Month: October 2010

They’re Not Even Pretending To Tell The Truth Anymore

by digby

Greg Sargent has yet another example of a lying campaign ad financed by a shadowy right wing group:

The ad claims health reform means “$500 billion in Medicare cuts.” But Politifact found that “the law does not take $500 billion out of the current Medicare budget.”

The ad claims health reform means “thousands of new IRS agents.” But Factcheck.org pronounced that assertion “wildly misleading.”

As for the claim of “jail time for anyone without coverage,” the original bill passed by the House did provide for possible criminal prosection of those who evade the tax imposed on those who don’t get mandated coverage. But FactCheck.org says the Senate nixed that provision, and the final bill Obama signed said folks will not be subject to criminal prosecution.

I’m beginning to see why all these wealthy donors are afraid something might happen to them if it’s revealed they are financing these ads. At the very least they will be exposed as the lying piles of garbage they are.

Greg’s right — the real scandal of all these ads isn’t the money or the anonymity, although that’s a big story. It’s the sheer volume of outright lies contained within them.

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Rediscovering Newtie In America

by digby

You’ve got to admire the chutzpah if nothing else:

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich will speak at Liberty University during the school’s Wednesday convocation, university officials announced Saturday.

Gingrich will deliver remarks on the theme “Rediscovering God in America” at the school’s Vines Center.

Gingrich also addressed Liberty at the school’s 2007 commencement ceremony, just days after founder Rev. Jerry Falwell’s death.

University officials said Saturday that after the address, Gingrich and Chancellor Jerry Falwell Jr. will hold a private discussion with a group of “key conservative and evangelical leaders.”

“This is a critical moment in our nation’s history,” Falwell said in a statement.

“Our republic is in jeopardy, and the only way to save it is a return to the principles upon which this nation was founded … Our founders further believed that God and an adherence by the people to Judeo-Christian values were essential to the survival of our republic.”

Gingrich understand very well who the real foot soldiers in the conservative movement are. Some of them may wear tri-corner hats and wave around the constitution, but it’s the Bible that governs their views.

I could see him becoming the Tea Party candidate for president if he plays his card right. And that’s something we should all hope for. Gingrich is repulsive to most people and I don’t believe he can possibly be elected president. (And if he can be then this country has gone into some kind of dark age and it doesn’t matter anyway.)

He’s Still Got It

by digby

Those of you who don’t live in California have been spared the year long assault by Meg Whitman’s ads so you can’t know how relieved we are all going to be when we don’t have to see her on TV constantly. (Even if she gets elected we’ll see much less of her over the whole course of the next four years than we have over the last.) We waited and waited for Jerry Brown to engage and basically he simply allowed her to wear out her welcome with the public. It seems to have worked.

But he’s been doing some good ads in the final stretch and he’s ahead in the polls so you have to give the old veteran some credit for knowing what he’s doing. (And he can certainly make the argument that he’s more responsible with money considering how much less he’s spent on his campaign.)

Whitman’s latest ad is all about how she and her husband came to California when it was still the Golden State and how she wants to return it to the way it was. And Brown’s come up with a great response:

You’d think they would have seen that coming.

Brown’s become much more conservative over the years and I feel quite confident that his administration is going to be disappointing in many ways. But he’s better than Whitman by a mile and he knows something about traversing this unworkable system, so maybe he can do something around the margins.

I cast my very first vote for Jerry Brown for governor. (I sure hope this coming one isn’t my last!)

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Embarrassed and Ashamed

by digby

This says everything you need to know about our ruling elite:

When it comes to the anonymous contributions fueling the tens of millions of dollars in advertising this year boosting Republican candidates, you could say that American Crossroads was against them before it was for them.

Early this year, when an elite team of GOP operatives rolled out plans for the group and a linked network of other independent conservative organizations, they enthusiastically embraced the idea of public disclosure of donors, in part because of a professed commitment to transparency.

“I’m a proponent of lots of money in politics and full disclosure in politics,” Mike Duncan, an American Crossroads board member, said in May during a panel discussion focusing partly on Republican plans for outside group spending in the midterm elections in the wake of a January Supreme Court decision allowing more corporate spending with less transparency.

American Crossroads, the non-profit group Duncan helps lead with assistance from Bush-era operatives Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie, had recently registered under a section of the tax code – 527 – that requires regular disclosure of its donors, primarily because of its founders’ commitment to “full accountability” and “transparency,” explained Duncan, a former Republican National Committee chairman. During the panel, Duncan recalled “when we had the board discussion, we talked about the fact that we were going to be ahead of the curve on this.”

But, less than one month after the panel, with American Crossroads entering its fourth month of existence struggling to raise money from donors leery of having their names disclosed, the Crossroads operatives spun off a sister group called Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies (or Crossroads GPS, for short), which they registered under a different section of the tax code – section 501(c)4 – that does not require donor disclosure.

With the Crossroads fundraising team, led by Rove, emphasizing to prospective donors the ability to give to Crossroads GPS anonymously, fundraising took off.

Through Oct. 12, more than 57 percent of the $56 million raised by the two groups had come through anonymous donations to Crossroads GPS, according to an analysis by POLITICO of Crossroads public statements and records on file with the Federal Election Commission and Internal Revenue Service.

The success Crossroads has had in attracting anonymous donors highlights a broader trend on the right in which political activity has increasingly shifted to non-profit corporations that can conceal donors’ identities. Republican finance insiders interviewed for this story say it is easier to get major GOP donors to contribute when there’s no risk of having their identities disclosed and being subjected to either additional appeals for money from other groups, or to criticism from President Barack Obama and other Democrats.

“Whether it’s legitimate or not, there is this near-hysteria, this belief that the Democrats are going to come after us,” if donors disclose their contributions to GOP-allied groups, said one person who was asked to donate the Crossroads groups. “Everybody is truly afraid that the Obama administration is going to target them.”

There are a couple of possibilities here. The first is that they truly are as stupid and paranoid as they are being portrayed. And that’s a reasonable assumption. The Tea Bag revolution is being led by billionaires after all. They could be as idiotic as their followers. Certainly, the Wall Street Masters of the Universe have revealed themselves as cowardly, greedy and inept.

But it’s more likely that they know very well that they are risking the disapprobation of their customers and society at large if they are seen to be buying elections. (The idea that the Obama administration is going to go after them doesn’t pass the laugh test.)Certainly, it could make dinner parties uncomfortable for some of these people if it’s known that they are supporting throwbacks like Sharron Angle. I suspect a good number of them are simply embarrassed about what they are doing and afraid of being held responsible for it.

It’s true, however, that they are very, very touchy about the idea that the rubes don’t appreciate being told to eat cake. When I wrote metaphorically that I was going to “sharpen my pitchfork” you could hear the frightened calls for smelling salts all over the blogosphere. So maybe they are really afraid the people are going to storm the barricades.

Whatever their excuses, it comes down to the same thing we’ve been seeing in all areas of our society the last few years. They wealthy simply don’t believe they should be required to be held liable for anything they do and certainly not by the common folk. So they are banding together to rig the game in secret.

The funny thing is that they’ve always run things. But they had the good sense to keep up the pretense that they believed in democracy and were smart enough to share the wealth enough to keep the bourgeoisie contented. Now they’re hysterically screeching and flailing about, grasping at every last penny like the world is coming to an end tomorrow. So maybe they really are just stupid and paranoid — it wouldn’t be the first ruling class that went down that road.

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Rejecting The Bullshit

by digby

There used to be a truism called “as California goes, so goes the nation:

Reporting from SacrameNTRO –Despite the struggling economy, most California voters oppose suspending the state’s landmark global warming law, which would place strict new environmental regulations on business, a new Los Angeles Times/ USC poll shows.

Proposition 23, which would put the new emissions standards on hold, is trailing 48% to 32% among likely voters, according to the survey.

But as voters look inclined to stay the course with the state’s global warming policies, they appear ready to radically change state budget policy. The poll found that 58% of likely voters support Proposition 25, which would replace the constitutional requirement that the state budget be approved by two-thirds of the Legislature with a simple majority vote requirement. Such a change would allow Democrats to pass a budget without any GOP votes under the current makeup of the Legislature.

The push to suspend the global warming law has been bankrolled in large part by out-of-state oil refining companies that stand to see profits decline as a result of the state’s new regulations. The ballot measure would suspend implementation of the new air pollution rules until unemployment drops to 5.5% or less for a full year. State analysts say that could take many years, as the unemployment rate has stayed that low for a sustained period only three times since 1970.

Please let it be true. If it is, it shows that California, the most progressive state in the union (for the most part) has not succumbed entirely to the teabag ethos.

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Virtually Speaking

by digby

Join me for a Virtually Speaking conversation with the inimitable Watertiger at Blogtalk radio and Second Life at 5pm pst.

Talking elections, tea baggers, Juan Williams and more …

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Foreclosure Fraud Primer

by digby

Here’s a helpful simple primer on the mortgage fraud mess. It doesn’t go into all the details and gives short shrift to some of thecriminbality, but I think it gives a good accounting of the two emerging explanatory narratives.

I think the conclusion is correct:

So far, the Obama administration’s reaction has been unsatisfactory. After several years of claiming that it was doing everything possible to help Americans to avoid foreclosure (but failing to do so), the administration is now resisting a national foreclosure moratorium on the grounds that dealing with the foreclosure backlog is essential to restoring the housing sector to full health. In so doing, the administration has managed to give fresh blood to criticism of the White House as overly beholden to bank interests. But the tone has sharpened in recent days. The SEC and the administration’s Financial Fraud Task Force have both launched investigations in the past week. On Wednesday, HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan declared, “Where any homeowner has been defrauded or denied the basic protections or rights they have under law, we will take actions to make sure the banks make them whole, and their rights will be protected and defended.” But in the same press conference he also asserted that “we have not found any evidence at this point of systemic issues in the underlying legal or other documents that have been reviewed.” That is simply nonsense. The widespread use of robo-signers, the epidemic of lost paperwork, the proliferation of lawsuits, the potential invalidation of mortgage-backed securities — everything points to a systemic problem. The only real question is how big the mess will get. The White House should be far more out in front. Right before an election, the administration couldn’t have asked for a development that better illustrates the necessity for tight government supervision of the financial sector and industrial-strength consumer protection.

The White House is readying to turn to starboard once this election is done (as they were going to do regardless) and this is just another way they can distance themselves from those who are blaming shoddy and fraudulent business practices and failed laissez faire economic policies for the nation’s economic problems. They believe that’s a losing position going up against the business friendly GOP. (Plus there’s the problem of money …)

But more than that, I think many Democrats either truly believe that the only solution to the problem is for people to suffer while the invisible hand sweeps all the garbage out (and its opportunistic plutocratic helpers skim anything they want off the top) or they are simply afraid of what these nihilistic economic terrorists of the financial elite will do if they are forced to pay the piper. It doesn’t bode well for the folks either way.

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Religious Tests

by digby

Yeah, they’re going there:

A Tea Party Nation e-mail (requires login) sent late Saturday night in support of Lynne Torgeson, the Republican candidate in Minnesota’s 5th district, went full negative against Rep. Keith Ellison, the Democratic incumbent. Best to just let you read it, verbatim:

There are a lot of liberals who need to be retired this year, but there are few I can think of more deserving than Keith Ellison. Ellison is one of the most radical members of congress. He has a ZERO rating from the American Conservative Union. He is the only Muslim member of congress. He supports the Counsel for American Islamic Relations, HAMAS and has helped congress send millions of tax to terrorists in Gaza.

I think what’s most amusing (and terrifying) about the new Teabag GOP is the fact that they wave the constitution around constantly and yet never seem to have read it.

This one’s easy:

Article VI, paragraph 3:

The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.

Now I suppose they could quibble by saying that the state isn’t administering a religious test, just an activist group, and they’d be right. Teabaggers can require that all their members be Christian fundamentalist throwbacks if they want to.

But that’s not the excuse they would use. They would say the founders were Christian conservatives who designed the constitution for believers like themselves and that they were just indicating that there should be no sectarian test among them. This is not a matter of history or interpretation to them. It’s a matter of faith.

They believe that Keith Ellison should not be in the US Congress because he is a Muslim and Muslims are the enemy of the United States. That is also an article of faith, which is being mainstreamed by FOX news and, unfortunately, all those who defended Bill O’Reilly and his ilk for saying “they killed us on 9/11.” Once you start with that sort of sweeping condemnation of “them” it’s only a matter of time before this sort of thing happens.

I have to say that as I’ve been watching Condi Rice (and soon George W. Bush) on the circuit hawking books, it would be really nice if they stood up on this. Bush was a rotten president in almost every respect, but he did keep a lid on this sort of chauvinism and religious intolerance and he could show some moral leadership right now.
Not that he’s likely to, of course. His admonitions to not demonize Islam in general were driven more by electoral strategy than anything else. But his legacy could be somewhat burnished if he showed some now.

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What Defines A Terrorist

by digby

Pro-choice activist Ann Rose has written an important heads up on DKos today about Rachel Maddow’s upcoming piece on the murder of Dr George Tiller. She writes:

True to Rachel’s history and character, I expect this to be a telling expose of the “connections” between Scott Roeder, Dr. Tiller’s convicted assassin, and the various anti-abortion groups who terrorized and harassed Dr. Tiller, his family, his staff, and his patients for years.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

I realize that killing doctors who perform abortions and blowing up clinics doesn’t concern those who think the far right fundamentalists who are increasingly dominant in Republican politics is no big deal. But to some of us, the ongoing tolerance for this particular form of “protest” says volumes about their eagerness to see such things as individual crimes rather than a violent assault on women’s rights.

You’ll have to pardon me for being a little bit concerned about further legitimizing and validating people like this. And you’ll also have to pardon me for being just a little bit taken aback when people find it more offensive to compare these terrorists to the Taliban than they seem to find the acts they are perpetrating. As I’ve said before, it’s a matter of scale not degree. No, they’re not executing women for adultery. But they are throwing them in jail for having an illegal abortion. Or even falling down the stairs:

Last month, after an upsetting phone conversation with her estranged husband, Ms. Taylor became light-headed and fell down a flight of stairs in her home. Paramedics rushed to the scene and ultimately declared her healthy. However, since she was pregnant with her third child at the time, Taylor thought it would be best to be seen at the local ER to make sure her fetus was unharmed.

After Taylor was treated by a nurse at the private hospital and deemed fine, she confided to the nurse that she was upset and scared and wasn’t sure she wanted to continue the pregnancy. Her husband recently left her after she told him she was pregnant with their third child:

“I never said I didn’t want my baby, but I admitted that I had been considering adoption or abortion,” she said. “I admit that I said I wasn’t sure I wanted to continue the pregnancy. My husband sends me money, but money doesn’t make a parent. I don’t have anybody else to turn to.”

Although Taylor was in the first part of her second trimester, the nurse noted on her chart that she was in the first week of her third trimester – the time when, under Iowa’s fetal homicide law, a violent act perpetrated against a pregnant woman could be considered criminal. The nurse called over the doctor who then called the police – which is when Christine Taylor found herself arrested and sent to jail for admitting uncertainty about her pregnancy and fear about raising three children on her own.

Luckily we don’t live in a country where religious fanatics use the power of the state to control women. And I’m sure we have nothing to worry about if these people gain total control of one of the two political parties in the nation.

Update: Ms Magazine published a very interesting story about Dr Tiller’s assassin and his violent associates. A lonewolf he wasn’t.

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Put The Blue Dogs Down

by digby

Ari Berman has written an important op-ed in the NY Times today called “Boot the Blue Dogs” that everyone who rads this blog should read. It fairly describes the logic on which many of us in the Netroots are operating — namely, that in a polarized time and an ever more parliamentary style of government, philosophical cohesion matters.

Margaret Johnson, a former party chairwoman in Polk County, N.C., helped elect Representative Shuler but now believes the party would be better off without him. “I’d rather have a real Republican than a fake Democrat,” she said. “A real Republican motivates us to work. A fake Democrat de-motivates us.”

Ms. Johnson is right: Democrats would be in better shape, and would accomplish more, with a smaller and more ideologically cohesive caucus. It’s a sentiment that even Mr. Dean now echoes. “Having a big, open-tent Democratic Party is great, but not at the cost of getting nothing done,” he said. Since the passage of health care reform, few major bills have passed the Senate. Although the Democrats have a 59-vote majority, party leaders can barely find the votes for something as benign as extending unemployment benefits.

A smaller majority, minus the intraparty feuding, could benefit Democrats in two ways: first, it could enable them to devise cleaner pieces of legislation, without blatantly trading pork for votes as they did with the deals that helped sour the public on the health care bill. (As a corollary, the narrative of “Democratic infighting” would also diminish.)

Second, in the Senate, having a majority of 52 rather than 59 or 60 would force Democrats to confront the Republicans’ incessant misuse of the filibuster to require that any piece of legislation garner a minimum of 60 votes to become law. Since President Obama’s election, more than 420 bills have cleared the House but have sat dormant in the Senate. It’s easy to forget that George W. Bush passed his controversial 2003 tax cut legislation with only 50 votes, plus Vice President Dick Cheney’s. Eternal gridlock is not inevitable unless Democrats allow it to be.

Republicans have become obsessed with ideological purity, and as a consequence they will likely squander a few winnable races in places like Delaware. But Democrats aren’t ideological enough. Their conservative contingent has so blurred what it means to be a Democrat that the party itself can barely find its way. Polls show that, despite their best efforts to distance themselves from Speaker Pelosi and President Obama, a number of Blue Dog Democrats are likely to be defeated this November. Their conservative voting records have deflated Democratic activists but have done nothing to win Republican support.

Democrats can either accept that they are in a new political age or they can keep spending their money to elect saboteurs who will destroy any chance of enacting policies that work and then help the Republicans blame the party for their failure.

The Republicans signaled from the beginning what they were going to do. It wasn’t a secret:

January 16, 2009:

RUSH: I got a request here from a major American print publication. “Dear Rush: For the Obama [Immaculate] Inauguration we are asking a handful of very prominent politicians, statesmen, scholars, businessmen, commentators, and economists to write 400 words on their hope for the Obama presidency. We would love to include you. If you could send us 400 words on your hope for the Obama presidency, we need it by Monday night, that would be ideal.” Now, we’re caught in this trap again. The premise is, what is your “hope.” My hope, and please understand me when I say this. I disagree fervently with the people on our side of the aisle who have caved and who say, “Well, I hope he succeeds. We’ve got to give him a chance.” Why? They didn’t give Bush a chance in 2000. Before he was inaugurated the search-and-destroy mission had begun. I’m not talking about search-and-destroy, but I’ve been listening to Barack Obama for a year-and-a-half. I know what his politics are. I know what his plans are, as he has stated them. I don’t want them to succeed.

If I wanted Obama to succeed, I’d be happy the Republicans have laid down. And I would be encouraging Republicans to lay down and support him. Look, what he’s talking about is the absorption of as much of the private sector by the US government as possible, from the banking business, to the mortgage industry, the automobile business, to health care. I do not want the government in charge of all of these things. I don’t want this to work. So I’m thinking of replying to the guy, “Okay, I’ll send you a response, but I don’t need 400 words, I need four: I hope he fails.” (interruption) What are you laughing at? See, here’s the point. Everybody thinks it’s outrageous to say. Look, even my staff, “Oh, you can’t do that.” Why not? Why is it any different, what’s new, what is unfair about my saying I hope liberalism fails? Liberalism is our problem. Liberalism is what’s gotten us dangerously close to the precipice here. Why do I want more of it? I don’t care what the Drive-By story is. I would be honored if the Drive-By Media headlined me all day long: “Limbaugh: I Hope Obama Fails.” Somebody’s gotta say it.

You’ll recall that everyone tut-tutted and clutched their pearls over that statement. You’ll also recall that any Republican who was stupid enough to publicly disagree with that statement was summarily summoned to the woodshed:

Responding to President Barack Obama’s recommendation to Republican congressional leaders last week that they not follow Limbaugh’s lead, Limbaugh said on his show that Obama is “obviously more frightened of me than he is Mitch McConnell. He’s more frightened of me than he is of, say, John Boehner, which doesn’t say much about our party.”

Gingrey came to his leaders’ defense.

“I think that our leadership, Mitch McConnell and John Boehner, are taking the right approach,” Gingrey said.

“I mean, it’s easy if you’re Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh or even sometimes Newt Gingrich to stand back and throw bricks. You don’t have to try to do what’s best for your people and your party.You know you’re just on these talk shows and you’re living well and plus you stir up a bit of controversy and gin the base and that sort of thing. But when it comes to true leadership, not that these people couldn’t be or wouldn’t be good leaders, they’re not in that position of John Boehner or Mitch McConnell,” Gingrey said.

[…]

Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.) apologized Wednesday to “my fellow conservatives” for comments critical of talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh – saying he sees “eye-to-eye” with Limbaugh and that his remarks defending House Republican leadership came across more harshly than intended.

He also took issue with a headline on a Politico story about his comments, saying he never told Limbaugh to “back off,” as the headline read.

“I regret and apologize for the fact that my comments have offended and upset my fellow conservatives—that was not my intent,” Gingrey said in a statement. “I am also sorry to see that my comments in defense of our Republican Leadership read much harsher than they actually were intended, but I recognize it is my responsibility to clarify my own comments.”

Gingrey said he issued the statement because of a high volume of calls and correspondence to his office after the Politico article and wanted to speak directly to “grassroots conservatives. Let me assure you, I am one of you. I believe I was sent to Washington to fight for and defend our traditional values of smaller government, lower taxes, a strong national defense, and the lives of the unborn.”

“As long as I am in the Congress, I will continue to fight for and defend our sacred values. I have actively opposed every bailout, every rebate check, every so called “stimulus.” And on so many of these things, I see eye-to-eye with Rush Limbaugh.”

This election will undoubtedly validate that point of view. (All you have to do is listen to Orrin Hatch do his Jim DeMint impression to see how it will go.) Those of us who take the right seriously instead of pooh-poohing them as a sideshow knew very well that this would be the outcome and understood that it wasn’t a posture. (At the very least, the immigration battle under Bush should have awakened the establishment and it didn’t.)

The Democrats can continue to pretend that having a coalition of liberals and conservatives will somehow show them to be the superior, thoughtful people they believe themselves to be or they can adapt to the existing political environment.

If progressives survive and Blue Dogs lose in this election, we may have a chance to see if they can do it.

Update: I just watched the Florida Senate debate and listening to Charlie Christ and it’s clear if he wins he will be a complete pushover for the right wing. I realize that he’s got to make this endless pitch for lukewarm water because he’s running as an independent and he may be very marginally better than Rubio on certain issues. But in the end, he’s going to be their pawn. The Republicans know exactly how to massage the egos (and threaten the vanity) of these “independent” Fauntleroys.

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