Who’s Voting?
by digby
Steve Benen asks if you know who’s voting … and what that means.
He’s right. They’re coming out in droves to vote for crazed fundamentalist, nihilistic lunatics to run this country. Anyone who says it can’t get any worse is in denial. It can.
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The Cost Of Running The World
by digby
Rick Santorum has come up with a great new rationale for not having universal health care that I think could work great for the Tea Party:
Q: Will this spending have an effect on our military?
No European socialist country has any military to speak of, because they can’t afford it. We spend $650 billion a year on the military. You’re going to hear in the next year or so that we must dramatically cut the military because we can’t pay for it: “We can’t afford to be the policeman of the world. America’s role has to change.” The Chinese and the Russians are sitting there licking their chops. This is exactly what the left would like to see, since they see America as an oppressive imperialist country.
Q: The long-term consequences of the healthcare law . . .
It will destroy the country.
I wonder what Americans would feel about all that if they actually realized that the United States has consciously decided to dominate the world militarily, thus enabling our allies to spend more on their own people? I don’t think that’s ever been put to a referendum.
The hardcore Republicans would undoubtedly find such questions outrageous as any discussion of the military in terms other than total support in every possible way is received as a suggestion that America isn’t the greatest country the world has ever known or will ever know. But the rest of the country might find the choice between taking care of Americans vs American Empire somewhat intriguing. Unfortunately, we have almost nobody in politics who will ask such a question.
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Waiting For The Man In The Middle
by digby
Oh please just shoot me now. This is from Tuesday night’s Spitzer Parker show. The round table was asked who they would like to see run for president in 2012. Here’s noted “centrist” Matt Miller:
MILLER: I would go for Mike Bloomberg and a billionaire to be named later because I think we need a kind of third force in this country. And I think once we get past November, the polarization and the sense of finger pointing and unproductiveness and sort of partisan pickiness is going to —
(CROSSTALK) SPITZER: But the motion is the plutocrats (ph) have not been represented — the threshold in that 100 million is clearly the billion dollar threshold.
MILLER: It would be nice if that wasn’t the case but in the system we have today, because of the lock the two parties have on ballot access and being able to actually get traction in the system, it would take somebody with a lot of money to try and get —
(CROSSTALK)
SAM SEDER, COMEDIAN: But what is a theory that somehow a third party president is going to be able to do more than any other president? I mean, what makes you think that the right is going to accept Bloomberg any more than they would accept Barack Obama?
MILLER: And I don’t know if they’re going to accept them yet. But right now, there’s such a vacuum in the debate because I think most of the country is not in the sort of 20 percent on each sides that both parties are locked into. And there’s such a wide open terrain for somebody who’s a common sense person who’s going to synthesize the best of liberal and conservative ideas. That finds no expression in public —
SPITZER: I think that’s the point as a matter of political analysis is right. There is a desperate need for somebody in the middle who can disregard either fringe that traditional politics would suggest. Sometimes —
SEDER: That’s not Barack Obama?
SPITZER: Look, I think that’s the debate. I think many of us think Barack Obama was trying to do that. But why would a third party candidate be able to get anything through Congress at all? That’s the real question.
MILLER: I think the first question is what would the campaign and the debate sound like? Because I think that would change the country. Perot in ’92 fundamentally changed the direction of the country because he showed there was a 20 percent constituency. And Bloomberg, look, I’m not counting for Bloomberg, but the idea of a candidate like that —
SPITZER: And Bloomberg who is a very popular mayor here in New York City, I think the problem he has is on many of the issues he is to much of the country way left, and frankly to much of the country his views about Wall Street are far right. So I’m not sure if he actually brings that constituency the way you’re articulating it.
Spitzer sort of tried to point out how utterly obscene it is to tout a billionaire for this wonderful Man in the Middle who’s going to come and save us, and Sam Sedar rightly noted that the idea of someone who is without party getting anything through congress is a joke. But by what measure does anyone believe that the country is 20% too hot, 20% too cold and 60% just right? Why are so many people convinced of that?
I guess it’s that it is just too painful for many people to grasp that the country really is full of people who vehemently disagree with one another on a host of political issues. That just can’t be true — deep down the majority of this country is in agreement and we all really love one another and this whole thing is just an awful game being perpetrated by terrible folks who want to make everyone else miserable for their own selfish reasons. If we could only find a politician who could represent that great silent majority of pragmatic, friendly, apolitical people who just want to buckle down and get the job done, we could solve these problems in a flash and go back to shopping and TV watching.
It’s childish nonsense. And it’s time people got over the notion that it is in any way realistic. There is no consensus. If there ever was one (and that’s highly debatable) it was lost decades ago. We are engaged in an ongoing philosophical battle that waxes and wanes in intensity but never completely goes away. And it’s one in which nobody can declare victory in real time — only history shows who won.
This is just the way it is. You can dream of a savior who will bring us a glorious day when everyone sees the light and we can all sing kumbaaya, but that is very unlikely to happen short of a horrible catastrophe, so it’s probably better not to wish too hard for it. This is American politics. We fight. We have serious, fundamental differences about the way we think this country should be governed and we always have.
There is no great, moderate middle of America who think the same way and reject the so-called fringe. That’s a pipe dream for people who hate conflict or see themselves as superior to all the down and dirty warriors in the trenches. Basically, there are just fighters and civilians. The only ones who are truly above the fray are the owners — they don’t care who wins as long as they get their theirs.
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Political Staple
by digby
So I guess it’s a big problem if a fully clothed Democratic female candidate is shown in some mildly naughty pictures with her husband at a private party some years back.
But this is fine:
Just getting the rules straight. Big time GOP studs posing completely nude in a national magazine is perfectly acceptable. Female Democrats in naughty snapshots with husband fully clothed at college party is a scandal. Check.
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Tom Tomorrow For Every Tomorrow
by digby
I was sad to see that the passing of the great political cartoonist Paul Conrad went largely unremarked the other day. I wrote about it but it didn’t get much pick-up and he was an old guy so maybe most people just didn’t remember him.
But I do think it’s worthwhile to support our current political cartoonists as much as possible. It’s an important form, one that has been around forever, and it has the capacity to disseminate some very sophisticated political insights in a way that ordinary people can instantly understand. They are certainly intrinsic to American political discourse.
Unfortunately, with the stresses that are battering the newspaper and publishing business, these important voices are feeling the pinch in a big way, including every DFHs favorite cartoonist Tom Tomorrow:
Just learned that my new publisher, Soft Skull, is scaling back and shutting down their New York office. The new compilation is being printed as we speak, so it will still exist in the world — not sure what this means beyond that, except that the road ahead may be bumpy. It’s been a great experience working with their production team, and my editor Denise Oswald, and I really hope everybody affected by this lands on their feet. Also: I really don’t want this book to get lost in the shuffle. If you can afford the ten bucks, please consider pre-ordering it
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You know it will be good:
Your Daily Grayson
by digby
Yves Smith has written a comprehensive post on the current state of the foreclosure scandal:
Wow, someone in DC has connected the dots: that the banks’ failure to adhere to contractual and legal requirements in the residential mortgage backed securities market are so extensive and widespread as to constitute systemic risk. Alan Grayson, Congressman from Ground Zero of the foreclosure mess, is calling on the Financial Stability Oversight Council to investigate the escalating foreclosure fraud crisis.
Although the data points we have seen so far could be considered anecdotal, we have evidence that strongly suggests that major RMBS originators, the investment bank packagers, and the bank trustees failed to convey the notes (the borrower IOU, which is critical to having the legal standing to foreclose in 45 states) to the RMBS trusts starting in 2005, perhaps even earlier. And comments from industry insiders suggest this problem is pervasive.
That puts a cloud over the entire US RMBS market, the biggest asset class in the world. This paper was sold as secured; the ability to offset the cost of borrower defaults by seizing and selling his house is critical to the value of the instruments. And if no assets were conveyed to a particular trust by closing, an even uglier possibility exists: under New York law, which was elected by RMBS as governing law for the trust, it would be considered to be “unfunded”, which means it does not exist. read on
I have a feeling they will find some way to finesse this — the worst case alternative is too bizarre to contemplate. But who knows? This just gets curiouser and curiouser.
As noted, Grayson has been leading the charge on this one from deep in the heart of the crisis. Below is the text of the Grayson letter, which is addressed to Timothy Geithner, Shiela Bair, Ben Bernanke, Mary Schapiro, John Walsh (Acting Comptroller of the Currency), Gary Gensler, Ed DeMarco (FHA) and Debbie Matz (National Credit Union Administration):
October 7, 2010 Dear Secretary Geithner and members of the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC), The FSOC is tasked with ensuring the financial stability of the United States, which includes identifying and addressing possible systemic risks. There is a well-documented wave of foreclosure fraud sweeping the country that presents such a risk. Bank of America and JP Morgan Chase have both suspended foreclosures in 23 states where that fraud could be uncovered and stopped by the courts. Connecticut has suspended foreclosures. I write to encourage the FSOC to appoint an emergency task force on foreclosure fraud as a potential systemic risk. I am also writing to ask the members of the FSOC to use their regulatory authority to impose a foreclosure moratorium on all mortgages originated and securitized between 2005-2008, until this task force is able to understand and mitigate the systemic risk posed by the foreclosure fraud crisis. So far, banks are claiming that the many forged documents uncovered by courts and attorneys represent a simple ‘technical problem’ with foreclosure processes. This is not true. What is happening is fraud to cover up fraud. The mortgage lending boom saw the proliferation of predatory lending and mortgage fraud, what the FBI called at the time ‘an epidemic of mortgage fraud.’ Much of this was lender-induced. When lenders – many of whom are now out of business – originally lent money to borrowers, they often did so knowing that the terms of the loans could not possibly be honored. They sought fees, not repayment. These lenders put people in predatory loans, they induced massive amounts of fraud, and Wall Street banks misrepresented these loans to investors when they moved through the securitization chain. They were stealing money from investors, and from homeowners. Obviously these originators and servicers didn’t keep good records of who owed what to whom because the point was never about getting paid back, it was about moving as much loan volume as possible as quickly and as cheaply as possible. The banks didn’t keep good records, and there is good reason to believe in many if not virtually all cases during this period, failed to transfer the notes, which is the borrower IOUs in accordance with the requirements of their own pooling and servicing agreements. As a result, the notes may be put out of eligibility for the trust under New York law, which governs these securitizations. Potential cures for the note may, according to certain legal experts, be contrary to IRS rules governing REMICs. As a result, loan servicers and trusts simply lack standing to foreclose. The remedy has been foreclosure fraud, including the widespread fabrication of documents. There are now trillions of dollars of securitizations of these loans in the hands of investors. The trusts holding these loans are in a legal gray area, as the mortgage titles were never officially transferred to the trusts. The result of this is foreclosure fraud on a massive scale, including foreclosures on people without mortgages or who are on time with their payments. The liability here for the major banks is potentially enormous, and can lead to a systemic risk. Fortunately, the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation includes a resolution process for these banks. More importantly, these foreclosures are devastating neighborhoods, families, and cities all over the country. Each foreclosure costs tens of thousands of dollars to a municipality, lowers property values, and makes bank failures more likely. I appreciate your willingness to assess possible systemic risks to the country, and would again encourage you to suspend foreclosures until this problem is understood and its ramifications dealt with.
If you’d like to get Grayson’s back, you can do so here. Blue America is less than 1800.00 away from our 2010 goal for Grayson.
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Illegal Strategy
by digby
I wrote back in 2006 that I thought the Republicans would probably blame their losses on illegal immigrants illegally voting. It didn’t happen, but I figured that they’d eventually put it together since it’s such a perfect theme to piggyback on the work the Democrats already did in bringing attention to the holes in the voting system and perverting it to their own cause. And here we are.
Brietbart’s outfit (naturally) is on the case saying that a conspiracy between the “Soros Funded” SOS project (to elect decent Secretaries of State who enable rather than prohibit voting), the unions and millions of illegal immigrants to steal elections may tip races that otherwise would have gone to Republicans.
You can read the whole thing over there, but here’s the outline if you don’t want to soil your browser:
Here are the disconnected dots that are detailed below:
* First Dot: The SOS Project
* Second Dot: The SEIU’s Shenanigans
* Third Dot: 11 Million Illegal Immigrants
* Fourth Dot: The Fake ID Industry & Meg Whitman
* Fifth Dot: Voter Registration
* Sixth Dot: Union GOTV Strategies
* Seventh Dot: Early Voting
* Connecting the Dots
They illustrate the story with this picture, no caption, no explanation, as if it self-evidently proves their point:
You get the idea. This story is as old as the hills in American politics, of course. But the “illegal” voting theme has a particularly interesting history considering that it was heavily practiced by some of the most illustrious early members of the modern conservative movement. Here’s Rick Perlstein on the vote suppression effort in 1964, called “Operation Eagle Eye” in which Chief justice John Roberts’ predecessor, William Rehnquist, participated as a young man:
The “vote fraud” fantasies are tinged by deeply right-wing racial and anti-urban panics. I’ve talked to many conservative who seem to consider the idea of mass non-white participation in the duties of citizenship is inherently suspicious. It’s an idea all decent Americans should consider abhorrent. It is also, however, a very old conservative obsession–one that goes back to the beginnings of the right-wing takeover of the Republican Party itself.
Let me show you. Read this report from 1964, running down all the ways how Barry Goldwater’s Republican Party was working overtime to keep minorities from voting. The document can be found in the LBJ Library, where I researched my book Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus
John M Baley, Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, charged today that “under the guise of setting up an apparatus to protect the sanctity of the ballot, the Republicans are actually creating the machinery for a carefully organized campaign to intimidate voters and to frighten members of minority groups from casing their ballots on November 3rd.
“‘Let’s get this straight,’ Bailey added, ‘the Democratic Party is just as much opposed to vote frauds as is the Republican party. We will settle for giving all legally registered voters an opportunity to make their choice on November 3rd. We have enough faith in our Party to be confident that the outcome will be a vote of confidence in President Johnson and a mandate for the President and his running mate, Hubert Humphrey, to continue the programs of the Johnson-Kennedy Administration.
“‘But we have evidence that the Republican program is not really what it purports to be. It is an organized effort to prevent the foreign born, to prevent Negroes, to prevent members of ethnic minorities from casting their votes by frightening and intimidating them at the polling place.
“‘We intend to see to it that the rights of these people are protected. We will have our people at the polling places–not to frighten or threaten anyone–but to protect the right of any eligible voter to cast a secret ballot without threats or intimidation.’
I wrote about vote suppression until I simply couldn’t write about it anymore. But it’s all in the archives. This piece hits some of the highlights.
*And to those who insist that these stories of voter registration rolls being overrun with dead people and illegally registered names need to get a grip. Our system has always had a lot of extraneous names on the rolls. People move, people die, there are people registered who shouldn’t be. What study after study has shown is that in the last 50 years or so there has never been any systematic voter fraud, meaning people actually voting more than once or voting when they aren’t entitled to vote. The voter rolls themselves don’t affect elections. It’s the votes that count — and when it comes to manipulating the votes, it’s Republicans who have made an industry out of keeping legal voters from being able to cast votes and keeping legal votes from being counted.
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Tough As Nails
by digby
I’m sure you remember this. Before it was cool to hate the Taliban, many of us who had been watching their takeover of Afghanistan with horror for some time were appalled when this happened:
The Buddhas of Bamiyanwere two 6th century monumental statues of standing buddhas carved into the side of a cliff in the Bamyan valley in the Hazarajat region of central Afghanistan, situated 230 km (143 miles) northwest of Kabul at an altitude of 2500 meters (8,202 ft). Built in 507, the larger in 554, the statues represented the classic blended style of Gandhara art.
[…]
They were intentionally dynamited and destroyed in 2001 by the Taliban, on orders from leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, after the Taliban government declared that they were “idols” (which are forbidden under Sharia law). International opinion strongly condemned the destruction of the Buddhas, which was viewed as an example of the intolerance of the Taliban. Japan and Switzerland, among others, have pledged support for the rebuilding of the statues.
Now I realize that it is considered the gravest possible insult to draw comparisons between these evil fundamentalist theocrats and any (by definition exceptional) American, but I can’t help but think of it when I read something like this:
A woman armed with a crowbar entered the Loveland Museum/Gallery on Wednesday afternoon and destroyed a controversial exhibit that some said shows Jesus Christ engaged in a sex act.
(Not that it’s relevant, but the artist claims it does not depict Jesus Christ engaged in a sex act, but it a comment on the Catholic Church’s priest abuse scandal.)
Now I understand that this isn’t exactly the same thing. The clergy didn’t order it (as far as we know) and it wasn’t ancient art of another religion but rather a secular work critiquing religion and politics. But the act of destroying art that depicts unauthorized religious images comes from the same rigid, fundamentalist view.I have little doubt that others like this woman would happily destroy Muslim art they find offensive and that their conservative pastors and priests would sanction it.
What I’ve always found to be particularly ironic is the fact that so many of the right wing Muslim bashers went completely berserk when the Danish cartoonists were targeted and have never said a word about Christians doing the same thing right here in the US. let’s just say that their principles on such matters are somewhat … malleable.
Here’s the woman who was arrested, wearing an interesting t-shirt:
It says “My Savior Is Tougher Than Nails I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen. Revelations 1:18.
When I went to look up the slogal to see what it said I found a whole bunch of Christian products with these sorts of messages about Christ’s toughness and warrior machismo. (Who knew? Here I thought he was all about peace and forgiveness)Here’s another one:
It says:
Driven
Not By Nails By His Love
Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends”
It’s taken from John 15:13.
I don’t mean to second guess the Biblical intentions of these things, I honestly have no idea what the greater theological meaning is to the people who wear them. But to a secular person they seem pretty violent and hardcore. There are a lot of these things that appear to be aping heavy metal, biker style imagery, which may be fine, but it’s not exactly the doves and peace symbols of my childhood in the church.
But then I read something that cleared it up for me. Here’s Bryan Fischer, Daniel Webster and Jim DeMint’s go-to radio guy explaining it all for us. He’s speaking of the Fire department allowing the person’s house to burn down for lack of a $75.00 payment:
In this case, critics of the fire department are confused both about right and wrong and about Christianity. And it is because they have fallen prey to a weakened, feminized version of Christianity that is only about softer virtues such as compassion and not in any part about the muscular Christian virtues of individual responsibility and accountability…
This story illustrates the fundamental difference between a sappy, secularist worldview, which unfortunately too many Christians have adopted, and the mature, robust Judeo-Christian worldview which made America the strongest and most prosperous nation in the world. The secularist wants to excuse and even reward irresponsibility, which eventually makes everybody less safe and less prosperous. A Christian worldview rewards responsibility and stresses individual responsibility and accountability, which in the end makes everybody more safe and more prosperous.
That’s tough as nails all right.
As for whether Fischer is someone who would blow up statues that he finds offensive to his religious beliefs, well you be the judge:
I think if we take an objective look at Islamic ideology, which is militaristic, it is totalitarian, it is fundamentally in conflict with every single major American value, then no community in its right mind would want a mosque built in its community.
You know, every single mosque is potentially, or actually, a training and recruiting center for jihadism. We know that 80 percent of the mosques in America are built with Saudi money and that the Saudi Arabian government is sending education materials to these mosques that teach them to spill the blood of infidel Christians and Jews. Which means that 80 percent of the mosques in America are inculcating and disseminating this totalitarian anti-Semitic ideology. I’ve seen estimates that there may be as many as 3,000 mosques in the United States. That means that perhaps 2,400 of them are preaching this kind of ideology, which is treasonous at its core … So every time we allow a mosque to go up in one of our communities, it’s like planting an improvised explosive device right in the heart of your city and we just have no idea when one of these devices is going to go off but the one thing we can be sure of is that eventually, one or more of them will.
It’s true that he hasn’t advocated flogging or stoning anyone yet; he just believes gays should be barred from working among decent people and that unmarried women should be kept from teaching children if they get pregnant and other things the new leadership of the Republican tea party find to be quite mainstream. But he has called for Muslims to be denied citizenship and “repatriated” back to their home countries where they will be more “comfortable” since this is a Christian nation and is quite adamant that they should be denied the [privilege of serving in the US military since they are all taught to kill Christians and Jews. Who knows what may be necessary when the secular laws fail to protect this Christian country from these treasonous infidels Muslims who still lurk in every Mosque in America plotting against “us.” Stronger measures may be unavoidable.
It’s a very good thing we have people who’s Savior was “tough as nails” and “driven” to serve as an example of how to deal with those who disagree with them. Otherwise we might become just like them.
For the full indictment against Fischer, PFAW has been compiling the evidence, going so far as to ask NPR why they continue to feature this fellow on the its radio shows. (Why Republicans run over each other to appear with him is much less confusing. They agree with him.)
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Chaos
by digby
Ayeyayay, it just doesn’t stop. The foreclosure fraud story is gaining steam with new allegations and more AGs throughout the country freezing the system. Today we find out that the bill awaiting signature on the president’s desk may contain certain provisions that would exacerbate the problem and nobody seems to know how it got in the bill.
But the big picture is even more daunting. This is a crisis that just seems to have no end. Here’s Felix Salmon:
Millions of people have already lost their houses to lenders who didn’t have the proper paperwork, and it’s unlikely they will ever get any redress. For people who haven’t yet been foreclosed upon, however, it could now be a very long time before they lose their house. The big-picture consequences here are by their nature unpredictable, as no one has a clue how this might all play out. But I can think of a few themes:
- Bond investors, who have seen the value of their mortgage-backed debt rise impressively over the past 18 months, could find themselves unable to find any kind of bid at all. The paper will still be cashflowing, but those cashflows will be surrounded by enormous uncertainty, and no one’s going to want to buy them except at extremely deep discounts until the mess is cleared up.
- Mortgage servicers will go from being assets to being liabilities, and banks which own mortgage servicers could find themselves on the hook for substantial losses.
- The time from default to foreclosure will become indefinite, and as a result there will be a significant uptick in strategic defaults, especially in states with judicial foreclosures.
- The “shadow inventory” of houses which aren’t on the market but will eventually be sold once the bank gets around to foreclosing will grow substantially from its already-enormous level.
All of this is going to be very costly and very unpleasant for all concerned; the only winners I see here are the lawyers. Add in possible securities-fraud charges against investment banks which underwrote a lot of these bonds, and the end result is a level of legal chaos I can barely imagine, in both the civil and criminal courts. And I see no easy way out at all.
From the useless HAMP program to the lack of criminal accountability among the people who created this mess, this situation is basically the result of the misplaced idea that “helping” banks instead of helping people was the way to fix the economy. It’s a typical modern American half-assed response that comes of this ridiculous fetish for “markets” and privatization and a corresponding belief that the the government can’t directly do anything. When the problem is the market and the private sector, the fallacy of this myopic view becomes obvious.
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Hickey Ads
by digby
You’ve probably already heard about this:
A Republican ad that shows a couple of regular-looking guys commiserating in a diner about West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin (D) turns out to have been shot with actors, from a script, in Philadelphia.
But not just any actors: “We are going for a ‘Hicky’ Blue Collar look,” read the casting call for the ad, being aired by the National Republican Senatorial Committee. “These characters are from West Virginia so think coal miner/trucker looks.”
It’s funny, when I saw the ad I thought I thought it was strangely “stereotypical” but figured that they must have used some locals who fit the stereotypes who they could trot out if there was any outcry. It didn’t occur to me that they would cast actors and script a commercial like this.
I suppose the reason I was so aware of it was that when Blue America casted its ads for the Blanche Lincoln campaign, we cast actors, but we went out of our way not to do what these people apparently did. I have been so schooled over the years in regional sensitivities that I wouldn’t dream of playing around with accents and “hicky” wardrobe. Not that it stopped people from criticizing our ads for failing to use proper Arkansas accents and authentic local fashion — critics will always find something. But there was no way in hell we were going to go there. And anyway, accents and clothes aren’t particularly reliable indicators of much these days. Plenty of Southerners don’t sound like Haley Barbour and I see plaid shirts and Cat hats all over east LA.
But this isn’t the first time, even this week, that this has come up. Beck’s radio partner did an egregiously stereotyped impression of the Tennessee homeowner who’s house they let burn down the other day that rather shocked me. I thought making fun of southerners in that way was strictly verboten (unless you are Jeff Foxworthy.) But apparently the right wingers didn’t get the memo. Interesting.
Here’s the ad:
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