Month: July 2010

Blue America chat with Jim Wilson

by digby

Happening right now at C&L:

A labor union president once told me that the worst Democrat in Congress, at least from the point of view of ordinary working families, is Oklahoma reactionary Dan Boren. I’ve never been able to find anyone to persuade me that he was wrong. The video above should explain that pretty well.

Today Blue America is very proud to present the courageous populist who’s decided Boren doesn’t deserve a free ride from Oklahoma Democrats. State Senator Jim Wilson, long considered Oklahoma’s most pro-family state legislator, made up his mind after Boren voted in favor of the anti-Choice Stupak amendment and then against the overall healthcare reform bill– twice. Healthcare reform has been one of Jim’s signature issues as a state Rep and state Senator. He’ll be joining is for a free-ranging discussion.

The last two mangy Blue Dogs we’re trying to dislodge in this cycle are John Barrow– who faces off against Regina Thomas on July 20– and then Boren, who will be facing Jim on July 27. If you can, please consider donating to his campaign so that Jim can continue getting out his message to Oklahoma Democrats.

Come on over. If there’s a more loathsome Blue Dog than Dan Boren (and that’s a rich field indeed) I’d like to know who it is.

.

Serf’s Up

by digby

What kind of people would look at this and say that unemployment insurance is “spoiling” people:

What kind of people? Well, Republicans to be specific, 38 out of 40 of whom voted against extending unemployment benefits. And then there was Ben Nelson, the one so-called Democrat who crossed the line leaving it one vote short. He’ll go down in history as a profile in perfidy.

What a beautiful message of unity on our Independence Day it is to tell close to 20 million citizens that they are on their own in the worst job market since the Great Depression purely to make a cheap political point. It would make King George proud to see his aristocratic heirs flexing their muscles two centuries later in the country that once proudly proclaimed that it didn’t have a class system.

Update: Oh, and also — is this is true, President Obama should fire his fucking political team:

While President Bill Clinton’s political advisers favored more spending and tax cuts coming out of the recession of the early 1990s and his economic team pushed to start reducing deficits, in President Obama’s circle the opposite is true. Political advisers are channeling the widespread public anger at deficits while the economic team argues that the government should further spur the economy to avert another recession.

In Mr. Clinton’s day, the economic team, asserting that a credible commitment to fiscal responsibility would reassure financial markets and lead to greater long-term growth, won the argument in favor of deficit reduction, helped by moderate Democrats in Congress. These days, the Obama political team has the edge, again in the cause of emphasizing deficit reduction and with an assist from Congressional Democrats nervous about the midterm elections.

.

Pest Control

by digby

Sometimes it scares me to think of what it must be like inside the heads of people who think like this. On some level the world must be a very scary place:

Are Democrats a party of parasites who give handouts to people who don’t work, by taxing those who do? That’s what farmer Donald Jungerman claimed when he put up a trailer along a freeway in Missouri with the words:

Are you a Producer or Parasite
Democrats – Party of Parasites

Well, it turns out that Jungerman himself got government handouts, to the tune of over $1 million!

After a story about Jungerman’s trailer ran in Sunday’s Star, however, some readers called him a hypocrite for criticizing others for getting government help while taking government subsidies paid for by taxpayers. Jungerman said he put up the sign to protest people who pay no taxes, but, “Always have their hand out for whatever the government will give them” in social programs. Crop subsidies are different, he said. When crop prices dip below a certain point, the federal government makes up the difference with a subsidy payment.

Of course. It’s completely different for taxpayers to give one man a million dollars in subsidies when he can’t make a profit than it is to give poor children’s parents food stamps so they can buy the food this fellow produces and give him even more money. I don’t know how these Democratic parasites can live with themselves.

.

Embeds

by digby

During the US Attorney scandal many of us wondered if it would result in a bunch of GOP operatives remaining burrowed in the Justice Department because the Democrats would fear being criticized for “politicizing” the department if they tried to fire them. Republicans, having fully mastered “I know you are but what am I” politics can always be counted upon to cry victim even when the turned tables are of a completely different type and the hapless Democrats end up chasing their tails because they can’t figure out how to parry it. It was predictable that, perversely, there would be quite a few wingnut holdovers after the scandal completely safe in their jobs.

It turns out there are burrowers and one of them has left the department and immediately gone to the press to spill breathless tales of racism in the Obama/Holder DOJ — toward white people, naturally:

Adams’ allegations spread across the right-wing media. After Adams penned a Washington Times column leveling accusations of a “corrupt” dismissal of the New Black Panthers case and appeared in an interview with Fox News’ Megyn Kelly, Adams’ unsubstantiated story spread throughout other right-wing media. Kelly brought the story to Hannity, and it was picked up by Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingraham, radio host Jay Severin, the blogs Hot Air, Atlas Shrugs, Ace of Spades, Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government, and the Fox website Fox Nation.

Adams was one of Bradley Schlotzman’s proteges, the notorious destroyer of the civil rights division under Ashcroft and Gonzales and long time right wing vote suppression specialist. Media Matters quotes from the DOJ Office of Professional Responsibility report:

The evidence in our investigation showed that Schlozman, first as a Deputy Assistant Attorney General and subsequently as Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General and Acting Assistant Attorney General, considered political and ideological affiliations in hiring career attorneys and in other personnel actions affecting career attorneys in the Civil Rights Division. In doing so, he violated federal law — the Civil Service Reform Act — and Department policy that prohibit discrimination in federal employment based on political and ideological affiliations, and committed misconduct. The evidence also showed that Division managers failed to exercise sufficient oversight to ensure that Schlozman did not engage in inappropriate hiring and personnel practices. Moreover, Schlozman made false statements about whether he considered political and ideological affiliations when he gave sworn testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee and in his written responses to supplemental questions from the Committee…

Several attorneys in the Division also told us that Schlozman was open about his disdain for and lack of trust in the attorney staff of the Division. Appellate Section Chief Diana Flynn told us that in conversations with her, Schlozman alternately referred to the Appellate Section lawyers hired during prior administrations as “Democrats” and “liberals,” and said they were “disloyal,” could not be trusted, and were not “on the team.” Flynn said Schlozman pledged to move as many of them out of the Division as he could to make room for the “real Americans” and “right-thinking Americans” he wanted to hire.

Accounts from numerous other Division employees and officials, including former AAG Wan Kim and Section Chiefs Cutlar and Flynn, as well as the context of Schlozman’s e-mails, indicate that his use of terms such as “real American,” “right-thinking American,” being “on the team,” and similar terms were Schlozman’s way of referring to politically conservative applicants and attorneys. For example, an e-mail dated July 17, 2006, from Schlozman to Monica Goodling, who at the time was Senior Counsel to the Attorney General and White House Liaison, sheds light on the meaning of Schlozman’s terms. In that e-mail, Schlozman recommended a friend who had interviewed with Goodling for a political position. Schlozman wrote, “I can assure you that [the applicant] is a good American. [The applicant] and Sheldon Bradshaw and I (and [one] other person) made up a four-member Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy at my former law firm.” In another e-mail sent to Goodling on December 4, 2006, in which Schlozman recommended a different friend for an Immigration Judge position, Schlozman wrote, “[D]on’t be dissuaded by his ACLU work on voting matters from years ago. This is a very different man, and particularly on immigration issues, he is a true member of the team.”

A May 9, 2003, e-mail provides additional evidence of the meaning of Schlozman’s phrases. Luis Reyes, then Counsel to the AAG for the Civil Division, sent an e-mail to Schlozman in connection with a legal matter, endorsing an attorney in the Department’s Office of Legal Policy as a “right thinking american [sic] to say the least.” In an e-mail response, Schlozman wrote that he “just spoke with [the attorney] to verify his political leanings and it is clear he is a member of the team.”.

Despite all that, his protege Adams was kept on in the Obama administration — according to the Washington Times article he was there until a month ago. And Media Matters reports that last October, presumably while he was still a Justice department lawyer, he penned this delightful screed for the American Spectator comparing Obama to Nobel Prize winner Norman Angell from 1933 whom he excoriated as an appeaser:

Angell’s arguments were comfortable in 1933 for the same reasons many today find comfort in the primacy of negotiation as the best tool to confront militant Islam, Iranian nukes or a belligerent Russia: prosperous nations are deluded into thinking talk is always the best way to preserve prosperity. Your familiar comfort and daily routine simply cannot be inconvenienced by wars or rumors of wars. The lessons of an entire century, both Neville Chamberlain’s errors, and Ronald Reagan’s successes, aren’t enough to shake awake a populace blessed with comfort and material satisfaction.

Churchill, responding directly to Angell, asked “who is the man vain enough to suppose that the long antagonisms of history and of time can in all circumstances be adjusted by the smooth and superficial conventions of politicians and ambassadors?”

The Nobel Committee may have answered Sir Winston’s query for the 21st century.

Keeping him on was basically like having Karl Rove working in the Obama administration. I wonder how many more like him there are?

.

Senator Centerfold Doesn’t Read The Articles

by digby

Steve Benen makes a compelling case that the centerfold Senator from Massachusetts is a teensy bit of a himbo:

I guess what annoys me most about Scott Brown is that I feel as though I know people just like him — in the neighborhood, in the family, etc. These are the kind of folks who seem interested in public affairs, and feel like they’re supposed to have opinions on important developments, but never quite get around to paying attention to the news or learning anything substantive about the subjects they claim to care about. In my heart of hearts, I don’t think Brown is lying. I rather doubt he appeared on that radio show yesterday, hoping to deliberately deceive listeners about the sanctions on Iran the president was just signing into law. The problem is that Brown doesn’t seem to keep up on current events, but likes to pretend he does. That’s not a crime; a lot of people do this. But a lot of people aren’t U.S. senators. As a result, this guy ends up saying demonstrably ridiculous things about the stimulus, financial regulatory reform, health care reform, economic policy, and energy policy, among other things.

Who would have guessed that his guy might not be a serious person?

In fairness, highly attractive people are often stereotyped by their looks and it’s as unjust as stereotyping anyone else. There are lots of highly accomplished, intelligent lookers in this world and they often have to fight harder to be taken seriously.

And anyway just because a Senator doesn’t know about current events or understand the basic outlines of legislation he’s working on doesn’t mean he’s shallow and dim about everything:

“The pinkish color drained from [Brown’s] face when I asked him about it during a conversation in his campaign office just before we took off in the truck. He clarified that the shorts weren’t something that he went out and purchased — it wasn’t like that at all. ‘I did the couture shows, and instead of paying in cash, they paid in clothes,’ he said. ‘And one of the things I had to wear were leather shorts. And these happened to be pink.’” As he told the story, he seemed, almost in spite of himself, to get into it. ‘If I wore these now,’ he said, ‘I’d get shot. But it was the ’80s. Pastels were in. It was all pastel-y.’ The shorts went with his tan at the time and a pair of white shoes that he owned, so he gave them a whirl. ‘Gail comes out and she’s like, “Those are pink shorts.” I said: “Yeah, you like them? They’re great. Comfortable. Feel this leather.”’ With this last phrase, he slowly stroked the side of one of his thighs, apparently miming the gesture he made in front of her.” He emphasized: ‘This isn’t cheap leather. This is, like, $750 shorts back then.’ He shook his head at the memory. ‘Crazy stuff.’”

Brown undoubtedly isn’t truly dumb. But he’s gotten through life without having seriously challenged himself or being forced to deliver something other than his pulchritudinous self. It’s not surprising that he isn’t inclined to spend a lot of time reading the paper when his bread and butter is his fab abs.
What this says about the GOP is far more interesting. Their two biggest stars are a gibberish spouting beauty queen and a bumbling centerfold and I wonder if this might be the natural outgrowth of the Roger Ailes strategy of hiring gorgeous spokesmodels to take the edge off the GOPs hate and fear agenda. perhaps it’s just been taken to its natural conclusion.
I think Palin actually showed the way for Brown here. Stay in politics as short a period of time as possible and then get out and make zillions as a “political celebrity.” It’s a much better job and you never, ever have to read anything that isn’t on (or in) the palm of your hand.

.

Shocker!

by digby

From Gallup:

There is significant overlap between Americans who identify as supporters of the Tea Party movement and those who identify as conservative Republicans. Their similar ideological makeup and views suggest that the Tea Party movement is more a rebranding of core Republicanism than a new or distinct entity on the American political scene.

No kidding.

But I’ll be sure to hold my tongue and not be derisive toward these people as everyone’s been admonishing me to do. Why I’m supposed to do this when they clearly loathe me and everything I believe in — and always have — still eludes me, but the fact that they wear tri-corner hats and call themselves tea partiers instead of Republicans evidently makes them Real Americans. Where have I heard that before?

.

Scaring the bejezuz out of ’em

by digby

Dday has the rundown on how the votes went down last night on the war. The short version is that it passed as expected, but the details are complicated and interesting.

However, the most interesting is this:

The other three votes were test votes on the level of opposition to the Afghan war. An amendment pushed by Blue Dogs to embarrass the antiwar crowd by calling for an elimination of military funding got 25 votes. But Barbara Lee’s amendment calling for money to only go toward a withdrawal garnered 100 votes. And the McGovern amendment, which would have required a timetable for withdrawal, received a whopping 162 votes, including the majority of the Democratic caucus and 9 Republicans. This shows a real crumbling of the Afghanistan policy.

I was having a conversation the other night about these latest signs of unrest among the Democrats over Afghanistan and we discussed the fact that history shows these Congressional debates on the war are important regardless of the short term success rate. Back in 2007 Rick Perlstein wrote about how this worked during the Vietnam era:

Let’s start at the very beginning. Representatives and senators had been criticizing the creep, creep, creep of America’s escalating military involvement in Indochina at least since 1963. The hammer really started coming down, though, in February 1966 — when, a year after Lyndon Johnson began the first bombing runs over North Vietnam, Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman J. William Fulbright of Arkansas called hearings questioning the entire underlying logic of the war. Americans had been doing that in the streets for some time by then. Shortly after the Senate passed the president’s 1965 $700 million military appropriation for Vietnam 88 to 3, the antiwar movement staged its first big Washington demonstration — with about 20,000 young people on the Mall. But the collective reaction of the guardians of polite opinion was a sneer. “Holiday From Exams,” the New York Times headed its dispatch.

By contrast, when Sen. Fulbright began his hearings, they stood up and took notice. All three networks covered the hearings live over six days. Thus did Americans learn from hippies like World War II hero Gen. James Gavin and George Kennan, architect of the Cold War doctrine of “containment” — who said, “If we were not already involved as we are today in Vietnam, I would know of no reason why we should wish to become so involved, and I could think of several reasons why we should wish not to,” and that victory could come only “at the cost of a degree of damage to civilian life and civilian suffering … for which I would not like to see this country responsible.”

President Johnson did not sit by idly. He directed the FBI to monitor the proceedings to find where they were echoing the so-called Communist line — and had agents study wiretaps of the Soviet Embassy for evidence of friendly congressional contact. He also may have had words with the top network brass. CBS, for one, cut away from Kennan’s testimony to return to regularly scheduled programming (“I Love Lucy” and “Andy Griffith Show” reruns). The execs defended themselves, claiming the hearings served to “obfuscate” and “confuse” the issues.

First lesson: Forthright questioning of a mistaken war by prominent legislators can utterly transform the public debate, pushing it in directions no one thought it was prepared to go.

Second lesson: Congress horning in on war powers scares the bejesus out of presidents.

It’s past time for more horning. This was a good start.

.

Teetering On The Edge

by digby

Charlie Cook:

Among the registered voters in the survey, Republicans led by 2 points on the generic congressional ballot test, 45 percent to 43 percent. This may not sound like a lot, given that Democrats now hold 59 percent of House seats. When this same poll was taken in June 2008, however, Democrats led by 19 points, 52 percent to 33 percent.

That drop-off should be enough to sober Democrats up, but the next set of data was even more chilling. First, keep in mind that all registered voters don’t vote even in presidential years, and that in midterm elections the turnout is about one-third less. In an attempt to ascertain who really is most likely to vote, pollsters asked registered voters, on a scale of 1 to 10, how interested they were in the November elections. Those who said either 9 or 10 added up to just over half of the registered voters, coming in at 51 percent.

Hart and McInturff then looked at the change among the most-interested voters from the same survey in 2008. Although 2010 is a “down-shifting” election, from a high-turnout presidential year to a lower-turnout midterm year, one group was more interested in November than it was in 2008: those who had voted for Republican John McCain for president. And the groups that showed the largest decline in interest? Those who voted for Barack Obama — liberals, African-Americans, self-described Democrats, moderates, those living in either the Northeast or West, and younger voters 18 to 34 years of age. These are the “Holy Mackerel” numbers…

The NBC/WSJ survey, when combined with a previously released NPR study of likely voters in 70 competitive House districts by Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg and Republican Glen Bolger, point to an outcome for Democrats that is as serious as a heart attack. Make no mistake about it: There is a wave out there, and for Democrats, the House is, at best, teetering on the edge.

You can’t help but wonder if the Democrats have decided that having the votes of “liberals, African-Americans, self-described Democrats, moderates and those living in either the Northeast or West” just aren’t worth having so they are going to fight the Republicans for every last one of those John McCain voters. How else to explain the ongoing derision of their rank and file? (“They look like absolute idiots” is the quote that comes to mind.)

If going for hard core Republican votes isn’t their strategy, then someone might tell the president that for the next four months he might want to knock off his patented “one from column A one from column B” routine and stop making false equivalence between the Democratic base and teabaggers and lavishing praise on Blue Dogs who repeatedly punch hippies and stab him in back. Of course, as I said, it’s always possible that the highly professional strategists have decided to purposefully depress the Democratic base and just fight mano-a-mano for the Republicans. Judging by the rhetoric and behavior it’s the most logical assumption at this point.

I do hope the Dems enjoy the scandal and impeachment circus once the batshit insane Republicans get the gavels. I know the media will.

.

One Big Mess

by digby

At the time I’m writing this, this is where we stand on the war supplemental votes happening tonight, from HuffPo Hill. (It’s all subject to change or clarification.)

In five steps, the House will vote to approve war funding this evening without ever voting to approve war funding. The first vote will be on the rule that allows this to happen. The vote on the rule is the key vote for or against the war — unless you’re a House Republican, in which case you’ll vote against it because it’s a bunch of hocus pocus proposed by Democrats.

Next will come a separate vote on a Dave Obey-sponsored amendment to add social spending — for teachers, Pell grants, jobs, border security, oil clean-up, disaster relief and $13 billion for Vietnam Vets exposed to Agent Orange. Because of other cuts, Obey’s amendment shaves $493 million off the deficit. Next will come three votes that will give us a window into where the House is when it comes to ending the war in Afghanistan, which is now 104 months old: Jim McGovern’s to create a timeline for withdrawal, another to strike military spending from the bill altogether and a third, sponsored by Barbara Lee, to only allow funds to be used for an orderly withdrawal.

If all four of those amendments fail, the bill dies. But a Democratic leadership aide tells HuffPost Hill that they have the votes they need to pass Obey’s amendment, so this thing’s going through. It won’t get to Secretary Bob Gates by his Fourth of July deadine, but the military has money to get itself into August, say Democrats.

The White House has threatened to veto the $75 billion supplemental spending bill if it includes an offset in the package that would cut funding from the Department of Education’s Race to the Top program, part of the package of cuts Obey identified to pay for his amendment. “If the final bill presented to the President includes cuts to education reforms, the President’s senior advisors would recommend a veto,” reads the message from the White House. Well, it’s gonna include it.

So Obama is threatening to veto his own war supplemental if it moves money from one education program to pay to keep teachers employed? Hookay.

Dday says, via email, that he suspects this is really just because the administration doesn’t want to have to run the war funding back through the senate. Why they decided it made sense to issue a bizarre veto threat rather than negotiating it privately is anyone’s guess. I suspect the whole damned town has gone nuts.

Especially when I read this:

In the House summary of the rule that governs tonight’s war-funding vote is this gem: “Commits the House to vote on any Senate-passed recommendations of the bipartisan Fiscal Commission and that net savings from any Commission recommendations will go to deficit reduction.”

I don’t know whose vote that bought, but it was way too costly. In fact, I can’t imagine that anything is worth that.

.

Shameless

by digby

Mary Landrieu just can’t stop shilling:

On the same day the White House commission investigating the Gulf oil spill announced its first meetings — July 12-13 in New Orleans — a Senate committee cast what amounted to a no-confidence vote on the commission’s objectivity.

The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee voted Wednesday to create a congressional bipartisan commission to investigate the spill, with Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., and others saying a separate panel is needed because the White House commission has four environmental advocates — three members and the executive staff director — but no oil industry representation.

“Maybe the commission that the Congress sets up, in a more balanced fashion, with both very strong environmental views and very strong industry views, could actually come up with something that really might work for the dilemma and the challenge that this nation faces, which briefly is this: We use 20 million barrels of oil a day,” Landrieu said. “That was true the day before the Deepwater Horizon blew up. It is true today. And we need to get that oil from somewhere.”

Right. But I don’t actually think that’s the “dilemma” the commission is supposed to be dealing with. This is:

These oil companies sure are getting their money’s worth.

Via C&L, h/t to @AllisonKilkenny