Skip to content

Month: April 2011

Constituent service: arrest and mace for asking questions

Constituent Service

by digby

I don’t recall that Tea Partiers were arrested at the health care townhalls in 2009, but maybe they were. We know for a fact that they were disruptive — and that they were instructed to be so.

It definitely happened in Florida yesterday when liberal talk radio host Nicole Sandler confronted her congressman, war criminal Alan “liberal women are neutering American men” West at his townhall:

It figures, my blog is the last place you’ll read about my arrest and subsequent incarceration after attending Allen West’s so-called Town Hall Meeting last night.

Since I spent last night in jail and, thanks to the sickeningly awful people at the Broward County Jail was subjected to three hours in solitary confinement in a 7×10 room, and then maced. Nice, huh?

Anyway, I’ll have more on how it all unfolded on the show tomorrow, and then in a lengthier written piece after I get some rest, food and a shower.

But I do want to clear something up. The video that’s floating around portraying me as a heckler doesn’t show the Medicare question that Mr. West was asked, the way he answered it, and my FOLLOW-UP question.

So, here’s how it actually happened:

Being arrested for speaking your mind at a political event is not unprecedented. I would guess that it’s happened to a few of you. (It’s not common to maced while in custody — but I can’t say I’m surprised that it happened to a female liberal talk show host. That’s just how the authoritarians roll.)

Alan West is the worst of the worst, a sick piece of work who tortured Iraqis and narrowly escaped a court martial. He’s also, apparently, a coward.

.

If only birtherism was the only ludicrous thing happening in politics …

Fiddlers and clowns

by digby

As I wrote earlier, I really liked the way Obama addressed the Trumped up birther nonsense today, especially the part where he wrote that we don’t have time to listen to carnival barkers.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of them in politics these days. Get a load of this, from Sarah Posner

Alabama Republican Robert Aderholt and West Virginia Democrat Nick Rahall have introduced a Congressional Resolution, timed to coincide with the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible, designed to express the body’s “gratitude” for the “influence” the KJV has had on “countless families, individuals, and institutions in the United States.”

The bipartisan co-sponsors were lobbied by the small non-profit Bible Nation Society, based in Corunna, Michigan, said Jason Georges, the group’s executive director. Georges said that other members of Congress, particularly the Congressional Prayer Caucus, were also interested in the KJV resolution.

The Bible Nation Society, affiliated with Immanuel Baptist Church in Corunna, was founded by Immanuel’s pastor, Douglas Levesque. At the Bible Nation Society’s 2010 Bible in Culture Conference, Levesque preached on the “Antichrist Quotient,” in which he laid out wide-ranging conspiracy theories that President Obama might be the Antichrist.

The Bible Nation Society, which is also sponsoring an Expo on the National Mall next week to celebrate the KJV 400th anniversary, came to Capitol Hill to lobby for the resolution at the height of the budget battle, said Georges. That made the effort more challenging, he said, but he saw it as an opportunity “to pause and think about the principles of money — the debtor is servant to the lender, ideas of usury, Joseph’s idea of saving, storage, national saving for hard times, that’s in the Book of Genesis. . . there is a principle there that people can glean some wisdom from.”

Georges insists, “we’re not promoting a theocratic state” — just that policymakers should find answers to the nation’s pressing questions in the King James Bible. The KJV, he added, “speaks to issues today if we would all pause for a minute, it would give us answers.”

This is our country being serious and sober about the pressing problems of the day.

.

Suspicious typing alert: freeper kerning experts wanted

Bring on the kerning experts

by digby

This is just funny. From Smoking Gun:

This morning’s White House release of President Barack Obama’s long form birth certificate will, of course, do little to derail the “birther” movement, which will now analyze the document with the kind of verve previously directed toward those Texas Air National Guard memos faxed to CBS from that Kinko’s in Abilene.

So here’s a few nutty points about the birth certificate sure to be seized upon by the nonbelievers:

• If the original document was in a bound volume (as reflected by the curvature of the left hand side of the certificate), how can the green patterned background of the document’s safety paper be so seamless?

• Why, if Obama was born on August 4, 1961, was the “Date Accepted by Local Reg.” four days later on August 8, 1961?

• What is the significance of the smudges in the box containing the name of the reported attendant?

• David A. Sinclair, the M.D. who purportedly signed the document, died nearly eight years ago at age 81. So he is conveniently unavailable to answer questions about Obama’s reported birth.

• In the “This Birth” box there are two mysterious Xs above “Twin” and “Triplet.” Is there a sibling or two unaccounted for?

• What is the significance of the mysterious numbers, seen vertically, on the document’s right side?

• Finally, the “Signature of Local Registrar” in box 21 may be a desperate attempt at establishing the document’s Hawaiian authenticity. Note to forgers: It is spelled “Ukulele.”

Here are the first of the comments:

Submitted by WhoHasMoreFunTh… on Wed, 2011-04-27 14:22.
The certificate does look like it was doctored…lots of marks, smudges & that typewriter! Anyone can forge anything. What a scam!

Submitted by Ohiowordguy on Wed, 2011-04-27 14:22.
I noticed the possible “layers” in this document almost immediately. When I had the .pdf file of the BC open in my browser then used Command + Tab (on an Apple computer), to switch to another app, I noticed that the majority of the text disappeared. I recreated the effect numerous times. As others have suggested, when you open the BC in Acrobat (full version) and strip out the “Metadata” and “Deleted or cropped content” this SAME EXACT TEXT disappears leaving only a few bits of type, date stamps and all or part of three signatures: his mother, the attendant and the local registrar. Also, some of the digits used in the Aug. 8, 1961 date stamp disappear. The full background and the April 25, 2011 stamp remain. I am making no “birther” claims, but CLEARLY this document has been altered. If it had been photographed or scanned, the pixels containing all the information (the document background, the type, the signatures, date stamps and the check marks) would be part of ONE pixelated image. As someone who uses Photoshop/Adobe Creative Suite daily, it is my belief that had the BC been scanned or photographed, the layering would not happen. Again, I am making NO “birther” claims or conclusions. But I believe this document has been altered.

Submitted by sammy5858 on Wed, 2011-04-27 14:22.
Are there any Adobe experts out there? Are there any cases where scanning a document like this could EVER break up and create these layer groups? Even if it could, would any software break it up this precisely? I pulled the PDF into Illustrator and was really shocked to see 10 different groups.

Submitted by 34packardphaeton on Wed, 2011-04-27 14:21.
This purported ‘full’ certificate is clearly a FAKE . . . which most any second-rate forgerer could replicate or create. There’s a lot of discrepancies . . . and evidence of a “layering” technique in part to create this FORGERY. The thing about D. Trump that I really appreciate is his courage to actually pursue the truth. It seems like the politicians that SHOULD pursue this lie are utterly intimidated by the “P C Crowd” and the TV media. A plague upon all of those collaborators! (a descriptive word that became “fighting words” in the early 1940s).

Submitted by jerryblay on Wed, 2011-04-27 14:20.
I would nice to compare this Birth Certificate to others issued around the same time, maybe signed by the same doctor (e.g., 61 10640, 61 10642). I assume several are issued each week at the hospital. It would seem that the typist would use tabs to line up names, etc. (e.g., father’s and mother’s name; race and kind of business).

Submitted by JackPayne on Wed, 2011-04-27 14:19.
Hey people, come on, first of all, HE was not born ( or named at birth Barack Husein Obama, ) was he not Barry Soetoro first? Then Barack later in life, use your head, this is not right.

I don’t think they get the joke …

Reportedly, the Freepers are all over this. This is their beat.

I wonder if Trump will join this circus — and if the media will follow him into the clown show once again. After all, there’s no earthly reason they needed to feature him every five minutes on TV flogging this silly story in the first place. There was no basis for suspicion. And even if there had been, Obama’s mother was an American and her son would have also been an American even if he had been born in Kenya. Therefore, the conspiracy is so byzantine that they are supposed to have faked his birthplace because they planned for him to become president someday — the only job in America that requires someone be born on American soil. That the media have allowed this idiocy to fester for this long means they have no reason not to continue if someone can come up with another patently absurd reason to do it.

BTW: You have to love Obama’s comments. He was almost rolling his eyes and groaning at the stupidity of this whole thing. And who can blame him? It must take everything he has not to just blurt out that these people are the biggest idiots on the planet.

.

Paul Ryan’s War: boomer vs boomer

Boomer vs Boomer

by digby

As this week’s ongoing uprising at the townhalls shows, Republicans are playing with fire with this Ryan plan. Current seniors are concerned about their own kids and grandkids. After all, they are living in “medical world” where Medicare is at the very center of their lives and they know what’s at stake. And I would guess that the next group in line — people my age — are also concerned, dealing as they are with their own elderly parents and facing their own impending old age illnesses before too long.

However, as Merrill Goozner explains in this post, it is much worse than they know and the political ramifications will be huge. If the Democrats are smart they will mobilize this constituency around this right now — it’s the baby boom and getting their support will cripple the Republicans for a generation:

[L]et’s take a closer look at what will actually happen after 2023, and think through what it means for the generation between 45 and 65, most of whom will still be alive by 2033 when Ryan’s privatization scheme will be fully in effect. Every new senior entering Medicare after 2023 will receive a voucher to buy insurance. According to the Congressional Budget Office, that will pay for less and less of their coverage. By the time 2033 rolls around, their vouchers will cover about one-third of the cost of care. But what will the overall Medicare-eligible population look like in 2033, when the entire 77-million strong baby boom generation will be in its golden years? According to the CMS actuary’s office, there will be 85.4 million Medicare-eligible seniors that year, up from 48.6 million today. Their projection for 2023 is about 69 million. That means roughly 16 million newly retired, active, more politically engaged seniors will be receiving sharply lower benefits and making sharply higher co-pays (call it higher taxes) to pay for health care, while about 53 million will be on the old plan that pays about 80 percent of costs. Every year after 2033, the ranks of seniors in the costly plan will grow, while there will be a declining number of seniors under the old, more financially attractive plan. Moreover, those in the old plan will be the most expensive people to take care of because they are the oldest in the cohort, thus consuming the vast majority of Medicare’s funds. So what we will have is two groups of seniors: one younger, healthier, more politically active and making significantly higher payments for health care insurance out of pocket; and the other older, sicker, poorer and being coddled with the financially “bankrupt” older plan. This is precisely the situation that people in line for state and local government pensions face. Taxpaying private sector workers, whose employers took away their pensions years ago, resent paying higher taxes for pension benefits earned by their neighbors who went to work for government and never had their pensions taken away.

I can tell you that people in their 50s are thinking about retirement and medicare — a lot. It’s a part of our lives through our parents and it’s something we know that it works. This hideous scenario can and should be avoided if people know what’s in store.

As Goozner points out, there will undoubtedly be Alan Simpsons in 2033 (maybe even him, the way he’s going!) trashing the greedy geezers and demanding that they give up what they were promised. He notes:

The politics of resentment has a long history in America. One is reminded of the retort by Guilded Age tycoon Jay Gould, who in 1896 faced a strike among his railway workers at a time of high unemployment. “I can can hire half the working class to kill the other half,” he shrugged.

I’m fairly sure that the Randian extremist Paul Ryan is in accord with that thinking. (Replace “working class” with “parasites” and you’ll see it.) In his view thecoming war between the boomers is a feature not a bug.

.

Blue America Chat with Ilya Sheyman at 11am PDT, 2pm EDT

Blue America Chat: Ilya Sheyman

by digby

Howie sez:

The first time I mentioned Ilya Sheyman, the progressive Democrat running for the northern Chicago suburban seat held by GOP freshman Robert Dold, it was in a long and rambling post lashing out against conventional wisdom. When I finally got to Ilya, former Field Director for Democracy for America and, more recently, National Mobilization Director at MoveOn, who Blue America was urging to run against Dold, he quoted Paul Wellstone to me:

“Politics is not just about power and money games, politics can be about the improvement of peoples lives, about lessening human suffering in our world and bringing about more peace and more justice.”

Candidates with this kind of mindset are candidates Blue America is looking for to help solve the country’s problems. That’s why we’re enthusiastic about endorsing him today and why we’d like to invite you to meet him at a live blog session at Crooks and Liars at 1pm (Central Time), 11am on the West Coast.

Until his vote to phase out Medicare and replace it with a pathetic voucher system so that the wealthiest Americans get more tax breaks, not many people had heard of Dold outside the 10th CD between Arlington Heights and Waukegan in Chicagoland. But that triggered an angry reaction at Dold’s town hall meeting in Buffalo Grove last week and now Dold has become another right-wing poster boy for Paul Ryan’s dystopian vision of a mean, dark, reactionary America.

Rep. Robert Dold (R-Ill.) cut a presentation on the federal deficit short at a town hall meeting he held last week, after audience members began firing questions at him about the Ryan budget and its changes to entitlement programs, including Medicare and Social Security, according to the Chicago newspaper the Daily Herald.

Senior citizens in the audience expressed their discontent with turning Medicare into a voucher program, calling the change a “shell game” that would bog senior citizens down with uncertainty in dealing with private healthcare companies.

And senior citizens are getting to know Dold better now that he’s been in Congress for 4 months. He may be trying to hide his support for dismembering Medicare but he’s surprisingly open about his contempt for Social Security and what he insists is the need to trim it back. Dold has been the perfect little rubber stamp for the radical House leadership, buying into all their harebrained schemes. “Rep. Dold and the right wing of the Republican Party,” Ilya confirmed “are hell-bent on dismantling Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and eliminating the foundations of the American Dream that have made millions of middle-class lives possible– and we can’t let them get away with it… The fact that he continues to advocate for cuts in Social Security benefits shows just how out of touch he is with the voters of the 10th District [and] his vote for the radical Republican budget that ends Medicare in order to give tax breaks to giant corporations and the wealthiest 2% of Americans should put to rest any notion that he actually cares about the deficit.”

Read on to hear more about Sheyman and then join Howie, John and I at 11AM over at C&L to chat with him about all these issues and more:


Please help us welcome Ilya to the Blue America family and, if you can, please contribute to his campaign through our ActBlue page
. An active admirer of Raul Grijalva’s and Keith Ellison’s Put America Back To Work Act, Ilya will be working inside the Progressive Caucus helping to advance real solutions for working families. It’s what he’; campaigning on and it’s what has drawn him into politics. And it’s why Blue America has endorsed him.

.

Austerity: telling you what you need, giving you what you want

The brought them around

by digby

It took some relentless demagoguery and propaganda, but it finally worked.

Greg Sargent:

The Beltway deficit feedback loop: For the longest time, polls indicated that the deficit ranked low on the list of voter concerns, showing public opinion to be strikingly out of sync with official Washington’s prioritizing of the deficit over job creation. But this morning brings a new poll from the Washington Post and Pew Research that finds a whopping 81 percent now think the deficit is a major problem that should be dealt with now, rather than when the economy improves. Tellingly, that number has jumped even among Democrats. When you have leading officials in both parties — starting with all Republicans and a handful of moderate Dems — acting as if reining in the deficit is so urgent that it requires more attention than creating jobs, people start to tell pollsters they agree. This helps create a climate in which Dems lose any incentive to make the case for more government spending to prime the recovery, which begins to vanish from the conversation. Meanwhile, the other side continues to hammer away at reining in spending as the way to resuscitate the economy. Dems, anxious that Republicans will be seen as the only ones proposing solutions, nod in agreement and pick a fight over how much we should cut. The public hears an ever growing chorus of bipartisan agreement that the deficits and spending are our number one problem. The case that government can create jobs continues to fade. And so on…and so on…

Looks like we’re going to get us some austerity folks! And now that the entire village has convinced everyone that the deficit is going to kill us all in our beds, when it fails to correct the economic malaise, people will lose faith in government even more! It’s a twofer!

How long will it take to unwind this one? I’m not sure. But it could take a very long time. And the damage it’s going to create is immeasurable.

.

Racism: An American tradition

It’s A Tradition

by digby

Paul Waldman and Kevin Drum have a couple of good posts up today discussing Limbaugh’s crude racist comments this past week and what it says about his conservative listeners. Both are well worth reading, but I think there’s chicken or the egg question that goes unanswered. Waldman writes:

When Limbaugh says Obama’s resentment is about race “as you know,” his audience certainly does know, because they’ve heard it hundreds of times. I think most liberals are unaware that this message gets pounded home to white conservatives day after day and has been since 2008. This is how something like health-care reform can be fit so seamlessly into the culture war: It’s big government, and that can only mean taking money from hardworking white people and giving it to undeserving, shiftless black people. That’s why Limbaugh so often refers to health-care reform as “reparations” — Obama, angry black man that he is, enacted it to stick it to white people in vengeance for slavery and discrimination.

He’s absolutely right. This particular narrative is as old as the republic and it’s always been part of conservative talk. It’s why people like me, who grew up immersed in it, recognize it for what it is and reflexively cringe. Way back when I wrote about this (and I’ve quoted it a few times since then, so forgive me for repeating myself):

Sociologist Nathan Glazer of Harvard answers a … question — “Why Americans don’t care about income inequality” which may give us some clues. Citing a comprehensive study by economists Alberto Alesina and Edward Glaeser of Harvard and Bruce Sacerdote of Dartmouth called, “Why Doesn’t the United States have a European-Style Welfare State?” (Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, 2/2001) he shows that the reluctance of Americans to embrace an egalitarian economic philosophy goes back to the beginning of the republic. But what is interesting is that both he and the economists offer some pretty conclusive evidence that the main reason for American “exceptionalism” in this case is, quite simply, racism.

AGS [Alesina, Glazear and Sacerdote] report, using the World Values Survey, that “opinions and beliefs about the poor differ sharply between the United States and Europe. In Europe the poor are generally thought to be unfortunate, but not personally responsible for their own condition. For example, according to the World Values Survey, whereas 70 % of West Germans express the belief that people are poor because of imperfections in society, not their own laziness, 70 % of Americans hold the opposite view…. 71 % of Americans but only 40% of Europeans said …poor people could work their way out of poverty.”
[…]
“Racial fragmentation and the disproportionate representation of ethnic minorities among the poor played a major role in limiting redistribution…. Our bottom line is that Americans redistribute less than Europeans for three reasons: because the majority of Americans believe that redistribution favors racial minorities, because Americans believe that they live in an open and fair society, and that if someone is poor it is his or her own fault, and because the political system is geared toward preventing redistribution. In fact the political system is likely to be endogenous to these basic American beliefs.”(p. 61)

“Endogenous” is economics-ese for saying we have the political system we do because we prefer the results it gives, such as limiting redistribution to the blacks. Thus the racial factor as well as a wider net of social beliefs play a key role in why Americans don’t care about income inequality, and why, not caring, they have no great interest in expanding the welfare state.

Glazer goes on to point out how these attitudes may have come to pass historically by discussing the roles that the various immigrant support systems and the variety of religious institutions provided for the poor.

But initial uniformities were succeeded by a diversity which overwhelmed and replaced state functions by nonstate organizations, and it was within these that many of the services that are the mark of a fully developed welfare state were provided. Where do the blacks fit in? The situation of the blacks was indeed different. No religious or ethnic group had to face anything like the conditions of slavery or the fierce subsequent prejudice and segregation to which they were subjected. But the pre-existing conditions of fractionated social services affected them too. Like other groups, they established their own churches, which provided within the limits set by the prevailing poverty and absence of resources some services. Like other groups, too, they were dependent on pre-existing systems of social service that had been set up by religious and ethnic groups, primarily to serve their own, some of which reached out to serve blacks, as is the case with the religiously based (and now publicly funded) social service agencies of New York City. They were much more dependent, owing to their economic condition, on the poorly developed primitive public services, and they became in time the special ward of the expanded American welfare state’s social services. Having become, to a greater extent than other groups, the clients of public services, they also affected, owing to the prevailing racism, the public image of these services.

Glazer notes that there are other factors involved in our attitudes about inequality having to do with our British heritage, religious background etc. But, he and the three economists have put their finger on the problem Democrats have with white Southern voters who “vote against their economic self-interest,” and may just explain why populism is so often coupled with nativism and racism — perhaps it’s always been difficult to make a populist pitch that includes blacks or immigrants without alienating whites.

The angry black man seeking revenge narrative has been out there just as long. (When you treat people like dirt it’s natural to worry they’re going to turn on you.) I wrote about this during Katrina:

Ever since 1791, there have been white Americans who get very nervous when they see a large number of angry black people in one place. That was the year that Haiti’s slaves rebelled and killed almost every Frenchman on the island. The fear of slave revolt — black revolt — entered the consciousness of the American lizard brain and has never left. From Gabriel Prosser to Nat Turner to Malcolm X to Stokely Carmichael and the long hot summers of 66 and 67, notions of barbaric vengeance being wreaked upon unsuspecting white people has lurked in our racist subconscious. During slavery it was the immoral institution itself combined with horrible inhumane treatment. After the civil war it was the knowledge of seething anger at Jim Crow. During the 60’s the anger became explicit and words like “by any means necessary” reached deep into the American psyche and fueled the backlash against the civil rights movement — and set the conditions for the Republican dominance of politics today.

Race is America’s deepest psychic wound that festers in different ways over and over again. It has lost much of its original blazing pain, but it is still there, buried and waiting to come to the surface.

Waldman points out today that it’s important to recognize the extra layer of opposition that Obama faces as the first black president and he’s right. Obama has a political complication that no other president has faced. But it’s also important to recognize that liberalism itself is opposed for many of the same fundamental reasons. Historical opposition to the welfare state was always at least partially motivated by racism and so American liberalism, which promotes the welfare state and equal rights is suspect as well.

Waldman concludes with this observation

Liberals look at Obama and see someone who is overly conciliatory, forever reaching out to opponents who despise him and giving up more than he should. But we shouldn’t forget that a substantial portion of the population is constantly steeped in this racial poison. Nothing the president or anyone else says or does will change that.

It does change, actually. But it takes time. It’s changed tremendously during my lifetime and the pace is picking up. But there’s no use in pretending that it’s gone because it isn’t. Limbaugh proves that every day.

.

Boomarang-rang: Confronting Republicans in their Townhalls

Boomarang-rang

by digby

This is great:

Record crowds of supporters and opponents flooded town hall meetings throughout southeastern Wisconsin on Tuesday to hear Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan defend his plan to trim government savings — including controversial changes to the Medicare program.

In the district’s Democratic stronghold of Kenosha, at least 200 people were left outside once the 300-seat auditorium filled to capacity. The crowd largely opposed the Ryan plan, holding signs such as “Caution: Paul Ryan at Play,” “Leave Medicare Alone” or simply, “Save Medicare!”
[…]
At least two of Ryan’s four townhalls — in which he gave a brief PowerPoint presentation of the budget and took questions — filled to capacity, leaving some constituents and reporters outside. Ryan said the crowds were larger than those during the infamous August 2009 health care town hall sessions.

Ryan being from Wisconsin is a beautiful, timely coincidence. His state is the home of the most mobilized progressives in the nation — he’s walked right into the lion’s mouth.

It would be really helpful if the anti-Ryan plan uprising had a TV Network devoted to pushing the cause as the anti-Health Care Townhalls did in 200, but it doesn’t. Nor is it backed by any other corporate money. It’s a testament to the power of the message that this is all happening without it.

And it’s happening. You remember Taliban Dan, don’t you?

A town hall meeting held in Orlando by U.S. Rep. Dan Webster degenerated into bedlam Tuesday, with members of the crowd shouting down the freshman Republican congressman and yelling at one another.

It was the last of a series of town hall meetings Webster has hosted during Congress’ spring recess, which ends Monday. While the others were civil and largely uneventful, the 300 people at Tuesday’s meeting were so raucous they were scolded by a police officer to act “like grown people.” Webster tried to go over a series of charts showing growing levels of federal spending and debt, and the reason he supports the federal budget plan put forward by Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis. But he was interrupted at every turn by shouts from his critics, including members of progressive groups such as Moveon.org and Organize Now.

Boos and shouts of “liar” were mixed with angry accusations that Ryan’s plan to change Medicare would leave those now under 55 without health insurance in their retirement, calls to eliminate the tax cuts first put in place by former President Bush and the need to raise corporate taxes rather than cut entitlement programs.

Now I know that we are about to have a hissy fit of epic proportions over the “thuggish behavior” of the left at these townhall meetings. It’s just how they roll. So be prepared with this little primer on how the right was instructed to conduct themselves by the wealthy backers of the Tea Party:

Missing from the reporting of these stories is the fact that much of these protests are coordinated by public relations firms and lobbyists who have a stake in opposing President Obama’s reforms. The lobbyist-run groups Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks, which orchestrated the anti-Obama tea parties earlier this year, are now pursuing an aggressive strategy to create an image of mass public opposition to health care and clean energy reform. A leaked memo from Bob MacGuffie, a volunteer with the FreedomWorks website Tea Party Patriots, details how members should be infiltrating town halls and harassing Democratic members of Congress: Tea Bagger Memo

– Artificially Inflate Your Numbers: “Spread out in the hall and try to be in the front half. The objective is to put the Rep on the defensive with your questions and follow-up. The Rep should be made to feel that a majority, and if not, a significant portion of at least the audience, opposes the socialist agenda of Washington.” – Be Disruptive Early And Often: “You need to rock-the-boat early in the Rep’s presentation, Watch for an opportunity to yell out and challenge the Rep’s statements early.” – Try To “Rattle Him,” Not Have An Intelligent Debate: “The goal is to rattle him, get him off his prepared script and agenda. If he says something outrageous, stand up and shout out and sit right back down. Look for these opportunities before he even takes questions.”

The memo above also resembles the talking points being distributed by FreedomWorks for pushing an anti-health reform assault all summer. Patients United, a front group maintained by Americans for Prosperity, is currently busing people all over the country for more protests against Democratic members. Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX), chairman of the NRCC, has endorsed the strategy, telling the Politico the days of civil town halls are now “over.”

Just so we’re clear about the new rules of behavior at townhall meetings. They weren’t changed by the progressives.

.

Firefighters: Who needs ’em?

Who needs em?

by digby

So the Firefighters Union is giving up on national politics and is putting their money elsewhere. It seems they don’t feel their money has been well spent since they don’t appear to have any allies in Washington. Well played, Democrats. Rick Perlstein addressed this problem in a piece in the NY Daily News a week or so ago:

You’ve seen them: Ordinary white Americans from Wisconsin or Indiana, protest signs aimed at treasonous politicians.

No, not the Tea Partyers, though that description fits them, too. I write of the ones on the left, the thousands petitioning their governors against budget cuts and the slashing of union rights.

But while John Boehner has declared “no daylight” between himself and the Tea Party, one wag joked that President Obama had more to say about whether the Chicago Bears would get into the Super Bowl than the union protests in Wisconsin.

His silence has liberals baffled. The Wisconsin protesters’ demands – a focus on jobs; preservation of collective bargaining; resistance to cuts in social services – poll well among the general public. So why are Democrats leaving this political energy on the table?

Excellent question. I think the only logical answer is that they don’t agree with it.

Meanwhile, here’s an in-depth look at just who is funding the anti-union crusade that seems to have come out of nowhere:

Behind the onslaught is a well-funded network of conservative think tanks that you’ve probably never heard of. Conceived by the same conservative ideologues who helped found the Heritage Foundation, the State Policy Network (SPN) is a little-known umbrella group with deep ties to the national conservative movement. Its mission is simple: to back a constellation of state-level think tanks loosely modeled after Heritage that promote free-market principles and rail against unions, regulation, and tax increases. By blasting out policy recommendations and shaping lawmakers’ positions through briefings and private meetings, these think tanks cultivate cozy relationships with GOP politicians. And there’s a long tradition of revolving door relationships between SPN staffers and state governments. While they bill themselves as independent think tanks, SPN’s members frequently gather to swap ideas. “We’re all comrades in arms,” the network’s board chairman told the National Review in 2007.

read on …

As Perlstein points out, grassroots movements have historically been great resources for presidents who sought to be “transformational.” In fact, there’s a case to be made that it can’t happen without them. But then I suppose it depends on what kind of transformation you seek to make. If the vision is to further the interests of business, then going where the real money is makes sense. Besides, we’re into ersatz movements these days. The real thing can get messy. And expensive.

.

Catfood Formula: the Gang of Six has some special treats in store

Catfood Formula

by digby

Lot’s of twaddle today about the deficit ceiling kabuki, but this speculation from the National Journal wraps it all up in the Gang of Six, which sounds reasonable:

The most closely watched fail-safe proposal, however, may come from the bipartisan “Gang of Six” senators. The group, comprised of Conrad and Sens. Mark Warner, D-Va., Dick Durbin, D-Ill., Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, and Tom Coburn, R-Okla., hopes to release a sweeping plan to cut the deficit as soon as next week. Their proposal, based on a plan offered last year by the heads of Obama’s bipartisan fiscal commission, would seek to cut spending by $3 trillion and increase tax revenue by $1 billion over a decade.

Two Senate sources briefed on Gang of Six talks said they expect the senators to propose multiple “pieces,” that could receive votes at separate points this year.

The sources said that in addition to a long-term deficit-cutting plan, the senators are preparing to recommend a relatively simple process under which Congress commits to meet deficit-reduction targets, to both mandatory and discretionary spending over perhaps a decade. The plan would also set targets for revenue increases. It would impose “draconian” cuts if the targets are not met, one senior aide said. That proposal could then be linked to the debt-ceiling vote.

A key to the proposal would be the exclusion of specific cuts. That will allow Congress to defer fights it cannot complete in the next month or two while committing to future reductions.

It remains to be seen how strict the plan would be—Congress has previously created exemptions to limit the effect of similar approaches, like Paygo. But the plan would at least serve the political and legislative means for passage of the debt-limit increase.

Conrad has said he is holding off on offering a budget resolution to see if the gang reaches a deal soon. If it does, a senior Democratic aide said Conrad could then include a fiscal 2012 budget plan in the fail-safe mechanism that would be voted on in conjunction with the debt limit.

The aides said they expected the gang to unveil their both long- and short-term deficit-cutting plans as soon as the middle of next week.

Spokesmen for Coburn, Durbin, Warner, Conrad, and Chambliss said the senators have not reached an agreement, noting that no proposal is agreed on until a complete deal is reached by gang members. The aides said the group may not offer a plan next week. All declined to comment on the specifics of the potential proposal.

In public appearances in recent days, gang members have made it clear that their long-term deficit-cutting plan would include a trade in which Democrats agree to a long-term effort to trim spending on Social Security benefits while GOP members back efforts to increase tax revenue by ending tax deductions or loopholes. The package will not include any increases in tax rates, according to senators and multiple aides.

Well hell, who would have ever predicted that?

Norquist is making noise about how these “tax expenditures” are really tax increases and therefore, violate the pledge, which could really complicate this plan. The truth is that he needn’t worry — the only “exemptions” and “loopholes” that will be ended will be those that hit the parasites and favor liberal interests, but he seems sincere in this, which makes it a heavier lift, at least in the House. They’d probably have to pass this pig with mostly Democratic support. I would actually be fairly sure that the Progressive Caucus would hold the line on this one -=– there’s no upside for Progressives in this deficit reduction hysteria at all — but that probably means they’ll put in some provision that will force them to make another Soloman’s choice.

I think the best of all possible worlds for the Republicans would be to vote against the President’s deficit reduction plan because it “raises taxes” and have the Democrats take the heat for doing the unpopular thing with both spending cuts a tax hikes. For all the Village nonsense about being “brave” by defying the will of the people, I think they’d be thrilled with a vote for the failed Ryan plan on their record and a vote against a successful plan that can be spun as both raising taxes and cutting Social Security and Medicare. Let’s hope the President knows how destructive that would be for him, the Party and the country is planning ahead.

Update: Greg Sargent makes the point, which I think is correct, that the Democrats are trying to thread the needle between the public’s conviction that the deficit is an immediate existential crisis and the fact that they don’t want their programs cut. But I can’t help but point out that the public’s perception is the result of Democratic Party political malpractice in that they allowed Pete Peterson to go unanswered for the past two years — indeed, they actively helped him.

We are in a period of protracted high unemployment, anemic growth and a very sick housing sector that just isn’t recovering. Talking about deficits at a time like this is the equivalent of fiddling while Rome burns. And the Democrats have done almost nothing to change this conversation. So they are threading needles of their own making. And I’m not honestly sure they aren’t fine with it.

If, in the end, they manage to lift the payroll cap on SS in exchange for cuts in defense or something like that nobody will be happier to give them kudos for savviness than I. But I have a sneaking suspicion that threading this needle isn’t going to result in something quite that palatable. Hoping to be wrong, of course, as always.