Month: February 2011

Bizarro Tea Party?

by digby

I’m sure you were just dying for some old fashioned he said/she said punditry on Wisconsin so look no further than Jon Stewart, who is now in the process of becoming an iconic representative of the genre. It started off well, calling out the Governor on his union breaking goals. But then he turned on the Democratic Senators implying that they were being wimps instead of strategists playing for time and proceeded to denigrate the protesters as fools, taking them and the media to task for comparing these silly hippie protests with the Egyptian uprising. (Nobody’s been killed fergawdsake!) He finally took Rick Santelli to task for comparing it to 9/11 after which he went after MSNBC and Fox for being hypocrites etc, etc, etc., ending up calling the Wisconsin protests the Bizarro Tea Party.

I’m so glad we have Jon Stewart around to reduce all political activities of ordinary people into a clown show. It makes it much easier to maintain our ironic distance. Silly people making noises in public is really beneath all smart liberals like ourselves — the only respectable way for people to engage in politics is to let Jon Stewart explain it all to us in our special coded hipster humor, as he did in the next segment:

See? He’s a real liberal with real liberal ideas. But he doesn’t engage in all the ridiculous double standards of your average fool out there in the hinterlands (or the earnest “professional left” either, thank God.) And that’s what’s important. Liberals aren’t allowed to be uncool or unfair. It makes us all embarrassing and shit, taking sides, acting out, being like … well … dirty hippies or Teabaggers.

The interesting thing about all this to me is that the left’s original critique of the mainstream media was that they affected this pose of being “objective” with this he said/she said . ( Jay Rosen has developed an entire thesis about it, called “the view from nowhere.”) And Stewart isn’t doing that exactly, even though he takes great pride in drawing an equivalence between the politics of Fox, which is owned by a giant corporation with an explicit, coordinated partisan goal and the “politics” of MSNBC which is also owned by a giant corporation and has allowed a couple of liberal voices to speak in public for purely pecuniary reasons. Instead, he’s telling liberals (nobody else cares what he thinks) that it’s more important to behave in a dignified, fair fashion than to stand up for your beliefs in a way that could be perceived as unseemly or one-sided. That makes you as bad as the other side.

Except, of course, it really doesn’t. It’s really about what you’re fighting for. Tea partiers were trying to stop the federal government from reforming our health care system so that middle class workers will not go broke or die if they get sick. The Wisconsin protesters are trying to stop the Republican governor from making it illegal for them to belong to a union so that they can live a decent middle class life. Can we all see the pattern here? I’m sorry that people are misbehaving and failing to have the Oxford style debate that Stewart seems to think we should have, but this is a big argument that’s taking place and I’m fairly sure that it’s not going to be resolved by having some elite representatives of both sides sitting around Charlie Rose’s table hashing it all out and then going out for drinks afterwards. Neither do I think that’s what’s important. If the Tea partiers had been well-behaved, would it have made their noxious politics any better? I don’t think so.

Calls for”civility”are usually just a way to shut people up and sadly, I’m fairly sure that the only people who listen to Stewart are liberals who are getting the idea that it’s wrong to get in the streets or call out the other side in rough language. Conservatives just think he’s a useful idiot. I find this attitude very perplexing coming from a comedian, especially one who commonly does things which could be perceived as unfair, silly and undignified.

This is why Colbert’s satire is so much more effective and, frankly, much braver. His satire is firmly aimed at the right, so he cannot take both sides. That’s why it works — it takes a position. By contrast, I’m increasingly not finding Jon’s church-lady finger wagging all that funny, much less cool, and I fast forward though his opening segments more often than not. If I wanted a nightly lecture on proper behavior I’d consult Miss Manners or go to church.

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American Infighting

by digby

Greg Sargent makes a point that really can’t be made enough: the Wisconsin public employee unions have already capitulated on all financial requests. They did so early on. What they will not give in on is their right to be unionized. All of Walker’s arguments about this being a budget issue are therefore moot. This is just about breaking the unions, plain and simple.

I watched a fair amount of gasbaggery yesterday and this wasn’t made clear by either the press or the Democratic defenders. The other side just rolled out its usual misdirection and babble of nonsense and the point consistently got lost. And this is terribly important. Here’s Greg again with the latest polling:

Key finding: When read a very detailed explanation of Walker’s proposal, 52 percent of Wisconsin voters oppose it, 42 percent strongly so. Meanwhile, 42 percent support it, only 24 percent strongly. The poll finds that since the standoff began, “Walker has seen real erosion in his standing, with a majority expressing disapproval of his job performance and disagreement with his agenda.” And: “When asked more specifically, 58 percent oppose eliminating collective bargaining, 57 percent oppose reducing wages for public employees and 50 percent oppose reducing pension benefits for public employees.” And 59 percent of independents oppose the collective bargaining piece, too. Of course, at this point, one presumes Walker’s intended audience is national conservatives, not his own constituents. The full polling memo is right here.

(Greg’s right that this is a national union busting campaign.)

These results show that when people understand what is happening, they side with the unions, not the Republicans. Even a lot of Republicans side with the unions. After all, it’s kind of hard to argue about freedom and liberty if the only people who have it are employers.

But then this is a sour country right now, full of angry disappointed people who’ve been sold a bill of good for a long time. Many of them, as has been true since the beginning of the Republic, are drawn to the Resentment Tribe, which has politically organized itself as the GOP for the past few decades. Sadly, this is how it’s manifesting itself in these troubled times:

Among the top five employers here are the county, the schools and the city. And that was enough to make Mr. Hahan, a union man from a union town, a supporter of Gov. Scott Walker’s sweeping proposal to cut the benefits and collective-bargaining rights of public workers in Wisconsin, a plan that has set off a firestorm of debate and protests at the state Capitol. He says he still believes in unions, but thinks those in the public sector lead to wasteful spending because of what he sees as lavish benefits and endless negotiations. Here in Janesville, a city of about 60,000 an hour southeast of Madison, Crystal Watkins, a preschool teacher at a Lutheran church, said she was paid less than public school teachers and got fewer benefits. “I don’t have any of that,” she said. “But I’m there every day because I love the kids.” In Palmyra, a small village bounded by farmland and forests, MaryKay Horter remembered how her husband’s Chevy dealership had teetered on the brink of closing after General Motors declared bankruptcy, for which she blamed unions. Ms. Horter said she was forced to work more hours as an occupational therapist, but had not seen a raise or any retirement contributions from her employer for the last two years. All told, her family’s income has dropped by about a third. “I don’t get to bargain in my job, either,” she said. And in nearby Whitewater, a scenic working-class city of 15,000 that is home to a public university, Dave Bergman, the owner of a bar, was tending it himself on Sunday. He has been forced to cut staff and work seven days a week. “There are a lot of people out of work right now that would take a job without a union,” Mr. Bergman said.

This is the result of the aristocracy’s strategy since time began — pitting the serfs against each other to fight over an ever shrinking piece of the pie — while the nobles enjoy the fruits of their labor. In our democracy the way to do that is by exploiting the long standing resentments and cultural divisions that have been with us since the beginning. It’s very effective as we can see.

If you think I’m wrong, take a look at this and ask yourself why any working person should be fighting another working person over wages and benefits:

That chart is from Mother Jones, which has put together several great visual aids to simply and easily explain how the average worker in America is being screwed. Why so many of them side with the oligarchs is probably more psychological than anything else. But it’s a long tradition here — Americans may hate “the Man”, but they often hate their fellow man more.

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The Nuge Weighs In

by digby

Finally, a serious discussion of Social Security from someone who really knows what he’s talking about. Here’s wealthy celebrity Ted Nugent sharing his deep knowledge of the program with the readership of the Washington Times:

Sometimes you wanna start higher
and sometimes you gotta start low

Some people think they gonna die someday
I got news ya never got to go

Oh wait, that’s one of his musical masterpieces. Here’s his policy analysis:

Americans have been used, strung along, ripped off, manipulated and frightened for decades by runaway gangs of power-mongering, deceptive politicians.

I give you Social Security. As usual, it is the exact opposite of what we have been told. This classic Ponzi scheme is anti-social and insecure.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt created Social Security 75 years ago. As with many other Fedzilla programs, Americans got suckered into believing Social Security was a healthy, wealthy and wise program.

Social Security is bloated, broke and busted. FDR’s New Deal turned out to be the Rip-off Deal.

There is an IOU for $2.5 trillion in the Social Security trust fund. Our elected bandits stole all the Social Security taxes collected over the years and spent it on who knows what.

The Congressional Budget Office recently stated that Social Security will pay out $45 billion more this year than what it takes in. Deficits such as this are projected until Social Security rolls over and goes completely belly-up 25 years from now.

The only way to truly reform Social Security is to sink it. Settling for anything less than the total destruction of this financial sinkhole would be perpetuating the problem and allowing Fedzilla to continue to pick the pockets of future generations of Americans.

He goes on to suggest that we raise the cap and the retirement age immediately and start means testing while forcing anyone under the age of 45 off the program cold turkey. After all, if they have any balls at all they too can become rich rock stars just like Ted and won’t need any social security.

I think it’s great that the right wing has such articulate spokespeople for their philosophy. No wonder they’re winning this argument.

H/t to The People’s Pension Blog who made this dry observation:

At this point in his demented career, The Nuge – Tedly, Uncle Ted, what have you – is an American institution, a living, breathing parody of contemporary rugged individualism that Glenn Beck and the Tea Party would have to invent if he wasn’t already roaming the Upper Midwest…

Although I rarely offer advice, I would counsel you to do everything possible to encourage the Great Gonzo as he lays siege to the citadel of the right, demanding to know why they aren’t getting serious.

Right on, right on.

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Let’s hope it didn’t break the camel’s back

by digby

Madison, WI, this afternoon:

Rumors are that John Oliver is the rider. Hopefully he’ll be light with the whip hand.

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It’s Not Getting Better

by digby

As soon as all the GOP Governors fire their public employees things should start looking up. Right?

The unemployment rate in mid-February is 0.8 percentage points lower than it was at this time a year ago, compared with a 1.1-point improvement at the end of January. This suggests that jobs are less available now than they were in January.

More troubling, however, is the surge in underemployment. On this broader basis, current job conditions are barely improved from what they were at this time last year. Essentially, what has happened over the past year is that some people who were unemployed got part-time jobs but are still looking for full-time work. This is not much to show for a year in which many macro-economic indicators showed improvement.

This is likely why Gallup’s self-reported spending remains stuck in “new normal” even as consumer optimism continues to hit new highs. Jobs remain the key to getting the U.S. economy moving, and mid-February underemployment results suggest little or no progress is being made in that regard.

If 10% unemployment is the new normal then how are these people supposed to survive when the conservatives finally zero out unemployment insurance?

If economists are seeing this as “structural” and therefore nothing is to be done, we are well and truly fucked. This cannot be considered “normal” by any stretch of the imagination.

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Back In The Day Qadhafi was Bush’s BFF

by digby

Joshua Holland did some digging for this so I didn’t have to. Before everyone gets too sucked into the nonsense already percolating on the right that Obama is somehow responsible for the carnage in Libya, they need to remember this little bit of Bushian braggadocio:

Because of American leadership and resolve, the world is changing for the better. Last month, the leader of Libya voluntarily pledged to disclose and dismantle all of his regime’s weapons of mass destruction programs, including a uranium enrichment project for nuclear weapons. Colonel Qadhafi correctly judged that his country would be better off, and far more secure, without weapons of mass murder. Nine months of intense negotiations involving the United States and Great Britain succeeded with Libya, while 12 years of diplomacy with Iraq did not. And one reason is clear: For diplomacy to be effective, words must be credible — and no one can now doubt the word of America.

That was the 2004 State of the Union address. Libya was welcomed into the world of civilized nations and Qadhafi was treated as a conquering hero. Everyone was so proud of what had been accomplished through deft diplomacy backed by threats of annihilation. Huzzah for the Bush doctrine.

Nobody seemed to care much about this:

According to the US Department of State’s annual human rights report for 2007, Libya’s authoritarian regime continued to have a poor record in the area of human rights.[60] Some of the numerous and serious abuses on the part of the government include poor prison conditions, arbitrary arrest and prisoners held incommunicado, and political prisoners held for many years without charge or trial. The judiciary is controlled by the government, and there is no right to a fair public trial. Libyans do not have the right to change their government. Freedom of speech, press, assembly, association, and religion are restricted. Independent human rights organizations are prohibited. Ethnic and tribal minorities suffer discrimination, and the state continues to restrict the labor rights of foreign jobs. In 2005 Freedom House rated both political rights and civil liberties in Libya as “7” (1 representing the most free and 7 the least free rating), and gave it the freedom rating of “Not Free”.[61]

But then this wasn’t really about terrorism or human rights anyway:

The removal from the terrorism list is expected to take place after a 45-day waiting period.However, Libya will immediately be removed from an annual list of countries that do not cooperate with U.S. anti-terrorism efforts, according to Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern Affairs David Welch.The move is likely to have a major impact on oil markets and could even bring down fuel prices, CNN’s David Ensor reports.Oil companies have been lobbying Congress to do business in Libya, but Welch denied that the United States decided to restore ties to ease the rising cost of gasoline prices.

So, taking Libya off the terrorist list was useful for oil companies? Very convenient. How’s that going to work out now, I wonder?

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Look Who’s Talking?

by digby

It really takes some nerve for Rush Limbaugh of all people to insult Michelle Obama by calling her fat, but that’s never stopped him before:

LIMBAUGH: I’m sure you’re aware that nutritionist-at-large Michelle Obama is urging, demanding, advocating, requiring what everybody can and can’t eat. She is demanding that everybody basically eat cardboard and tofu. No calories, no fat, no nothing — gotta stop obesity. Except as in the case of all leftists, that’s true for you, but not for them.

Michelle My Belle, minus the husband, took the kids out to Vail on a ski vacation, and they were spotted eating and they were feasting on ribs, ribs that were 1,575 calories per serving with 141 grams of fat per serving. Now I’m sure some of you members of the new castrati: “This is typical of what you do Mr. Limbaugh, you take an isolated, once in a lifetime experience, and try to say that she’s a hypocrite.” She is a hypocrite. Leaders are supposed to be leaders. If we’re supposed to go out and eat nothing — if we’re supposed to eat roots, and berries and tree bark and so show us how. And if it’s supposed to make us fit, if it’s supposed to make us healthier, show us how.

The problem is — and dare I say this — it doesn’t look like Michelle Obama follows her own nutritionary, dietary advice. And then we hear that she’s out eating ribs at 1,500 calories a serving with 141 grams of fat per serving, yeah it does — what do you mean, what do I mean?

What is it – no, I’m trying to say that our First Lady does not project the image of women that you might see on the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue, or of a woman Alex Rodriguez might date every six months or what have you. I mean, women are under constant pressure to look lithe, and Michelle My Belle is out there saying if you eat the roots and tree bark and the berries and all this cardboard stuff you will live longer, be healthier and you won’t be obese. Okay, fine, show us.

Haven’t seen any evidence here if that advice is being followed that it works, that’s all. It’s just, look it folks, leaders lead. They can sit up there, they demand we do this and demand we do this and demand we do that, but show us. Poor kids are living in food deserts, parents are unemployed, kids got no place to go other than the mall, hang around for scraps at the Orange Julius place, maybe get some papaya juice out there, and then they hear about Michelle My Belle and the kids 1,500 calories per rib serving — 141 grams of fat, I’m just saying. Mom and dad unemployed, kids in the food court hoping for some drips of papaya juice and there they are eating ribs, skiing in Vail.

That’s very cute, and he was being exceptionally careful, but the message comes through loud and clear: Michelle isn’t “lithe” like a Sports Illustrated model or someone Alex Rodriguez would date so that proves there’s no evidence she’s following a healthy diet. In other words, she’s fat — you can even see her eating ribs (chuckle, chuckle.)

I’m sure I don’t have to tell anyone that she’s not telling people to eat bark or that the unemployed and their kids should try to get some drips of papaya juice at the mall while she and her girls eat like pigs. All the woman is doing is trying to raise awareness about obesity and encourage kids to eat some vegetables. It’s really not revolutionary. In fact, Rush’s fave rave, Arnold, made a whole career out of this stuff. It’s a sad comment on our times when the first lady can’t even promote child nutrition without having to put up with this from extremely unhealthy obese jackasses like Rush Limbaugh.

I’m going to bookmark this for the day it’s reported that Limbaugh has fallen over from a stroke or a heart attack, as is highly likely to happen. He can be the poster boy for why obesity will kill you. That would be the only useful legacy he leaves.

Update: I hadn’t realized that the lithe and willowy Breitbart had already gone there:

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Ancient History

by digby

Not that anyone gives a damn, but there’s evidence that the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico is still coated with oil and pretty much dead:

Oil from the BP spill remains stuck on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, according to a top scientist’s video and slides that she says demonstrate the oil isn’t degrading as hoped and has decimated life on parts of the sea floor.

That report is at odds with a recent report by the BP spill compensation czar that said nearly all will be well by 2012.

At a science conference in Washington Saturday, marine scientist Samantha Joye of the University of Georgia aired early results of her December submarine dives around the BP spill site. She went to places she had visited in the summer and expected the oil and residue from oil-munching microbes would be gone by then. It wasn’t.

“There’s some sort of a bottleneck we have yet to identify for why this stuff doesn’t seem to be degrading,” Joye told the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual conference in Washington. Her research and those of her colleagues contrasts with other studies that show a more optimistic outlook about the health of the gulf, saying microbes did great work munching the oil.

“Magic microbes consumed maybe 10 percent of the total discharge, the rest of it we don’t know,” Joye said, later adding: “there’s a lot of it out there.”

Does it seem to you as if the BP oil spill happened almost as long ago as the Exxon Valdez? It’s just gone from our consciousness. (I assume not so much in the gulf region, however.)

We live in turbulent time (the big news today is that Libyan air force is strafing democracy protesters!) so it’s hard to stay focused. But this was a really big deal just six months ago. And now — it’s ancient history. I’m thinking that may be part of our problem. Catastrophe overload.

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Please Stop Worrying

by digby

… and just join the GOP:

Bradley Tusk, a former Illinois deputy governor and New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s 2009 campaign manager, said that if Walker succeeds in the fight, “this will be portrayed as a major change toward fiscal sanity and protecting taxpayers.”

“The average voter will never feel any pain from it,” he added, “so the high ground shifts away from labor. That puts Obama and other Democrats in the position of being forced further to the left, or moving more toward the GOP position and risking losing support from labor. … This almost creates some of the problems that a primary forces on the challenger.”

Don’t you just love that lede? First of all, quoting Mike Bloomberg’s campaign manager’s “analysis” of the situation is dicey to begin with. But to then frame the so-called dilemma as Obama having to “move farther to the left” (Oh no!) or risk losing labor ….. and oh gosh, that’s just like an awful primary challenge means that it’s not even considered that the position might be popular with actual humans or, God forbid, the right thing to do. It simply never enters a villager’s mind that the “left” position might be mainstream or that the “right’s” positions are every anything but.

Now it’s true that he says that the risks are high and that most people will not feel the pain if labor loses. But it is not written in stone that the win will be seen as a major change toward “fiscal sanity and protecting taxpayers” —- unless the Republicans succeed in lying and spinning the press to portray it that way. It is a lie that busting unions protects taxpayers. It protects the wealthy plutocrats whose lives are devoted to evading paying even a minimal fair share.

The fact of the matter is that this is a frontal attack on the fundamental values — indeed survival — of the Democratic Party and there is simply no question which side it must be on here regardless of the political risk. And if that drags it “to the left” well, that’s just a big fat shame — if labor unions aren’t the vital, working base of the Democratic party then the Party doesn’t really exist so these timorous politicians might as well join the GOP and be done with it.

It’s very nice of this super-centrist,ex-Lehman brothers employee, Bloomberg associate to be worried about the Democratic party, but really … don’t bother. It’s that kind of help that’s killing us.

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Tea Party Win

by digby

EJ Dionne is half right:

Take five steps back and consider the nature of the political conversation in our nation’s capital. You would never know that it’s taking place at a moment when unemployment is still at 9 percent, when wages for so many people are stagnating at best and when the United States faces unprecedented challenges to its economic dominance.

No, Washington is acting as if the only real problem the United States confronts is the budget deficit; the only test of leadership is whether the president is willing to make big cuts in programs that protect the elderly; and the largest threat to our prosperity comes from public employees.

Take five more steps back and you realize how successful the Tea Party has been. No matter how much liberals may poke fun at them, Tea Party partisans can claim victory in fundamentally altering the country’s dialogue.

It’s true that our political dialog is focused on some problems that are not acute while ignoring those that are. But you’ll notice that it’s not the Tea Party agenda actually being enacted so much as the Tea Party’s corporate owners. They are making a big play to completely defund and totally defang the left. The real Tea Party agenda (culture war issues) is being passed in the House, but it’s mostly bread and circuses — and it’s keeping liberals occupied playing defense. (In this environment you can’t take anything for granted — you never know who the Democrats will sacrifice.)These irrational budget “fixes” are shock doctrine moves, obviously coordinated by the GOP down to the state level.

I’m glad that Dionne has noticed that despite Obama’s charisma and super-fabulous “success” in the lame duck session, the right is firmly in charge. That’s what happens when the political system depends upon billions and billions of their dollars. But he’s not all the way there yet.

This is an excellent step, however:

More striking is the Tea Party’s influence on Washington’s political elite, which looks down at the more extreme men and women of the right when they appear on Fox News but ends up carrying their water.

Lori Montgomery reported in The Post last week that a bipartisan group of senators thinks a sensible deficit reduction package would involve lifting the Social Security retirement age to 69 and reforming taxes, purportedly to raise revenue, in a way that would cut the top income tax rate for the wealthy from 35 percent to 29 percent.

Only a body dominated by millionaires could define “shared sacrifice” as telling nurses’ aides and coal miners they have to work until age 69 while sharply cutting tax rates on wealthy people. I see why conservative Republicans like this. I honestly don’t get why Democrats – “the party of the people,” I’ve heard – would come near such an idea.

Follow the money.

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