Month: April 2010

Not Us

by digby

I’ve always thought that Fox News hosts didn’t have a clue, but I thought they probably knew what people were saying on their own shows. Neiwert proves they don’t:

Last night on his Fox News show, BillO — incensed by Sen. Tom Coburn’s suggestion that Fox News’ coverage of the health-care debate was misleading and biased — tried to claim that no one on Fox had ever suggested that you’ll get thrown in jail if you don’t buy health insurance. O’Reilly claimed it three times in the course of the interview, each time with escalating falsity, culminating with the claim that his staff had carefully researched the question and found that no one at Fox had ever said it. Oh really? Because as you can see, we have the video that demonstrates clearly otherwise. Glenn Beck, as a matter of fact, said it on his own Fox News show — and he said it on Bill O’Reilly’s program too, directly to O’Reilly’s face. And O’Reilly made a joke about it. Nor was Beck alone. Here’s how O’Reilly put it to Coburn:

O’Reilly: OK, but can you tell me one person on Fox News, just one, who has told this audience that they’ll go to jail if they don’t buy health insurance. … O’Reilly: Well, why then was it legitimate to bring in Fox News in the discussion, when, No. 1, you don’t know anybody on Fox News — because there hasn’t been anyone — that said people will go to jail if they don’t buy mandatory insurance. … O’Reilly: Well, tell me, what — because it doesn’t happen here. And we researched to find out if anybody on Fox News had ever said you’re going to jail if you don’t buy health insurance. Nobody’s ever said it.

Of course, none other than O’Reilly’s sometime stagemate, Glenn Beck told his audience on Nov. 12, 2009:

Beck: But if you don’t play by their new rules on health care, oooh, here’s a new little twist. Have you heard this? You’re going to be looking at a fun little stint in jail. … But if you don’t play ball with them now, if you don’t get into their government health care, there will be jail time. And that of course was fair.

The next day, Nov. 13, in his weekly appearance on The O’Reilly Factor, chatting over his then-recent appendectomy, Beck repeated the line, and O’Reilly responded by asking Beck if he intended to go to jail over health insurance (transcript courtesy Media Matters):

O’REILLY: Couldn’t they do [liposuction] at the same time [as your appendectomy]? BECK: No, they wouldn’t. No. I don’t have universal health care. O’REILLY: Well you will soon. BECK: Or I’ll go to jail. O’REILLY: Are you going to be a conscientious objector to health care? BECK: You know, this is the first time in history in our country where, just to be a citizen, just to not go to jail, you have to buy something.

That’s some crack research squad O’Reilly has there — they can’t even rustle up the times this lie was repeated on O’Reilly’s own show.

This notion that you will go to jail if you don’t buy health insurance is all over the place. And it didn’t spring out of nowhere. Fox is the leading producer of right wing bullshit in the nation, so it’s not a leap to assume they had a hand in it.

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Police Seizure

by digby

We know that tasers are dangerous to the health of the people who are tased, but is there some evidence that tasers must leak some sort of chemical that causes brain damage to the people who use them? There must be something because police are constantly doing idiotic things like this with them:

Police officers fired a 50,000-volt stun gun charge into a man who had collapsed with a major epileptic seizure, the policing complaints watchdog said yesterday.

The man, 40, who has accused police of being negligent and using excessive force, claims that he was Tasered five times despite police being told about his medical condition.

He spent more than two weeks in hospital after the incident, which is being investigated by the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC).

Sophie Khan, the man’s solicitor, said her client had been in a gym when the seizure occurred. “The officers were made aware by the ambulance staff and the gym staff that he was suffering from an epileptic seizure but they continued to Taser him in the stomach and forcibly restrain him in a manner that has caused him long-term nerve damage to his wrists and back,” she said.

A leading epilepsy charity said that the incident should prompt a review of police training.

“We are disturbed that the police used a Taser on a person who was clearly in, or recovering from, a medical emergency,” said Monica Cooper of Epilepsy Action.

“A Taser should not be used on a person who is having, or has recently had, a seizure. During a seizure, and for a period of time afterwards, the person may not be fully aware of their surroundings or what is happening, and they may be confused.

The seizure was pretty violent and the paramedics had called the police to help them with the patient. Why they then thought it was a good idea to shoot him with electricity is beyond me. Common sense would suggest that someone who is having an involuntary seizure isn’t able to “comply.” So unless they were conducting some kind of electro-shock experiment, this was obscenely dumb.

I’m guessing that when this sort of thing happened before tasers came along, police didn’t put a bullet in epileptics who were having seizures. But I could be wrong.

h/t to sleon

What’s The Problem?

by digby

So Rush was blathering today about the new student loan program:

Rush urged people to avoid using government loans to pay for school because the government screws everything up. He later claimed that if you get a loan to go to medical school, when you graduate, you’ll owe Obama up to six years of service as a doctor and you’ll be forced to go to underserved areas to practice.

I don’t know specifically what he’s referring to with the medical schools, but I have thought for years that this was a good idea. The government should pay for medical school up front and then instead of facing repayment of these big loans, (necessitating charging huge fees in their practice) doctors could instead pay it back by going on salary for the first few years of their careers. It seems to me that this would hold down health care costs, allow doctors to get plenty of training at a reasonable cost and allow them to pursue the fields in which they are interested or gifted instead of the ones that will help them pay back their enormous debt before they die. It’s worked pretty well with the military.

I realize that’s a commie kind of thing, but health care just doesn’t work very well in a laissez faire capitalist system. And frankly we are going to have to reassess whether or not it makes sense that certain doctors are millionaires and others aren’t, depending on their specialty. It’s a sort of microcosm of income inequality that could at least be a tiny bit mitigated by taxpayer sponsored education.

Rush seems to think you shouldn’t even get a student loan from the government because …. well, just because. But then he’s an idiot.

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Another Breitbart Scam

by digby

Does Andrew Breitbart just lie by reflex? You tell me:

Three Democratic congressmen — all black — say they heard racial slurs as they walked through thousands of angry protesters outside the U.S. Capitol. A white lawmaker says he heard the epithets too. Conservative activists say the lawmakers are lying.

What does the video show? Not much. Indeed, new interviews show that a much-viewed YouTube recording cited as evidence by conservatives was actually shot well after the time in question.

[…]

A reconstruction of the events shows that the conservative challenges largely sprang from a mislabeled video that was shot later in the day.

Breitbart posted two columns on his Web site saying the claims were fabricated. Both led with a 48-second YouTube video showing Lewis, Carson, other Congressional Black Caucus members and staffers leaving the Capitol. Some of the group were videotaping the booing crowd.

Breitbart asked why the epithet was not captured by the black lawmakers’ cameras, and why nobody reacted as if they had heard the slur. He also questioned whether the epithets could have been shouted by liberals planted in the crowd.

But the 48-second video was shot as the group was leaving the Capitol — at least one hour after Lewis, D-Ga., and Carson walked to the Capitol, which is when they said the slurs were used.

Questioned about using a video on his Web site from the wrong moment, Breitbart stood by his claim that the lawmakers were lying.

“I’m not saying the video was conclusive proof,” he said.

Of course not, you scumbag con artist, since it’s yet another of your fabulist dirty tricks.

The article also says that Heath Shuler heard the slurs which I didn’t know before. I don’t know what happened that day, but we know that people were nearly hysterical in that crowd. Earlier one of them had screamed “faggot” at Barney Frank, which was verified by some reporters who were in earshot. We all heard the phone messages with wingnuts slinging the word around and I had heard reports from multiple personal sources that members were getting a lot of racial epithets from callers in the lead up to the health care vote.

There are reports like this every day:

Racist comments, including a slur about Hispanics, posted on the Twitter page of the Springboro Tea Party were particularly hurtful to Alana Turner.

“Illegals everywhere today! So many spics makes me feel like a speck. Grrr. Wheres my gun!?” said the March 21 posting on the site managed by the group’s founder, Sonny Thomas.

Turner said the comments upset her because she and Thomas have a 6-year-old son who is part Hispanic.

“Basically, it’s like he’s saying he hates his son,” Turner said.

You don’t have to be wearing a hood to express racist sentiment but it’s times like this when such things tend to pop out. And there’s something about this movement which makes it easy for people to think it’s ok to do it. Everyone can figure out for themselves what that says about the people involved, but to deny that this is happening at all is putting your head in the sand.

And no matter what you may think about all this, taking Andrew Breitbart’s word for anything — especially when it comes to racial issues — is just stupid.

Update: Apparently Breitbart was at Richard Trumka’s speech and the following ensued:

In the question-and-answer session, Breitbart said there is no video or audio evidence of either event happening. Breitbart has, in fact, offered a $100,000 award to anyone who produces evidence that the racial insult actually occurred, and so far he has had no takers.

Until now. As Breitbart spoke, Trumka said he himself had seen the events in question. “I watched them spit at people, I watched them call John Lewis the n-word,” Trumka said. “I witnessed it, I witnessed it. I saw it in person. That’s real evidence.”

h/t to bb

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Calling In The Baggers

by digby

They’re pulling together the coalition:

Conservative groups preparing to fight President Barack Obama over his next Supreme Court nomination are trying to recruit tea party activists to their cause, hoping their enthusiasm will help them beat back any nominee that could be too liberal for their taste.

Bringing in the tea party movement — known for its high-energy rallies and protests calling for small government, lower taxes and less spending — would be a coup for conservatives, who were not able to stop the confirmation of Sonia Sotomayor last year.

This time, “you may have a whole new group of activists involved,” said Tom Fitton of the conservative group Judicial Watch.

[…]

Curt Levey of the conservative Committee for Justice said he has been in contact with some tea party leaders trying to explain to them how an Obama judicial nomination affects their cause.

“Are we going to have big or small government? Should the Supreme Court have unlimited power?” he said.

And the health care overhaul? “That’s going to end up in front of the Supreme Court, and if you care whether that bill survives or not, you better care about the Supreme Court,” Levey said.

I’m guessing the teabaggers are very well aware of Supreme Court fights. This persistent propaganda about these people being some new group of activists is a crock. They are just the conservative movement 2010, with all that that implies.

I was struck by the fact that these groups reached out to the tea party folks, however, validating them and showing them the respect of being fellow conservatives and participants in the political process. I don’t recall anything like that on the Democratic side during the Roberts and Alito hearings. But then the netroots aren’t Real Americans.

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The Democratic Strategist Is Shrill

by digby

I don’t think anyone would call William Galston, Stan Greenberg and Ruy Teixeira radical leftists. Indeed, they pretty much define middle of the road. So when they come out with something like this, people should probably pay attention:

Urgent: A TDS STRATEGY MEMO on the Supreme Court (pdf)

The Republican right has a deeply disturbing covert extremist agenda for the Supreme Court – end the separation of church and state, undermine the legality of Social Security and Medicare and give individuals the right to ignore any laws they choose.

Does this sound like a wildly hysterical exaggeration?

It certainly does. But unfortunately, it also happens to be true.

The unavoidable fact is that major elements of the Republican coalition—the elements most likely to become deeply engaged in the battle over the next supreme court nominee like the Christian Right, the Tea Party Movement, and the radical Federalist Society legal wing of the Right—do indeed harbor profoundly extreme views on the Constitution. In fact, since Obama’s election these views have veered even more sharply toward extremism.

• Since the 1990’s, the Christian Right has sought to replace the traditional American separation of church and state with the notion that the U.S. was actually created as a “Christian Nation” in which Christianity was intended to receive favored treatment by government policy. The most startling recent expression of this view was last month’s decision by the Texas School Board to remove Thomas Jefferson—the symbol of America’s tradition of religious freedom and tolerance—from the states’ history curriculum.

• The opponents of Health Care Reform in the Tea Party Movement and among Republicans around the country have advanced the argument that Congress does not have the constitutional authority to enact health reform legislation and are now filing lawsuits based on this view. The basis1 for such suits—typically a denial of the power of Congress to legislate economic matters under the Commerce and Spending Clauses of the U.S. Constitution—is automatically and unavoidably a collateral attack on the constitutionality of a vast array of past legislation, including most New Deal/Great Society programs such as Social Security and Medicare.

• The Republican revolt against any cooperation with Democratic legislation and initiatives has carried an extraordinary number of conservatives into a general attitude of defiance towards the rule of law itself and flirtation with constitutional doctrines of state nullification nand succession. These doctrines were developed as arguments for state sovereignty by the Confederacy in the civil war era and as 1950’s and 1960’s era segregationist strategies to thwart desegregation and civil rights for African-Americans.

Taken together, these three ideas actually amount to a covert three-pronged agenda to
radically transform the American constitution:

1. To redefine America as a Christian Nation; and treat Christianity as a state-favored
religion.

2. To create a legal doctrine that could justify the voiding of all social programs enacted
since 1933.

3. To establish the right of individuals or states to ignore and disobey any laws that they
happen to interpret as impinging on their freedom or natural rights.

Democrats can—and must—respond firmly and categorically to this extremist philosophy. They must respond by saying that the Democratic Party proudly upholds the traditional American view of the constitution—the view of the founding fathers of this country—George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton and John Adams.

1. That the constitution guarantees religious freedom and tolerance for all Americans of every faith and creed.

2. That the constitution guarantees the right of the freely elected representatives of the people in a democracy to pass laws for the common good. The people have the right to elect new representatives who promise to repeal laws with which they disagree, but not to simply ignore and violate laws of which they do not happen to approve.

3. That the constitution protects individual liberty but is not a prescription for anarchy. It provides equal rights for all under a system of laws, but does not provide veto rights for anyone who happens to disagree with a particular law.

The battle between these two views is not a battle from which Democrats should shy away. Most Americans aren’t likely to react well to the spectacle of conservatives demanding a virtual revolution against a popularly elected government, threatening to undermine the legal foundation of the social safety net many Americans depend on for their well-being and seeking to overturn constitutional doctrines that have been in place for many decades and even since the foundation of the Republic.

Republican strategists will desperately try to frame this debate as an argument between the “founding fathers” on the one hand and the “crazy liberal democrats” on the other. They will attempt to blur the distinction between the two fundamentally different visions of America embodied in the two interpretations of the constitution above.

Democrats should not let them get away with this deception. A substantial part of the Republican base deeply and sincerely believes in the three-pronged extremist agenda described above and will consider any attempt by the Republican leadership to shy away from those views as a betrayal tantamount to treason. If Democrats firmly and consistently demand that Republican leaders honestly say where they stand on these issues, the Republican coalition will become deeply fractured.

So if conservatives want to make a battle over Barack Obama’s next Supreme Court nominee, let them bring it on.

• Let them bring it on with all the rhetoric Tea Party folk and other radicalized conservatives have been using about Obama’s “socialism” and the Nazi-like tyranny of universal health coverage.

• Let them bring it on with all the segregation-era legal strategies of succession
and nullification.

• Let them bring it on with arguments that programs like social security and medicare are illegal and unconstitutional

• Let them bring it on with all the attempts to write Thomas Jefferson and the separation of church and state out of American history.

The truth is that Democrats don’t want an ugly ideological battle over the next Supreme Court nominee. They would much rather focus on important economic issues like financial reform. But if the Republicans insist on a fight, let’s stand ready to give them a battle they’ll wish they never started.

Aside from the moral and legal error, Obama has obviously made a terrible political mistake in continuing the Bush era unconstitutional national security policies. Had he fought them, he would be in a position to tie these people up like pretzels explaining why that position is ok, but social security is unconstitutional. He not only guaranteed that these awful assaults on the constitution would become institutionalized, he lost a powerful weapon to thwart his political enemies. It’s impossible for any of us to argue that he’s scrupulously protecting the constitution because he isn’t.

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Omnidirectional Placation

by digby

I’ve written quite a bit over the past year about what I call Obama’s “goldilocks” and “one from column A and one from column B” approach to governance. At various times I’ve termed it a problem of “believing their own hype” or a naive assumption that the election itself was so transformative that it had repealed the usual political dynamic in Washington.I have often criticized the president for trying to be all things to all people.

But it takes a writer and observer with the skill of Garry Wills to distill that down to its essence. Here, he reviews David Remnick’s new Obama biography, which charts Obama’s progress as the man who really could be all things to all people. He concludes with this:

Obama’s strategy everywhere before entering the White House was one of omnidirectional placation. It had always worked. Why should he abandon, at this point, a method of such proved effectiveness? Yet success at winning acceptance may not be what is called for in a leader moving through a time of peril. To disarm fears of change (the first African-­American presidency is, in itself, a big jolt of change), Obama has stressed continuity. Though he first became known as a critic of the war in Iraq, he has kept aspects or offshoots of Bush’s war on terror — possible future “renditions” (kidnappings on foreign soil), trials of suspected terrorists in military tribunals, no investigations of torture, an expanded Afghan commitment, though he promised to avoid “a dumb war.” He appointed as his vice president and secretary of state people who voted for the Iraq war, and as secretary of defense and presiding generals people who conducted or defended that war.

To cope with the financial crisis, he turned to Messrs. Geithner, Summers and Bernanke, who were involved in fomenting the crisis. To launch reform of medical care, he huddled with the American Medical Association, big pharmaceutical companies and insurance firms, and announced that his effort had their backing (the best position to be in for stabbing purposes, which they did month after month). All these things speak to Obama’s concern with continuity and placation. But continuity easily turns into inertia, as we found when Obama wasted the first year of his term, the optimum time for getting things done. He may have drunk his own Kool-Aid — believing that his election could of itself usher in a post-racial, post-partisan, post-red-state and blue-state era. That is a change no one should ever have believed in. The price of winningness can be losing; and that, in this scary time, is enough to break the heart of hope.

That’s how I see it too. I honestly think Obama — and his inner circle — believed his own hype. As Wills points out, you can see why they would. After all, Obama had been miraculously successful by believing it up to that point. His followers were nearly delirious with faith that he could do it. It was very tempting to believe that he could single handedly change the dynamics of American politics with his mere presence because it was so hard to believe he could come that far that fast without having super human skills. But it was never even remotely realistic. His history actually showed that he was a natural conciliator and placator which I don’t think was what most progressives thought they were getting. They thought they were getting someone who could hypnotize the opposition into thinking they wanted what he wanted, which is something else entirely.

He’s actually a polarizer, which is completely predictable and not his fault. Sure, being African American enlivens the natural tribal state of American politics, but it would have happened anyway. We are polarized because we believe different things about what America stands for. We define ourselves differently. We have different values. It’s not the first time. In fact it’s defines American politics.

The problem is that the other side believes that our side is illegitimate and they have no obligation to abide by the government’s decisions if they are not in charge.

And I continue to be surprised that after a bogus impeachment, an election decided by a partisan Supreme Court decision and a shocking war of choice, the Democrats failed to realize that Republican party no longer believed it needed to abide by the traditions and norms that had been holding together whatever fragile truce existed. This undemocratic streak has been around among the conservatives to some degree or another forever, but it rises up now and then and it’s been evident since the early 90s that we were now in one of those times.

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The Deficit Trap

by digby

If these guys aren’t careful somebody might get the idea that improving the economy will improve the deficit picture without destroying the safety net. Luckily, Andrea Mitchell is there to keep that from happening:

Andrea: Talk to us about the deficit and any prospects for improvement on the unemployment front.

Ron Insana: Well Andrea I’ll take the first part first. The deficit, and this is something I’ve been talking about for many months now, is going to be considerably smaller in fiscal 2010 than most people realize and if you go back to fiscal 9 when we had a 1.4 trillion dollar deficit, we had federal tax receipts fall about 37 percent. That’s simply not going to happen this year as was reported in the March numbers, there was a 129 billion dollar reduction in the deficit from the same month a year ago thanks to rising tax receipts because the economy is growing and falling spending because the bailout’s being paid off. Right now the price tag’s only 89 billion dollars. The Fed may earn that all back this year and give it to the treasury. It could be a net plus to the Federal Government by the time this bailout is over.

Ok, without necessarily agreeing with Insana’s rosy view of the Fed’s ingenious plan to earn a profit for the government, let’s just stipulate that he’s saying that large deficits are affected by a bad economy when the government naturally receives less in tax receipts — and that the deficits are often reduced as an economy improves.

That will not stand. Andrea, boggled by this strange notion, swiftly interrupts:

Andrea: You’re talking about the short term deficit and not the long term looming deficits as Medicare costs and everything else that’s…

Insana (laughing) Sure, you’ve got a hundred… trillion in unfunded liability. And the jury is still out on whether the new health care bill will cost more or will reduce health care costs over time

Andrea: Exactly!

Insana: … and no one can see far enough out to make that kind of projection.

Right, but we know for a fact that “looming deficits” in the next several decades are going to destroy everything we hold near and dear. And anything we might do to ensure that the economy recovers and thrives today so that there will be increased tax receipts due to prosperity in the future is off the table because of that. Bit of a conundrum, isn’t it?

Not to worry, though. As long as the top 1% continue to thrive there will always be some crumbs to fall through the cracks in the table. I’m fairly certain that to celebrate that fact, Insana and Mitchel later shared an orgasm over the Dow reaching 11,000.

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Executive Paywatch

by digby

I got a lot of positive feedback last week-end for posting Richard Trumka’s awesome speech at Harvard. I highloy recommend that you read it when you get a chance.

The AFL-CIO is launching an initiative today to monitor executive pay called Executive Paywatch.

A chief executive officer of a Standard & Poor’s (S&P) 500 index company was paid, on average, $9.25 million in total compensation in 2009.[1] At the same time, millions of workers lost their jobs, their homes and their retirement savings in the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. Executive pay has taken center stage since the $700 billion government bailout of financial institutions. Americans expressed outrage as big banks helped create the financial crisis, took billions in taxpayer bailouts, paid out billions in pay and bonuses and are now lobbying on financial regulatory reform. The case studies here focus on executive pay at six of the biggest banks that received government bailout funds and their multimillion-dollar lobbying efforts. Also in Executive PayWatch, you can find CEO compensation data for some of the country’s largest companies; learn how you, as a shareholder, can have your “Say-on-Pay“; and find out what you can do to ensure re-regulation of the financial system.

Trumka will be hosting a live discussion at 9AM, which you can watch here

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Nuts

by digby

I thought I’d seen some insensitive, childish and ignorant behavior by Republicans but this may just take the cake:

OKLAHOMA CITY — Frustrated by recent political setbacks, tea party leaders and some conservative members of the Oklahoma Legislature say they would like to create a new volunteer militia to help defend against what they believe are improper federal infringements on state sovereignty.

Tea party movement leaders say they’ve discussed the idea with several supportive lawmakers and hope to get legislation next year to recognize a new volunteer force. They say the unit would not resemble militia groups that have been raided for allegedly plotting attacks on law enforcement officers.

“Is it scary? It sure is,” said tea party leader Al Gerhart of Oklahoma City, who heads an umbrella group of tea party factions called the Oklahoma Constitutional Alliance. “But when do the states stop rolling over for the federal government?”

Maybe they can pass the bill on April 19th — the anniversary of the Oklahoma City Bombing. They can call it McVeigh’s Law.

This is simply more Sore Loserman politics of the crudest sort. They don’t like the results of the election so they want to raise an army to fight it. They simply don’t think elections are meaningful if they don’t win them. And they can’t wait until 2012 to put Palin in the White House.

Still, don’t kid yourself, if Republicans win again, we’ll hear this from them, just as we heard in 2004:

“I’m ecstatic,” said Representative Thomas M. Reynolds of New York, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee.

Mr. Reynolds and his Senate counterpart, George Allen of Virginia, said the returns validated the approach of Congressional Republicans and should make it easier to pursue the economic, environmental and social agenda they favor, an agenda they blamed Mr. Daschle for helping to block. Mr. Allen said he hoped Democrats would see Mr. Daschle’s defeat as a warning from voters that they did not favor the use of Senate procedural tools to stall legislation and White House nominees.

“Elections have consequences,” Mr. Allen said. “There are messages and lessons that I hope members of the Senate will understand.”

or this:

Rock-ribbed Republican Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, proffered a solution, tell[s] us that Democrats must accept the finality of their powerlessness.”Once the minority of House and Senate are comfortable in their minority status, they will have no problem socializing with the Republicans. Any farmer will tell you that certain animals run around and are unpleasant, but when they’ve been fixed, then they are happy and sedate. They are contented and cheerful. They don’t go around peeing on the furniture and such.”

We didn’t like that very much and so we worked hard to boot them out of office at the first opportunity. Silly us. We should have issued death threats and raised an inner city army instead. Apparently, that’s how it’s done in America in this new century. Live and learn.

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