Month: February 2011

If the war is over, they don’t want it

by digby

I’m awfully glad that the culture war is over, aren’t you? Unfortunately, somebody seems to have forgotten to tell the social conservatives.

We had the first clue when polls showed that the Tea party was far more socially conservative than the rest of the country. And then, as soon as the election was over, the Tea Party sent a list of demands. The first was the defunding of Obamacare (they acknowledged that repeal is impossible under Obama.) The second was “spending reductions” and a demand that “if the debt ceiling must be lifted, this must be the last time.”

Those two are fairly vague requests. The third one is explicit:

Third, we must dismantle the liberal-political complex. Liberal groups such as Acorn and Planned Parenthood receive millions of dollars in federal monies every year. This must stop. Most of the members of this movement would probably describe themselves as pro-life. Regardless, abortion is a multibillion-dollar business. Why is the government paying Planned Parenthood anything, much less almost $1 billion from 2002-2009?

(They just throw ACORN in there to signal some lizard brain reaction, I guess.)The tea partiers made themselves very clear and the Republicans are listening. This attack on the “liberal-industrial complex” is happening as we speak:

On the eve of the 38th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the anti-choice crowd in the House of Representatives has introduced H.R. 3, No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act, a monstrosity that would set back women’s reproductive rights further than any single act since the Supreme Court made its famous ruling. Already beset by a series of legislatively imposed retreats over the past few decades, women’s right to obtain an abortion would be further curtailed by this latest proposal, introduced by the most anti-choice member of Congress, Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), and co-sponsored by 161 House members. Speaker John Boehner is making it a priority. One progressive activist lamented that the GOP leadership would not only “Blitzkrieg” the proposal through the House, but also use it to divide the Democratic coalition. The composition of the House membership means the bill will most certainly pass. And unlike the repeal of the health insurance reform package passed by the House this week, H.R.3 could very well pass the Senate, too, short of a filibuster. That means the only thing between it and enactment is President Obama’s veto pen.

And then there’s the new Sodomized Virgin Exception.

But I think this proves that if there’s one tie that binds the right, it’s abortion. Even the opportunistic hedonist Andrew Breitbart’s minions are devoting their dubious talents to the cause:

Today, anti-abortion rights propagandist Lila Rose released her latest in a series of heavily edited videos seeking to demonstrate that Planned Parenthood engages in criminal activities. Rose’s organization, Live Action, claims their video exposes what they call “Planned Parenthood’s cover-up of child sex trafficking.” Except that isn’t what the video shows at all. Rather, the Live Action video shows edited comments made by a single Planned Parenthood employee. Live Action has so far refused to publicly release the full video of the incident, instead posting what the organization itself admits is an “abridged 11-minute video.” (Live Action claims they are “sending full footage” to law enforcement officials.) Is Live Action accurately portraying the Planned Parenthood employee’s statements and actions? It’s impossible to say for sure without the full video, but there is good reason for media to be skeptical. Lila Rose, after all, began infiltrating abortion clinics in collaboration with James O’Keefe — a convicted criminal who repeatedly lied about his heavily edited ACORN videos. Rose herself has a history of smearing the subjects of her videos. But even if Live Action’s video doesn’t take the employee out of context, the incident obviously doesn’t show Planned Parenthood covering up child sex trafficking. That’s because Planned Parenthood has already reported the “potential sex trafficking” to law enforcement officials.

I wrote about that here. In that same post, I noted this:

Here at RedState, we too have drawn a line. We will not endorse any candidate who will not reject the judicial usurpation of Roe v. Wade and affirm that the unborn are no less entitled to a right to live simply because of their size or their physical location. Those who wish to write on the front page of RedState must make the same pledge. The reason for this is simple: once before, our nation was forced to repudiate the Supreme Court with mass bloodshed. We remain steadfast in our belief that this will not be necessary again, but only if those committed to justice do not waiver or compromise, and send a clear and unmistakable signal to their elected officials of what must be necessary to earn our support.

This has all happened just since the election.

Indeed, I think you can expect more of this:

Here’s self proclaimed Tea Party candidate Missy Smith’s ad from last cycle:

She has a nice little primer on how to exploit the law in order to show these odious ads on TV (which even You Tube wouldn’t allow.)

How to Run for Office – And Run TV Ads Showing Murdered Babies

You must run for Federal Office to be able to run unedited, uncensored ads showing
babies murdered by abortion at the Lowest Unit Rate. PLEASE NOTE: You cannot enjoy these rules and laws if you run for a state or county or city office in your area. These rules ONLY apply to FEDERAL candidates. I.e., U.S. Senate, U.S. House, or U.S. President.

If this is what a cease fire looks like I’d hate to think what comes next.

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He Ain’t Heavy

by digby

This just in on my wingnut chainmail:

Have you ever wondered why President Obama has been relatively quiet and uninvolved in the uprising in Egypt? We dug up a two-year-old article that surprisingly shows a connection between Obama and, you guessed it, the Muslim Brotherhood! Obama was against Hamas during his presidential campaign and pro-Israel to get the Jewish vote. However, since he became president of the United States (POTUS), he has dissed Israel and is now spending billions of American taxpayers’ money to move and set up thousands of Hamas members within the United States homeland. Whose side is Obama on anyway?

Read this linked article. It will make the hair on the back of your neck stand up. This article is supported with a list of credits at the bottom of the article that gives it legitimacy. This topic must be opened up for some serious debate. The man that is said to still rule in Washington, somehow, we keep seeing him and Henry Kissinger in the news quite frequently. Google these two words together “Banna Nazi.”

Do google it. I’m guessing the wingnuts will find this incontrovertible proof that Obama is Hitler’s proper heir.

Ok, so this is just kooky conspiracy mongering on the fringe. But get a load of this:

Sadly, Beck isn’t confining his ravings to his own show. They’ve invited him on all the FOX shows to share his important insights:

On O’Reilly, Beck Says Egyptian Unrest “Is Being Orchestrated By The Marxist Communists” And The Muslim Brotherhood

On Fox and Friends, Beck Links Obama To Mubarak, Suggests He’s Exhibiting “Sign[s] Of A Dictator”

So the Tea party “professor” is getting the word out to the wingnuts. It’s gibberish, but I suppose it sounds good to the folks — after all, he’s making the case they love to hear: Muslims/Negroes/liberals are a lot like Hitler/Stalin/Lucifer and they are trying to destroy America and kill you all in your beds.

I offer this up in case you happen to be greeted by rambling along these lines from a Tea Partier or deluded relative. It’s always good to know the source of the lunacy.

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Reagan’s Trajectory

by digby

Greg Sargent highlights a post by Brendan Nyhan about the myth that Reagan turned the American people against government and adds:

The key takeaway here is that public attitudes towards government are not fixed in stone, and if there’s one thing that can get folks to rethink their supposed anti-government bias, it’s actual cuts to government. Nyhan worries that Obama has internalized the “phony narrative of Reagan’s presidency,” and says this “is likely to lead him astray.” But I think it’s becoming clearer that Obama has not internalized this narrative.

Rather, as I noted below, it seems more and more obvious that Obama and Dems are placing a heavy bet on the very phenomenon Nyhan pinpoints here: People suddenly start to like government once officials start talking specifics about how to downsize it in the real world. Not even Saint Ronald Reagan could talk them out of this apostasy.

I think this is correct as far as it goes. Most people actually like government programs that benefit them and are usually hostile only to those they think benefit the “undeserving.” But there is no doubt in my mind that Reagan and his progeny have made anti-government sentiment in general a baseline value among a large number of Americans, which has led to an ongoing, incremental degradation of the relationship of people to their government. People may not want their government services cut in the abstract, but with every vote for a Republican or Democrat who rails against taxes, they make it that much more difficult to deliver them. And being unable to deliver adequate services leads more and more people to vote for people who promise to lower taxes and spending.

This “starve the beast” approach has always been to rail against government and force tax cuts — thus driving up debt. The cuts in programs are what follows. And they are quite successful at the first two elements. We know their anti-government rhetoric is nearly universal. It’s almost impossible to find someone who says “I think the government does a pretty good job” even though they may personally have positive dealings with it. It just isn’t socially acceptable. That’s a huge political advantage for those of both parties who are most concerned with weakening the safety net, deregulation and low taxes.

But this is an astonishing accomplishment:

Amid complaints about high taxes and calls for a smaller government, Americans paid their lowest level of taxes last year since Harry Truman’s presidency, a USA TODAY analysis of federal data found.

Some conservative political movements such as the “Tea Party” have criticized federal spending as being out of control. While spending is up, taxes have fallen to exceptionally low levels.

Federal, state and local income taxes consumed 9.2% of all personal income in 2009, the lowest rate since 1950, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reports. That rate is far below the historic average of 12% for the last half-century.

Despite that, the extension of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, even in light of their great comeback from the recession, is considered a model of future bipartisan behavior. I’d call that a big win for the Reaganites.

As Greg notes, we don’t know how the administration and the Democrats in the congress will behave on “entitlements.” (So it’s probably a good idea to err on the side of caution and exert pressure wherever possible.) But I would just point out that the very argument Greg says the administration is putting forth is very, very close to the argument he used in the campaign to explain why Reagan was a transitional figure.

Greg writes this:

But it seems clear that Obama’s gestures in the direction of austerity are more about creating a larger vision, a blend of fiscal discipline and sensible government spending, that the public will ultimately judge as preferable to the all-government-is-bad GOP approach.

Here’s Obama on Reagan:

“I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it. I think they felt like with all the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s and government had grown and grown but there wasn’t much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating. I think people, he just tapped into what people were already feeling, which was we want clarity we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing.”

At the time he said that virtually everyone was adamant that he didn’t mean this in terms of policy, but rather as an illustration of how a president seizes the day to enact fundamental change. It was assumed that he saw his moment as a chance to do something similar in the liberal direction. But since it’s impossible to argue that Obama’s “larger vision of fiscal discipline and sensible spending” is some sort of progressive transformation (since that’s been the mantra of most politicians of both parties for the past 30 years) it may be fair to assume that he really was endorsing Ronald Reagan’s policy trajectory. (If you want to know how he felt about social security, click here.)

It’s true that Ronald Reagan didn’t end Big Government. Neither did Bush, Clinton or Bush II. But they all did their part in making it impossible to do anything that requires people to pay for it. That bill is coming due. It remains to be seen if Obama will be the one who finally picks up the tab.

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