Month: December 2009

Call Captain America

by digby

I think Dana Rhorabacher has delivered the best wingnut rationale for opposition to global warming. It’s a conspiracy of global elites!

ROHRABACHER: Copenhagen may well lay the foundations for the future that the globalists who are pushing this agenda envision for us. […] What the Copenhagen crowd would mandate and can be traced back to the same alliance between our own radical environmentalists and the global elite. […] This is about centralizing power into the hands of global government, that’s what Kyoto and Copenhagen are all about, that’s what the globalist alliance is all about. […]

We must fight the globalist clique that is trying to shackle generations of Americans. … Members of Congress need to hear from angry constituents, and I predict they will.

Why didn’t we see this before? Why, it’s got the word “global” right in it!

This goes right to the heart of the right wing conspiracy fringe and works perfectly with their New World Order paranoia and subterranean global conspiracies about the Rothschilds and the gold standard and a bunch of other crazy hooey. (Think Progress points out that this tracks perfectly with 9/11 truther Alex Jones’ list of global conspiracies, which no doubt includes fluoridated water stealing his manly essence.)

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The Lil’est Cynic

by digby

David Shuster reported on Russ Feingold’s comments concerning the public option this morning and then turned to MSNBC’s new expert Capitol Hill analyst for his take on it:

Shuster: What sort of efforts are Harry Reid and his cohorts making toward Russ Feingold?

Lil’ Luke: (smirking) You remember last week or ten days ago that Mary Landrieu was able to get 300 million dollars for Hurricane Katrina down in Lousisiana? Expect Russ Feingold to possibly get something, a nice little present, an early Christmas present from Harry Reid here, possibly that could go to other members.

Obviously David, you know it’s politics. These Senators want what’s best for their home states, if they can hold up a major bill like this and get something in return, they just might do it.

But I think the people who are interesting to look at here are one, is Mr Feingold here, as you mentioned because he is the apotheosis of the progressive wing, but also folks like Blanche Lincoln, like Mary Landrieu, who are very fiscally conservative. If this is very expensive, they might not be on board. We also have to look at Mr Lieberman who has given a little bit of a hint that he might like this idea, but he is very much opposed to the trigger and some folks are looking at Olympia Snowe to possibly give the Democrats that buffer, that one vote buffer they could lose somebody. But she’s not signed on to this 100% at all either David so there’s still a lot of jockeying to be done.

It’s politics at its best, as we like to say at MSNBC.

Shuster: Thanks as always, (laughter) we’ll be watching the horse trading as it develops.

Lil Luke: Hahahahaha! Take care David.

It’s like a Darryl Hammond impression of his father, right down to the sage, all knowing attitude. Except he gets all mixed up and says ridiculous things like Feingold is looking for a handout (that’s not how he rolls at all) but that he is the “apotheosis” of the progressive wing.

And they have to stop him from making these ridiculous pronouncements like “as we all know David, that’s politics!” because he looks like the Campbell Soup Kid pretending to be Cokie Roberts. He acts like he’s been up on the hill since the Truman administration. I don’t mean to pick on the kid. He’s young and he doesn’t know what he’s doing. But his string of irrelevant cliches are perilously close to Palin-level gibberish and it makes the more credible news people like Mitchell or Shuster look like complete fools when they respond to him like a real newsman.

This really is the worst example of nepotistic indulgence I’ve seen in a long time. They are actually trying to reincarnate Tim Russert in his callow, untried 20 something kid and it’s painful to watch. It was painful to listen to Russert Sr too, but at least his stale, world weary CW wasn’t coming out of the mouth of someone who looks like he just finished up a rousing game of beer pong.

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Shadow Government

by digby

Let’s air our dirty laundry all over the world, shall we?

House Republicans are preparing for a trip to Copenhagen and looking to derail Democratic efforts to negotiate an international climate agreement.

About a half-dozen Republicans will make the trip to Denmark to oppose plans for cap-and-trade legislation, express their discontent with the scientific community that researches climate change and call for the United Nations to halt any negotiations until the academic scandal known as “Climategate” is resolved.

At least Texas Rep. Joe Barton, the ranking Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, along with Republican Reps. Jim Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin, Darrell Issa of California and Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee are making the trip.

House Republican leaders Tuesday laid out their plans for the U.N. climate conference, which will be to essentially buck all Democratic climate-change platforms.

Republicans plan to highlight the leaked e-mails that allegedly show countervailing research was suppressed to undermine the theory of climate change. And they are arguing that Democratic emissions trading “cap and trade” legislation does not have the widespread support of the American people.

“In the worst recession in 26 years, in the midst of an academic scandal and questionable science revealed in ‘Climategate’ and in the absence of a national consensus about policies that would bear upon the category known as climate change, we gather here to say, Mr. President, don’t make promises in Copenhagen that we cant keep,” said House Republican Conference Chairman Mike Pence of Indiana.

President Barack Obama, Pence added, should refrain from negotiating treaties “in the absence of a national consensus.”

The constitution is pretty clear on how this treaty thing works. The president negotiates them. Then the Senate ratifies them. If there’s no “consensus” then presumably they won’t do that. It’s called representative democracy and it’s the way we’ve been doing things for a long time here in the US.

I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a group of political opponents going to a foreign country to confront the president when he’s representing the nation. It’s kind of startling. I’m not a big fan of the rules that call for royal deference to presidents, but you do have to let the country speak with one voice in certain situations, and the constitution anticipates that when it comes to dealing with foreign governments that voice should be the president’s subject to ratification by the people’s representatives. To personally go to Copenhagen and publicly argue with the president as he’s negotiating a treaty is truly radical.

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Say What?

by digby

I don’t know how I missed this, but it came to my attention this morning via this post. Peter Beinert actually wrote this for all the world to see:

By essentially sacrificing abortion and immigrant rights to get conservative Democrats to vote for expanded health-care coverage, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi restored the old hierarchy that between the 1930s and the 1960s helped Democrats establish dominance on Capitol Hill. Today, to a degree we haven’t seen since then, the Democratic Party is about economic protection first, and cultural freedom second. ..

Once upon a time, the Democratic Party was a big tent—a big, ugly, tent. In Congress, liberals coexisted with all manner of racists, nativists, misogynists and morons. “History shows that nations composed of a mongrel race lose their strength and become weak, lazy and indifferent,” declared Georgia Democratic Senator Herman Talmadge in 1955, in a statement that placed him firmly in the mainstream among Southern Democrats at the time. In 1964, less than two-thirds of the Democrats in Congress voted for the Civil Rights Act. Yet it was that big, ugly Democratic Party that from Franklin Roosevelt to Lyndon Johnson pushed through Social Security, the Wagner Act, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Tennessee Valley Authority, Food Stamps, Head Start, Medicare and Medicaid (with occasional help from the then-extant progressive wing of the GOP). Some of the Democratic bigots opposed these economic reforms, to be sure. But others backed them; they genuinely wanted to curb the savagery and chaos of unfettered capitalism. They just wanted to preserve white, male supremacy too. This was the devil’s pact that defined the Democratic Party for more than three decades, until the civil rights and women’s movement forced party leaders to choose. They reluctantly chose racial and gender equality, and so the racists and the misogynists drifted away. The Democratic Party became culturally liberal: pro-affirmative action, pro-choice, and smaller, since the old racists and sexists, now repackaged as racial and sexual conservatives, flocked to the GOP. Starting in 1968, Democrats began consistently losing the presidency. And in 1994, the realignment finally trickled down to the House of Representatives, and the Democrats lost that, too.

He goes on to explain that the Democrats have been trying to lure back these racists and misogynists who want to preserve white privilege for decades now and have finally succeeded (with the blessing of the netroots!) as triumphantly demonstrated by the passage of the Stupak Amendment in the House:

For cultural liberals, it was ugly. They had better get used to it: Big parties are ugly. But if you want to rebuild the American welfare state, there is no alternative. A profound shift is under way, one that will likely endure even if Democrats lose seats in the midterm elections next year. The Republican Party is growing smaller and more ideologically pristine; the Democratic Party has grown larger and more untidy. Conservative activists seem positively thrilled by their party’s newfound purity. I hope they enjoy it. Meanwhile, in the messy real world, the party of FDR and LBJ is back.

No it isn’t. The party of FDR and LBJ didn’t have blacks in it and women had no power at all. Hispanics didn’t even figure into it, much less gays. That’s because it was a different world. And not incidentally, a much worse world for well over half the population.

Nonetheless, he evidently believes that the 60% of the party that is female, the members of the fastest growing demographic (Hispanics) and the 90+% of African Americans who vote Democratic are going to just allow the white male privilege people to turn back the clock in the name of the Big Tent. What nonsense. Today’s balance of power calls for compromises on these issues to be borne by the straight, white, male privilege set in order to advance everyone’s economic agenda, not the other way around.

The days of white male privilege are nearly over and those who want to recreate them are going to find themselves stymied in a party in which the majority are women, Hispanic, black or gay — or often a combination of all of those. I can’t imagine why anyone would even think of saying they shouldn’t be. Economic issues and “cultural issues” (if you want to describe human rights in such a dry way) aren’t mutually exclusive. Indeed, they are mutually dependent. The Party that gets that right will be the Party that can form a majority for a long time to come.

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Knowingly False

by digby

Following up on posts of the last few days asking why the global warming deniers are global warming deniers, Mike the Mad Biologist offers up another explanation, which is very intriguing:

I think Fred Clark at the Slacktivist hits on a key point in these two posts: “It isn’t intended to deceive others. It’s intended to invite others to participate with you in deception”

He then excerpts Clark’s discussion an earlier right wing rumor that ran rampant on the right about Procter and Gamble being a satanic cult (seriously) culminating with this observation:

Are you afraid you might be a coward? Join us in pretending to believe this lie and you can pretend to feel brave. Are you afraid that your life is meaningless? Join us in pretending to believe this lie and you can pretend your life has purpose. Are you afraid you’re mired in mediocrity? Join us in pretending to believe this lie and you can pretend to feel exceptional. Are you worried that you won’t be able to forget that you’re just pretending and that all those good feelings will thus seem hollow and empty? Join us and we will pretend it’s true for you if you will pretend it’s true for us. We need each other.

I think that’s getting to the heart of this. And for those who observed the chauvinistic fantasies of the keyboard commandos after 9/11, you will recognize some of the same impulses.

Read the whole post. It describes something that goes beyond religious faith to a kind of cultlike worldview which insists that people buy into demonstrable falsehood in order to establish solidarity with the group. Very interesting.

Update: It has been pointed out to me that part of the fault in this lies with the environmental movement which is arrogant and ineffectual in getting out the word, as well as invested in failure. There is truth in all that. But while I agree that the messaging is obviously not resonant with global warming deniers or they would not be global warming deniers, I’m still not sure that anything would persuade them. I think we’re dealing with something more fundamental than politics here, which is why I raised the question.

Update II: Apparently the Washington Post has joined the cult. Think Progress:

As The Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder notes, “Once again, the Washington Post has given Sarah Palin the chance to harness herself to the political story of the hour” by publishing her op-ed today urging President Obama to boycott the Copenhagen climate change conference because of the exaggerated controversy over the “Climategate” hacked e-mails. On its homepage, the Post promotes Palin’s op-ed, which is largely a redux of one of her Facebook posts, by putting [the word] science in scare quotes.

Update III: Fox News performing its duty as the official scribe of the denier cult.

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Oy

by digby

Good morning:

Eight Days of Hanukkah from Tablet Magazine on Vimeo.

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Well Excuse Me

by digby

There were those who warned that allowing anyone president to have unaccountable powers would lead to every successor to fight to maintain them. But no one wanted to believe that a nice Democrat would ever do such a thing. Ahem:

The Obama administration has asked an appeals court to dismiss a lawsuit accusing former Bush administration attorney John Yoo of authorizing the torture of a terrorism suspect, saying federal law does not allow damage claims against lawyers who advise the president on national security issues.

Such lawsuits ask courts to second-guess presidential decisions and pose “the risk of deterring full and frank advice regarding the military’s detention and treatment of those determined to be enemies during an armed conflict,” Justice Department lawyers said Thursday in arguments to the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.

Once again we are to understand that supposedly patriotic American will hold the the country hostage during a crisis and refuse to do their jobs if they aren’t given complete immunity from prosecutions — even for torture.

Who are the terrorists again?

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Breakthrough?

by digby

It looks like the Democrats have made some kind of deal on health care. Here’s Reid’s statement:

“This has been a long journey. We have confronted many hurdles, and tonight I believe we have overcome yet another one.

“I asked Senators Schumer and Pryor to work with some of the most moderate and most progressive members of our diverse caucus, and tonight they have come to a consensus.

“It is a consensus that includes a public option and will help ensure the American people win in two ways: one, insurance companies will face more competition, and two, the American people will have more choices.

“I know not all 10 Senators in the room agree on every single detail of this, nor will all 60 members of my caucus. But I know we all appreciate the hard work that these progressives and moderates have done to move this historic debate forward.

“I want to thank Senators Schumer, Pryor, Brown, Carper, Feingold, Harkin, Landrieu, Lincoln, Nelson and Rockefeller for working together for the greater good and never losing sight of our shared goal: making it possible for every American to afford to live a healthy life.

“As is long-standing practice, we do not disclose details of any proposal before the Congressional Budget Office has a chance to evaluate it. We will wait for that to happen, but in the meantime, tonight we are confident.”

Ryan Grimm gives the latest speculation on what that means:

They declined to outline the specifics of the agreement, but said that the measures they had been discussing will be sent to the Congressional Budget Office office for cost estimates. Once the estimates are returned, the final deal will be put together. “We have made a lot of progress. There’s a lot of agreement. We have decided to take the next step and that is to ask the CBO to score what we’ve been discussing,” said Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.), one of five conservative Democrats negotiating with five liberals. The discussion has focused on abandoning or greatly narrowing the public health insurance option. In exchange, people 55-64 would be able to buy in to Medicare and Medicaid eligibility would be expanded to people within 150 percent of the federal poverty line. And people within 300 percent of poverty would be eligible for a program pushed by Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) modeled on her state’s Basic Health. Cantwell is not one of the ten in the meetings but has stopped by to brief negotiators. Senators, after the meeting, would not confirm which elements of the discussion were sent to CBO. Much will depend on the results of the CBO analysis. Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), one of the liberal members in negotiations, said that he was happy with where the talks had gone. “I’ve got a smile on my face. I don’t smile naturally,” he said.

If Reid is right, they had better have found another vote, because this guy won’t buy anything less than a total repudiation of the anything called a public option. This is from earlier today:

While re-affirming his fierce opposition to the “public option,” Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., showed an openness to consider the deal, which would create an insurance program regulated by the government but run by private insurance companies.

“My colleagues know where I am on the public option, which is I’m against it,” he said before walking into his party’s weekly luncheon. “And I think [they] also know that I’m open-minded on some of the other trade-offs.”

[…]

While other moderate Democrats — like Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas — have opposed the public option as it is currently written in the Senate’s health care bill, they have publicly entertained a willingness to vote for a scaled-back version.

But Lieberman has consistently vowed to block the bill if it contains any form of a government insurance program.

That stance, said Democratic aides, had made him the biggest obstacle to final passage of the bill.

[…]

Lieberman was explicit Tuesday that his openness hinged on any form of a public option being scrubbed from the bill, saying he refused to accept any deal that appeared to be “public option-light.”

I believe that had Obama and Reid really been committed to the public option they probably could have found a way to finesse Lieberman long before now. There is no doubt that the only reason Lieberman did this was to fuck the liberals. Hard. It’s obviously become his life’s purpose.

We’ll know details soon. Right now it sounds like everyone is still confused, so there’s no need to get too excited or angry or anything else. Rockefeller’s attitude bodes well. And I saw Bernie Sanders on Maddow and he seemed quite jolly, although he reiterated his pledge to not vote for any bill that didn’t have a public option. So, we’ll see.

Update: Brian Beutler at TPM has more. Ezra here.

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Hating On The Eggheads

by digby

Krugman responds to my query about why the right is so angry about the existence of climate change and disagrees that it’s all about bugging the liberals. He thinks it’s something a little bit different:

What I think is that we’re looking at two cultural issues.

First, environmentalism is the ultimate “Mommy party” issue. Real men punish evildoers; they don’t adjust their lifestyles to protect the planet. (Here’s some polling to that effect.)

Second, climate change runs up against the anti-intellectual streak in America. Remember, just a few years ago conservatives were triumphantly proclaiming that Bush was a great president because he didn’t think too much:

Mr. Bush is the triumph of the seemingly average American man. He’s normal. He thinks in a sort of common-sense way. He speaks the language of business and sports and politics. You know him. He’s not exotic. But if there’s a fire on the block, he’ll run out and help. He’ll help direct the rig to the right house and count the kids coming out and say, “Where’s Sally?” He’s responsible. He’s not an intellectual. Intellectuals start all the trouble in the world.

So they’re outraged, furious, at the notion that they have to listen to guys who talk in big words rather than sports metaphors.

I think that’s right. And that’s also why they love listening to people like this:

“I’m not an Al Gore, gloom and doom environmentalist blaming the changes in our climate on human activity”

It probably isn’t a coincidence either that the two “regular guys” beloved by the anti-intellectual wingnuts also happen to be tools of Big Energy. They are just as dumb as they seem, I have no doubt, so they aren’t being deviously clever. But the big oil people have found these dolts to be very useful at manipulating the fervent right fringe into believing that the point headed scientists just ain’t all that when it comes to global warming.

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Cash For Caulkers

by digby

I heard this in the background and thought they were reporting on the Tiger Woods scandal.

I think perhaps they should rethink this slogan.

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