Month: July 2010

Manning The Ramparts

by digby

Krugman asks:

What I’ve never quite understood is why so many investors still loooove the likes of the WSJ editorial page, while they hate, hate, hate people like, well, me — when believing anything the former says has historically been a very good way to lose a lot of money.

Perhaps that explains why our economy is so fucked up. It’s not about capitalism and certainly not about rationality.

I think this may be better understood as a failing, reckless aristocracy protecting its prerogatives. These days, making and losing money is beside the point. They believe they have been ordained by God and the serfs are challenging their authority.

.

It’s As If She Had No History At All

by digby

This is a good piece by Derrick Jackson in the Boston Globe about the Sherrod mess and it brings up something that has been bothering me for some time. Here’s the relevant passage:

Sherrod’s rich and tragic 62 years makes it all the more embarrassing for Obama. Her father was murdered in 1965 by white men who were never indicted. Her younger sisters endured cross burnings for integrating schools. Her husband was a courageous civil rights worker who was beaten by an ax-handle-wielding white mob. The family home was shot into and the Sherrods lost their own farm to discriminatory loan practices. All that also makes it, in her words, “unbelievable’’ that the national NAACP at first joined the chorus condemning her.

She said if someone with her history can be treated as if she had no history at all, the Obama administration risks being oblivious to real racial rot.

Forgetting about the implications for the administration, I’ve been struck for some time about the apparent need among a fairly large number of Americans to pretend that racism is ancient history with which we no longer need to be concerned (at least as it pertains to racial minorities.) The fact is that Shirley Sherrod lived during the great cataclysm of the civil rights movement and paid a huge personal price for standing up against the forces that killed her father. But that wasn’t the end of it. She has spent the rest of her life trying to fight other insidious forms of racism like these discriminatory loan practices that continue to this day. I suspect that somebody forgot to send her the memo that the whole thing is over and that she just needs to move on. Indeed, it’s been made crystal clear that the fight isn’t over. (The fact that she was targeted for statements about racial reconciliation is even more galling.)

Far too many people are acting as if this woman wasn’t a living witness to the horrors of Jim Crow and the fallout of 200 years of racist history and instead believe that she’s nursing ancient grievances. Her life is treated as the forgotten detritus on the trash heap of history, as if it’s all over, a museum exhibit.

Indeed, it’s even worse than that — her history wasn’t just demeaned, she was victimized all over again, this time as a “reverse racist” fired on bogus charges of discriminating against the same white farmer she actually helped. Sure, she was hired back after a stink was raised, but what can you say about the reflex that would allow people to assume so easily that this person deserved to be fired without so much as a cursory investigation? Or the instantaneous furor over ACORN for that matter. (Here’s a little thought experiment: just imagine how this would have gone down if the white farmer and his wife hadn’t emerged to give testimony.)

People act as if the incredible life experience of people who have lived through this tumultuous history is less than nothing. Today, it’s becoming an article of faith among far too many Americans that these same people, rather than spending their lives heroically trying to right the injustices done to their people for centuries, are actually perpetrators of the crimes that were inflicted on them. Shirley Sherrod, the woman who lived through the violence of the civil rights movement, is accused of racism and many people automatically believe it —- and think that black racism is a huge problem that needs to be solved because whites are an aggrieved minority suffering at their hands. (And just in case a white person is revealed to have used an impolite word, it’s only because they were provoked into it by people who complain about racism.)

Here’s a terrific example of how inverted the whole debate has become:

What do you say to people who call you a racist?
Breitbart: Yes. It may be a task that’s so Herculean, but I think it’s a worthy goal to try to open up America to individuals who just so happen to have a different skin color, that they have every right and every freedom to think what they want to think. That’s my battle, it’s my goal.

Can you understand how this has been difficult for her to get caught up in that?
Breitbart: As difficult as it probably was for her, it’s been difficult for me as well, especially to hear her hurl an accusation of racism at me, when my motivation is absolutely pure and is driven by a desire for this country to move beyond its horrid racist past.

Perhaps that’s even true. His mind works in very convoluted ways. But his method of doing it is just a tiny bit questionable. After all, it consists so far of posting doctored videos of black ACORN workers apparently condoning child prostitution (replete with extra footage of a “pimp and ho”) and then another edited video of a woman allegedly making a racist speech that was actually a speech about racial reconciliation. (I shouldn’t forget the bogus time stamped video purporting to prove that nobody hurled racial epithets at civil rights heroes at the capitol.) He seems to be going to great deal of trouble to “prove” that blacks are criminals, liars and racists if he wants to attract them to his cause.

Now, Breitbart is a very disturbed circus clown who is merely playing to his crowd, so it’s unfair to tag the entire right with his peculiar illness. But his whining complaint that “it’s been hard for him too” is what he shares in common with them — the feeling of victimization at the hands of people who are taking things they don’t deserve. That’s the common thread. It’s not new, but the combination of the election of the first black president and the full realization of the end of the American Dream seems to have brought it splashing to the surface.

It’s not that white right wingers don’t have a reason to be angry and bitter, but blaming African Americans is cheap and stupid, particularly since those same white people have been blithely pushing the policies of the very people who’ve been exploiting them. On the other hand, Shirley Sherrod and her husband Charles have every right to be bitter and angry at whites — and they’re not. For that alone they deserve our amazed appreciation. I can’t say I would be so forgiving.

But they also deserve to have their lifetime of fighting for racial justice honored and respected, not dismissed as so much old news. Even if this recent experience didn’t prove in living color how easily their lives can be twisted into something ugly by people with an agenda (and that the mere threat of such a thing can send timorous Democrats into fits of overreaction) they would still deserve respect for living the lives they’ve lived. After what we’ve just witnessed, I’d say they deserve it more than ever.

LEMON: The local civil rights organizer was a transplant from Virginia. Where he helped found the student non-violent coordinating committee. A young firebrand name Charles Sherrod.

CHARLES SHERROD, SHIRLEY SHERROD’S HUSBAND: We had no idea of the monster that we were undertaking to fight.

LEMON (on camera): Across the south. White officials were using every trick in the book to keep civil rights activists in check, to keep black voters from turning out. That helped set the stage for a violent confrontation as demonstrators began to gather here at the courthouse in downtown Newton on the day that became known as Bloody Saturday.

CHARLES SHERROD: I saw some whites coming out of the hardware store with axe handles, and they approached us and started beating us with the axe handles. They beat us down to the ground.

SHIRLEY SHERROD: And my aunt Josie, she’s a little petite woman. She fell on. You know, she put her body over his and was hollering at them to stop beating Charles Sherrod because they were going to kill him.

LEMON (voice-over): But that didn’t stop Sherrod from driving back roads to meet every black family in the area.

CHARLES SHERROD: I was canvassing in Baker County, knocking on the door and three or four pretty girls came to the door. They started talking about this girl, their sister, that was prettier than either one of them. I want to see this girl. So they said they got a picture. I said I want to see this picture of your sister. And I pointed at it, and I said, I’m going to marry that girl.

LEMON: He did marry Shirley. It was a love story in a land of hate. Phone threats became part of the household routine.

CHARLES SHERROD: We’re going to blow up your head up, you better be at your house. We’re going to burn you down. We’re going to do this. We’re going to do the other. It was just the regular nigga, nigga, nigga.

GRACE MILLER: I would just tell them to be careful because I knew they were determined. And I just tell them to be careful. My heart would just bleed while them going home because I didn’t know whether they would make it there or not.

MILLER JONES: She kept telling Shirley, you got to stop. But she kept pushing. She said, mother, it’s going to be all right.

Could this man ever be that brave?

.

Finally, nirvana

by digby

David Broder is positively giddy at the prospect of Obama finally working in a bipartisan fashion after the fall election and he thinks Obama is too. Sure, he won’t be able to solve most of the pressing problems confronting the country but the biggest problem — Democratic partisanship — will be taken care of, so that’s something to look forward to.

Here’s an example of how great it’s going to be:

As the problem of long-term joblessness has drawn increasing White House attention, thoughts have turned again to the need for large-scale investment in all kinds of infrastructure projects, electronic as well as physical. Obama has set staffers to searching for innovative ways to finance such projects, with some form of public-private partnership, and has asked them to invite Republicans to come forward with ideas that could significantly reduce the ranks of seemingly permanent unemployed construction workers.

What a great idea. I have no doubt that the Republicans are going to step up with all kinds of great ideas for this. I know, how about some tax cuts for rich people?

But this is especially hopeful:

It is more difficult to imagine how Obama will enlist Republican help on some of his other priorities. Many in the White House are doubtful that when the bipartisan commission on debt and deficits reports in December, enough Republicans among the panel’s 18 members will sign on to provide the 14 votes required for a consensus. But at minimum, its majority report is expected to point to a plausible formula for budgetary discipline and, with pressure from the president, force congressional Republicans to come up with their own plan — not just say no.

On the NN panel on the deficit in which I participated, the consensus was that this was exactly how it was likely to go down. The commission will agree on certain “principles” and disagree on others and will be unable to form a consensus But the principles on which both the Democrats and Republicans will agree have to do with benefit cuts. Those on which they will disagree are tax hikes for the wealthy. This will form the basis for the debate going forward — benefit cuts will be said to have already achieved bipartisan agreement.

Nobody expects the catfood commission to actually pass although a turnover in both Houses in November could shake that assumption. What’s expected is that they will set new parameters for the debate perfectly situated for Broder’s bipartisan utopia. And the expectation is that the deficit hysteria may propel the president to declare this “consensus” a Grand Bargain achievement.

These are very weird times. Anything could happen. And nothing in the world would make Broder and the villagers happier than to see Social Security “saved” by weakening it. They’ve told us incessantly that (unwealthy) Americans are going to have to sacrifice and they meant it. If the Democrats manage to fulfill this Village dream they can count on really good press coverage and lots of back patting at social events for at least a week so it’s totally worth it.

Update: It’s actually worse than I thought:

I don’t want to overreact. I’d hate to prematurely diss President Obama’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, which held its fourth public meeting Wednesday. But the commission’s Democratic co-chair, Erskine Bowles, may have already blown it. In little-noticed remarks a few weeks ago, Bowles suggested that the long-term goal the commission should adopt for federal spending should be 21 percent of gross domestic product. This sounds like a bookkeeping matter. But Bowles’ goal would end progressive ambition, ratify America’s declining competitiveness and bury the American dream. Why? For starters, federal spending under Ronald Reagan averaged 22 percent of GDP. Under Bowles’s view, therefore, the outer limits of the Democratic Party’s 21st-century aspirations would be to run government at a size smaller than did a 20th-century conservative icon.

That’s the Democratic position, he’s talking about.
.

Blue America Endorses David Segal for Congress

by digby

Howie makes the case:

Rhode Island’s first congressional district, the eastern and northern parts of the state, including most of Providence, is an open seat this year because of the retirement of Patrick Kennedy. It’s one of the safest Democratic districts in the country and McCain barely managed to scrape together a third of the vote. In 2008 Kennedy was re-elected with almost 70%. It’s safe to say that whichever Democrat wins the September 14 primary will be the next Rhode Island congressman. There are 4 Democrats running: today’s guest and the newest Blue America endorsee, state Rep. David Segal, Providence mayor David Cicilline, conservative businessman Anthony Gemma, and Bill Lynch, the Establishment candidate, a former Democratic Party state chairman and the brother of the state’s Attorney General.

There are no actual John Barrows or Bobby Brights or Parker Griffiths among the Democrats. And although David Segal stands head and shoulders above the rest on every single policy issue without exception, the reason Blue America has decided to endorse in this race has more to do with his leadership potential. Everyone is always telling John and Digby and I that we need more Members like Alan Grayson in Congress. They don’t grow on trees– but we found one.

David Segal is one of us. He was elected to the Providence City Council in 2002 as a Green, and is now a lefty Democratic state Rep for Providence and East Providence. He has a very clear path to victory and he can win– and if he does, he’ll be among the strongest voices for progressives in the halls of the Capitol.

David’s worked on the meat-and-potato issues: Jobs, the environment, housing, progressive taxes, all with success. He’s successfully pushed for expanded renewable energy, more affordable housing, against predatory lending, and for foreclosure prevention measures.

But he’s never shied away from the really controversial issues: He’s been a vocal leader on criminal justice reform, standing up for the rights of immigrants and for gay rights, and has pushed as hard as one can from the state level against war spending. He’s an ardent supporter of gay marriage, and was the sponsor of the last year’s bill, which was passed over the Governor’s veto, to allow gay partners to plan each other’s funerals.

He’s a co-sponsor of marijuana decriminalization, and just convinced the Governor– after two years of vetoes– to allow a bill to become law that ensures due process for people on probation.

He’s sponsored the “Bring the Guard Home” legislation, and his first act on the City Council was to pass a resolution against the war in Iraq.

But, most importantly, he’s an organizer at heart, who is committed to joining the Progressive Caucus– and making it function better. Here’s an excerpt from an interview with David Swanson:
“[I]n Rhode Island I’ve tried to develop alternative structures for legislators to lean on when the leadership makes such threats. I am the lead organizer for our progressive caucus. I founded a political action committee to support members of our progressive caucus so that if funding from sources dries up at leadership’s request because something was done to offend them, that we would have at least some, some degree of money to fall back on to help fund our campaigns nonetheless. We funded ten, twelve races relatively modestly in the last cycle and hopefully we’ll be able to do something in the forthcoming cycle.”

Last week, many of us were disappointed as 148 Democrats, including Patrick Kennedy, joined Boehner, Cantor and 158 other Republicans to vote for more unjustifiable billions of dollars to throw down the Afghan sewer. The disgraceful supplemental demanded by the Military Industrial Complex passed 308-114, more Republicans voting for Obama’s proposal than Democrats! Among the candidates running in RI-1, only David Segal came out publicly to say he would have voted NO.

I’ve been against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan since the beginning. My first act on the Providence City Council in Providence was to sponsor an antiwar resolution in 2003, which of course was not going to end the war in its own right, but it was an opportunity for Providence to assert the negative impact of the war on the city’s ability to function– to fund municipal services and education.

I don’t think there’s any indication that we’re preventing future terrorism by keeping our presence in Afghanistan right now. The CIA’s made it clear that the drone attacks there present a real risk of destabilizing the Pakistani government, which possesses nuclear armament and should be a grave concern to all of us.

I think that it’s unfortunate but it’s the case that our involvement in Afghanistan is effectively a quagmire right now; there is no neat and tidy way to get out and tie it all up in a bow wrap everything up and leave it neat and pristine and I think it’s time to recognize that and bring the troops home.

I am the only candidate in the Democratic primary for CD 1 in Rhode Island who has pledged that the only Afghanistan war funding I will approve is the funding necessary to safely and expeditiously bring our troops home.

That’s the kind of straight forward answer we always look for from our candidates and it’s part of the reason we endorsed Segal today, why we’ve asked him to join us over at C&L today at 2pm (ET) for a chat and why we’re asking you to dig deep and help him run his grassroots campaign, a campaign that accepts no corporate contributions. And it’s also why Segal has also been endorsed by the PCCC, PDA, DFA, the
Rhode Island American Federation of Teachers & Healthcare Professionals and why we’ll be hearing some interesting endorsements this week from other organizations that will comes as a bit of a shock to the Democratic Establishment.

I had the pleasure of meeting Segal last week in Las Vegas and he was all that and more. He’s not just right on the issues, he’s a fighter and an organizer for progressive causes.

Jump over to Crooks and Liars right now to meet him.

Confederate Rump Strategy

by digby

I think Joan is right here:

Fox News has, sadly, become the purveyor of a 50-state “Southern strategy,” the plan perfected by Richard Nixon to use race to scare Southern Democrats into becoming Republicans by insisting the other party wasn’t merely trying to fight racism, but give blacks advantages over whites (Fox News boss Roger Ailes, of course, famously worked for Nixon). Now Fox is using the election of our first black president to scare (mainly older) white people in all 50 states that, again, the Democratic Party is run by corrupt black people trying to give blacks advantages over whites (MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow laid out this history last week). Consider four of the biggest stories the network has peddled since Obama entered the White House:

• Glenn Beck and others went after “green jobs czar” Van Jones, an African-American, false claiming Jones signed a 9/11 “Truther” petition, correctly noting he’d said some not-nice things about Republicans. Jones resigned.
• Then the big story was ACORN, the community-organizing group run by a black woman, Bertha Lewis, and known for working in low-income black communities. First, remember, ACORN allegedly committed voter fraud in the 2008 election (in fact, the voter registration problems at ACORN were self-reported, and the fraud was on ACORN, because they paid some scam-artist workers to register voters that ultimately didn’t exist – and thus wouldn’t vote). Then Fox hyped the big Breitbart video lie: that James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles went into various ACORN offices dressed outlandishly as pimp and prostitute, and got advice on how to beat taxes and set up a child prostitution ring. In fact, once law enforcement officials began examining those charges, they found they were false. Fox owner Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post even had to headline its story: “ACORN set up by vidiots: DA.”
• More recently, Fox has been pushing the story of how the Obama administration protected the New Black Panther Party from charges of voter intimidation, stemming from complaints by three Republican poll workers that the “Panthers” were intimidating mainly black voters in Philadelphia in 2008. No intimidated voters were ever found, and conservative Abigail Thernstrom blasted other GOP members of the U.S Civil Rights Commission for trying to use the non-story to “topple” Obama.
• Then came Shirley Sherrod. I have no doubt that, if CNN hadn’t found Roger and Eloise Spooner, the white farmers helped by Sherrod, Fox would have peddled Breitbart’s lies all week, to further its paranoid and politically driven narrative that Obama is a “racist” who’s out to oppress white folks as “reparations” for the centuries of discrimination blacks have endured. It’s crazy, sure, but Ailes worked for Richard Nixon, who pioneered the “Southern strategy.”

Remember that Pat Buchanan has compared the Tea Partiers to “George Wallace voters,” and bragged that he won them over to Nixon.

The Republicans aren’t making a purely racist play, of course. There simply aren’t enough racists in America anymore to get a majority that way. but it’s part of the package, to be sure, and Fox is the vehicle for promoting it. (Buchanan is a sort of fish out of water over on MSNBC, although he gets his message across to the odd wingnut who might tune in.)

The point is that this is obviously part of the strategy, particularly among older voters who tend to be a rather large part of the mid-term electorate. Ailes is a very shrewd political propagandist and he knows he has a major part to play with his older, white, conservative male demographic. Breitbart’s just feeding the bea.

I do have to wonder how many new, young bigots are being made with the normalizing of Fox/Breitbart racist victimhood rhetoric, though. It’s not like cultures can’t ever go backwards.

.

Over The Cliff

by digby

Dana Milbank notices that Glenn Beck is promoting violence almost every day and tells him that he should stop it. He focuses in on the latest atrocity, in which some nutcase was caught before he could shoot up the ACLU and Beck’s odd obsession The Tides Foundation:

[W]hat television news show could have directed the troubled man’s ire toward the obscure Tides Foundation, which sounds as if it’s dedicated to oceanography, or perhaps laundry detergent, but which is in fact a non-profit that claims to support “sustainability, better education, solutions to the AIDS epidemic and human rights?” A week after the incident, the mystery was solved. “Tides was one of the hardest things that we ever tried to explain, and everyone told us that we couldn’t,” Fox News host Glenn Beck told his radio listeners on Monday. “The reason why the blackboard” — the prop Beck uses on his TV show to trace conspiracies — “really became what the blackboard is, is because I was trying to explain Tides and how all of this worked.” Beck accuses Tides of seeking to seize power and destroy capitalism, and he suggests that a full range of his enemies on the left all have “ties to the Tides Center.” On Monday, he savored the fact that “no one knew what Tides was until the blackboard.” For good measure, Beck went after Tides again on Fox that night. And Tuesday night, Wednesday night and Thursday night. That’s on top of 29 other mentions of Tides on Beck’s Fox show over the past 18 months (two in the week before the shootout) according to a tally by the liberal press watchdog Media Matters. Other than two mentions of Tides by Beck’s Fox colleague Sean Hannity, Media Matters said it was unable to find any other mention of Tides on any news broadcast by any network over that same period. Beck declined comment. It’s not fair to blame Beck for violence committed by people who watch his show. Yet Williams isn’t the only such character with a seeming affinity for the Fox News host. In April 2009, a man allegedly armed with an AK-47, a .22-caliber rifle and a handgun was charged with killing three cops in Pittsburgh. The Anti-Defamation League reported that the accused killer had, as part of a pattern of activities involving far-right conspiracy theories, posted a link on a neo-Nazi Web site to a video of Beck talking about the possibility that FEMA was operating concentration camps in Wyoming. The killings came after Beck told Fox viewers that he “can’t debunk” the notion that FEMA was operating such camps — but before he finally acknowledged that the conspiracy wasn’t real

And Beck isn’t the only inspiration for the huge spike in right wing violence since Obama’s election. Every reporter in DC ought to read this book. Clearly they are unaware of what’s happening:

Update: If you haven’t heard about Beck’s latest, it’s a doozy. Something about a Weather Underground conspiracy in the 1960s to make Homer Simpson an American hero. Seriously.

.

Dismissing The Gusher

by digby

I posted yesterday about the emerging meme that the BP disaster was not big deal and today Brad Johnson at Grist puts that meme in perspective:

In a contrarian take, Time Magazine‘s Michael Grunwald wrote a preemptive post-mortem impact of BP’s Deepwater Horizon disaster, saying that it “does not seem to be inflicting severe environmental damage.” Grunwald believes that Rush Limbaugh “has a point” because the right-wing radio host spent weeks dismissing the disaster. New York Times reporters Justin Gillis and Campbell Robertson wrote that the “oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico appears to be dissolving far more rapidly than anyone expected.” The Associated Press’s John Carey believes “the oil slicks that once spread across thousands of miles of the Gulf of Mexico have largely disappeared.” The narrative of the disappearing disaster has been promoted by Politico’s Mike Allen and the Drudge Report.

That figures. I saw Grunwald on TV yesterday and it was clear that he had a specific agenda. He is someone who has spent his life working on the issue of the disappearing wetlands and he’s upset that the oil spill has drained all the energy out of that effort. Apparently, like so many other liberal activists, he has no imagination and is unable to see how one can raise the general environmental consciousness through the attention being paid to the BP catastrophe. It was clear to me that his ego was at work. (As for the rest — well, they are myopic or anxious to have this boring story over so they can start covering Democratic sex scandals again. Maybe both.)

Anyway, Johnson puts this ridiculous idea to rest:

[T]he only honest take on the BP disaster right now is that this is a calamity, the true scope of which will take years to discover, with many impacts impossible to ever know. No one knows how badly this disaster will affect the dying marshlands of Louisiana. No one knows how badly the toxic oil plumes will affect the spawning grounds of the bluefin tuna, the feeding grounds of the threatened Gulf sturgeon, or the future of the endangered Kemp’s ridley sea turtles, whose corpses have been found at 15 times the historical rate this summer. No one knows what the long-term physical and mental health impacts will be on the tens of thousands of cleanup workers. Moreover, it is undoubtedly premature to announce that the vast oil slick has largely disappeared from the ocean’s surface. Thick oil, vast slicks, and tar balls continue to wash ashore along Louisiana’s coastline. Satellite imagery from July 27 and 28 — as the stories of disappearing oil were being filed — show a vast region still discolored by slicks and sheen, little diminished from previous weeks.

The Donkey Edge is constantly updating their coverage of health implications of the Gulf calamity here. The latest is an outbreak of unexplained hideous skin lesions among cleanup workers. But all those toxic chemicals are no big deal. Let’s move along.

.

What Atrios Said

by digby

I have often wondered about this myself:

I … don’t think the fortunes of Obama and Democrats depend much on how loudly I clap. More than that, if the volume of my clapping is that important then people should be spending a bit more time and money ensuring that I’ve got an adequate supply of hand lotion to keep my hands in peak clapping form.

I would certainly think that if liberal cheerleading is valuable they would at least refrain from using liberals as a doormat every time they want to appease some conservadem princeling. Depending on supporters’ masochism probably isn’t a great strategy.

And any adult should know that angrily exhorting someone to love you doesn’t actually work.

.

Galtian Nincompoop

by digby

I wish I could figure out why everyone in DC thinks Paul Ryan is so smart, but apparently it’s just an article of faith that this guy is some sort of intellectual powerhouse. I guess it’s because he isn’t completely illiterate and can speak in words with more than one syllable. I guess I just have a slightly more holistic definition of intelligence than the ability to speak wonk.

For me, it doesn’t take anything other than this, to tell me everything I need to know about the breadth of Ryan’s intellectual capacities:

“The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand,” Ryan said at a D.C. gathering four years ago honoring the author of “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Fountainhead.”

[…]

“Almost every fight we are involved in here on Capitol Hill  . . .  is a fight that usually comes down to one conflict – individualism versus collectivism. If we actually accomplish this goal of personalizing Social Security, think of what we will accomplish. Every worker, every laborer in America will not only be a laborer but a capitalist. They will be an owner of society.  . . .  That’s that many more people in America who are not going to listen to the likes of Dick Gephardt and Nancy Pelosi, Ted Kennedy, the collectivist, class-warfare-breathing demagogues,” said Ryan

That sounds pretty damned dumb to me.

But some people think he’s brilliant, no doubt about it:

GLENN BECK: Nice to meet you, sir. Tell me, tell me your thoughts on progressivism.

PAUL RYAN: Right. What I have been trying to do, and if you read the entire Oklahoma speech or read my speech to Hillsdale College that they put in there on Primus Magazine, you can get them on my Facebook page, what I’ve been trying to do is indict the entire vision of progressivism because I see progressivism as the source, the intellectual source for the big government problems that are plaguing us today and so to me it’s really important to flush progressives out into the field of open debate.

GLENN: I love you.

PAUL RYAN: So people can actually see what this ideology means and where it’s going to lead us and how it attacks the American idea.

GLENN: Okay. Hang on just a second. I ‑‑ did you see my speech at CPAC?

PAUL RYAN: I’ve read it. I didn’t see it. I’ve read it, a transcript of it.

GLENN: And I think we’re saying the same thing. I call it ‑‑

PAUL RYAN: We are saying the same thing.

GLENN: It’s a cancer.

PAUL RYAN: Exactly. Look, I come from ‑‑ I’m calling you from Janesville, Wisconsin where I’m born and raised.

GLENN: Holy cow.

PAUL RYAN: Where we raise our family, 35 miles from Madison. I grew up hearing about this stuff. This stuff came from these German intellectuals to Madison‑University of Wisconsin and sort of out there from the beginning of the last century. So this is something we are familiar with where I come from. It never sat right with me. And as I grew up, I learned more about the founders and reading the Austrians and others that this is really a cancer because it basically takes the notion that our rights come from God and nature and turns it on its head and says, no, no, no, no, no, they come from government, and we here in government are here to give you your rights and therefore ration, redistribute and regulate your rights. It’s a complete affront of the whole idea of this country and that is to me what we as conservatives, or classical liberals if you want to get technical.

GLENN: Thank you.

If infantile Randism is smart, then Paul Ryan is a genius. Strangely, a lot of people, even the president, seem to think so. He named this very smart fellow to the deficit commission.

Krugman takes on the latest Ryan ramblings about interest rates:

I’m sure someone will try to come up with a reason why Ryan is being smart here, but the truth is that he’s stone-cold ignorant. Now, he wouldn’t be the only ignorant member of Congress. But wait — my colleague David Brooks tells me, this very morning, that

Paul Ryan, the most intellectually ambitious Republican in Congress, lavishly cites Brooks’s book. Over the past few years, Ryan has been promoting a roadmap to comprehensively reform the nation’s tax and welfare system.

So this is the smartest Republican Congress has to offer? Of course, Ryan’s idea of fiscal reform is to run huge deficits for decades, but claim that it’s all OK because we’ll cut spending 40 years from now; and he throws a hissy fit when people challenge his numbers, or call privatization by its real name.But hey, he’s intellectually ambitious

So’s his BFF, Glenn Beck.

.

Democratic Chumps

by digby

We won’t be able to blame the Republicans for this after January:

Why won’t that be their fault if it happens again next year? Well:

Five Senate Democrats have said they will not support a lowering of the 60-vote bar necessary to pass legislation. Another four lawmakers say they are wary about such a change and would be hesitant to support it. A 10th Democrat, Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), said he would support changing the rule on filibusters of motions to begin debate on legislation, but not necessarily the 60-vote threshold needed to bring up a final vote on bills…

Senior Democrats say Reid will not have the votes to change the rule at the beginning of next year.

“It won’t happen,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who said she would “probably not” support an effort to lower the number of votes needed to cut off filibusters from 60 to 55 or lower.

Sen. Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii) echoed Feinstein: “I think we should retain the same policies that we have instead of lowering it.
“I think it has been working,” he said.

Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) said he recognizes his colleagues are frustrated over the failure to pass measures such as the Disclose Act, campaign legislation that fell three votes short of overcoming a Republican filibuster Tuesday.

“I think as torturous as this place can be, the cloture rule and the filibuster is important to protect the rights of the minority,” he said. “My inclination is no.”

Sen. Jon Tester, a freshman Democrat from Montana, disagrees with some of his classmates from more liberal states.

“I think the bigger problem is getting people to work together,” he said. “It’s been 60 for a long, long time. I think we need to look to ourselves more than changing the rules.”

Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), who is up for reelection in 2012, also said he would like the votes needed for cloture to remain the same.“I’m not one who think it needs to be changed,” he said.

I think I see the contours of how this is going to go. The Democrats will do all the work to get this done by shaping public opinion and preparing the ground. Then the Republicans will take the majority and do it.

At that point the Democrats will start fighting to restore it and as soon as they get the majority back will put it back in place.

This would be what we call the “Independent Counsel Blowback Gambit.”

.