Month: February 2010

Stop Being Condescending

by digby

… you stupid, loser liberals.

I’ve often found over the years that if you watch closely (and often you don’t even have to do that) you can see the right’s strategy forming before your very eyes. I think I see it this week.

First, yesterday I heard Pat Buchanan lugubriously lecture Joan Walsh that she should stop “making fun” of the teabaggers and calling them names. When he went on about Ronald Reagan never being condescending I couldn’t help but recall this famous Reagan line: “A hippie is someone who looks like Tarzan, walks like Jane, and smells like Cheetah.”

This is, of course, a ploy to make liberals temper their criticism of conservatives as they make their move over the next year. They are playing the refs, appealing to political correctness to force them to circumscribe their criticism. Meanwhile, they will continue to create items like these:

There is more evidence that they are also beginning to work the refs in earnest on a grander scale with this simpering whine in today’s Washington Post, asking why liberals are so condescending to conservative ideas. This seems clearly designed to make reporters and editorialists write that Obama is being presumptuous again, if he challenges Republican ideology instead of simply saying “well, we just have to disagree on that point” and moves on. It’s also clearly a pre-emptive move to make the Democrats think twice about their “tone” for far of failing to appear to be properly bipartisan.

The conservatives have successfully played this game for decades. They make it thoroughly acceptable for the National Review to say things like this:

The product of divorced parents from Marin County, California (are there any other kind?), he was raised in the very crucible of cultural nuttiness at the absolute zenith of its pervasiveness. He is a child of hot tubs, amicable divorce, racial guilt, vegan diets, Chardonnay anti-Americanism, and “Teach Peace” bumper stickers. He is the product of gray-bearded radical high-school history teachers, old Volvos, public radio, world beat music, women’s bookstores, pita-wrap sandwiches, and clunky brown sandals. He is . . . well, you know who he is. He’s a rich American kid from a rich American town who was raised to believe that every crazy idea and every loony impulse he ever had was valid, that all cultures are basically equal (except for ours, which is a good deal worse), and that America is a pretty bad place

… while simultaneously complaining that liberals are rude and condescending.

They are attempting to make this culture war hypocrisy into a complaint about their colossally failed ideas with characteristically insane bravado, claiming have been vindicated by the past year of Democratic government. It’s a bold move, but completely predictable.

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Go Al! (Again)

by digby

So apparently, after the “question time” featuring endangered conservadems whining about bipartisanship, the Senators really let their hair down in private. And they were led by none other than Al Franken:

Sen. Al Franken ripped into White House senior adviser David Axelrod this week during a tense, closed-door session with Senate Democrats.

Five sources who were in the room tell POLITICO that Franken criticized Axelrod for the administration’s failure to provide clarity or direction on health care and the other big bills it wants Congress to enact.

The sources said Franken was the most outspoken senator in the meeting, which followed President Barack Obama’s question-and-answer session with Senate Democrats at the Newseum on Wednesday. But they also said the Minnesotan wasn’t the only angry Democrat in the room.

[…]

In his public session with the senators Wednesday, Obama urged them to “finish the job” on health care but did not lay out a path for doing so. That uncertainty appeared to trigger Franken’s wrath, and the sources in the room said he laid out his concerns much more directly than any senator did in the earlier public session.

The private session was set up in a panel format, with Axelrod joined at the front of the room by Democratic National Committee Chairman Tim Kaine and Democratic strategist Paul Begala.

A Democratic source said that Franken directed his criticism solely at Axelrod.

“It was all about leadership and health care and what the plan was going to be,” the source said.

Good for him, although there’s certainly plenty of blame for the health care debacle to go around, particularly in the House of Lords.

But it appears the irreverent comedian isn’t playing by the rules there either:

Franken — a comedian turned liberal talk show host — vowed to keep a relatively low profile when he arrived in the Senate over the summer after a protracted legal battle with former GOP Sen. Norm Coleman. But he has developed a reputation among his colleagues as one of the more aggressive personalities on the Hill.

Last November, after Tennessee Republican Sens. Bob Corker and Lamar Alexander authored an op-ed in a local paper defending their opposition to a Franken amendment, Franken confronted both men on the floor — and grew particularly irritated with Corker.

He lashed out at Corker and a staff member in a follow-up meeting about the matter, several people said. Franken also clashed with South Dakota Sen. John Thune, No. 4 in GOP leadership, last month in a scathing speech during the health care debate, and staffers have reported other run-ins.

Those delicate little Republican flowers just don’t know what to do when a Democrat isn’t afraid of them.

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Populists For Profits

by digby

Ben Smith reports that this spot is running in Pennsylvania:

The ad’s sponsor, the Committee for Truth in Politics, is an obscure third party group reportedly run by a former North Carolina GOP official. The group has battled disclosure requirements in court after launching attacks connected to abortion policy and sex offenders during the presidential election. The group’s lawyer, Jim Bopp, didn’t immediately respond to a request for information about the spot.

Jim Bopp is the right wing activist who filed the Citizen’s United case and went to the Republican party meeting demanding a purity test and the ability to cut off funding for any Republican who is not deemed sufficiently conservative (thus enforcing party discipline even beyond what they have today.) He is a servant of corporate power, not a fighter of it.

Far be it for me to suggest that this exploitation of populist anger to tank the financial reform bill might just be a little bit self-serving.  Sure, the financial reform bill is hardly Rooseveltian in scope and may very well end up being completely toothless, but let’s not kid ourselves that the people who made this ad did it because they think the bill’s not strong enough. “Bailout” is now a dogwhistle.

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There Are Reasons

by digby

If you’re looking for a lucid, compelling discussion of the current financial crisis from a liberal who doesn’t buy into market orthodoxy, this interview with James Galbraith is very illuminating.

Here’s the first question:

In July of 2009, you signed an initiative of the Roosevelt Institute that seeks an answer to the question: What Caused the Crisis?(ii) May I ask for your personal answer?

Yes, you may. (laughs.) — The principal cause of the crisis was the dismantling of the system of regulation and supervision in the financial sector which had for much of the post-war period kept the most dangerous elements of that sector in check. In the absence of an appropriate system of effective supervision and regulation, what happens is that the actors in the system, who are intent upon taking the greatest degree of risk — including actors who are intent upon using fraudulent methods to increase their returns — come to dominate parts of the system. As they do that, the general methods of assessing performance in the market, specifically stock-market valuations, become counter-productive. That is to say, they invariably reward the worst actors, while they force more traditional actors, who are still respecting the old norms of conduct, into a competitively disadvantaged position. Thus the bad actors, the fraudulent actors, and the speculative extremists quickly take over.

That is what happened specifically in the origination of mortgages in the United States in the middle part of the last decade. You had a transition from a traditional method of issuing mortgages to people who could be reasonably expected to service them, to a method of originating mortgages that were sold off immediately, that were rated in a way that permitted them to be bundled and sold to fiduciaries, and where the issuer had no interest in whether the borrowers could pay or not. In fact, in some ways the lenders actively preferred people who did not intend to pay, because they could then inflate the value of the loan and earn a larger fee upfront for doing it. And in this way, not only was there a large segment of the market that was explicitly corrupt, but the equity value of homes all across the country was compromised. When these practices collapsed, so too did the home values not only of people who had bad mortgages, but also those for many people who had good mortgages, good incomes and perfectly good credit.

The result of that was a general slump in activity. The wealth and financial security of much of the American middle class disappeared. So far about a quarter of the measured wealth of the American middle class has disappeared – about $15 trillion of $60 trillion. That’s bound to have a fantastically traumatic effect on people’s consumption behaviour and on their ability to get new good credit. Even if they wish to continue to extend the past pattern of borrowing in order to finance activity, they can’t do it. So, this is a very big problem. It starts with a failure to supervise and regulate the financial system, and flows on to the reaction of the broader population, which is to protect their remaining assets, to become extremely adverse to taking ordinary business and consumer risks.

His comments on the Fed and Ron Paul are particularly interesting.

Update: now we’re talking,

Dagny 4-Ever

by digby

Some baby boomers never did grow up:

Name: John Stossel
Age: 62
Neighborhood: Upper West Side
Occupation: Host of Stossel, Thursdays on FBN.

Who’s your favorite New Yorker, living or dead, real or fictional?
Dagny Taggart.

What’s the best meal you’ve eaten in New York?
Wings at the Firehouse on Columbus Avenue.

In one sentence, what do you actually do all day in your job?
I read, watch, obsess, write, obsess, write more, edit, re-edit, and then talk.

Would you live here on a $35,000 salary?
That’s more than I made when I got here.

What’s the last thing you saw on Broadway?
The Naked Cowboy.

Do you give money to panhandlers?
No. That’s irresponsible. I give to the Doe Fund and other groups like the Doe Fund that have a track record showing that they really help.

What’s your drink?
Diet Coke.

How often do you prepare your own meals?
I fix a healthy breakfast for myself and then pig out on junk food much of the rest of the day.

What’s your favorite medication?
Beach volleyball.

What’s hanging above your sofa?
Barney Frank in effigy.

How much is too much to spend on a haircut?
$25.

When’s bedtime?
Whenever I feel like it.

Which do you prefer, the old Times Square or the new Times Square?
The innovative but not yet sleazy center of the Arts. Unfortunately, that was before I was born.

What do you think of Donald Trump?
Clever entrepreneur, but a bully when he tries to use government and crony connections (eminent domain) to force an old lady in Atlantic City out of her house. Glad he lost that one. Hope I helped.

What do you hate most about living in New York?
Smug, ignorant, and arrogant Upper West Side Lefties.

Who is your mortal enemy?
Smug, ignorant, and arrogant Upper West Side Lefties and personal-injury lawyers.

When’s the last time you drove a car?
Yesterday. I drive to Chelsea Piers to play volleyball.

How has the Wall Street crash affected you?
Its biggest effect is to cause me to spend more time defending free markets. Financially, not so much. I had hedged by investing in a gold fund.

It’s bad enough when young libertarian snobs speak like this. They’re just full of their own youthful superiority. But it’s really embarrassing for a 62 year old man who sports the look of a 70s porn start to be crushing on Dagny Taggert. It kind of makes your skin crawl.

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Heh

by digby

“Sure, we have ideas and plans, just not those ideas and plans. Necessarily. At least not all the stuff people don’t like.”

House Republicans are at pains to point out that a far-reaching budget roadmap unveiled by their top budget guy, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), isn’t their budget, but when asked today at a press conference what about Ryan’s budget he disagreed with, Minority Leader John Boehner couldn’t name anything.

“Off the top of my head, I couldn’t tell you,” Boehner said.

Despite the apparent lack of substantive disagreement, though, Boehner wants to keep the Ryan plan from sticking to the GOP.

“Paul Ryan, who’s the ranking member on our budget committee, has done an awful lot of work in putting together his roadmap,” Boehner said. “But it’s his. And I know the Democrats are trying to say that it’s the Republican leadership. But they know that’s not the case.”

Ryan’s detailed long-term budget roadmap has awakened Democrats, who are beginning to make political hay of his proposal’s call for privatizing and slashing Social Security and Medicare benefits. It’s a tough spot the Republicans have been trying to avoid. On the one hand, touting that they have a deficit reduction plan better than President Obama’s. On the other hand, being careful not to hitch themselves to a plan full of politically unpopular cuts in the middle of an election year.

Ryan said that the leadership thought his ideas were just great.

Maybe Obama should suggest some townhall meetings with Ryan to sit down and hash this all out for the American people?

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Cruel And Confused

by digby

A ton of interesting information has surfaced this week about teabugger James O’Keefe, not the least of which is Max Blumenthal’s story about his white supremacist associations. Lindsay Beyerstein also revealed some fascinating stuff about O’Keefe and his relationship with his mentor Ben Wetmore.

But I have to say that this one by Dave Weigel about a pre-ACORN “investigation” just floors me:

Ben Wetmore, the 28-year-old conservative activist whom James O’Keefe called a “mentor,” has stayed out of the headlines since it was revealed that he housed O’Keefe and the other participants in the bungled sting of Sen. Mary Landrieu’s (D-La.) office. When I reached Wetmore by phone yesterday, he politely declined to talk about the situation until it settled down.

Still, the Wetmore-O’Keefe friendship was, in gonzo journalism terms, a productive one. In 2008, after O’Keefe had left the Leadership Institute, the two men recorded hidden camera video of themselves going to three state offices in Massachusetts, applying for marriage licenses, openly admitting that they were straight men who wanted to get married to take advantage of the benefits.

O’KEEFE: We probably plan on doing this for about a year and then..
CLERK: And then, divorcing.
O’KEEFE: Right.
CLERK: Yeah.
WETMORE: Yeah.

The closest thing O’Keefe and Wetmore got to an ACORN moment was a Worcester, Mass., clerk admitting that she wasn’t telling a supervisor about their meeting because she didn’t want to get in trouble.

Here’s what I don’t get: is there some law that says people can’t get married for the benefits? I think it’s pretty common actually — in fact, that was one of the main reasons why my longtime partner in cohabitation and I finally decided to tie the knot. Granted we’re a heterosexual couple, but I don’t recall anyone asking us if we really, truly loved each other for ourselves before they’d issue a license.

I’m not sure what this was trying to prove, but there’s little doubt that these guys are jackasses of the highest order. They are just mean little pranksters seeking to entrap low level clerks into validating bigots’ worst imaginations. The fact that the MSM never did any real investigations of these little creeps before now and gave them credibility instead, is a sad comment on journalism.

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Job One

by digby

The WaPo’s Steven Pearlstein tells me on MSNBC that the American people shouldn’t expect Washington to be able to do anything about jobs because it’s the result of “imbalances” that have to be “worked out” and it’s going to take time and people just need to be patient and take their medicine. (Mrs Alan Greenspan agreed and added this hysteria over jobs in congress is all just politics in the wake of Massachusetts.)

Those are excellent observations from successful political celebrities who have jobs and are among the wealthiest Americans who can afford to “ride out” the slump. For most people, who aren’t any of those things, not so much.

I assume that Pearlstein’s fellow WaPo writer, Harold Meyerson, wrote about the dismally inadequate job proposals on the table before today’s jobs numbers were released, which makes his criticism of the government for failing to directly create jobs all the more poignant. As he says, it’s not as if the government hasn’t directly created jobs before:

In the winter of 1933-34, with unemployment close to 25 percent, FDR aide Harry Hopkins put an astonishing 3 million people on the federal payroll in just 90 days, repairing airports, military bases and schools. This in a nation of just 130 million people — the equivalent today would be around 7.5 million. Hopkins and Roosevelt faced the same criticisms — over the size of the deficit and the growth of the federal government — that Obama and the Democrats face. But the New Dealers persisted throughout the 1930s, reducing unemployment; building roads, airports and bases; and securing the allegiance of voters for decades to come.

Today’s Democrats seem to lack the urgency, compassion and spine of their ’30s forebears. Obama’s proposals fail to challenge the conservative narrative that government can’t engender worthwhile economic activity, so all we can do is cut taxes on business and hope for the best. No narrative is more in need of challenging, but Obama has demurred at the very moment he must make the affirmative case for government. With the private sector economically unable to produce jobs, and the public sector politically blocked from doing so, we are condemned to a long, dismal decade.

They could do it. But they don’t want to upset their corporate benefactors (who have shown they are more than willing to sacrifice the country if anyone tries to dictate to them) and simply pray that the magic voodoo of the markets somehow brings everything around so they can go back to their comfortable political sideshows and stimulating war porn.

I suspect this is less a lack of spine than it is an unwillingness to challenge market orthodoxy and right wing political cant, which they have internalized even more than the average American (who has benefited far less.) And those who do have the imagination to see another way are powerless in the face of a political system that is at the mercy of an unprecedentedly disciplined political opposition and a Senate which no longer even tries to hide its constitutional function as the protector of the wealthy. It’s a problem.

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Affirmative Fool

by digby

I know this isn’t news to anyone, but Rush Limbaugh is a sexist pig and proud of it. If he didn’t have 250 million dollars there’s no doubt he’d be a very lonely guy.

But this racist statement is a doozy:

“This is the first time in his life there is not a professor who can turn his C into an A, or to write the law review article for him he can’t write. He is totally exposed. There is nobody to make it better,” Limbaugh said.

I think he’s probably speaking for a considerable number of people out there who truly believe that black people are inferior. But most of them are smart enough not to say so in public.

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Twit Tweets

by digby

Jonathan Schwarz, informed me that Sally Quinn is tweeting.

Typical tweets:

Underfire Obama is still very cool. Is that a bad thing? Is he too cool?

Did Don Imus this morning. My 5 favorite songs: Because of You, You are my Sunshine, Evergreen, Washington Post March, Star Spangled Banner

As Jonathan says, “It’s sort of fascinating if you can get past the human depravity.”

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