Month: February 2010

Big Snow, Cold Planet

by digby

I know the weather on the East coast is frightful and evidently many of our leaders are convinced that means that global warming is is a hoax. But what are they going to say about this inconvenient truth?
 

I’ve been having fun recently mocking the normally weather-obsessed Matt Drudge, as well as the rest of the right-wing media, for having refused to acknowledge the big pre-Winter Olympics story out of Vancouver: The Canadian outpost has a shortage of snow  thanks to an historic January heat wave [emphasis added]:

it comes as little surprise that this January will go down as the warmest in Vancouver history. The 44.8-degree 31-day average easily eclipsed the previous mark of 43.3, set in 2006. Since record-keeping began in 1937, the January average had been 37.9.

But of course, that’s bad news for Drudge and his anti-reason friends at Fox, because this winter’s meme has been that, OMG, it’s been snowing a lot (in some place) in January and February, which means (duh!) global warming, or climate change, must be bunk, right? Because if it’s snowing today, that means the atmosphere won’t warm decades from now, right? (Makes perfect sense.)  

Vancouver.  Isn’t that in some foreign country?  What does that have to do with us anyway? Let them fix their own weather.

Update: Oh my goodness. I’ve really got to stop posting anything the least bit snarky.

I’m not saying that Vancouver proves that global warming is real. (I’m no climate scientist, but I did see An Inconvenient Truth twice and even bought the Melissa Etheridge CD with the theme song on it.) I’m merely wondering, with amusement, how the flat-earthers who insist that record snow on the east coast proves climate change is a hoax will deal with the fact that while it’s very cold in DC right now, it’s unusually warm in Canada.

h/t to bb

Running On Empty

by digby

Look who’s talking:

Remarking on African American leaders meeting about jobs at the White House today, Rush asked: “Have any of these people ever run anything besides their mouths?”

Perhaps he’s convinced himself that having your ring kissed by every office holding Republican qualifies as “running” something.

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Drawing A Picture

by digby

McJoan reports:

The Obama administration has already sent a sternly-worded letter to Anthem Blue Cross over the company’s excessive rate increase for individual policy holders in California. How excessive? Up to 39 percent. But that’s not all. Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield also informed their customers that they are changing their practice of adjusting rates annually, and as of now are reserving the right to raise premiums basically whenever they feel like it.

There’s little beyond sternly-worded letters that the administration can do, other than something like maybe advocating strongly for some kind of legislative remedy, say in the form of serious competition to private insurers in the form of a robust public option for health insurance. But there’s something Congress can do, and that’s put the insurers on the hot seat and investigate.

And apparently, they are going to do just that.

It seems as if this would have been a very good thing to do before the health care debate even started. Indeed, it would have been a good thing to do constantly since 2007, when the Democrats took the majority.

There was an assumption that the country truly understood the problem with the health care system and felt their own vulnerability to its excesses. Maybe everyone assumed people pay really close attention to the presidential debates and sign on to all the details of the various platforms of the candidates. Or perhaps they just thought that everybody in the country had seen Sicko (if only.) Whatever the case, the politicians erred in not illustrating the problems in living color, over and over again, in a sustained education campaign before they attempted a comprehensive overhaul.

People know something’s wrong. But the problem is that most of them are working and have insurance, which means it is an abstract problem that they don’t personally face. The job of the politicians was to 1) make the moral case for not allowing your fellow citizens to be completely destroyed, physically and financially, because they have the bad luck to get sick and 2) to illustrate how easily it could happen to anyone.

It’s tough to do in an era of self-centered conservatism, so they tried to make it about the nation’s well being as a whole. But that’s not a case that’s easily sold in a political environment that’s been drenched in incoherent conservative cant for decades and which holds as an article of faith that taxes are the major cause of economic insecurity and cutting spending will result in better benefits.

I don’t know if these hearings will help pass health care reform this year. I no longer have any sense of whether that is going to happen or not. But the problem isn’t going away and so regardless of its immediate chances for passage, the Democrats have to keep trying to educate people about the issue. It’s overdue.

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The Greatest Deliberative Body In The World

by digby

Steve Benen passes on a report that the cap and trade bill appears to be doomed in the Senate, which isn’t all that shocking considering the stalemate. But I had to read this twice to believe it:

It seems mind-numbing, but Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) said snowfall in D.C. has had an effect on policymakers’ attitudes. “It makes it more challenging for folks not taking time to review the scientific arguments,” said Bingaman, chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

“People see the world around them and they extrapolate,” he added.

Now explain to me why we would listen to these bright fellows’ fearmongering about the deficit when they believe that a big snowfall in DC proves that global warming is a hoax? Are these people really believable when they sanctimoniously insist that they are just worried about the future of their kids and grandkids.

I’m sure future generations will thank their parents and grandparents for saving them from having to worry about paying higher taxes when they are foraging for food and searching desperately for high ground. Very thoughtful of them to think ahead like that.

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Sweethearts

by digby

I just love it when I’m accused of being condescending and rude to conservatives in the same week in which their Vice presidential standard bearer is tossing around the bitchy teabag bon mots like confetti and the Republican National Committee is sending nasty “Valentine” cards all over the country. 

Speaking of which, Skippy is collecting examples of conservative condescension, so if some of the more obvious examples come to mind, click on over.

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Presidential Populism

by digby

*sigh*

President Barack Obama said he doesn’t “begrudge” the $17 million bonus awarded to JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon or the $9 million issued to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. CEO Lloyd Blankfein, noting that some athletes take home more pay.

The president, speaking in an interview, said in response to a question that while $17 million is “an extraordinary amount of money” for Main Street, “there are some baseball players who are making more than that and don’t get to the World Series either, so I’m shocked by that as well.”

“I know both those guys; they are very savvy businessmen,” Obama said in the interview yesterday in the Oval Office with Bloomberg BusinessWeek, which will appear on newsstands Friday. “I, like most of the American people, don’t begrudge people success or wealth. That is part of the free- market system.”

He’s not a stupid man. The only thing you can conclude is that this is a matter of principle for him and that he truly believes that these people are worth that kind of money despite the fact that they nearly destroyed the world financial system and are benefiting from its chaos and failure.

And it clarifies once and for all that he doesn’t understand the very real angst out in the country and the desperate need to hold someone, somewhere, accountable for what’s gone wrong. Evidently, he’s perfectly content to allow the government to take the blame for the whole sorry mess.

The owners will be pleased, I’m sure. This was just two days ago on MSNBC:
 

The New York Times writes how Wall Street is threatening to no longer shower the Democratic Party with campaign contributions — and is even beginning to donate more to Republicans — now with the White House pushing for financial reform. 

Could the White House and Democrats have asked for a better headline here?

Evidently, that wasn’t a headline they wanted at all. Indeed, it seems to have pushed the president into publicly defending the most despised men in the country, which proves in living color just how much power those people have. Clearly, the Democrats understand their priorities and winning elections isn’t one them.

 Obama’s “one from column A and one from column B” approach has always frustrated me, but I think it’s really starting to take its toll. At this point, he just seems bipolar not bipartisan, ranting about wall street one day and saying that Lloyd Blankfein and Jamie Dimon are jolly good fellows who deserve their obscene bonuses the next. Do they think that nobody notices — or just feel in their bones — that he’s trying to be all things to all people? I don’t think it inspires confidence.

Update: Greg Sargent has the transcript which does show the context as slightly different. I’m not sure it changes the general thrust of the interpretation. Obama vouching for Dimon and Blankfein in any context is a monumental error.

And I still maintain that “nuance” of this sort isn’t working. At this point it’s confusing not illuminating.

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Satire

by digby

Stephen Colbert is very condescending:

What If?

by digby

Eric Boehlert:

If you don’t think there’s a media double standard that favors Republicans over Democrats, then let’s play a game of what-if.

What if, in 2006, at Yearly Kos, the first annual convention of liberal bloggers and their readers, organizers shelled out $100,000 for former Vice President Al Gore to address attendees? And what if the same organizers booked as an opening-night speaker a fringe, radical-left conspiracy theorist who’d spent the previous year pushing the thoroughly debunked claim that some Bush White administration insiders played a role in, and even planned, the 9-11 attacks. What if the speaker (also proudly anti-Semitic) received a standing ovation from the liberal Yearly Kos crowd?

Given that backdrop, and given the fact that the 9-11 Truther nut had for weeks bragged about his chance to share the stage with Gore, do you think the press would have demanded that Gore justify his association with a hateful conference that embraced a 9-11 Truther? Do you think pundits would have universally mocked and ridiculed Gore’s judgment while condemning the Yearly Kos convention as being a hothouse of left-wing hate? Do you think Gore’s appearance would have become a thing?

I sure do. Gore and liberal bloggers would have been crucified by the press and the D.C. chattering class if the scenario I described ever unfolded in real life.

I don’t think there’s any doubt. In fact, the first Yearly Kos got a lot of media attention and it featured some big names like Howard Dean and Harry Reid. But the organizers didn’t pay for any of them and there were no extremist cranks invited, so there was nothing to compel the huge hue and cry that would have been raised if they had done so. It was, all in all, a pretty staid affair, with the only controversy surrounding the fact that Mark Warner paid 50k for a party — which was roundly criticized by the participants as gilding the lily.

Considering what would have been a feeding frenzy if the netroots had done something similar, Boehlert goes on to wonder why the mainstream press didn’t bother to report the fact that Sarah Palin, whose speech was broadcast live on television, followed a prime time speech by “birther” fruitcake Joseph Farah:

Because, yes, at the Tea Party convention, Farah, a proud Muslim-hater and gay-hater, did receive a standing ovation from the conservative crowd after he unfurled his thoroughly debunked birther garbage. (i.e. Obama “doesn’t have a birth certificate.”) And Farah did brag in the weeks leading up to the event about his chance to share the stage with Palin, to associate with Palin. (“Sold out! Palin-Farah ticket rocks tea-party convention,” read the headline at Farah’s discredited right-wing site, WorldNetDaily.com.)

Worst of all, though, the press played dumb about the whole thing.

Fact: Virtually nobody in the corporate media said boo about Palin helping to legitimize Farah by sharing the same stage with him. She was given a total free ride.

And I mean nobody. According to Nexis, there were more than 150 newspaper articles and columns published in the U.S. last week that mentioned both Palin and the Tea Party. (Combined, The New York Times and The Washington Post published 18 of them.) Yet out of all those articles and columns, exactly two also mentioned Joseph Farah by name. (Congrats to the Philadelphia Daily News and New Hampshire’s Concord Monitor.)

And keep in mind that lots of scribes, even after listening to Farah’s rambling rant, filed dispatches from Nashville stressing how mellow and mainstream the Tea Party convention was turning out to be. read on …

If you look back at the pieces written about the first Yearly Kos convention, you can see how badly the reporters were looking for some kind of code pink flakiness or, even better, real left wing radicalism. What they found instead was a bunch of mostly middle aged political junkies and activists listening respectfully to mainstream Democratic politicians. At the tea party convention they could have written some really sexy stories about birthers and Breitbart and other assorted fringers, but they chose not to.

The reason, it seems to me, is pretty obvious: they’ve been worked. After all, we now know that the Washington Post was out there actively commissioning pieces about “liberal condescension” which tells you pretty clearly that the word has gone forth that the teabaggers must be treated with kid gloves. I assume reporters read the papers.

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They’ll Stop At Nothing

by digby

These deficit fetishists are pulling out all the stops. Here’s Dean Baker:

The deficit hawks apparently believe that their case is so weak that they must resort to crass jingoism to push their agenda. NBC apparently intends to run a piece on the evening news on Tuesday that talks about the portion of the government debt that is owned foreigners, highlighting the role of China.

[…]

A serious discussion of this issue would focus on the value of the dollar. That is the relevant factor in the story of foreign indebtedness. Given the current value of the dollar, at the same level of GDP, we would be building up just as much foreign debt if the government were running a budget surplus rather than a $1.3 trillion deficit. Economists all know this.

However, the deficit hawks are not interested in a serious discussion. They are pushing their agenda of cutting Social Security and Medicare. And they are apparently willing to appeal to crude jingoism to make their case.

Well yes, the yellow peril argument was a staple of the earlier deficit obsession in the 1990s that hamstrung any kind of progressive agenda (with the willing capitulation of the Democrats, it must be noted.) In those days, it was Japan that was preparing to invade, now it’s China.

And they will undoubtedly find a willing audience for it again. As this interesting report from the teaparty convention notes, there are apparently already people out there who are willing to reanimate the communist corps and make the logical leap. When asked about the Citizens United decision, one of the attendees replied: “Obama got his money from China, so why shouldn’t our companies spend their money?”

You knew that was just lurking beneath the surface …

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Surprise, Surprise

by digby

I know that you’ll be shocked to hear this but the deficit hawks are all turning into fiscal doves when it comes to taxing Paris Hilton. Seems they are more concerned about the immediate fate of the children of the wealthy than they are about the fate of any other kids, who they seem to suggest will be living in mud huts and wearing burplap sacks if we don’t do away with social security immediately:

Senate leaders are working on an estate tax deal to make it easier to move a bipartisan jobs bill.

The deal discussed by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) involves moving an estate tax bill through the Senate that would prevent a huge hike in the tax from taking effect in 2011, staffers and lobbyists say.

For Reid, it could provide crucial Republican votes for the jobs bill in a Senate where Democrats now have only 59 votes. Republicans would get a vote on legislation to stop the estate tax from returning to a historically high level.

The exact nature of the deal is still subject to negotiations, and the final details of a jobs bill are unclear. But the basic deal would involve Republicans providing enough votes on the jobs bill to give it the 60 votes necessary to clear procedural hurdles in exchange for a vote on the estate tax.

The tax is currently repealed, but barring congressional action it returns next year to pre-2001 levels by socking estates worth more than $1 million with a tax that tops out at 55 percent. Republicans and more than a few Democrats oppose this level and prefer rates set in 2009, when estates worth over $3.5 million were taxed at a top rate of 45 percent.

Lobbyists say the Reid-McConnell talks have been fruitful, but historic snows in Washington have delayed a final decision on when an estate tax fix might move.

A Senate vote on the House-passed bill is one alternative for getting Republicans to support a jobs package.

In December, the House passed legislation (H.R. 4154) making permanent 2009 estate tax rules, which costs a whopping $233.6 billion over 10 years.

While Republicans favor a consistent tax over one that is temporary, they also prefer a lower rate than 2009 levels as well as higher exemption levels than 2009 law that would be indexed for inflation.

So, you see, they are making a huge sacrifice in this negotiation by agreeing to merely extend the Bush tax cuts instead of getting what they really want which is for the estate tax to be eliminated completely. What a wonderful bipartisan gesture on their part.

But then we know what they think about bipartisanship, don’t we?

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