Month: July 2011

Building the memes

by digby

Here’s an ad i just saw on television, brought to you by Karl Rove and Crossroads GPS:

You’ll notice they aren’t saying not to raise the debt ceiling. And they are completely shameless about Medicare, caring not one whit that the Ryan plan which the GOP all voted for turns it into a skimpy voucher program.

This is about creating perceptions and the one that matters is they are portraying this woman as someone who voted for Obama but has lost faith because of a bad economic performance caused by debt. This is their theme and this notion that they are going to let him “take it off the table” is ludicrous.

He’ll be much better off at this point if they stop him from enacting deficit reduction. At least the Democrats could run ads saying that they offered to give the GOP everything they could possibly dream of and they still refused to take yes for an answer. It’s not great, but it’s something.

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Tom Tomorrow on the debt ceiling

by digby

This is making the rounds and well it should. As is true so often, Tom Tomorrow gets it right:

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The Public’s Cynical Assumption

by digby

Greg Sargent reports that the Republican rank and file are fools. And, by the way, so are nearly 30% of Democrats:

A new Pew poll finds that a majority of Republicans voters, and an even larger majority of Tea Party supporters, simply don’t think failing to raise the debt ceiling will lead to a crisis:

By a 53% to 30% margin, most Republicans say that it will not be a major problem if the debt ceiling is not raised by Aug. 2. The balance of opinion is the reverse among Democrats: 56% say it is absolutely essential to meet that deadline to avoid an economic crisis, 28% say it is not. Independents are more divided, though a slim 43% plurality say the country can go past Aug. 2 without major economic problems, while 32% say it is essential to raise the debt limit by this date…

Tea Party Republicans are by far the most unconvinced about the potential fallout from going past the Aug. 2 deadline. Fully 65% of Republicans and Republican leaning independents who agree with the Tea Party see no major problems if this occurs, compared with 45% of Republicans and Republican leaners who do not agree with the Tea Party.

Yes, these are the Koch’s little Frankenstiens. Did they know what they were creating?

On the other hand, I’m not sure that this particular polling result is nearly as powerful and important as one might think. Yes, these people may believe that it won’t matter if they fail to raise the debt ceiling. But I would guess that most of them are not going to vote on this issue.

Now, it’s true that some conservative Republicans in conservative districts may have to face a primary from a Tea Partier if they do it. Live by the sword die by the sword. But it’s still hard for me to believe that the two parties can’t cobble together enough votes without them.

Nate Silver had an interesting analysis of who these Republicans are relative to their districts and how they are turning the party right:

What I want to draw your attention to, however, is the difference between first-term Republicans, who appear in red in the chart, and the holdovers, who appear in black-and-white. About four-fifths of freshman Republicans are above the regression line, which is formed from the scores of the returning members. Essentially this means that 80 percent of the first-termers are more conservative than you’d “expect” based on knowing how the veteran Republicans are voting.

Through regression analysis, we can determine that the trend is highly statistically significant. (This is also true, incidentally, even if you also account for membership in the Tea Party Caucus.) Although first-term Republicans, like returning members, are somewhat sensitive to the partisanship of their districts, they are nevertheless more conservative across the board once you’ve accounted for it.
[…]
The mistake that a lot of first-term members of Congress can make is to assume that electoral environment from which they were elected is one that will persist indefinitely. Most freshmen Representatives aren’t likely to have developed particularly strong constituent services, or to have acquired positions of power within the Congress. These are the kinds of things that help a member get re-elected when the political environment becomes more challenging, as it inevitably will get sooner or later.

But those who stake out ideological positions that are out of step with the voters in their district are liable to be especially vulnerable. Political scientists generally agree that there is a relationship between the ideological views of a Congressman and the share of the vote he tends to get in subsequent elections, with more extreme and partisan members having a higher bar to clear.

So something very probably has to give for the Republicans. Even if the public has become somewhat more conservative on fiscal issues, something which I suspect is true, it is not nearly to the degree reflected in the representation in Congress.

The two most plausible paths are as follows. First, Republicans in Congress will maintain their present course toward more and more conservative views. There will be yet another wave election but this time one that breaks against them, whether in 2012, 2014, 2016 or some combination thereof. One of the more likely scenarios, for instance, is that a conservative Republican like Rick Perry is elected president in 2012 along with a Republican Congress. But the economy continues to sputter, as it often does for as many as 5 to 10 years after a financial crisis. In that case, Democrats might win back 50 or 60 or (who knows) 70 or 80 seats in 2014.

A second scenario is that the Republicans show a little bit more willingness to compromise. Perhaps not a lot, but enough so that the public decides to give both the House Republicans and President Obama another go. This is essentially what happened after 1994: although Republicans in Congress shifted to the right that year, as they have this year, they nevertheless reached a number of bipartisan compromises with President Clinton, and the parties continued to share power.

I suspect that is exactly what John Boehner and that little weasel Eric Cantor are actually going for. Yes, they have to contend with a third of their caucus being totally insane, hence Cantor’s role as the voice of their discontent. They have to play it out, let their Teabaggers have their say and then let them go their own way. This means the President must force his party to bear the burden of getting the debt ceiling raised. But considering what he’s offered, that is the best deal Republicans have ever had and I’m quite sure that many of them know it. They aren’t all stupid.

And as far as the public is concerned, the truth is that this “debt ceiling” argument is a mystifying nonsensical beltway argument that most of the people who gave an opinion on it don’t understand and don’t really care about. They are in a cynical and despairing mood and when you ask them if not raising the debt ceiling will make any difference, they say no because they don’t believe anything that politicians and other authority figures say anymore, not because they think the government’s got a secret stash of cash they can dispatch. Think of it as a protest vote — a statement of disbelief and disregard in the whole process. The particulars of this issue don’t matter and if Silver’s analysis is right, they may not even matter as much to the Tea Partier’s constituents as we think. After all, according to his calculation, these GOP congressmen are actually quite a bit more radical than they are.

I could be wrong and we may still end up blowing this up, but I don’t think Boehner and McConnell are worried about public opinion on this issue and I think they believe they can finesse their caucus into doing what needs to be done when the time comes. The issues at hand are about how to properly calibrate the political and procedural leverage they know they have. And it’s a lot of leverage.

On the other hand, this result could spook them a little bit.

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Tea Party Philosophy 101

by digby

Here’s your average right wing congressman’s take on the default crisis:

ROKITA: We’ll learn to live within our means right now, in the here and now. And this might force that issue even if the economy does or the stock market does go down, the economy might get worse. The economy is terrible it’s been terrible for years now, and the reason it’s bad is not because of a debt-ceiling vote.

The reason it’s bad is because we have people who believe that by making government bigger by keeping people on unemployment checks and on welfare we’re going to dig us out of this mess.

That’s what they think. It’s about bad people on welfare. Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose. It’s up to the GOP leadership to figure out how to deal with that. Perhaps they could consult with some special needs specialists.

I don’t think I have to remind you that Bill Clinton “took welfare off the table” 15 years ago.

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Grown ups in charge

by digby

Robert Kutner is very shrill:

As the debt doomsday of August 2 draws closer, what sort of end-game can we imagine?

The worst scenario would be for an outbreak of common sense and self-interest to overtake the extremism of the House Republican caucus. If the Republicans were to accept Obama’s proffered deal, they would weaken Social Security and Medicare — and put the Democrats’ fingerprints on the deed — depriving Democrats of their traditional defense of America’s best loved social programs. They would also get a ten-year deficit-reduction agreement that is mostly program cuts. And they would get an austerity package that guarantees high unemployment as Obama heads into a difficult re-election. And a Democratic president is offering this deal!

The Republicans would also get to savor the spectacle of a badly divided Democratic Party, as the White House twists arms of unwilling House and Senate Democrats to vote for a right-wing package.

It’s quite a drama. Who will save us from a perverse approach to deficit reduction that is bad economics and worse politics — the unreality of the Republicans, or the principled resistance of rank and file Democrats?

Obama and his advisers, weirdly, believe that his stance as “the only grownup in the room” who forces his own party to abandon its core principles for the sake of an austerity program will somehow win the gratitude of voters struggling with declining incomes and rising joblessness.

The unemployment may be stuck near ten percent, but good old Obama brokered a deal to balance the budget in 2021. So re-elect this man.

On which planet is this?

It would seem to be planet Earth, having something of a hissy fit.

He’s rooting for a clean McConnell,as I am, but all reporting indicates that it’s been dirtied up substantially to make it “palatable” to House Republicans and a disgusting sell-out for Democrats. I believe that defines bipartisan victory in the Village.

Kuttner agitates for the Democratic activist base to save Obama from himself. But I just don’t think that has much salience. After all, the polls show that the public blames Republicans for the impasse and his early fundraising shows that threats by a small number of small donors to withhold donations probably won’t make a difference. At this point we’re forced to rely on GOP intransigence (and then last minute sanity) to stop the worst from happening. I don’t think progressives are particularly relevant at the moment to any of this.It’s like Iraq — we just have to watch it play out.

By the way — does anyone think that Karl Rove will be so hamstrung by a deal that he can’t run any more of these ads in 2012?

From his point of view, it doesn’t matter if a tea partier takes out a Republican in a primary or not — he’s still going to run these ads against Democrats.

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Of course it’s an American problem too

by digby

I’ve been hearing quite a bit of fatuous chatter over the past few day about the superiority of the American press over the Brits and our alleged unwillingness to be manipulated by someone like Rupert Murdoch. Please.

John Nichols writes:

Just as Murdoch has had far too much control over politics and politicians in Britain during periods of conservative dominance—be it under an actual Tory such as former Prime Ministers Margaret Thatcher and John Major and current Prime Minister David Cameron or under a faux Tory such as former Prime Minister Tony Blair—he has had far too much control in the States. And that control, while ideological to some extent, is focused mainly on improving the bottom line for his media properties by securing for them unfair legal and regulatory advantages.

Over the past decade, as media reform groups have battled to prevent FCC and Congressional moves to undermine controls on media consolidation, Murdoch and his lobbyists been a constant presence—pushing from the other side for the lifting of limits on the amount and types of media that one corporation can own in particular communities and nationally.

The objection was never an ideological one. Media owners, editors, reporters and commentators have a right to take the positions they like. Where the trouble comes is when they seek to turn politicians and regulators into corporate handmaidens—and when they build their empires out to such an extent they can demand obedience even from those who do not share their partisan or ideological preferences.

And the corruptions of the process created by Murdoch’s manipulation are not merely a British phenomenon.

Murdoch’s political pawns in the United States have been every bit as faithful to the mogul and his media machine as the British pols.

When he appeared before the House Judiciary Committee in May of 2003, at a point when he was the chief global cheerleader for George Bush’s war with Iraq (“We basically supported…I will say supported the Bush policy,” the media mogul would later admit), Murdoch was seeking to secure ownership of the nation’s largest satellite television company while pressing for FCC rule changes that would allow him to own newspapers and broadcast outlets in the same cities and for an easing of controls on the extent to which one corporation could dominate television viewership nationally.

Did Murdoch have a hard time of it?

Not hardly.

Back in the 90s the right wing laundered their Clinton hit pieces through the British tabloids so the US media could “report” it. In the aughts, Fox News dominated the American press and helped the Bush White House with its agenda and message. It exists to spread conservative propaganda and has become so powerful that the entire political establishment is cowed by it (or is keeping their professional job prospects open.) More recently it served as the public relations arm of the Tea Party movement. Murdoch’s empire has had perhaps the most profound effect on American politics and culture of any corporation or individual of the last 20 years. We certainly didn’t escape its malevolent ethos — it’s permeated our whole society.

If Murdoch’s empire is brought down because of its sleazy, tabloid ethics my faith in justice will be restored.

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Fighting the wrong war

by digby

We seem to be making a fetish of it.

Here’s a very interesting piece by Barry Ritholz in today’s Washington Post called “Wall Street analysts and economists have this recession recovery wrong.” What makes it unusual us that it makes the case why investors should be concerned when the whole system breaks down the way this one has — the central bank is running out of gas and the political players are dysfunctional or are solving problems that don’t exist while ignoring those that do.

In the not too distant past, the market might have been inclined to rally following a horrific data point such as June’s NFP report. The assumption was that the Fed, or perhaps Congress, would respond to economic distress with its usual largess. But the immediate market reaction — selling off on the “surprisingly” bad number, and then having difficulty all last week — suggests that traders are no longer expecting a cavalry charge to save the day.

Indeed, the Federal Reserve is in no position to do much more without great distress. Markets briefly rallied Wednesday when Fed chief Ben Bernanke suggested that a QE3 was possible. But soon after he finished his congressional testimony, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas President (and FOMC voting member) Richard Fisher said the Fed had “exhausted our ammunition.” And Thursday, Bernanke scared markets further, saying the central bank wasn’t yet ready to take additional steps to boost the economy.

Markets gave up most of their rally on the recognition that the cavalry might not come this time.

Even with the Fed out of the picture, investors should not expect any relief from Congress: The legislative body in charge of taxing and spending seems incapable of accomplishing much these days. We are more likely to see counterproductive austerity measures than anything else.

Investors, it looks like you are on your own this time.

On the other hand, these are the same guys who finance lunatics and lackeys to run these institutions and they are so short sighted they didn’t care if their greed killed off the golden goose. It was only a matter of time before it caught up with them.

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“Don’t set up a situation where you’re guaranteed to be disappointed,”

by digby

I co-sign what Dday says here, which is excellent and I urge you to read it. I would only add that “compromise” can only create progress if somebody in the negotiation is fighting for progress. Belittling those who do that, even from the outside, is to automatically turn compromise into capitulation.

This is a very, very revealing video for all the reasons Dday outlines in his post. I would imagine that the students in that room were riveted by the message and took it to heart. Let me amend that: the progressive students in that room. The conservatives are taught a different view. They are the idealists now, believing that if they stand up for what they believe they can change the world. According to the greatest inspiration for progressive youth in generations, liberalism is all about transactions and dealmaking and lowered expectations. It’s quite a switch.

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Long walk off a short Piers

by digby

People are starting to wonder why nobody’s asking CNN’s Piers Morgan about what he might know about this Murdoch scandal since he is a former editor at News of the World. Think Progress reports:

A CNN spokesperson confirmed the lack of coverage to Ad Week last week, “saying that the network hasn’t covered the matter because Morgan has not been officially called to testify in England.”

Morgan himself did address the issue on Monday, telling a CBS talk show that neither he nor his former publication have broken any laws.

The allegations are especially troubling given this passage from Morgan’s 2005 book, The Insider: The Private Diaries of a Scandalous Decade:

Apparently if you don’t change the standard security code that every phone comes with, then anyone can call your number and, if you don’t answer, tap in the standard four digit code to hear all your messages. I’ll change mine just in case, but it makes me wonder how many public figures and celebrities are aware of this little trick.

As Ad Week notes, “Morgan has been sounding a fairly sympathetic note about Murdoch.” In the CBS interview, he said, “I’m not going to join the Murdoch bashing. I’ve always been a big admirer of his. He gave me my first break in journalism. He made me editor of [News of the World] when I was 28 years old.”

And there’s this, which I wrote about earlier, from a radio interview that Gordon Skene caught over at Newstalgia:

I have a lot of sympathy for the people at the top because I don’t think they had a clue what was going on. And I think it’s one of those situations where until you know exactly what the scale of the problem is it’s very hard to deal with it.

But what I do find stomach churning was your mate Hugh Grant on here the other day.A guy who has used the media. This is my problem with all the phone hacking victims. They’ve all used the media over the years to feather their nests, buy their houses flog their movies, sell out their concerts and now they’re squealing like little pigs ove them edia and I just think it’s perspective time again.

The Guardian is leading the charge on phone hacking. They believe it’s wrong for any newspaper to publish material that has been gained unlawfully and yet the Guardian was the newspaper that published Wikileaks, which is openly an illegal form of material that’s been acquired illegally that was very dangerous to many parts of the security services and the armed forces. They knew that and willfully published it and their arguments is well it was all in the public interst. Really? Colonel Ghadaffi’s lovers? Which is one of the Wilileaks revelations? That’s in the public interest?

There is no difference. It is sanctimonious, hypocritical bilge by the Guardian by the BBC — sorry, they’ve piled in too — by stars like Hugh Grant. The BBC, in my experience when I was a newspaper editory, you break a big juicy story, a big old scandal, and then what would happen is the Guardian and BBC the next day would say, “there are disgusting revelations in the Daily Mirror or news of the World so repellant that we are now going to talk about them for the next 20 minutes” and in the case of the Guardian we are going to run 17 pages.

You can’t have your cake and eat it. If the BBC and the Guardian feel so strongly about this pruriant form of journalism then they should never cover it again.

He’s right about the mainstream media being perfectly happy to run with scandals, but I think he’s rather purposefully missing the point. Hacking into celebrities’ answering machines is criminal. Hacking into crime victims’ answering machines is just sick. And turning it all into a backscratching exercise with the police is a threat to a free and democratic society.

Yes, the Ghadaffi lovers story exposed in Wikileaks was not really a matter of national interest. But “big juicy scandals” of the tabloid variety are hardly the main thrust of Wikileaks. And as far as I know, Wikileaks hasn’t been blackmailing politicians with threats to expose their dirty personal laundry if they refuse to play ball. (It’s possible, but I haven’t heard of it.)

Piers Morgan is a prick. And sooner or later CNN is going to have to deal with this. At the very least the celebrities who are his bread and butter should ask themselves if it’s worth whoring themselves out to someone who clearly has no respect for them whatsoever. He apparently thinks that if you use the media to sell something you’ve completely given up your rights.

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Winning The Future

by digby

This is pretty amazing. I grew up in the military and around it and I have to say that until recently I couldn’t have imagined active duty gay service members openly marching in a gay pride parade:

Full coverage here.

Despite all the procedural battles still going on, this one is a win for the good guys. And President Obama and the military brass deserve credit for getting it done when they had the chance. You can’t underestimate the symbolic value of it even beyond the individual right it finally acknowledges.

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