Month: September 2010

Left Literalism

by digby

Ok,I was going to drop this until I read the book because well — it’s stupid for any of us to be arguing a bout a book none of us have read. But I can’t let this one thing pass. Ta-Nehesi Coates and Matt Yglesias (both of whom I have great respect and even affection for) are being bizarrely literal about this subject.

Markos has written a polemic called “American Taliban” in which he draws an ironic comparison between the far right in American politics and the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He isn’t saying they are interchangeable. That’s ridiculous. Obviously, one exists within a secular Western democracy with a rule of law and the other well … doesn’t. And just as the American far right doesn’t require beards and pray to Mecca or speak Pashtun, neither do they execute women in the middle of sports stadiums for adultery. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t, in fact, repressive, authoritarian, theocratic, anti-feminist and (on the fringes) quite violent. (Abortion clinics have been under physical siege for decades by these people.)

Are they mirror images? Of course not. But it’s infinitely interesting to consider the ways in which they are alike and for a liberal writer to not be intrigued by the huge irony that these similarly anti-modern fundamentalists are now organizing themselves around the idea that the other is the devil just strikes me as inconceivable. I think it’s a fascinating and provocative observation. I mean, come on — just last week-end we watched a rally at the Lincoln Memorial where a bunch of conservative religious folks listened raptly to a loon talking up a black robed regiment of religious leaders as he decried the pending takeover of Sharia law! Setting aside the politics for a moment, what kind of writer doesn’t isn’t struck by that image?

Since only one person in this exchange has actually read the book I’m guessing writing is not the real source of this argument. It feels remarkably like the many old arguments we’ve had over the years about whether or not “the left” is embarrassing everyone by acting out and breaking the rules of polite political discourse. And that argument’s been going on as long as I can remember. In fact, when I was younger I was on the other side, often uncomfortable with the idea that the country was deeply divided in ways that are fairly irreconcilable. It didn’t comport with my idealistic belief in the perfectibility of the Union. I don’t think so anymore — I came to see American politics as an endless struggle between two big competing visions with progress being made by two steps forward one step back most of the time. (That one step back can be a real bitch, btw.) But I’ve written about that before …

Meanwhile, we’ll have to disagree about whether or not it’s politically smart to make comparisons between today’s far right and the Taliban. I don’t imagine that it will convince anyone who doesn’t already see the political divide in these stark terms, but if it helps anyone on the left stiffen his resolve and work to keep these people from power then it’s successful on its own terms. That’s a dirty job, to be sure, but somebody’s got to do it.

Update: Paul Rosenberg has more.

Update II: Also I have to say that it’s remarkably uncharitable for so many people to make the unsupported assertion that Markos wrote this book to gain attention, traffic or whatever. It’s become a very nasty, reflexive habit lately to accuse everyone you disagree with of corruption and it’s not fair. Markos has been writing all this stuff on his blog for years. His reputation as a left wing shit disturber is secure and I would doubt very seriously if he will get rich on this book. It would be nice if people would at least grant that he might have written this book for honest reasons even if you disagree with it.

.

“Fuck the UAW” They Don’t Vote For Us Anyway

by digby

Oh wait … :

In “Overhaul”, his upcoming chronicle of his reign as “car czar,” Steven Rattner offers an insider’s account of the Obama administration’s rescue of the auto industry. And he pulls no punches when it comes to describing the foibles of such heavyweights as Rahm Emanuel, Tim Geithner, Larry Summers and Sheila Bair.

Though the 58-year-old financier lasted only six months, with his sudden resignation sparking speculation that a pay-for-play scandal at his old private equity firm was becoming an unhealthy distraction, Rattner has plenty of tales to tell…

Rattner depicts White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel as a force to be reckoned with who disparaged unions — once quipping “Fuck the UAW” — and who effectively supervised Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner during his first rocky months on the job by dictating his public appearances and staff picks.

According to him Goolsbee and Summers fought all the way along. And nobody likes Sheila Bair. Again.

I guess we’re supposed to be shocked that Rahm was running Geithner when all the important economic decisions were being made. But why? It was all politics from the minute they hit the ground. And they were wrong on both politics and policy.

.

Revisionist Historian Strategery

by digby

If you have a few minutes, it’s quite pleasurable to see Keith Olbermann and Jeremy Scahill make mincemeat out of those who are demanding that Junior Bush be given plaudits for ending the war in Iraq:

We’ll be litigating this one for the rest of our lives, I’m afraid. And a hundred years from now, If Iraq is a stable modern country there will be wingnuts of the day crediting the neocon crazies with “giving birth” to the country by invading it for no good reason.

That’s what Junior comforts himself with late at night. Cheney doesn’t give a damn.

h/t to Patty

.

Crazy? Like Fox.

by tristero

Matt is still making the same basic mistake he made years ago. He still believes that those who have demonstrated repeated contempt for liberal values adhere to liberal norms of argumentation and persuasion.

I don’t see any evidence that the particular apocalyptic “my enemies are totalitarian madmen” strain of Birch/Beck/Goldberg conservatism has helped anyone win any elections.

Hoo boy.

Let’s ignore all the obvious contradictory examples, like Bachmann and Coburn and Tancredo and DeLay and so on and so on and – solely for the sake of argument – go so far as to entirely concede Matt’s point: no one gets elected by being a rightwing loon. That doesn’t mean that lunacy has no palpable effect on the public discourse, or on policies that national-level politicians deem to be politically acceptable. In fact, the effect of extremist rhetoric within mainstream discourse is very well known and lunatic ideas are clearly being employed by the right in precisely this fashion: To shift the palette of acceptable ideas further and further to the right. Sure, it’s silly to believe Obama wasn’t born in this country, but having that idea out there enables “moderates” to declare, with something resembling a straight face, that they take Obama at his word when he says he’s a Christian. By any rational standard, that’s a wacky thing to say, but compared to out and out Birtherism – which, remember, was deliberately mainstreamed not by a raging lunatic but by the “well-respected” and “intelligent” Lou Dobbs – it’s a somewhat reasonable position to hold in re: the “Obama legitimacy controversy.”

Matt goes on:

But there’s no real upside in lying to the choir. Political movements need to adapt to the actual situation, and that means having an accurate understanding of your foes. You need to see them as they actually are so that you know the right way to respond.

Matt makes some seriously faulty assumptions here. The most egregious is that he mistakes playing a lunatic in public with actually being a lunatic. He assumes that Beck really believes what he says, the way a good liberal might, rather than accept the far more likely possibility that Beck simply doesn’t care what he says, as long as it helps his career. No doubt, Beck is a deeply disturbed man, but the fact that he said Obama is a racist doesn’t necessarily mean he’s crazy enough actually to believe it to be true.

What Beck does understand, and understands with complete accuracy, is that calling Obama a racist will infuriate liberals and help sow doubt about Obama among his listeners. That is precisely what a sane opportunist in Beck’s position would want to do. (FWIW, it’s just the same trick all over again now that Beck has decided that Obama is “practicing” liberation theology: whether it’s true or not isn’t the point. It makes us angry, it feeds his flock and it sets up a dichotomy that establishes fundamentalism as the norm and any other religious interpretation a perversion.)

Matt here also lumps people like Goldberg in with Republicans who don’t act as crazy (usually) and yet benefit enormously because they come off as “men of reason, Republicans you can talk to” – eg, Grassley – in comparison. Rest assured that people like Grassley have a deeply accurate picture of who their Democratic opponents are. And Grassley well understands the usefulness of portraying them, as Grassley did during healthcare, in a manner as reality-challenged as Goldberg did to liberals.

Despite what Matt says, the rightwing has quite an accurate picture of what liberals and Democrats are likely to believe, and how they are likely to behave. They have played us like a virtuosic, if thoroughly demented, violinist. One of the most useful techniques in the rightwing repertoire is The Crazy Lie. And we still haven’t found any effective riposte to it – or at least, any effective rhetorical counter-strategy that mainstream politicians would be willing to use. Matt’s failure to understand how incredibly effective this tactic has been for illiberals, and how debillitating it has been for liberals, is simply astonishing.

This ain’t no party. This ain’t no disco. This ain’t no serious effort to persuade based on the truth. This is, as far as the right is concerned, about getting power, holding on to power, and extending power.

And this ain’t no foolin’ around.

UPDATE: As for Matt’s larger point…well, let’s just say that in a healthy democracy, criticism of the sort Matt extols would be such an obvious given, no one would bother to comment about it. But we don’t live in a healthy democracy. In the present United States, I don’t see liberals’ willingness criticize themselves in public as necessarily advantageous or necessarily destructive. Clearly, the far right has garnered enormous political power and I doubt that marching in goosestep has hampered them that much. Meanwhile, liberals have their self-respect, Rachel Maddow, and a few decent congresscritters.

I’m hardly saying that our willingness to self-criticize is the cause of our lack of power and influence, nor do I believe it. I simply think it is not necessarily an asset, and not necessarily a problem. In the case of Kos’s book, we’ll all have to wait to read it before we can decide whether the bad review it got from the American Prospect was deserved. Or, as in Kevin’s case, not read it.

Update: From digby — My thoughts on the bad review here. I received the book this morning and will write more about it after I get a chance to read it.

.

The Progressive Future

by digby

There’s a lot of despair in these parts lately and it’s perfectly understandable. The country is going to hell in a hand basket and the forces of corporatism and know-nothingism are dominating the political culture while the Democrats seem to be in a state of suspended animation. It’s very tempting to just tune it all out and watch TV. But we can’t. Not as long as there are progressive politicians like David Segal out there on the campaign trail fighting to change things every day. If don’t support real progressive leaders with a track record of success, we are basically giving up.

David is running in a primary for the Democratic nomination for Patrick Kennedy’s seat against two doctrinaire establishment hacks and an anti-choice zealot and he needs our help in the home stretch. (The election is September 14th.) His most formidable rival, the mayor of Providence is using his money advantage to run a deceptive ad and David needs our help to run this rebuttal to remind people who the real progressive in the race is:

I know it’s hard to get excited about politics right now. But it would be foolish for us to fail to support a young, smart progressive with a proven track record in his run for congress. Unless we are prepared to simply surrender to the forces gathering around us we need to nurture future progressive leaders who understand this political environment and have ideas about how to prevail in it. David is one of those future leaders.

Here’s what Howie wrote about him when Blue America endorsed him:

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:

“[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.”

That’s the kind of inside political organizing we desperately need in the US Congress. If you can help with a few dollars today the campaign can keep its ads on the air and compete. If he wins the primary, there’s almost no doubt that he will win the seat. It could be one of the few progressive victories in this midterm election.

.

Senior Blowback

by digby

It looks like the gray panthers/pink panthers are a little bit annoyed about Paul Ryan’s “Roadmap:”

That’s from one of his town hall meetings today.

It sure is too bad the Democrats couldn’t have been bothered to compete for the seat.

.

Thanks Be To Fox

by digby

Here’s an interesting video compilation of various comments at the Glenn Beck rally. It’s an understatement to say that there’s a lot of bad information out there.

h/t to tbogg

The Moral Case For Catfood

by digby

Ed Kilgore notes that the Tea Party/GOP Senate nominee Joe Miller from Alaska is just the latest to join a parade of Republican candidates who are taking a a very far right position on everything, but perhaps most surprisingly on Social Security and Medicare:

Miller is just the latest of a number of Republican Senate candidates this year who have called for phasing out Social Security and Medicare. DeMint himself has long described these programs, along with public education, as having seduced middle-class Americans into socialist ways of thinking.

As Republican pols from Barry Goldwater to George W. Bush can tell you, going after Social Security and Medicare is really bad politics. And they’ve yet to come up with a gimmick, whether it’s “partial privatization” or grandfathering existing beneficiaries, to make major changes in these programs popular (I seriously doubt the very latest gimmick, “voucherizing” Medicare, will do any better once people understand the idea). Indeed, Republicans notably engaged in their own form of “Medagoguery” by attacking health care reform as a threat to Medicare benefits.

Yet the sudden Tea Party-driven return to fiscal hawkery among Republicans, particularly if it’s not accompanied by any willingness to consider tax increases or significant defense spending cuts, will drive the GOP again and again to “entitlement reform.” In Senate candidates like Rand Paul and Sharron Angle and now Joe Miller, we are seeing the return of a paleoconservative perspective in the GOP that embraces the destruction of the New Deal/Great Society era’s most important accomplishments not just as a matter of fiscal necessity but as a moral imperative.

Kilgore suggests that Democrats take their views seriously and make sure that Americans are correctly informed of them because historically this has been a losing game for the right.I think this is largely correct, but I think we have to watch Democrats just as closely. They seem oddly willing to join this crusade under the illusion that they will be saving the programs by chipping away at them.

The logic of this escapes me, particularly in view of the fact that the right is pushing a moral case, which might end up getting conflating with liberal values of social justice and common good and cause an unintended fraying of the consensus on the programs. Kilgore notes:

In endorsing Miller on behalf of his Senate Conservatives Fund, Jim DeMint emphasized this dimension of Murkowski’s defeat:

Joe Miller’s victory should be a wake-up call to politicians who go to Washington to bring home the bacon. Voters are saying ‘We’re not willing to bankrupt the country to benefit ourselves.’

This is language of self-sacrifice for the greater good, which I’m not sure has been used by the far right in the context of destroying the social safety net. (Fiscal scolds pitch generational warfare, but it’s not quite the same thing. This has a broader reach.) And the Religious Right hasn’t gone this way before, instead worrying themselves about the culture wars. I’ve heard from an expert on the Religious Right that this is, in fact, an appealing approach to the evangelical side of the movement and very successfully marries the libertarian and Religious Right wings of the tea party. (And the Village will love it — they’ve been calling for poor people to sacrifice for years. They can write breathless columns about how everyone has to pull together while they travel to and from green rooms in the back of a limousine.)

Beck is probably a short lived leader of this movement, for the reasons described by Sarah Posner, but he did realize that it was important to present himself as a high priest uniquely able to decipher the deeper meaning of the sacred texts of both the Bible and the Constitution and turn them into one worldview. This moral case for destroying the safety net may be the key.

The funny thing is that I remember having an argument with a fairly prominent Democrat a decade ago in which he insisted to me that because Clinton had proved that Democrats were better economic stewards by vanquishing the deficit that we had fought our last battle over the New Deal programs. Seems like only yesterday.

Update: Posner reminded me of this scary article about the crossroads of Christian Reconstructionism and the tea party, which speaks to this more directly. These guys have been around for a long time but they are making a play for the mainstream. If all these tea party candidates make it (and don’t kid yourself, they might) they will have a claim to serious institutional politics.

.

Reasonable People

by digby

They just can’t stop lying.

[A] section of the confirmation transcript in which Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) asked Holdren whether he thinks “determining optimal population is a proper role of government.”

“No, Senator, I do not,” was Holdren’s reply, according to Weiss and a transcript of the proceedings.

In other remarks at the confirmation hearing, not cited by Weiss, Holdren told Sen. Vitter he no longer thinks it is “productive” to focus on the “optimum population” for the United States. “I don’t think any of us know what the right answer is.”

According to Weiss, Holdren “made clear that he did not believe in coercive means of population control” and is not an advocate for measures expressed in the book “and they are certainly not endorsed by this administration in any way.”

Weiss also provided CNA with a statement from the book’s other two authors, Paul and Anne Ehrlich.

The Ehrlichs said they had been “shocked” at what they called the “serious misrepresentation” of their and Holdren’s views.

“We were not then, never have been, and are not now ‘advocates’ of the Draconian measures for population limitation described — but not recommended — in the book’s 60-plus small-type pages cataloging the full spectrum of population policies that, at the time, had either been tried in some country or analyzed by some commentator.”

sigh.

.

This Could Be You

by digby

Stop resisting:

On June 29, 2009 McFarland and his wife Pearl were returning home from a charity fundraiser just before midnight. McFarland injured himself as he stumbled and fell down the long steps to his front door.

“Mainly it was to my knee and the front of my leg, my shin,” McFarland said.

His wife called paramedics, who helped him into the house and treated him. As the paramedics were leaving, two sheriff’s deputies arrived.

“All of a sudden, they just showed up, they came in here like there was a fire going on, like a gunfight was going on,” McFarland said.

What happened in the following minutes was captured on a camera mounted on the deputy’s Taser.

The deputy tells McFarland he is going to take him to the hospital because he may be suicidal.

“We want to take you to the hospital for an evaluation, you said if you had a gun, you’d shoot yourself in the head,” the deputy can be heard saying.

McFarland says it was just hyperbole. He was tired and in pain.

The deputy orders him numerous times to get up or else.

“Stand up, put your hands behind your back or you’re going to be Tased,” the deputy says.

McFarland keeps refusing.

The exchange goes on for about five minutes; his wife keeps pleading with the deputies not to Tase him, saying he has a heart condition.

Then, McFarland tells the deputies in no uncertain terms to leave.

As he gets up to go to bed, McFarland is Tased. Not once, but three times.

[…]

McFarland says he never had any suicidal thoughts. In fact, he considers himself lucky to be alive.

“I’m a survivor of pancreatic cancer; one of 4 percent in this country,” McFarland said.

Scott says his client was arrested, jailed and charged with resisting arrest. A judge later dismissed the charge.

.

No search warrant, no probable cause, inside the man’s home with his wife present. Are you feeling nice and free now?

Seriously, that’s one of the worst I’ve seen and I’ve seen hundreds of these by now. The police entered his home without a warrant or permission and told him they were forcibly taking him to a hospital (presumably because the paramedics had reported the comment) then shot him repeatedly full of electricity when he failed to comply, even after his wife told them he had a heart condition. He broke no law, appeared fully in control, was sitting on his couch talking to the officers. That’s something out of an East German nightmare circa 1954.

But I guess you can see why the cops all over the country are saying their privacy rights are being violated by videos of their activities. It really hurts the ball team when stuff like this comes out.

Judging from the comments most people are pretty horrified. But there are always a few authoritarian robots in every crowd:

Peter McFarland should be thanking the sheriffs not suing them. They thought he was a danger to himself and they were going to get him help despite himself. The fact that they held off from using any type of force for as long as they did amazed me. McFarland had ended the dialog with officers the second he became belligerent They showed restraint by patiently waiting and giving him repeated chances to comply. Officers need to be encouraged to ignore the excuses such as “it was just hyperbole”.

Just watch the video. You’ll especially enjoy the part where they taser him repeatedly while he’s screaming and writhing in pain on the ground, as they tell him to “stop resisting.”

.