think they are Moes . In America at least, they would be the real "winners."


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digby 11/23/2009 02:00:00 PM |

 
Divas, Zombies and David Broder

by digby


Think Progress depressingly lays out what may end up being the most pernicious and dangerous Big Lie about the health care reform bill:

Despite the fact that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has concluded that Reid's bill would reduce the federal budget deficit by $130 billion over the next 10 years, opponents of reform are still trying to paint it as fiscally irresponsible. On the Senate floor on Saturday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) quoted a then-unreleased column by the Washington Post's David Broder in order to claim that "the experts agree with the public opinion polls that this 2,074-page bill is a budget buster." But as Ezra Klein, Broder's colleague at the Washington Post, pointed out, Broder is misreading the CBO 's score of the legislation. Broder pointed to a section of the CBO report that says "federal outlays for health care would increase during the 2010-2019 period," which he claimed means that deficit will increase, not decline. But as Klein notes, "The net increase of $160 billion in the first 10 years is part of CBO's analysis, not a caveat to it. It doesn't mean the bill doesn't cut the deficit, it just means that overall spending is larger before you add revenues into the equation." On Fox News Sunday yesterday, host Chris Wallace made the same exact mistake as Broder by selectively quoting the same section of the CBO report. As the Wonk Room's Igor Volsky noted, the last paragraph of the same page that Wallace and Broder quote says that "during the decade following the 10-year budget window, the increases and decreases in the federal budgetary commitment to health care stemming for this legislation would roughly balance out, so that there would be no significant change in the commitment."

Perhaps this sounds like some arcane inside-the-beltway argument that doesn't have any salience beyond Capital Hill. Sadly, this isn't true at all, as David Sirota points out in this post called How the media and the GOP turn lies into zombie lies - a health care case study:

As both Media Matters and the Washington Post's Ezra Klein show, the lie is now framing the discussion over the Senate version of the health care bill. That's to be expected - it's Washington, D.C. after all, the beating heart of the American Idiocracy. But where that standard D.C. lie becomes a zombie lie is at the local level. When a lie starts getting repeated as fact in local news outlets where most average non-Beltway Americans get their news, it quickly becomes a zombie lie.

In the extended entry I provide a case study - you have to see it to believe it.

You do. (click here) Sirota lives in Denver and he shows the front page of the Denver Post and a segment of the local news to illustrate just how far this zombie lie has penetrated:

So, if you are the typical non-political junkie who glanced at the front page of the Denver Post, giant red font and a whopping 9 zeroes (for extra effect, of course) misled you to believe that the CBO says the Senate health care bill costs $849 billion - not that the CBO actually says the Senate health care bill will reduce the deficit by $127 billion over 10 years and up to $650 billion over 20 years.

Likewise, if you are the typical non-political junkie who caught the evening news on Saturday, you were given at least a little more accurate information - but only in a he-said-he-said way that calls into question the whole numbers. Specifically, you heard only that one guy - David Sirota - claims the bill will reduce the deficit, and that another guy - Colorado Republican Party chairman Dick Wadhams - insists the bill costs $2.5 trillion. You didn't hear that, in fact, it wasn't David Sirota who said the bill will reduce the deficit - it was the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office that the Republican Party itself cites as an unquestionably credible source. And you didn't hear that Dick Wadhams literally made up his $2.5 trillion number out of thin air.

We're back in "opposiute world" again. Sadly, health care reform has not come to this point because someone suddenly had his consciousness raised about the plight of people who are uninsured. It has come about because certain economic forces have created a market for reform, not the least of which is that both the government and businesses are going to collapse under the strain of the current runaway health care costs. This is happening all over the world, but the US, with its obscene rationing system that only guarantees coverage to the wealthy, the lucky and the elderly is at more peril than the others which have at least devised some controls and have their entire society covered.

Now for those of us who would prefer that our broadly prosperous country stay broadly prosperous and at least somewhat decent rather than become a banana republic, health care reform has been on the agenda for decades, for moral as well as practical reasons. It's disgusting to live in a country where wealthy people arrogantly complain when they might have to pay a tax for their botox treatments while tens of thousands of their fellow countrymen die each year purely because they lack access to adequate health care. But let's not kid ourselves that such inequality is the reason we find ourselves on the brink of health care reform. If only.

Of course it's possible to fix this and there were many roads that made more sense than the ones they chose. The only question has ever been whether they have the political will to take on some of the sacred calves that dominate our society and demand that they not be expected to sacrifice anything for their country because they are so damned special. Indeed they must be treated like Diva sopranos lest they decide to withhold their "talent" in a fit of pique.

And even when they are, what do they do? They call it socialism and create zombie lies that it's doing exactly the opposite of what it's actually intended to do --- which is cut costs over the long haul, through a whole series of measures including universal coverage. And braindead parrots like David Broder, with no proof whatsoever, believe them because it just "sounds right." After all, everyone knows that the deficit is the cause of the current economic meltdown and everybody knows that any program the government does will raise the deficit, no matter what the CBO says (unless it says it will raise the deficit in which case it's true.)

This zombie lie that any reform is going to break the bank is precisely the opposite of what the bill is intended to do, far beyond peripheral things like covering sick people. Indeed, if covering sick people were the only motivation we wouldn't be where we are today. And in the end the usual suspects will probably have their cake and eat it too -- the cost cutting will help their bottom lines but they'll make political hay out of the horrible socialistic takeover of the system. It's win win for them. The rest of us, not so much.



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digby 11/23/2009 12:30:00 PM |

 
All In The Same Boat

by digby

I remember reading somewhere that one of the reasons there are more benefits and privileges for working people in Europe than you do here is because their parliamentary systems encourage more working and middle class people to actually participate in electoral politics. (Shorter, cheaper elections etc.) Less representation from the upper classes means more representation for everyone else.

I'm sure you all have noticed that it's only when Republicans and their families are afflicted by a problem that they will agitate for government funding for research and the like. If that's so then, as Joe Klein notes, this is a very smart move:

My favorite provision requires that all members of Congress give up their federally-funded health care benefits and join the health care exchanges that will be set up by this bill. This is brilliant politics, addressing the tide of populist anger and fears of incipient socialism. But it also makes an important substantive point. The future of health care reform in this country will depend on how effectively the exchanges--health insurance super-stores--are working. If members of Congress have to participate in this system, you can bet they'll insist on a array of choices, similar to the system they currently use, the Federal Employees Health Benefits Plan.

If they are personally affected, then they will likely ensure that the exchanges are adequate. It's not exactly how we all assumed that representative government worked, but in our culture of greed and self-dealing, this may be about the best we can do.


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digby 11/23/2009 10:00:00 AM |

 
Waiting For The Bubble

by digby

In today's column about the administration listening to Wall Street's scare stories about what will happen if they do what's necessary and actually try to create some new jobs, Krugman is as astonished by Obama's words last week about deficits causing a double dip recession as I was:

In December 2008 Lawrence Summers, soon to become the administration’s highest-ranking economist, called for decisive action. “Many experts,” he warned, “believe that unemployment could reach 10 percent by the end of next year.” In the face of that prospect, he continued, “doing too little poses a greater threat than doing too much.”

Ten months later unemployment reached 10.2 percent, suggesting that despite his warning the administration hadn’t done enough to create jobs. You might have expected, then, a determination to do more.

But in a recent interview with Fox News, the president sounded diffident and nervous about his economic policy. He spoke vaguely about possible tax incentives for job creation. But “it is important though to recognize,” he went on, “that if we keep on adding to the debt, even in the midst of this recovery, that at some point, people could lose confidence in the U.S. economy in a way that could actually lead to a double-dip recession.”

What? Huh?

Most economists I talk to believe that the big risk to recovery comes from the inadequacy of government efforts: the stimulus was too small, and it will fade out next year, while high unemployment is undermining both consumer and business confidence.

He goes on to write that many Wall Street analysts are all having hissy fits about the debt because they are convinced that rates are going to soar and there's goingto be acollapse in investor confidence. (He later points out that these are the same analysts who were having major hissy fits just months ago about inflation --- and were arguing against the stimulus for that reason.) And the whole thing reminded me of this post I wrote last March:

I was just reading this interesting piece about narcissistic personality disorder and musing about the mindset that believes it's ok to take down the world economy and then dictate the rules by which it is fixed.(Not to mention turn a profit at it!) And then I read this:

In recent days, in spite of public furor over huge bonuses paid at American International Group Inc., the administration has concluded that it needs the private sector to play a central role in fixing the economy. So over the weekend, the White House worked to tone down its Wall Street bashing and to win support from top bankers for the bailout plan announced Monday, which will rely on public-private investments to soak up toxic assets.

But weeks of searing criticism by politicians and the public had left bankers leery of working with the government. After brainstorming about what to do about that problem, the White House resolved to try to take control of the debate, according to several administration officials. In weekend television appearances, President Barack Obama and other administration officials tempered their criticisms of the financial sector.

President Obama met with members of the National Conference of State Legislature at the White House speaking adamantly about how his $787 billion dollar bailout must be used wisely and that wasteful spending will be avoided. Video courtesy of Fox News.

Meanwhile, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and his colleagues worked the phones to try to line up support on Wall Street for the plan announced Monday. They told executives they don't favor using the tax code to retroactively penalize specific individuals who had received bonuses, according to people familiar with the calls. They asked officials to sign on "in pencil, not ink," and to "validate" or "express support" for the plan, these people say.

Some bankers say they turned the conversations into complaints about the antibonus crusade consuming Capitol Hill. Some have begun "slow-walking" the information previously sought by Treasury for stress-testing financial institutions, three bankers say, and considered seeking capital from hedge funds and private-equity funds so they could return federal bailout money, thereby escaping federal restrictions.

Well that certainly clears this up:

“It’s almost like they’ve got — they’ve got a bomb strapped to them and they’ve got their hand on the trigger,” President Obama said on Thursday of the banks he’s chosen to bail out. “You don’t want them to blow up. But you’ve got to kind of talk [to] them, ease that finger off the trigger.”

No kidding. Reading that WSJ article, I can't help but be reminded of another president who was shown in no uncertain terms who was really running the show:

Clinton's experience shows what such pressure can do to a president's agenda. Promises of spending on education, public works and a middle-class tax cut fell by the wayside as advisers led by Robert Rubin, who later became Treasury secretary, convinced the new president the best thing he could do for the economy was to show investors his resolve on fiscal discipline.

``You mean to tell me that the success of the economic program and my re-election hinges on the Federal Reserve and a bunch of fucking bond traders?'' Clinton raged at aides, according to journalist Bob Woodward's book, ``The Agenda.''

As it was then, so it is now. (And you can bet that the fucking bond traders are getting ready to strap on the IED over health care and energy...) The owners of America will be appeased or they will destroy everything in their wake.

In another world, they would call this economic terrorism.

Krugman winds up his column with this:

Still, let’s grant that there is some risk that doing more about double-digit unemployment would undermine confidence in the bond markets. This risk must be set against the certainty of mass suffering if we don’t do more — and the possibility, as I said, of a collapse of confidence among ordinary workers and businesses.

And Mr. Summers was right the first time: in the face of the greatest economic catastrophe since the Great Depression, it’s much riskier to do too little than it is to do too much. It’s sad, and unfortunate, that the administration appears to have lost sight of that truth.

Since the same people who advised Clinton that his economic program depended on a "bunch of fucking bond traders" are advising Obama today, I guess we'd just better keep our fingers crossed that there's another once in a lifetime bubble right around the corner to get us out of this thing. It sounds like that's what they're counting on.

Update: And then there's this. (h/t to mike)
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digby 11/23/2009 08:30:00 AM |