Month: August 2011

And now for some good news…

[A]bortion rights and reproductive justice activists around the country took Operation Rescue’s threatened actions in Germantown very seriously. Grassroots activists and organizations poured our time, resources and hearts into supporting a “Summer Celebration of Choice” taking place Sunday, July 31, through Monday, August 8, declared by none other than Dr. LeRoy Carhart himself.

The result was, in a word, awesome. From about 7:00 every morning to 10:00 (or later) every night, activists from 18 states stood out in 100-degree heat, intense pouring rain and everything in between to stand with Dr. Carhart, his excellent staff and the women they serve with dignity, compassion and respect. At many points during those nine days we outnumbered the antis. Members of the community kept stopping by with doughnuts, drinks and thank yous for our service. There was no violence, the clinic stayed open, and we did a great job representing the pro-choice majority in this country in the face of an extreme onslaught of misinformation, lies and hatred.

Read on for her list of observations about what this means going forward. There’s a lot of good news there, but this one really made me happy:

Young women are already leading the bulk of today’s boots-on-the-ground movement for abortion rights, in truly intergenerational partnerships with older women. There is a lot of noise made in the news media about younger feminists not existing, not caring about abortion rights, or spending all their time being dismissed by older feminists. It would be nice if the reporters perpetuating that tired old storyline would have come to Germantown, because what they would have seen was obvious: Young women were the vast majority of those standing out in the streets — in leading and not merely supporting roles — in support of Dr. Carhart. It was young women working with feminist women and men of all ages who sent Operation Rescue home.

It’s true that there’s a nasty stereotype out there, mostly perpetuated by the snotty right wing harpy faction, that all that’s left of the pro-choice movement is a bunch of bitter old bags like me. It is fantastic to hear that this call to arms was taken up by the younger generation. It gives me hope, it really does.

*It must be noted, however, that much of the energy of the forced childbirth movement is now focused on the political systems of all 50 states. They aren’t going away.

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Christian Army

by digby

Sarah Posner picked up on my post of yesterday about the Tea Party’s social conservatism and added some important information. And she pointed me to this fascinating article by a woman who’s been inside the Tea Party for the past two years. If you have any doubts about what these folks are all about, this should lay them to rest:

When I started going to Tea Party meetings two years ago, I was sympathetic. Just after attending one in North Dakota in August of 2009, I wrote: “Most tea partiers are not bad people. They’re just mad. In many meaningful ways, today’s Tea Party attendees’ lives have gotten consistently worse for the last 20 years, regardless of which party was in power.” I concluded that trying to figure out what they wanted was a dead end because what they wanted was simply to complain—that the Tea Party “is not a group of listen and respond; this is a group of respond and respond.”

Two years of Tea Party functions later, and I finally know what the Tea Party wants: A Christian nation.

She profiles some of the people she met, including a born again politician/children’s book writer, whose latest book boasts this lovely illustration:

It’s quite a story. It may be true that the “Tea Party” brand is no longer the latest fad, but right wing social conservatism has been with us for a long, long time and as Posner points out in her piece:

I’d caution against liberals feeling too complacent about the religious right’s unpopularity. The “religious right is dead” obituary is frequently written but always turns out to be wrong.

If someone like Bachman or Perry make it to the White House they will be the most socially conservative national politicians ever — largely thanks to the army of Christian Soldiers who have devoted themselves to the task for the past 30 years.

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Paris Hilton weeps for all of us

by David Atkins (“thereisnospoon”)

The “plight of the poor wealthy” genre of journalism is back, this time disguised as an article about the plight of the poor luxury retailers who supposedly depend on them:

A week ago, Michael Heller was ready to drop thousands of dollars on a Jaeger-LeCoultre watch that he’d been coveting. But the recent stock market turmoil made him rethink the splurge.

“Instead of making an impulse purchase on a $3,000 or $4,000 item, we’re going to wait six months,” the 40-year-old management consultant said while shopping in Beverly Hills, Calif. If things don’t rebound quickly, he added, further belt-tightening could occur “very soon.”

That kind of thinking has spooked high-end retailers, who have watched nervously this month as stocks fluctuated wildly.

Many fear a repeat of 2008, when the market crash led to deep cuts in spending among the wealthy and forced retailers to offer discounts as high as 70 percent off fresh designer merchandise. Luxury was the worst-hit retail sector during the recession.

In Beverly Hills this week, Pol’ Atteu said the stock market turbulence was especially disappointing because it came just as things were starting to look up at his namesake haute couture women’s boutique.

“We were all pumped, and now it’s like — boom. Another hit,” he said. “It’s hard to recover, and emotionally it’s draining.”

The luxury sector has been a consistent bright spot in the retail industry this year, posting robust sales month after month as wealthy shoppers spent freely on designer handbags, shoes and jewelry. Luxury brands have been selling out of products even as they’ve raised prices. Chanel, for instance, has seen its $4,300 jumbo classic flap bag fly off shelves despite a $600 price increase in June.

The poor dears. I’m sure things will be better for everyone once the Super Committee throws the social security funds of the

Straight to hell

by digby

It sure looks like somebody really wants Mitt Romney to get the nomination:

Karl Rove called the notion that the U.S. is Christian “offensive” on Fox News last night. “We are based on the Judeo-Christian ethic, we derive a lot from it, but if you say we’re a Christian nation, what about the Jews, what about the Muslims, what about the non-believers?” Rove said the president, in one of his books, inaccurately quoted Rove as calling the U.S a “Christian nation,” a misquote he was clearly offended by.

I’m not saying that, by the way, because Mormonism is “weird” or that it’s not Christian. I’m saying it because Rove is indirectly appealing to Republicans who are not members of the Christian Right Tea Party to come out and vote for the one guy who isn’t speaking in tongues on the campaign trail. Rove would not say this out of turn.

I’m also guessing that there’s quite a bit of bad Texas blood at play here between the Bushes and Rick Perry. (He went after Perry for his remark about Bernanke and he could have easily swept it under the rug.) The twitter was all atwitter yesterday with word that Rove and Ailes were keeping their fingers crossed for Christie to change his mind, ostensibly because the “business wing” and Rove and Ailes are desperately looking for a white knight. Personally, I think either Romney or Perry will do as they’re told, but maybe the big money Boyz are worried they can’t get elected.

In any case, it’s fun watching the Republicans fight amongst themselves for once. I can’t wait until the primary really heats up.

Update: Be sure to check out Tom Tomorrow if you haven’t already.

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The Grand Bargain & Jobs Jubilee

by digby

Wow, this is inspiring:

WSJ – Together We Can Beat the Deficit

By PATTY MURRAY, MAX BAUCUS AND JOHN KERRY

Our country has long been a beacon of light in the world because the American people always come together when times are tough. Over the past few months, in debating the debt ceiling and deficit reduction, that light of common cause has appeared to flicker at times in our nation’s capital. As appointees to the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction—12 members of Congress charged with finding $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction over the next decade—we hope to remedy that.

[…]

Make no mistake, this is an important moment for our country. Millions of Americans are still hurting, working overtime to pay the bills, struggling to find a job and a way forward for their families. Trillions of dollars in private capital are sitting on the sidelines because businesses are not yet confident enough in our economy or in their lawmakers to invest in the future. These families and businesses are demanding that this new committee work together to overcome the partisanship and brinksmanship of recent months and put our fiscal house in order.

The Standard & Poor’s downgrade of America’s credit rating was an unprecedented wake-up call for those who have for too long acted as if overheated rhetoric and dysfunction in Washington has no consequences for Main Street and working families. The shockwaves that roiled financial markets after the downgrade was a condemnation of Congress’s inability to address the unsustainable trajectory of our current fiscal policies.

[…]

None of us ran for office arguing that the United States should see its credit rating downgraded. Nobody ever campaigned in favor of mountains of debt or championed the idea that every American’s interest rates should go up. And no one has ever gone into a debate pledging that China and India should own this economic century because we can’t make our democracy work here at home.

This moment demands leadership, but it also demands consensus. The Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction was set up to require bipartisanship, and we are going to work hard to achieve it. We know that each of us comes into this committee with clear ideas on the issues and what our priorities are for our nation. But a solution can only be found by merging these priorities across party lines and finding a solution that works for the American people.

We know that our goal is to reduce spending. But we also know that America faces not just a budget deficit but also a jobs deficit. Nobody on this committee would be happy if we reduced the budget deficit but even more Americans end up losing their jobs.

So we are ready to get to work with our colleagues on both sides of the aisle to report out a balanced plan, with the shared sacrifices this moment requires. One that moves past the partisan rancor, puts our nation back on strong fiscal footing, and allows us to continue shining bright in the world in this generation and for generations to come.

We are so screwed: confidence fairy, “shared sacrifice”, “balanced approach”, China bashing, the whole nine yards. But never fear — it gets even more convoluted and confusing:

To pay for his jobs ideas, Obama will challenge the new “super committee” in Congress to go well beyond its goal of finding $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction, with part of the savings used to cover some of his economy-jolting help without sinking the nation deeper in debt. But there, too, Obama already faces trouble from Republican members who have ruled out tax hikes.

[…]

The final details of Obama’s new economic plan have not been decided, and it is expected to be broader than the proposals known so far.

It is likely to include tax cuts to help the middle class, a build-up-America construction program that goes beyond any infrastructure proposal Obama has had already, and targeted help for the particularly worrisome group of people who have remained unemployed for many months in a row.

That last will be the liberal bait, of course.

I guess the “compromise” the SuperCommittee Dems will be agreeing to is to sell-off the safety net (because the pain won’t hit for a while) in exchange for some mealy mouthed tax cut stimulus and maybe a little infrastructure to goose the economy. Oh, and hopefully some minor help for the long term unemployed — until the election anyway.

I’ve got a stupid, barely applicable family metaphor for you, since everyone loves them so much. Suppose you found yourself out of a job with some long term debt — say a mortgage — on your hands. You have numerous friends and family offering you loans at very low interest to help you get back on your feet, maybe spruce up your job search wardrobe, get a new car so you can commute to work. Under these circumstances, does it make financial sense to kick your spouse into the street, cash out your IRA (with penalties) and sell your house at a loss instead of taking the money? I suppose there are some people who would find that virtuous, but the reality is that it’s penny wise and pound foolish to destroy your retirement savings, it’s cruel and pointless to kick your spouse into the street and selling your house at a loss is dumb unless you have no other choice.

The country is having no problem borrowing money. Somebody — people who lend money — seem to think the US of A is good for it. So, there’s no reason to sell off our future in order to get a few temporary tax breaks and infrastructure projects done. But that’s what is shaping up to be the Grand Bargain and Jobs Jubilee of 2012.

Meanwhile, back on planet Earth:

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has released its recommendations for the Joint Committee on Deficit Reduction, or “supercommittee.”

In its letter, the Chamber’s chief lobbyist calls for “reform of entitlement programs” like Medicare and Medicaid (which means cutting spending on these programs). On taxes, “the group sees on opportunity to reduce tax rates” and does not want the committee to “single out specific industries or individuals for punishment”—which means oil companies, hedge fund managers, or corporate jet owners.

Yeah, I think we can forget about that “revenue” business.

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Lying down on the tracks

by digby

Rick Perlstein has a great piece up in TIME today responding to the fact that Obama is reportedly reading his epic history Nixonland. He assumes the President is reading it because he’s interested in learning about governance in a time of great political division. But he hopes he sees the other narrative in the book — about how Democrats win, and why.

He boils it down to this:

It concerns the two major axes upon which major national elections get fought. Sometimes they become battles over the cultural and social anxieties ordinary Americans suffer. Other times they are showdowns about middle-class anxieties when the free market fails. Normally, in the former sort of election, Republicans win. In the latter, Democrats do—as we saw in 2008, when the tide turned after John McCain said that “the fundamentals of the economy are strong.”

I think that’s right. When people are anxious about cultural change they tend to vote for the conservative GOP, for obvious reasons. When they are anxious about their economic security, Democrats are the ones with the credibility. Or they used to be. For the last 60 years the Democrats would hold up their achievements and say, “this is the deal we got for you” — and in times of economic hardship, the American people knew a good deal when they saw one.

I would never have thought that Democrats would greet a major economic downturn with promises to cut those programs. It increases people’s anxiety about their personal future and takes away the most important rationale for trusting Democrats. It’s extremely odd to see this happening.

Perlstein concludes with this:

Here’s what LBJ knew that ­McGovern didn’t: There are few or no historical instances in which saying clearly what you are for and what you are against makes Americans less divided. But there is plenty of evidence that attacking the wealthy has not made them more divided. After all, the man who said of his own day’s plutocrats, “I welcome their hatred,” also assembled the most enduring political coalition in U.S. history.

The Republicans will call it “class warfare.” Let them. Done right, economic populism cools the political climate. Just knowing that the people in power are willing to lie down on the tracks for them can make the middle much less frantic. Which makes America a better place. And incidentally makes Democrats win.

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Wise Man and Best Friend

by digby

Recall that this man is considered a Very Serious Person, member of the Gang of Six and close personal friend of President Obama when he was in the Senate:

“Show me where in the Constitution the federal government is responsible for your health care?” Coburn said.

He went on to say that government programs such as Medicare are primarily responsible for rapidly rising health-care costs, and that Medicare has made the medical system worse.

“You can’t tell me the system is better now than it was before Medicare,” he said.

Coburn agreed that some people received poor care – or no care – before Medicare was enacted in the 1960s, but said communities worked together to make sure most people received needed medical attention.

He also conceded that doctors and hospitals often went unpaid for their efforts, or accepted baked goods or chickens in partial payment.

Earlier, in Langley, Coburn partially deflected criticism of President Barack Obama – and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke – by blaming the country’s financial woes on Congress. He described his colleagues as “a class of career elitists” and “cowards,” and at one point, talking about his frustrations, said, “It’s just a good thing I can’t pack a gun on the Senate floor.”

But Coburn also said most members of Congress are good people with good intentions.

Responding to a man in Langley who asked if Obama “wants to destroy America,” Coburn said the president is “very bright” and loves his country but has a political philosophy that is “goofy and wrong.”

Obama’s “intent is not to destroy, his intent is to create dependency because it worked so well for him,” he said.

“As an African-American male,” Coburn said, Obama received “tremendous advantage from a lot of these programs.”

Gosh, his good friend Barack must be so surprised to hear what he really thinks about his achievments. But it is a good illustration of how a certain subset of American assholes really think about the President. (As if Tom Coburn is intellectually superior to Barack Obama …good God.)

Some of us are not surprised by this. After all, he ran for office claiming that lesbianism was so rampant in the public schools that they could only let one girl go into the bathrooms at a time. He’s not all there and never has been. And yet, this loon was until recently considered one of the wise men of the Senate who was going to cut an epic Grand Bargain to fix every problem in America for all time.

I would alert the Capitol police to keep an eye on him. He’s just that nuts.

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Another One Bites the Dust

by David Atkins (“thereisnospoon”)

Fellow blogger Marta Evry is a good friend of mine and great activist writing at Venice for Change. She is an Emmy-nominated film editor and longtime Obama supporter who has done tremendous work with the , particularly on their California Closed video. She has had much more patience with the Obama Administration than I have, and was much more deeply involved with Obama for America/Organizing for America than I was as a simple volunteer precinct captain and caucus captain in the 2008 Democratic Primary, and precinct captain in the general election.

But even she has reached her breaking point:

OFA’s Contempt For The Left: It’s Not A Bug, It’s A Feature

So the interwebs were all a-Twitter when this came over the transom today:

Obama Campaign Staffer Sends Out Email Bashing Paul Krugman And ‘Firebagger Lefty Blogosphere’

After reposting the Huffington Post story I wrote about earlier, Marta concludes:

A few hours later, an Obama campaign spokesman, Katie Hogan, tried to put some distance between OFA and the staffer, “The views expressed in this email do not represent the views of the campaign.”

Which is all very well and good, but here’s the deal – whether it was Rahm Emanuel calling progressive organizations “fucking retarded”, Robert Gibbs castigating “the professional left” or Obama himself, who lashed out at vocal critics who thought he gave too much away on the tax cut deal, saying “this is the public option all over again” – Mr. Sandoval’s email represented exactly what the views of the campaign are.

Closer to home, I reported on this blog how an OFA staffer in Southern California posted a story on their Facebook wall comparing liberals critical of the Obama tax deal to Tea Party members. Minutes later, in an epic example of #organizerfail, the same OFA staffer puts out an “ask” for volunteers to come out to California headquarters to phone bank…

Look, I know a number of great, dedicated OFA staffers, but the organization as a whole has degenerated from a powerful way for the grassroots to create real social change to a cheerleading, insular shell – it’s only purpose to redirect that energy into Obama’s next campaign. The staffer might not speak for OFA, but he certainly is reflecting the prevalent attitude coming from Washington.

In 2008, I took a six-month unpaid leave of absence to work on the Obama campaign. In fact, I was a Regional Field Director in Southern California. I also maxed out my campaign donations – the first time I’ve ever done that in my life.

Not in 2012. Next year, I’ll be turning my focus on retaking the House, keeping the Senate, and electing good Democrats in local races.

I highly recommend many of you do the same.

It’s true that many online progressives have been fed up with the Obama Administration for some time now. That’s been apparent all over the liberal blogosphere. But in fairness to the Administration’s defenders, most of those folks were never the types to do the grunt work of attending meetings, licking envelopes, running data scanners, managing difficult personalities, taking care of volunteers, and especially phonebanking and walking door to door in rain, snow and blazing sun talking to strangers while carrying campaign literature anyway. It’s easy to vituperate meaningless insults into a an online ether. It’s a lot harder to herd cats thanklessly in an unpaid capacity in a hectic organization, and do the boring hard work that it takes to push Democrats to victory, and conservatives into electoral oblivion.

But the Administration is seriously whistling past the graveyard at this point. They are reaching a tipping point. If folks like Marta Evry and I are ready to hop off the train, it’s not just angry cheetos-munching bloggers they’re going to lose. They’re going to lose the activist base that powered them to victory in 2008. If they think it’s going to come back just out of fear of Michele Bachmann or Rick Perry, they’re sorely mistaken.

I have crazy Republicans in my own backyard who terrify me, too–and getting rid of them will actually make a more immediate impact in my county, my state, and my personal life. I don’t have to lift a finger to help the President in order to help the Democratic Party, and neither do folks like Marta. I won’t be traveling to Nevada or Arizona for the President’s re-election campaign like I did in 2008. I’ll be sticking in my own California backyard, helping local progressive Democrats win office. People whose positions and negotiation styles I know I can count on. People who can make progressive dreams come true in California, since it has become abundantly clear they will not come true in Washington, D.C. Not even with 60 Democratic Senators and a big majority in the House.

And I know I’m not alone in this. If the Administration wants to take a bet that there aren’t enough people like me and Marta out there to make a difference to their field campaign, they’re free to do so.

But it would be a bad bet.

Drawing the line

by digby

I wrote earlier about President Obama comparing negotiating with the congress to negotiating with his wife by babbling something about her buying dresses and him keeping his golf clubs. But I missed this one:

“Everybody cannot get 100 percent of what they want. Now, for those of you who are married, there is an analogy here. I basically let Michelle have 90 percent of what she wants. But, at a certain point, I have to draw the line and say, ‘Give me my little 10 percent.’ ”

Yikes.

On the other hand, as Dowd concluded in her column: maybe Michelle should be the one negotiating with the Republicans…

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On the other hand …

by digby

Following up on David’s post below, I’ll just say that I also agree with Ezra on this:

Paul Krugman is one op-ed columnist. Firedog Lake is one Web site. They have readers. But they are not the state of Ohio. Time and again, however, we see evidence that they have gotten deep inside the White House’s head. In letters, in offhand comments, in outbursts at press conferences, in my personal reporting, members of the Obama administration and members of the Obama reelection campaign will let slip that they are dwelling and worrying over these arguments. They may not agree with them. They may not think they’re fair, or sophisticated, or useful. But they’re thinking about them. And if you’re the “professional left,” that’s exactly what you want.

What’s the old saying? First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.

Update: In the comment section of the FoxNews story about this, I find this comment:

One-hundred-fifty-one years ago, in his address at Cooper Union, Abraham

Lincoln, the founder of the Republican Party, addressed his opponents bitterly:

“Your purpose, then, plainly stated, is that you will destroy the Government,

unless you be allowed to construe and enforce the Constitution as you please,

on all points in dispute between you and us. You will rule or ruin in all

events.”

I’m fairly sure the professional left are the slave owning Southern secessionists in this version of the story. You can’t make this stuff up.

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