A Place In Hell
by digby
Just in case anyone was wondering what the effects of taking out all that silly, stimulus “pork” that was planned for the states might be, this story is a good clue.
I guess these are people who the Republicans think need to pay the price for capitalism’s creative destruction.
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Their Ideal World
by dday
Michelle Bernard is one of the new entries to the cable news jabberfest, an African-American woman whose ideology is rarely if ever identified. But she is the President and CEO of the Independent Women’s Forum, which tries to embed feminist rhetoric (“All issues are women’s issues”) behind a far-right conservative ideology. Humorously, the featured story at their website’s first paragraph is “You know things are getting bad for the Obama-Pelosi-Reid trillion-dollar American Recovery and Reinvestment Act when regulars on MSNBC, the liberal counterpoint to Fox, start to stomp on the bill.” Which of course looks past the fact that Michelle Bernard is on MSNBC every other hour.
But if you truly want to know the desired ends of the Independent Women’s Forum, look no further than this letter to the editor from one of their senior fellows about the book The Case for Big Government by Jeff Madrick (h/t Yglesias):
Conservatives read The Times to motivate them against the paper’s principles. Yet the review of “The Case for Big Government,” by Senator Edward Kennedy’s adviser Jeff Madrick (Jan. 18), gushed even by your standards. The review’s title and subtitle — “Renewed Deal: The need for federal spending is apparent even to conservatives, as a time of recovery requires investment in the country’s future” — is completely misleading. Conservatives believe spending is out of hand and never use “investment” as a synonym for tax and spend.
Madrick’s statement, quoted by the reviewer, that “there really is no example of small government among rich nations,” is unsupported nonsense. Think Dubai, free and rich.
Put aside for a moment the fact that Dubai is an oil-extracting hereditary dictatorship, which isn’t even a nation but a province. Dubai is about as close as you get in this world to a modern slave state. There are 240,000 citizens and 1.2 million imported workers from South Asia, who live in miserable conditions of servitude.
An hour’s drive into an area of Dubai that is about as far off the tourist map as it is possible to get brings us to Sonapur, an unhappy place in so many ways. Even its name cruelly teases its residents. The name of Dubai’s largest labour camp means “city of gold” in Hindi, and it also sounds very similar to the local slang word for a female orgasm, as Khaled, my translator, seems to rejoice in telling me.
I doubt that most of the 150,000 male workers who live here (some claim it is as many as 500,000, but there is little official headcounting going on), smile at the irony of living in a place so empty of wealth and women.
As we pass the large cemetery on the road into Sonapur, a long convoy of buses heads in the opposite direction towards the hundreds of building sites across Dubai. Curtains screening the workers from the sun flap violently in the open windows as drivers move up through the gears, spewing a dirty diesel puff at every shift. On entering the huge settlement – “town” doesn’t seem the right term as there’s no sign of cinemas, libraries, restaurants, or even any landscaping – we pass block upon block of concrete walls, some topped with barbed wire and all fronted by large metal gates. Inside, Khaled says, are housing units, some of which are home for up to 500 workers, owned by the dozens of contractors that feed Dubai’s construction boom.
The contractors take their worker’s passports and force them to pay back usurious loans taken out for the cost of them being brought to Dubai. Some are forced into sexual slavery and the ruler has even been accused of enslaving children as young as 2 to be jockeys in camel races.
Every so often the shriekers on the right will cite these incidents as proof that all Muslims are evil and cruel or something. But the Independent Women’s Forum – and, I would imagine, serious conservative economists – see it as a capitalist paradise, a paragon of small government. Similarly, right-wing privatization practices and ideological nation-building in Iraq inevitably led to the US Embassy being built by slave labor, subcontracted and once removed.
Why, it’s almost as if conservative economic theory places a value on shrinking labor costs so much that the ultimate society is one where the workers are owned.
In the antebellum South, slavery provided the economic foundation that supported the dominant planter ruling class. Under slavery the structure of white supremacy was hierarchical and patriarchal, resting on male privilege and masculinist honor, entrenched economic power, and raw force. Black people necessarily developed their sense of identity, family relations, communal values, religion, and to an impressive extent their cultural autonomy by exploiting contradictions and opportunities within a complex fabric of paternalistic give-and-take. The working relationships and sometimes tacit expectations and obligations between slave and slave holder made possible a functional, and in some cases highly profitable, economic system.
Will this come up on the next Michelle Bernard appearance on MSNBC, or will the talk be confined only to the “Obama/Pelosi/Reid recession” and when it will ever end?
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Keep Kicking Them In The Teeth
by digby
Village elder legal expert Stuart Taylor is at it again.Just as he laid the groundwork for the pervasive village viewpoint that Obama cannot prosecute those who ordered torture (and actually should keep torture in the arsenal) he’s laying down the framework for an argument that should she decide to retire, Obama can’t replace Ruth Bader Ginsberg with a liberal.
Conservatives concede that the Democrat-led Senate would almost certainly confirm any Obama nominee, absent any damaging revelation. But the more liberal the nominee, the more contentious the confirmation hearings will be. The president’s stance as a consensus builder might suffer if his first choice seems likely to support liberal causes such as gay marriage.
Conservative critics sense a preference for liberal “judicial activism” in Obama’s claim that “the truly difficult” legal cases “can only be determined on the basis of one’s deepest values, one’s core concerns, one’s broader perspectives on how the world works, and the depth and breadth of one’s empathy.” He voted against Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, complaining that the two Bush appointees had sided with “the powerful against the powerless.” When it’s Obama’s turn to pick a nominee, he’ll either sacrifice some political good will or he’ll upset his base. There’s not much middle ground.
Yes, that sounds like measured analysis until you recall that he was a Paula Jones warrior who just a couple of months ago said:
Obama will have a choice: He can give the Left what it wants and weaken our defenses. Or he can follow the advice of his more prudent advisers, recognize that Congress, the courts, and officials including Attorney General Michael Mukasey have already moved to end the worst Bush administration abuses — and kick the hard Left gently in the teeth. I’m betting that Obama is smart and tough enough to do the latter.
Taylor always writes from the perspective of being Obama’s bff, as if he’s giving him good solid centrist advice as a pal. But he’s a conservative who uses his “journalistic” perch in the media to slant the debate to the right on legal issues. In this case it’s obvious that he’s building the pressure for Obama to pick someone who liberals will hate so that he can preserve the (non-existent)goodwill of the Republicans in the senate. It’s pretty clear that he will be expected to nominate moderate judges who aren’t considered “activists” or risk a full blown hissy fit of epic proportions and once again be said to risk his agenda. (“Give me everything I want, or I’ll accuse you of partisanship!”) If Obama worries about that, he’ll end up pushing an already right wing court further right, and that is unthinkable.
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Responding To Crisis
by digbyfrom Think Progress:
[Republican] objections are indeed ironic coming from some of the greatest advocates for President Bush’s $1.35 trillion tax cut package in 2001. Indeed, when Bush introduced his tax cuts he declared, “A warning light is flashing on the dashboard of our economy, and we just can’t drive on and hope for the best. We need tax relief now.” The Republicans who now call the $800 billion recovery package “too big” jumped on the Bush bandwagon claiming his $1.35 trillion in tax cuts were just what was needed to jump start a sluggish economy:
Kyl: “I was there when the president signed into law the tax cut. … [I]f that isn’t one of the best things we can do to get this economy going again, then it seems to me that the American people might well lose confidence in what we’re doing, which would be the worst thing to do for the economy.” [Finance Committee Hearing, 10/3/2001] Ensign: “Well, I don’t know that we’re going to get to the — you know, the total $1.3 trillion tax cut. I do think the tax cuts are necessary right now.” [CNN, 1/3/2001]
Graham thought the cuts were so effective he wanted to make them permanent. But the tax cuts they championed proved to be extremely ineffective, leading to the slowest period of economic growth in decades.
If you compare the condition of the economy in 2001 to the current state of the economy, the numbers show that those who now call the recovery package too big, were willing to spend far more when the economic situation wasn’t nearly as precarious:
2001 2009 Cost of package: $1.35 trillion $900 billion Unemployment: 4% 7.6% Percent of Population Living In Poverty: 12.7% 17% Foreclosure Rates: .48% 1.19% Americans Relying On Food Stamps: 17 million Over 30 million
Why are we listening to these people again?
Update: Meet the Andrew Mellon of the new depression.Wait, I take that back. Mellon was an aristocrat who really believed this stuff. Sanford is just a very confused lil’ conservative who obviously played hookey on the day they taught economics in wingnut school.
I do believe he thinks that the New Deal caused the depression, though. They all do.
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Backing Into Shock Therapy
by digby
After all the wrangling over the recovery package this week, what’s the upshot? Krugman says:
According to the CBO’s estimates, we’re facing an output shortfall of almost 14% of GDP over the next two years, or around $2 trillion. Others, such as Goldman Sachs, are even more pessimistic. So the original $800 billion plan was too small, especially because a substantial share consisted of tax cuts that probably would have added little to demand. The plan should have been at least 50% larger. Now the centrists have shaved off $86 billion in spending — much of it among the most effective and most needed parts of the plan. In particular, aid to state governments, which are in desperate straits, is both fast — because it prevents spending cuts rather than having to start up new projects — and effective, because it would in fact be spent; plus state and local governments are cutting back on essentials, so the social value of this spending would be high. But in the name of mighty centrism, $40 billion of that aid has been cut out. My first cut says that the changes to the Senate bill will ensure that we have at least 600,000 fewer Americans employed over the next two years. The real question now is whether Obama will be able to come back for more once it’s clear that the plan is way inadequate. My guess is no. This is really, really bad.
I also keep hearing that Obama’s going to be able to come back and ask for more money for all those important things down the road, and I wonder if I’m living in the same country as these people. If the Republicans were willing to defy Obama at the moment of his greatest power, coming off a nearly hysterically euphoric inauguration, in the middle of a crisis with a clear mandate to change the country, what in God’s name makes anyone think they will be less likely to block this kind of “spending” down the road?
Obama’s going to be coming to the congress for God knows how many more gazillions in bailouts for the financial system. There are two wars that continue to burn vast amounts of money, not to mention the US global military empire in general. There is the massive federal police state apparatus that has been built up over the past seven years that has to be funded or the terrorists will kill us in our beds. All of these things are sacred and will be funded no matter what, although the Republicans may put up some kind of a token fight against the finacial system bailout and the Democrats may put up a token resistence to military spending. (Sadly, nobody will raise a question about the police state funding.) Those are things that are considered absolutely necessary and vital government expenditures that can’t even be touched, particularly by a Democratic majority, and the Republicans will use them as examples of their responsible leadership. They will say they just have to draw the line at “pork” and “entitlements,” which the country just can’t afford, what with all the unemployment and all.
They have shown their cards — they are cynically banking on the economy failing to get themselves back into power. And they have the media (and possibly even the administration) helping them.
Newsweek’s cover this week is “We Are All Socialists Now.” The article calls it a “center-right socialism” which is just funny. But then the whole piece is bizarrely oxymoronic and contradictory, just like the economic debate in the congress. It says that we are inexorably moving toward a European style mixed economy and that George W. Bush is the one who killed Reaganism with his prescription drug benefit and bank bailout. (Conservatism can never fail, it can only be failed.) But it all sounds almost reasonable until you get to this:
Now comes the reckoning. The answer may indeed be more government. In the short run, since neither consumers nor business is likely to do it, the government will have to stimulate the economy. And in the long run, an aging population and global warming and higher energy costs will demand more government taxing and spending. The catch is that more government intrusion in the economy will almost surely limit growth (as it has in Europe, where a big welfare state has caused chronic high unemployment). Growth has always been America’s birthright and saving grace. The Obama administration is caught in a paradox. It must borrow and spend to fix a crisis created by too much borrowing and spending. Having pumped the economy up with a stimulus, the president will have to cut the growth of entitlement spending by holding down health care and retirement costs and still invest in ways that will produce long-term growth. Obama talks of the need for smart government. To get the balance between America and France right, the new president will need all the smarts he can summon.
That is the state of elite American thought right now. Total incoherence.
We may need to make the government grow in order to deal with the massive problems, like deep recessions, global warming and an aging population, but it will create a big welfare state which will deny our high growth birthright. (That birthright, by the way, hasn’t actually been realized in more than 30 years for the vast majority of Americans.)
The president is faced with having to do what nearly every economist in the world says he must do — boost spending. But it requires borrowing and that’s bad. So we will need to cut all those big, nasty European welfare programs after all. And Gawd knows there can’t be any more spending that isn’t “investment” (as defined by conservatives as tax cuts and bridges to nowhere.) The most important thing, as always, is to not be French.I’m sure some of them thought they were being boldly unconventional when they “diagnosed” Obama’s problems, but the truth is that they are defending the status quo. Instead of using their space and influence to explain some rather basic facts about Keynesian theory they present the so-called paradox of stimulus to cure a problem caused by borrowing and spending as something that will have to be “paid for” almost immediately by destroying the safety net. Apparently, they think this makes sense, both economically and politically.
I know that I’m beating the drum in boring fashion about the impending “entitlement reform” agenda but it’s really got me spooked that they are talking about it while we are fighting a major recession. I guess it’s supposed to make wall street and banking concerns feel confidence that they still own the government, but to people who are retired or about to retire (and there are a boatload of them) it makes them want to take their money and either move to another country or hoard it under the mattress. At the very least it scares the hell out of people who are already living on very little, losing their jobs and insurance and see their futures slipping away. It’s hard to see why any progressive would put this on the table right now, particularly as some sort of “Grand Bargain” with people who want to destroy it.
And I doubt that calling health care reform “entitlement reform” is going to lead to a positive outcome. “Entitlement reform” by its very name implies that social security and medicare are unearned benefits, and to “reform” them under the rubric of saving money, which seems to be the plan, is a recipe for getting punk’d. If there is some super-duper Machiavellian plan that Rahm and his Blue Dogs are cooking up to protect social security and create universal health care, then the first order of business needs to be to ditch the word “entitlement.” (But I don’t think Rahm and his Blue Dogs are actually trying to do that, do you?)
Like most Democrats of the past three decades, they believe that if they can just get issues like social security, health care, abortion, trade, unions, crime, defense, tort reform, regulation etc “off the table” then nobody will ever have a reason not to vote for Democrats again and everything will be wonderful. And they’ve been successful to some degree — they have agreed on the death penalty, gun control, tough criminal sanctions, the drug war, defense spending and to never raise taxes on the rich above the historically very low agreed upon level of the Clinton years. And with the stimulus debate, they’ve now pretty much succeeded in defining most government spending that directly helps people as “silly,” so they’ve made even more progress in just the last two weeks. Their strategy has been to try get people to stop arguing about issues by capitulating rather than by trying to win the arguments. I guess they feel it worked.
There is some other, overarching logic to the stimulus debate and entitlement reform, though, and it’s important to keep it in mind. It’s the logic of disaster capitalism and there has never been a more perfect storm in which to apply it. “Entitlement reform”and “Grand Bargains” in this environment, particularly with a perceived mandate for compromise with wingnuts at all costs, looks very much like a form of shock therapy.
Perhaps the administration sees it more as a Nixon goes to China kind of thing, but that assumes that passing legislation with Republicans is the same thing as a president acting as a head of state (and that they don’t actually agree that social security and medicare must be cut to balance the budget.) If “entitlement reform” is on the agenda, I can’t see how universal health care happens — or anything else that costs money, for that matter (unless it involves war or imprisonment.) This first skirmish, over the stimulus, has already defined necessary spending as that which Susan Collins and Ben Nelson approve of. That doesn’t bode well for expansion of the safety net.I’m hopeful that this is a lesson for the administration and the Democrats in congress. Despite a big electoral victory and a mandate for change, they are not going to get cooperation from the Republicans and Presidents Nelson, Snowe and Collins aren’t the kind of people who have the imagination or necessary boldness to lead us out of this mess. Obama is going to have to be a much different leader than he wanted to be. Post-partisan mediation isn’t going to work. He’s going to have to get the people behind him on the specifics and enlist them in the cause.
Update: I was totally remiss in not mentioning the other reasons why the Newsweek title is utterly stupid. It’s a play on a famous quote from Milton Friedman: “We are all Keynesians now.” The fact is that everyone is still Keynesian — except for the neanderthal, conservative know-nothings in congress (and at Newsweek) who insist that all spending on anything but guns and prisons, even in an economic crisis, is socialism.
The title really couldn’t be more stupid in the context of the actual debate that’s going on. In fact, considering that they don’t even mention it in the story, I’m not even sure they recalled the reference when they came up with it. If they did, they sure did miss the point.
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Hack Attack
by digby
Apparently the holocaust denying Bishop was unavailable this morning, so Fareed Zakaria had Bjorn Lomborg on his CNN show to “debate” global warming.
Of course, they let Republicans on TV to talk about fiscal responsibility and freedom all the time too, so it’s not exactly unprecedented …
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What Is The Appeal Of Conservatism?
by tristero
On some New York Times server, Tobin Harshaw wastes valuable hard drive space rounding up, and lightly discussing, the opinions of some of the people who were dead wrong about everything in the past eight years. And it left me with the question in my title: What on earth is the appeal of conservatism?
I only have the stomach to go through a little of it. Harshaw types;
Defeat tends to bring out the best in so-called movement conservatives, the ideologues like William F. Buckley who provided the intellectual framework for the Reagan ascendance.
Is that the same oh so cultured William F. Buckley whose “intellectual framework” for dealing with the scourge of AIDS was to tattoo the buttocks of every sufferer? And who later changed his mind only when he found out his pal.Roy Cohn, had contracted AIDS, a world-class sleazebag who was fucking as many guys as he could and never told them he was infected? We’re supposed to believe there is a “best” side to a man like Buckley who was so morally bereft he would have branded the diseased, and who enthusiastically drew to his bosom some of the most odious men who ever disgraced America? What healthy political discourse would ever take the opinions of a lamebrain like Buckley seriously?
Harshaw continues, now summarizing an article by Tanenhaus. Here, the discussion focuses on classic conservatism:
To make his point, he offers his reading of Edmund Burke’s original conservatism — which he sees as being based “on distrust of all ideologies” and dedicated to the “ideal of replenishing civil society by adjusting to changing conditions”; that is, to compromise. He also stresses that the second great conservative figure, Benjamin Disraeli, “advocated ‘just, necessary, expedient’ policies — that is, the policies the public demanded even when they contradicted his own ideological certitudes.”
Anything strike you as odd about this? Why yes, this is very odd indeed. That’s because a distrust of ideology, a dedication to renewing civil society by adapting, and a street-smart pragmatism aren’t the values of any conservatism I”ve ever encountered in my life. These are, and have been for at least 56 years, liberal values.
Here, Harshaw quotes some Corner clown who gives us the real conservatism that’s created the mess we’re in and that we’ve all grown to loathe:
It’s true Burke believed political change should occur gradually, building on what works about the existing order to address what doesn’t work about it. But the reason was that it should avoid undermining the foundations of future progress, which were political order, family stability, and social peace. The trouble with the welfare state and with aggressive progressivism is precisely that they do undermine these foundations (and often intentionally so, because they see them as unjust) —
That’s right. Aggresive progressivism – you know, the theory of politics that is unalterably opposed to extralegal measures like torture, that advocates extending marriage rights to all loving couples, and which is famous for its opposition to putting semi-automatics in the hands of any deranged nut who wants to buy one – undermines political order, family stability, and social peace. Yup, that writer celebrates the conservatism I know: completely wrong on everything.
Go ahead. Read the article. Every positive value, or nearly every one, is a hallmark of modern liberalism. And every single one has been trampled on by the beings who call themselves conservatives. And yet, Harshaw invites us to discuss conservatism as we know it as if it potentially has something good to offer.
Conservatism – the real kind, the kind we’ve endured at least since Nixon – isn’t an intellectual movement in need of reform. It is extreme right thuggery epitomized by the bloated face of a fat, cigar-chomping, drug addict who makes fun of Parkinson victims and proudly boasts that he wants the president of the United States to fail.
I”m sick and tired of these sober, ever so thoughtful, discussions of the direction of modern conservatism. There is only one direction I care to discuss for such an utterly dildo pseudo-philosophy: its journey to defeat. Conservatism in the 21st Century has no intellectual history worthy of discussion – Edmund Burke, my ass. Today’s conservatives, like the incredibly influential religious nuts called The Family, are so unbelievably mush-brained they approvingly lump Hitler in with Jesus. Real conservatism is a haven for bigotry, stupidity, ignorance, bad ideas, and an unlimited obsession with violence that is symptomatic of profound deviance. It rots this country’s economic, scientific, artistic, and moral health. As the 2000 election, and now Norm Coleman show, It is deeply inimical to democracy,
Conservatism as it is practiced today is not something to reform. It is something mightily to oppose.
Saturday Night At The Movies
Welcome to the Hotel Babylonia
By Dennis Hartley
The late great George Carlin had an absolutely brilliant routine concerning his disdain for the rampant use of euphemisms to sugarcoat hard truths. As an example, he traced the metamorphosis of the term “shellshock” throughout the course of 20th century warfare:
There’s a condition in combat. Most people know about it. It’s when a fighting person’s nervous system has been stressed to its absolute peak and maximum. Can’t take anymore input. The nervous system has either (click) snapped or is about to snap.
In the First World War, that condition was called “shell shock”. Simple, honest, direct language. Two syllables, shell shock. Almost sounds like the guns themselves.
That was seventy years ago. Then a whole generation went by and the Second World War came along and the very same combat condition was called “battle fatigue”. Four syllables now. Takes a little longer to say. Doesn’t seem to hurt as much.” Fatigue” is a nicer word than “shock”. (Stridently) “Shell shock!” (Subdued) “Battle fatigue”.
Then we had the war in Korea, 1950. Madison Avenue was riding high by that time, and the very same combat condition was called “operational exhaustion”. Hey, we’re up to eight syllables now! And the humanity has been squeezed completely out of the phrase. It’s totally sterile now. Operational exhaustion. Sounds like something that might happen to your car.
Then of course, came the war in Viet Nam, which has only been over for about sixteen or seventeen years, and thanks to the lies and deceits surrounding that war, I guess it’s no surprise that the very same condition was called “post-traumatic stress disorder”. Still eight syllables, but we’ve added a hyphen! And the pain is completely buried under jargon. Post-traumatic stress disorder.
I’ll bet you if we’d of still been calling it shell shock, some of those Viet Nam veterans might have gotten the attention they needed at the time. I’ll bet you. I’ll bet you.
A rose by any other name. Whether you want to call it shellshock, battle fatigue, operational exhaustion or PTSD, there’s one thing for certain: unless you are a complete sociopath and really DO love the smell of napalm in the morning…war will fuck you up.
In a new animated feature called Waltz with Bashir, writer-director Ari Forman mixes the hallucinatory expressionism of Apocalypse Now
The film opens with the deeply unsettling sequence of a terrified young man being relentlessly pursued by a pack of raging, snarling hellhounds, nipping at his heels as he flees through a war-torn urban landscape. This turns out to be the visualization of a recurring nightmare that haunts one of the director’s fellow war vets. While lending a sympathetic ear to his pal as he props up the bar and continues to recount his psychic trauma, Forman has a sudden and disturbing epiphany: his own recollections of his tour of duty in Lebanon are nowhere near as vivid; in fact they are virtually non-existent.
This leads Forman on a personal journey to unlock the key to this selective amnesia. He confides in a psychiatrist friend, who urges him to seek out and interview as many of his fellow vets as he can. Perhaps, by listening to their personal stories, he will ultimately unblock his own. It soon becomes clear that the answer may lie in the possibility that he may have had a ringside seat to the horrific Sabra and Shatila refugee camp massacres, in which a large number of Palestinian non-combatants (including women and children) were rounded up and summarily executed by members of the Lebanese Christian Phalangist militia while Israeli Defense Force troops stood by. What follows is an affecting rumination on repressed memory, circumstantial complicity and collective guilt.
The director generally steers clear of making any heavy-handed political statement; this is more of a “soldier’s story”, a universal grunt’s-eye view of the confusion and madness of war, in which none are really to blame, yet all remain complicit. This eternal dichotomy, I think, lies at the heart of the matter in trying to understand what it is that snaps inside the mind of the walking wounded (or “shell-shocked”, if you will). How do we help them? How do we help them help themselves? With the recent distressing news about the ever-escalating suicide rates of our own American Afghanistan/Iraq war veterans, I think these questions are more important than ever, for a whole new generation of psychically damaged young men and women. In the meantime let’s continue to hope for a day when the very concept of war itself has become but a “repressed memory” for the entire planet.
War is cel: Persepolis
Previous posts with related themes:
Minority Veto
by digby
California is in deep trouble. The state’s bond rating is now the worst of all 50 states. They are furloughing workers. The place is coming apart at the seams.
And why? Because the anti-tax zealots have achieved their goal — a government that is held hostage to conservatives whether in the minority or the majority —conservatives who will ensure that the government can never function in a way that gives the citizens confidence that it can actually work.
It’s useful to think a little bit about that as we see the federal government likewise rigged, and increasingly dysfunctional. Conservatives masquerading as centrists having veto power when the government needs to raise revenue or spend it on anything that might make government seem like a useful institution for anything other than war, prisons and (sometimes) police, is a recipe for chaos.
Last night I heard the used car salesman Bob Corker and several other Republicans parrot a common GOP talking point, which will be their fall back if the Democratic program helps turn the economy around — they are already saying the economy is turning around on its own as part of the business cycle. Therefore, everything the Democrats are doing is wasteful pork at the expense of the deficit. In fact, John Kyl is already fretting about the recession that Obama’s plans are going to create down the road:
“If you knew a bill in the U.S. Senate would cause a recession in 10 years, would you support it?” asked Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Arizona. “That’s what the Congressional Budget Office, the bipartisan office that supports our efforts in the Congress, says about this legislation. … There will be negative [gross domestic product] in this decade as a result of this legislation.”
But the recession that has been going on or over a year and is getting worse as we speak isn’t something worth worrying about. Over and over again I hear how the Democrats blew thing thing by putting condoms and honeybees in the package. But let’s face it, when it comes to spending the Republicans will pull anything out and call it a boondoggle. Any hope of getting the kind of help to people they need to ride out this recession is getting whittled away by sharp Republican cant — and I see no hope that the Dems will get another bite of the apple. (The knew that, which is why they wanted to get as much relief money in this package as they could.)
So, when (if) the economy turns around, the lack of response will be seen as another example of government ineptitude. For conservatives, it’s all good.
I know I’m a broken record, but the fact remains that the Democrats have to start actually running against Republican ideology and not just saying they’ll be better Republicans or making promises to change the tone and the process. The people in this country don’t understand that most of what Republicans say with such arrogant assurance is malignant, discredited bullshit. Why would they? Nobody ever challenges it on the merits.
Here’s the result. When Republicans talk it makes “sense” to people because it’s what they’ve been hearing for thirty years. And they figure the other side must be the ones who don’t get it:
After all the Democratic bowing and scraping, and all the phony baloney GOP sturm and drang about fiscal responsibility, the American people still think all the partisan bickering is the Democrats’ fault. That’s the paradox of the hissy fit.
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It’s Like, Totally, Boring
by digby
It’s really great to see the media finally sobering up and taking their duty seriously:
The casual contempt for Obama–an unheard of phenomena for the press eight years ago when Bush arrived in the Beltway–has already become impossible for many within the media industry to hide. Specifically the WaPo Lisa de Moraes and her unnamed television industry “suits” quoted her news article, “Obama’s Preemptive Strike.” The premise is pretty simple: Obama may address the nation three times in primetime during the month of February. The Post’s television writer treats this as a really big deal and inserts a how-dare-he attitude, as she wrings her hands wondering how many millions of dollars the networks might “lose” by, you know, handing over the public airwaves for relatively small blocks of time to the POTUS so he can address a national crisis. “President Obama’s desire to talk — and talk, and talk — to the American public could cost broadcast networks millions, and millions, and millions of prime-time TV dollars,” wrote de Moraes. And yeah, good luck uncovering that kind of contempt when Bush addressed the nation in 2001 on network TV, even before the 9/11 attacks. The idea that it’s newsworthy or unusual or a crisis for the TV networks when a president uses the public airwaves to address the nation is just absurd.
That’s from Eric Boehlert. More at the link. These people are living in denial. Perhaps they don’t think the economic crisis is as sexy as when they got to dress up like GI Joe and play war, but this is a hell of a lot more relevant to their actual lives than the fantasy that Saddam was sending drone planes to kill us all in our beds. We are still living in bizarroworld. The entire media became hysterical, nearly speaking in tongues, at the prospect of going to war against someone who hadn’t even attacked us. Now that we have a real crisis on our hands, they are so,very, very booored with it all. It’s infuriating.There’s an underlying reason for this particular kvetching, however. Franklin Roosevelt spoke to the nation weekly during the depression and it helped him keep the country on his side as the administration tried everything it could think of to bring the country back from the brink. I think it’s pretty clear that the last thing the elites want is for Obama to maintain the kind of connection to the people that could undermine their control of the political dialog. It can only hurt their ball team.
Along those lines, if you didn’t get a chance to see Jay Rosen and Glenn Greenwald discussing this very topic on Moyers last night, check it out. Very good stuff. And Boehlert actually got to discuss this topic on CNN yesterday, which I think may be a first.
baby steps …
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