Month: November 2009

Shhh, Don’t Make Trouble

by digby

If Democrats can’t make something out of this they deserve to lose their majority and be sued for political malpractice.

Moments ago, Senate Republicans blocked a Democratic proposal to freeze credit card rates on existing balances through the holiday season. The bill, sponsored by Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), would prevent credit card companies from hiking rates and fees on existing balances until the industry reforms passed by Congress earlier this year take effect. Although a few provisions of that law took hold in August, most don’t launch until February or August of 2010. In the meantime, many card companies are hiking rates and fees to beat the law. “The industry has tried to make one last grab at their customers’ pocketbooks,” Dodd said, just before asking for the consent of Republicans to pass the bill unanimously. No dice. Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) objected “on behalf of several senators on this side of the aisle.” There’s no word yet which other lawmakers he was referring to.

These people are sticking up for credit card companies who are gouging their customers during the holidays in the middle of a recession! What do they have to do to provoke some outrage from the Democrats, gun down Tiny Tim? (Of course, the Republicans would simply say they were defending their constitutional right to bear arms.)

Honestly, this should provoke a Democratic outcry of epic proportions because it’s good policy and it’s good politics. They missed the boat by failing to draw attention to the fact that the Republicans blocked the unemployment insurance extension for over a month but this issue is hitting both the employed and the unemployed, all across the country. It’s a perfect example of the “give them and inch and they’ll take a mile” attitude of the banking industry and jamming the Republicans for helping them do it would go a long way to getting the public to understand that for all the GOP harping on spending as the cause of the downturn, they are helping their rich buddies shaft average Americans every step of the way when it comes to actual policy.

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Profiling High

by digby

Amanda Carpenter ably defended Sarah Palin’s stunning comments today that Scott Roeder, Dr George Tiller’s assassin, could have been stopped if the authorities had been willing to profile those who belong to radical anti-abortion Christian groups.

Carpenter: All the signals were there. And this gets into the divide of whether or not you think this was an act of terror and if he was motivated by a radical ideology. If you think that someone should have asked him about how his religion was impacting his thinking, that gets into the debate against political correctness. Can you ask him questions about his religious identity? That is the issue here.

Tim Fernholz:I don’t know where political correctness comes into this. If the FBI had evidence that he was talking to extremists, you don’t need to profile him, he’s saying things that are warning signs. A profile is a generalization across the board about an entire group.

Carpenter: But it’s a factor of whether or not his religion had an impact on this. And I think people are afraid to broach that subject because you can get in trouble for religious discrimination and all kinds of other things. That’s what I think the real issues is…

Oh wait, I guess I got that wrong. They were talking about the Ft Hood shooter.

But I certainly do agree that people are afraid to broach all kinds of subjects because you get into trouble for religious discrimination. It’s a real minefield isn’t it?

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Torture For Tantrums

by digby

Yesterday, I wrote about the taser incident in which a police officer tasered a 10 year old girl. There are more details today:

An Ozark police officer used a stun gun on a 10-year-old girl Thursday, an action the child’s father has publicly spoken against.

Officer Dustin Bradshaw used a stun gun to subdue the girl, whose mother had called police in response to her daughter misbehaving at the woman’s residence, according to an Ozark police report.

Bradshaw stated in the report that when he arrived at the scene, he found the girl “balled up in the floor crying and screaming (sic),” according to the report.

“I made several attempts to speak with her and she continued to behave in this manner,” Bradshaw stated.

Bradshaw said the child’s mother attempted to place the girl in the shower to get her ready for bed.

“I witnessed (the child) screaming, kicking and resisting every time her mother tried to touch her,” Bradshaw stated. “Her mother told me to Tase her if I needed to.”

Bradshaw said he and the mother carried the child to the shower, but the child refused to cooperate.

Bradshaw said after realizing there would not be a “peaceful resolution,” he moved the child to the living room and told her he was going to place her under arrest, according to the report.

“She was jerking her arms away from me violently while I was trying to cuff her and thrashing about wildly,” Bradshaw stated. “While she was violently kicking and verbally combative, (she) struck me with her legs and feet in the groin.”

Bradshaw said because he had difficulty placing handcuffs on the girl, he administered a brief drive stun to the child’s back with his stun gun, the report states.

“She immediately stopped resisting and was placed into handcuffs,” Bradshaw stated. “She would not walk on her own and I had to carry her to my police car.”

Well, why didn’t they say so? The little girl was having a tantrum and got even more upset when her mother and a strange man in a uniform tried to carry her into the shower. She’s lucky she wasn’t pistol whipped.

This is a new parenting technique I think every mom should try. But you needn’t call the police when your kid refuses to bathe or clean up her room or has a tantrum. Just stick her finger in an electrical outlet for a few seconds and she’ll turn right around. After all,it’s not like it hurts them or anything:

The girl, who hasn’t been identified, wasn’t hurt and is now at the Western Arkansas Youth Shelter in Cecil.

I am very much against tasering, but I honestly believe that any mother who tells a policeman to taser her child should be tasered first, just so she knows what she’s asking them to do. And if she then says it’s ok to do that to her own child, the child should be removed from her custody immediately.

Electricity shooting through the human body is excessively painful, which is why people fall to the ground screaming in agony when it happens. People who purposefully do that to children for any reason are sadistic and abusive. It’s torture.

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Choke On It

by digby

One of the benefits of making government spending and deficits the big villains in the economic downturn is that you can position yourself to be a populist while simultaneously helping out your rich pals:

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell says there is no support within his party for the financial overhaul plan outlined last week by Democrats.

Republicans say they believe the bill goes too far and could limit the availability of credit.

McConnell’s declaration puts on shaky ground legislation that President Barack Obama has made a top priority. The bill by Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd would extend government oversight of financial institutions and empower regulators to dismantle failing firms that threaten the broader economy.

Democrats hold a majority in the Senate, although some of their more conservative members might be tempted to side with Republicans if they think the proposal could hurt the financial industry.

If Democrats had spent more time naming the culprits and less time coddling billionaires, this would be a tough go for the Republicans. As it is, people are convinced that the recession was caused by Obama bailing out the banks and raising the deficit. Once you go down that rabbit hole the Republicans can defend Wall Street and the banks as the “engine of recovery” and insist that the government not only refrain from disrupting the “free market” but actually roll back whatever lame regulations currently exist.

Can’t you see that we simply can’t hold back the most productive members of society when they are saving us from the financial ruin that Obama’s socialist policies have created?

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Keynes Schmeynes

by digby

I’ve been writing for some time that Americans are confused about the recession and furthermore that the Republicans are making headway with their easy explanation that the cause of all their pain is government spending. I have felt for years that the Democrats needed to explain economics better because the free lunch supply siders and deficit hawks are on the verge of turning America into a dysfunctional state akin to California.

I guess that’s not going to happen:

Obama warned the United States’ climbing national debt could drag the country into a “double-dip recession,” though he said he’s still considering additional tax incentives for businesses to reverse the rising unemployment rate.

Let’s hope he just misspoke or the story is mischaracterizing his statement. If the Democrats really are so spooked by the Virginia and New Jersey results that they feel they need to cut spending with 10% unemployment and explicitly adopt the GOP’s false implication of the deficit being the cause of recessions then we have a problem. A big one.

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Freaky Little Factoid

by digby

Most of you probably know that Ben Nelson is former CEO of Central National Insurance Company. But did you know that Central National Insurance Company is located on John Galt Blvd in Omaha?

I think that pretty much sums up everything you need to know about Nelson and the insurance industry in Omaha.

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Bull Through It

by digby

I’ve been watching this report by John King up in Wasilla all week on CNN and one of the most amusing little tidbits is an interview in the local bookstore which shows Nixonland displayed prominently among the political offerings. (They can’t escape us …)

But it makes sense. If you want to understand Palin and the teabaggers etc, you have to understand the conservative movement. Nobody understands it better than Rick Perlstein, who is interviewed here on the subject of Obama and the conservative movement. Here’s an excerpt:

Question: What’s a modern example of synergy between corporate and religious conservatives?

Rick Perlstein: Well, healthcare is a fascinating example of this question of how religious conservatives and business conservatives can act in coalition. Being on the mailing list of, the American Family Association, Don Wildmon’s organization, I’m beginning to, get the emails saying that, healthcare – that, basically, a national healthcare program is an imposition on Christians. It’s going to fund abortions. It’s going to violate the sanctity of the traditional family. So, you see a pure example of kind of a right-wing Libertarian business conservatives using the leaders of the religious right in quite an effective way to undermine a mass constituency for a reform which, in the end, is actually quite conservative. I mean, what could be more, what could be more judicious than, like I said, letting people change their jobs if they have an entrepreneurial idea? What could be more strengthening of the traditional bonds of family and society than families not going bankrupt because someone in the family gets sick?

But, there are very powerful interests who basically benefit from the status quo, and they’re able to take advantage of this preexisting distrust that’s very American of anything having to do with an expanding state. And again, historically it’s the same thing you saw with Social Security. It’s the same thing you saw with Medicare. It’s the same thing you saw with the idea that the United States in the 19th century should have a central bank. The same thing you saw when the government began talking about financing internal improvements like canals, the interstates which were seen as a Communist plot by some people.

So, the challenge for progressives, the challenge for people who believe that this is not only an important goal but an imperative goal, national healthcare, is not to imagine that this kind of irrational fear is going to go away, but simply to bull through it. Force healthcare down people’s throats whether they want – whether they like it or not, and watch what happens ten, twenty, thirty, forty years from now when, again, conservatives come to power promising to uphold the ideals of Obama’s healthcare program just like George Bush promised to uphold Social Security and promised to honor FDR, and just like conservatives of every generation – or I should say reactionaries of every generation say, “Well, the liberals that we’re dealing with now are unacceptable extremists. The ones we had last generation weren’t so bad.”

That takes guts and a certain tactical vision — which Perlstein also discussed:

Question: Has Obama succeeded on his promise of being a “post-partisan” President?

Rick Perlstein: Well, the problem with Obama’s post-partisan agenda is that he came into it, he came into his presidency at a time when millions of Americans, perhaps even tens of millions of Americans don’t consider a Democratic president legitimate, don’t consider liberalism legitimate, don’t consider the idea of the state forming new programs to help people legitimate. So, he’s in a situation a lot like Abraham Lincoln faced in 1860 when you had millions of Americans who didn’t even consider what was going in Washington to have anything to do with them.

So, the big question for me was always was this post-partisan idea — this idea that you could kind of bring adversaries across a table and get them to agree to each other and agree with, to get them to agree with each other and achieve social progress — was that a deep-seated belief of his or was that, in a certain sense, a tactic? Not a cynical tactic, but a tactic. And I would be very with him if it were a way of thinking about politics, if it were a tactic, because the job of transformative leader is not to cue to the center, but define their own values as the center, as common sense.

And if he … I believe in the agenda he’s putting forward, for example, universal healthcare, cap and trade and green jobs as a way to, solve our energy problems while growing the economy. I think these are reasonable, while liberal, goals and if he presents them as reasonable and the reaction to them as one could knew they were going to – because there are these millions of people that don’t consider a liberal president legitimate – was irrational, extreme, that presented him an opportunity to say, “My program is rational, but my opposition has chosen extremism, has chosen unreason,” and be willing to take the hit.

There’s always going to be a minority of the country, thirty percent, 35 percent, even 40 percent who disagrees with him radically. disagrees with him strongly. But if he’s still willing to pass his program with that 60 percent margin, the rest of the country will eventually catch up. The reactionaries will understand as they did with Social Security, as they did with women getting the vote, freeing the slaves, Social Security – that actually these things were in their interests. They’ll accept them as part of the established order of American society, and in fact, 20, 30, 40 year down the road the Republicans and the Conservatives will be campaigning to save universal healthcare just like they campaign to save Social Security.

But the problem is this doesn’t really work unless you make this kind of tactical shift. If people say that you’re illegitimate and your liberal agenda is extremist socialist destroying the America that we all grew up with, you have to be willing to say, “This is unreasonable. This is extreme.” And if you aren’t able to say, “This is unreasonable and this is extreme,” then you’re granting your opposition an undue influence. You’re basically negotiating with the unnegotiatable. And as Abraham Lincoln said quite eloquently in his 1860 speech at Cooper Union, you can’t win that way.

No you can’t. And it remains to be seen if Obama has the will to blast past these barriers and take the win with an extremely hostile opposition getting ever more radical in deeply stressful times. We just don’t know yet.

I have never shared Perlstein’s quandry with respect to Obama’s post-partisan vision. It seemed obvious to me from his life story that he genuinely believed in his ability to transcend partisanship. It makes him somewhat eager to split the difference, I think.

But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t also see the value of placing his political adversaries in the role of unreasonable extremists. His administration has done that with some success, I would say (and a lot of help from the crazies) but they haven’t yet explicitly positioned their policy positions as the reasonable, mainstream alternative and I think it’s because they are flummoxed without any bipartisan support. The political establishment can’t see anything being “reasonable” if the Republicans are rejecting it.

He needs to say it anyway, as Perlstein prescribes. I would predict that citizens in the middle are well prepared to see total obstructionism as an unreasonable position, even if the Villagers see it as a sign of liberal extremism. After all, to them all partisanship is a sign of liberal extremism.

Watch the whole interview. It’s interesting stuff particularly considering the Palin spectacular we’re all witnessing this week.

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I Gotcher Incivility For Ya

by digby

I was very interested to read Kathleen Parker’s latest lament about political incivility in which she admitted that incivility has always been with us but that the problem is bloggers who have the bad manners to transmit the nasty things people say to a wider audience.

I plead guilty and in the interest of spreading the bad word even more, I’d like to offer up the highly respected former Federal judge and Bush Attorney General Mike Mukasey to some of that inappropriate scrutiny:

Former Bush attorney general Michael Mukasey is one of the Republicans who has been speaking out against Holder. Last week at a Federalist Society conference, Mukasey said that holding the trial in Manhattan increased the risk of a terrorist attack on the city.

In an interview with Washington Times radio this morning, the hosts asked Mukasey about Moran’s co. Mukasey responded by suggesting that the congressman “get professional help” from Maj. Nidal Hasan:

Q: Congressman Jim Moran of Virginia says anybody that questions KSM coming to New York City for a civilian trial — that they’re un-American. What is your reaction to that?

MUKASEY: I think he’s lost touch with reality. He ought to get professional help, perhaps from Maj. Nidal.

The segment then ends with the hosts laughing over Mukasey’s “joke.”

I suppose that’s better than saying he ought to be tortured, but perhaps that would have gone too far even for the man who famously said that waterboarding wasn’t illegal.

I guess I just don’t see how anyone can talk about “incivility” when the government tortures people with impunity. Seems kind of beside the point to me. So, let them joke away about terrorism and mass murder and quake in their boots about a potential terrorist attack — at the site of worst terrorist attack in American history. They are gibbering jerks, all of them.

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No Other Choice

by digby

Taser madness of the day:

Ozark police said they were called to a home where a mother asked for help with her unruly child, but the 10-year-old’s father said he’s outraged at the force police used against his daughter.

“I would like to say Ozark police Tased this little girl right here. Ten years old and [they] shot electricity through her body, and I want to know how the heck in God’s green earth can they get away with this,” said the girl’s father, Anthony Medlock.

Medlock said his daughter was at her mother’s house when Ozark police Officer Dustin Bradshaw shocked her in the back with a Taser and arrested her.

“If you can’t pick the kid up and take her to your car, handcuff her, then I don’t think you need to be an officer,” Medlock said.

Medlock said his daughter does show signs of having emotional issues, but she “doesn’t deserve to be treated like a dog. She’s not a tiger.”

According to a police report, the officer was called to the home by the mother and witnessed the child kicking and screaming.

The officer’s statement said the girl’s mother, Kelly Hamlert, told him to use a Taser on her if he needed to.

The officer did shock the girl after he said she kicked him in the groin.

“He had no other choice. He had to get the child under control,” said Ozark police Chief Jim Noggle.

Noggle said the officer shocked the girl for about a second.

Ozark police said it is their policy to use a Taser on someone who is a threat to others, no matter their age.

Noggle said simply restraining the child could be harmful.

“Well, if he tried to restrain her, he might hurt her by restraining her. If you grab somebody, you can slip an arm out of joint. They can slip from you and fall on the ground,” Noggle said.

Right, all those things would hurt. So it’s best to avoid such “harm” by shooting a child with 50,000 volts of electricity.

Do they even bother training cops anymore or do they just give them a taser and tell them to use it in all circumstances?

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Gamming Up The Works

by digby

Joan Walsh was just on MSNBC this morning arguing that it was sexist to put Palin on the cover of Newsweek in her running shorts, when she obviously didn’t pose in that particular outfit for that particular cover. Others on the show disagreed, saying that Palin just happens to be a politician who has nice legs. I think Joan is right, especially considering what is being said about the Palin Phenomenon among the village media in general:

JESSICA YELLIN, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: … Now that we’re back to debating why Sarah Palin is just so polarizing for many people, can we finally acknowledge what’s been unsaid? Yes, she’s evaluated for her political views, for her campaigning experience — her campaigning skills, her experience and her readiness. But there does seem to be another factor at play.

Look at this picture right here.[Newsweek cover] And what do you see? Can’t we just acknowledge it? Sarah Palin is sexy, and she doesn’t seem to hide from it. She shows her gams. She openly embraces her femininity. And how many other successful female politics do the same? Not Secretaries Hillary Clinton or Janet Napolitano, not Senators Kay Bailey Hutchison or Dianne Feinstein, or even next- generation female leaders like Jennifer Granholm, governor of Michigan, or California gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman.

Symbolically, all these female politicians have played by the old pantsuit rules of the workplace. They don’t pretend to be men. Every so often, they acknowledge their feminine side, usually by talking about motherhood.

But, far more often, American female politicians have seemed to keep their femininity under wraps, so to speak. But it’s different with Sarah Palin. And it strikes a chord.

Republican political analyst Leslie Sanchez has written a book about women politicians.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LESLIE SANCHEZ, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: What very few people will say publicly in Washington is that Sarah Palin is sexy. What they say privately in the blogosphere is — is every — is all the evidence to — to support that. They like her looks, her smile, her clothes, her hair, her legs, her shoes. What she’s going that’s different and unique is she’s embracing her femininity in a very strong and powerful way.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

YELLIN: Now, that doesn’t entirely account for why Palin is popular or polarizing or what her skills are. But it — it is something new in American politics.

And, Wolf, the question is, isn’t it at least — at least worth acknowledging?

BLITZER: That she’s good looking?

YELLIN: She’s good looking.

BLITZER: Yes, because a male politician is handsome. We all acknowledge that.

YELLIN: Yes.

BLITZER: What’s wrong with acknowledging that she’s attractive — a — a beautiful woman?

YELLIN: That’s right. That’s right. It’s an advantage for them.

BLITZER: What did women, in these new polls, say about their attitude toward Sarah Palin?

YELLIN: Well, it’s interesting. Sarah Palin is — tends to be less popular among women. And across the board, women are more likely to say Sarah Palin is unqualified than are men.

That’s also true, interestingly, if you break it down and look only at Republicans. Our newest poll shows that a majority — a significant majority of Republican men think she is qualified to be president. Fewer say she’s unqualified. But Republican women are divided on the question. And a small — a greater number, actually, say that she’s unqualified.

So is it possible that Palin’s public embrace of her femininity is part of that?

Several political analysts I talked to say, yes, they think so, but pollsters haven’t gone there yet — Wolf.

BLITZER: Jessica Yellin, thanks very much. A good, good report from Jessica.

I’m honestly at a loss for words about this. How many ways can one short segment be offensive?

First of all, it was very thoughtful of Yellin to agree that other female politicians “don’t act like men” even though they have “played the old pantsuit rules” of the workplace and don’t “embrace their femininity.” (This means, evidently, that they keep their “femininity under wraps” by not showing off their “gams.”)

However, Yellin might have considered that most professional women have enough problems getting people to listen to what they say rather than staring at their legs, so they don’t find it all that useful to show them off. Even Palin, before she became a celebrity, said that she wore those glasses and put her hair in a bun so people wouldn’t obsess over her looks.

It’s hard to believe that someone like Jessica Yellin would be so dismissive of women’s difficulties in being taken seriously in the workplace, but then she’s a television personality, not a serious professional, and for women in show business being sexy is paramount. I guess this makes sense for her.

But there’s another dimension here. Most of the women she names as being frumpy, sexless and “unfeminine” are quite a bit older than Palin. They have ascended to the heights they have in middle age, after putting in many years working their way up the ladder. In their 50s and 60s most of these women are not going to don short shorts under any circumstances. They are beyond selling themselves on the basis of their gams, even if they wanted to — they are selling their brains, experience, wisdom, hearts and commitment, which are really hard to market in a pair of Daisy Dukes, no matter what age you are.

Perhaps the gasbags and newsreaders in the infotainment complex find that distasteful or boring, but the women at least should probably think twice about perpetuating these stereotypes. They too will grow older like those other “unfeminine” women and won’t be able to show off their gams or otherwise market their sexuality. It might be a good idea to think ahead a little bit and ask themselves whether it’s a good idea to say that women who are no longer “sexy” are “playing by old pantsuit rules” and failing to “embrace their femininity.” They too are going to be beyond the years of being considered beauty pageant material someday.

I won’t even go into the notion that femininity equals sexiness because much smarter feminists than I have written volumes on the subject. Suffice to say that it’s more than a little bit startling to see such a thing advanced in the year 2009.

None of this is to deny that Palin is attractive and yes, sexy. She is. And I would never deny that physical attractiveness is an asset in our media culture. But that story framed her as doing something that other female politicians refuse to do because of some stuffy, feminist rules about pantsuits and “acting like men” when the fact is that Palin is not playing a serious political role, but rather a celebrity role where physical attractiveness is required. She is where she is not because of her hard work, study or political commitment, but because she is a compelling media figure and a huge part of that is because she is so attractive. Fine. But let’s not confuse these two things and tacitly condemn other women for taking their leadership roles seriously.

Angela Merkel is the most powerful woman in the world. She doesn’t look like a pin-up and nobody expects her to. Just like most world leaders she is a middle aged person whose looks are incidental to their position of power. This is the way it works for men and should work for women too. The world has many beautiful celebrities to entertain us and god bless them all. What we have a shortage of is leaders with intellect and compassion and that can’t be discerned by whether or not they sexually excite you.

(As for Palin being seen as unqualified among more women than men, I think it speaks to the fact that women only have one head to think with so things sometimes tend to be less confusing for them — 😉

Update: Sweet Jesus:

“That day in sunny Texas when the divorce rumors were rampant in the tabloids, I watched Todd, tanned and shirtless, take the baby from my arms and walk him back to the ranch house so Trig could nap while I made calls. Seeing Todd’s blue eyes smiling, I chuckled. ‘Dang,’ I thought. ‘Divorce Todd? Have you seen Todd?’”

I’m guessing we now know the answer to Katie Couric’s question. Palin reads romance novels.

(Not that there’s anything … yadda, yadda, yadda.)

Update II: I meant that last sentence about two heads to be an ironic little quip, not a sexist jab at men. When you think about it men are actually being remarkably open minded for not seeing Palin as unqualified. Apologies for giving offense. I don’t know why fewer women see Palin as qualified.

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