Month: July 2006

Value Menu

by digby

In this rundown of the latest “daddy has a right to know if his daughter/victim is aborting his child” law in the Washington Post, I see that the Republicans “values agenda” has a new item:

Yesterday’s vote marked the most significant congressional action on abortion in some time. Republicans, concerned about sagging poll numbers as they approach the November elections, have emphasized a “values agenda” that includes bids to ban flag desecration, same-sex marriage and estate taxes.

What a scam. The GOP has convinced both their gullible base and the media that protecting Paris Hilton’s inheritance from being taxed is a moral issue. There really is a sucker born every minute.

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Billmon

by tristero

By getting it so exactly right, he saves the rest of us the effort. Note his take on the murder of the UN observers – I agree – and be certain to click through on the post’s last link.

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The Squeeze

by digby

I’ve long felt that this was one of the most potent political issues that nobody ever talks about. It was the main reason why I thought those Democrats who supported the Bankruptcy Bill were prostituting themselves so cheaply when you considered the stakes for ordinary people — and the political bounty for those who have the imagination and the will to take it on:

In a survey of 1,000 adults, we find a public widely aware of the problem of growing household debt and overwhelmingly supporting solutions to this issue. The public’s concern over this issue results from perceptions of an economy performing unevenly, from perceptions of rising costs of living, and for a surprising and pressing number, from first-hand experience with excess or unmanageable debt. Despite the prominence of pay-day loan artists and other debt merchants in low-income neighborhoods throughout the country, the public does not see this is as a “lower class” problem, but a growing threat to the American middle class and the American dream.

Several lenders draw intense criticism of the public, including pay-day lenders, car finance companies and credit card companies. The practice of universal default—where credit card companies can raise your interest rates even if you never missed a payment, based on your behavior in other areas—is near universally condemned by respondents in this study.

At the same time, the public does not discount the importance of individual responsibility when it comes to solving this problem. More so than the lenders or even the economy, respondents hold individual borrowers responsible for the debt problem, and, naturally, the public responds enthusiastically to solutions that attempt to educate borrowers and improve financial decision-making at the household level.

This is one of those water cooler issues, like health care, where you hear tales of woe from everyone who isn’t making a healthy six figure income. (And I suspect that there are plenty of those too who have similar problems.)

Household debt is crippling people in a stagnant economy where nobody is really getting ahead. With the housing market finally coming back down to earth this is going to be a big issue for a lot of ordinary Americans. I know a bunch of them personally.

Key Findings

* The public recognizes the seriousness of the debt issue. Nearly half describe household debt on items like credit cards, car loans, home mortgages and payday loans a very serious problem in this country and 82 percent describe it as at least a somewhat serious problem.

* By a whopping 79 to 19 percent margin, the public insists this is a problem for middle class families, rather than a problem primarily for lower income families.

* The public is more worried about falling into debt, particularly through medical bills, than about being the victim of a terrorist attack or natural disaster.

It isn’t taxes that are keeping American up at night and it probably isn’t jobs, at least on a massive scale. It isn’t even terrorism or the war.

It’s debt. People are going to be looking for some help with this problem and one place to start would be to rein in these avaricious credit card companies who got a nice handsome payoff with that heinous bankruptcy bill. This is an issue to which average Americans can relate: greedy credit card companies who can literally raise your rates for any reason at all causing your debt to cascade from manageable to overwhelming overnight. It wouldn’t be hard to fix. There used to be laws against usury — we can just dust them off.

This would require, of course, going up against the banking and finance lobby. The votes are waiting for the guy or gal who has the nerve to take a populist stance on this. Who out there has the juice to do that?

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Too Clever For Me

by digby

Ok. I didn’t sleep well last night so maybe my brain isn’t working properly. Can somebody please explain to me what in the hell this is all about?

Democrats in the US Senate called on Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to condemn Hezbollah’s attacks against Israel and to recognize Israel’s right to defend itself.

The lawmakers expressed dismay during a press conference over Maliki’s recent criticism of “Israel aggression” in Lebanon and called for a “clarification” from the Iraqi leader before he appears Wednesday before a joint session of Congress.

The lawmakers suggested that some members of Congress may choose to boycott the event if an explanation is not forthcoming.

“No matter how politically expedient he thinks it may be, to stand with America, you have to stand against terrorism,” said Senator Chuck Schumer.

“Before he speaks in front of the Congress and the American people, there’s a very simple question we are asking the prime minister today: Which side is he on when it comes to the war on terror?” Schumer said.

In a letter dated July 24, Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid, along with other party leaders, called on the Iraqi leader to clarify his views before speaking to a joint session of the US Congress.

“Your failure to condemn Hezbollah’s aggression and recognize Israel’s right to defend itself raise serious questions about whether Iraq, under your leadership, can play a constructive role in resolving the current crisis and bringing stability to the Middle East,” the lawmakers wrote to Maliki.

“As you know, the American people have given so much in the name of fighting global terror and helping build a better future for the people of Iraq,” the Senate Democrats said.

“Americans deserve to know whether Iraq is an ally in these fights.”

Like I said, I’m a little bit punch drunk. The heat, you know. I’m sure this must be some sort of very clever ploy that I’m just not getting. They’re trapping Bush into something with this, right? They don’t honestly think this is a good idea on the merits do they?

I need another glass of Impeachment Tea, stat. I’m obviously dehydrated.

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Walk like A Republican

by digby

This is rich. Lieberman supporters are throwing ticketed participants out of campaign events because they recognize them as being Lamont supporters. Man, they really don’t get it, do they?

This was the Clinton speech, which one would think would be open to any American who had a ticket. He was, after all, the president of the United States for eight years and many people would like to hear him speak regardless of the circumstances. Yet Joe Lieberman’s pals kicked these people out of the event, something I would have thought they’d figured out by now isn’t in their best interest in this primary.

This seems to be a cognitive problem with the Lieberman campaign. They don’t understand that the reason he is being challenged is not his voting record, although there’s plenty to complain about. It’s that he acts like a Republican toward his fellow Democrats.

At a time when a number of Democrats are suing the Bush administration for exactly this kind of activity, you’d think that Lieberman’s people would know better. Salon posted this article just last week on the numerous cases pending in courts all over the country:

July 22,2006 | CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa — When school was canceled to accommodate a campaign visit by President Bush, the two 55-year-old teachers reckoned the time was ripe to voice their simmering discontent with the administration’s policies.

Christine Nelson showed up at the Cedar Rapids rally with a Kerry-Edwards button pinned on her T-shirt; Alice McCabe clutched a small, paper sign stating “No More War.” What could be more American, they thought, than mixing a little dissent with the bunting and buzz of a get-out-the-vote rally headlined by the president?

Their reward: a pair of handcuffs and a strip search at the county jail.

Authorities say they were arrested because they refused to obey reasonable security restrictions, but the women disagree: “Because I had a dissenting opinion, they did what they needed to do to get me out of the way,” said Nelson, who teaches history and government at one of this city’s middle schools.

“I tell my students all the time about how people came to this country for freedom of religion, freedom of speech, that those rights and others are sacred. And all along I’ve been thinking to myself, ‘not at least during this administration.'”

Their experience is hardly unique.

In the months before the 2004 election, dozens of people across the nation were banished from or arrested at Bush political rallies, some for heckling the president, others simply for holding signs or wearing clothing that expressed opposition to the war and administration policies.

Similar things have happened at official, taxpayer-funded, presidential visits, before and after the election. Some targeted by security have been escorted from events, while others have been arrested and charged with misdemeanors that were later dropped by local prosecutors.

Now, in federal courthouses from Charleston, W.Va., to Denver, federal officials and state and local authorities are being forced to defend themselves against lawsuits challenging the arrests and security policies.

While the circumstances differ, the cases share the same fundamental themes. Generally, they accuse federal officials of developing security measures to identify, segregate, deny entry or expel dissenters.

Who’s Your Daddy?

by digby

Uh Oh. Our Sunni Wahabbist allies in the war on terrah seem to be confused about who’s running things:

Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah warned on Tuesday of war in the Middle East if Israel continues attacking Lebanon and the Palestinians, in an apparent appeal to key ally the United States to end the fighting.

“Saudi Arabia warns everybody that if the peace option fails because of Israeli arrogance, there will be no other option but war,” state-owned media quoted the king as saying.

Heck. How’s the US ‘n Israel gonna help the Sunnis defeat the Shi’a and bring democracy tah everybody if they lose their nerve at the least little thing? Surely, they aren’t feeling heat from their own people now are they? If so, they just need to tell ’em to stop this shit.

They need to understand that the US is there to spread God’s gift of freedom (and, if we’re lucky, bring on Armageddon.) Israel is bombing the shit out of Lebanon for its own good.

Man, these Arabs have a helluva lot to learn about how things work in the middle east…

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After 9/11, Millions of New Yorkers Joined Al Qaeda

by tristero

That is the bizarre rationale behind those who seek to justify the leveling of southern Lebanon by Israel. If Israel, the “logic” goes, can demonstrate that merely living close to a Hezbollah office can get your children killed by an Israeli bomb, support for Hezbollah will dry up.

Riiiiiiiiiight.

In supporting the attacks, Samuel Freedman doesn’t bother to focus on the enormous human cost to the Lebanese civilians who, in many instances reported on NPR and elsewhere, appear to have been deliberately targeted by Israeli missile attacks (there’s a word to describe deliberate attacks on civilians designed to terrorize them: the word is terrorism). To Freedman, such unfortunate deaths are collateral damage in pursuit of a higher gain. To me, these deaths are clearly immoral and can only serve as a catalyst for further radicalization, endangering Israel’s future as a nation.

Some other highlights of Freedman’s article include the assumption that Israel really isn’t at war with Hezbollah, but Iran. Using that logic, Hezbollah and Israel aren’t fighting at all. It’s a proxy war between the US and Iran. All of this dovetails very nicely with an insane PNAC fantasy: “we” can eliminate evil (a la Perle/Frum’s The End of Evil) if only we are brave enough to use our Kristol balls and tackle the “root causes” of terrorism.* And sure enough, on CNN this weekend, an earnest discussion was held under the caption: “Iran: The Root of Evil?”

Nevermind that the situation is far more complicated than a mere proxy war. You get nowhwere, and fast, unless you immediately, and directly, address the proximate issues. In this case, they are (1) The outrageous kidnapping of Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah; (2) The outrageous and counterproductive destruction of Southern Lebanon by Israel; and (3) the unconsionable and wholesale slaughter, on both sides, of utterly innocent civiilians.

The fighting should stop. Now. A United States foreign policy that does not make that central and absolutely clear is not only immoral. It is insane. It is close to an open declaration of war against Iran and Syria. And if Bush persists, it will be a war that will last a generation and will accomplish nothing good for the US.

As for Israel, it is a dangerous illusion to think that turning Syria and Iran into Hobbesian dystopias similar to Afghanistan and Iraq will somehow make Israel safer. Any genuine friend of Israel should demand an immediate, total cease-fire.

Freedman writes:

Maybe the people so ready to assail Israel now should have been watching more closely a few months ago when President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran convened a conference devoted to the exterminatory premise of a “world without Zionism.” Maybe they should have been listening more closely when Ahmadinejad declared his desire to “wipe Israel off the map.”

Oh, we listened closely, all right and you needn’t tell us how obscene it was. But what else could you expect? Unfortunately, you, Samuel Freedman, didn’t listen closely when a few years before that, an American president in one of the most important speeches in the modern world, declared Iran, Iraq, and North Korea an Axis of Evil. If Hezbollah equals Iran, then Israel equals the US. Given Bush’s incredibly stoopid (spelled appropriately) words and action, it can only appear to Iran’s leader as if eliminating Israel will remove a real, imminent, threat to Iran’s very existence.

Israel has every right to protect itself. Therefore, it should immediately stand down, withdraw all troops from Lebanese territority, and put plenty of political distance between itself and those nuts, including the US president, urging them to tickle the Iranian dragon. To call the present course of action increasingly dangerous is to indulge in gross understaement.

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*And let’s not forget that the infamous PNAC paper outlining the conquest of Iraq, “A Clean Break,” was written for Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel, in order to solicit proposals to make Israel, not the US, safer.

ABA Report On Signing Statements

by tristero

Here’s a link to a PDF of the American Bar Association’s report on Bush’s use of signing statments. Anyone who doubts we are living under an early American form of fascism need only read this little excerpt and ponder how far we have moved from the quaint notion – the way the Geneva Conventions are quaint – that the US is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people:

Among those unanimous recommendations, the Task Force voted to:

– oppose, as contrary to the rule of law and our constitutional system of separation of powers, a President’s issuance of signing statements to claim the authority or state the intention to disregard or decline to enforce all or part of a law he has signed, or to interpret such a law in a manner inconsistent with the clear intent of Congress;

– urge the President, if he believes that any provision of a bill pending before Congress would be unconstitutional if enacted, to communicate such concerns to Congress prior to passage;

– urge the President to confine any signing statements to his views regarding the meaning, purpose, and significance of bills, and to use his veto power if he believes that all or part of a bill is unconstitutional;

– urge Congress to enact legislation requiring the President promptly to submit to Congress an official copy of all signing statements, and to report to Congress the reasons and legal basis for any instance in which he claims the authority, or states the intention, to disregard or decline to enforce all or part of a law he has signed, or to interpret such a law in a manner inconsistent with the clear intent of Congress, and to make all such submissions be available in a publicly accessible database.

As late as early January, 2000, the only response one would make to this list was, “No shit, Sherlock, like why waste time telling us the obvious?” ‘Cause until Bush, each of these recommendations would have been utterly unnecessary. Even under Nixon? Even under Nixon. (And speaking of the old scoundrel, be sure to read Jane Mayer’s excellent profile of creepy David Addington, and note the lessons Cheney, et al, took away from Watergate)

As the NY Times notes, in an editorial that is only three months behind Charlie Savage’s famous article in the Globe, Bush has issued more than 800 signing statements, over 200 more than all the previous presidents combined. The Times concludes, with the kind of justifiable cynicism they really should have shown towards Bush’s presidency in 2002 and 2003:

The A.B.A. called Mr. Bush’s use of presidential signing statements “contrary to the rule of law and our constitutional system of separation of powers” and recommended that Congress enact legislation clarifying the issue.

We agree on both points, even though we fear that if Congress passes a bill, Mr. Bush will simply issue a new signing statement saying he also does not intend to follow it.

Exactly.

Ain’t Nobody’s Business

by digby

Here’s a terrific idea. Just fantastic:

The Bush administration acknowledged yesterday that it had long known about Pakistan’s plans to build a large plutonium-production reactor, but it said the White House was working to dissuade Pakistan from using the plant to expand its nuclear arsenal.

“We discourage military use of the facility,” White House spokesman Tony Snow said of a powerful heavy-water reactor under construction at Pakistan’s Khushab nuclear site in Punjab state.

Pakistan has begun building what independent analysts say is a powerful new reactor for producing plutonium, a move that, if verified, would signal a major expansion of the country’s nuclear weapons capabilities and a potential new escalation in the region’s arms race.

The reactor, which reportedly will be capable of producing enough plutonium for as many as 50 bombs each year, was brought to light on Sunday by independent analysts who spotted the partially completed plant in commercial-satellite photos. Snow said the administration had “known of these plans for some time.”

And yet (I know this will shock you) they didn’t bother to tell the congress, not even members of the Eunuch Caucus:

The acknowledgment came as arms-control experts and some in Congress expressed alarm about a possible escalation of South Asia’s arms race. Some also sharply criticized the administration for failing to disclose the existence of a facility that could influence an upcoming congressional debate over U.S. nuclear policy toward India and Pakistan.

“If either India or Pakistan starts increasing its nuclear arsenal, the other side will respond in kind,” said Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), co-chairman of a House bipartisan task force on nonproliferation. “The Bush administration’s proposed nuclear deal with India is making that much more likely.”

Pakistan is reportedly the new home of Osama bin laden and all indications are that it is the epicenter of the next generation of Islamic fundamentalist terrorism. But no matter. Let’s let the whole sub-continent nuke itself up to the gills. Nothing bad can come of it, right?

Still, I can’t help but recall the immortal words of our Dear Leader when he said:

Tonight I want to take a few minutes to discuss a grave threat to peace, and America’s determination to lead the world in confronting that threat.

The threat comes from Iraq. It arises directly from the Iraqi regime’s own actions – its history of aggression, and its drive toward an arsenal of terror.

[…]

We also must never forget the most vivid events of recent history. On Sept. 11, 2001, America felt its vulnerability – even to threats that gather on the other side of the earth. We resolved then and we are resolved today to confront every threat, from any source, that could bring sudden terror and suffering to America.

[…]

Some ask how urgent this danger is to America and the world. The danger is already significant and it only grows worse with time. If we know Saddam Hussein has dangerous weapons today – and we do – does it make any sense for the world to wait to confront him as he grows even stronger and develops even more dangerous weapons?

[…]

We know that Iraq and the al-Qaida terrorist network share a common enemy – the United States of America. We know that Iraq and al-Qaida have had high-level contacts that go back a decade. Some al-Qaida leaders who fled Afghanistan went to Iraq.

[…]

Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorists. Alliances with terrorists could allow the Iraqi regime to attack America without leaving any fingerprints.

[…]

There is no easy or risk-free course of action. Some have argued we should wait – and that is an option. In my view, it is the riskiest of all options – because the longer we wait, the stronger and bolder Saddam Hussein will become. We could wait and hope that Saddam does not give weapons to terrorists, or develop a nuclear weapon to blackmail the world. But I am convinced that is a hope against all evidence. As Americans, we want peace – we work and sacrifice for peace – and there can be no peace if our security depends on the will and whims of a ruthless and aggressive dictator. I am not willing to stake one American life on trusting Saddam Hussein.

The military dictator Pervez Musharraf, however, he’s willing to trust with an entire nuclear arsenal and a population full of Islamic fundamentalists who hate the United States with every fiber of their beings. Now he’s keeping Pakistan’s secret development of plutonium from the congress. I sure hope he looked into Musharraf’s soul and saw a guy who could guarantee an iron grip on events because if not, Pakistan holds a lot of very scary cards.

I have always wondered why this was not questioned during the run-up to the war. Pakistan always made the Iraq invasion absurd. Still does, more than ever.

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Double Trouble

by digby

Joe Klein’s surprisingly mild column on Joe Lieberman in this week’s TIME contained one very interesting bit of information:

There are those who believe the Senator’s unwillingness to criticize Bush has its roots in politics. “He flew too close to the sun,” said a Connecticut Democrat who believes that Lieberman played nice with the President in the hope of securing both the Democratic and the Republican nominations for Senate this year.

Johnathan Chait asks:

Can this really be true? If so, it’s astonishing. Lieberman represents one of the bluest states in the country. He had zero to fear from a Republican challenger. Was he so eager to avoid having to undergo the formality of a reelection campaign that he wanted a double-endorsement?

The nugget from Klein’s source strikes me as not completely implausible, but pretty hard to believe. If Lieberman really pulled his punches against Bush so he could avoid a token challenge, that would be a pretty good reason to vote against him. I’d love to see more reporters dig into this.

I don’t find it hard to believe. I was chattering with Jane Hamsher about this yesterday and we both immediately speculated that Joe might have been plotting a presidential run — not as a Democrat, but under the Unity ’08 banner. It certainly would explain why he would have wanted a double endorsement.

It might also explain why he has been acting so shocked and angry. He thought he was getting a double endorsement and he may just be getting no endorsement at all.