Month: January 2012

Claud Rains, please pick up the white courtesy telephone

by digby

I’m shocked, I tell you, shocked to find out that Michele Bachman was stabbed in the back by her pals, the social conservatives.

Rival presidential candidate Rick Santorum’s Iowa coalitions director, Jamie Johnson, sent out an email saying that children’s lives would be harmed if the nation had a female president. […]

“The question then comes, ‘Is it God’s highest desire, that is, his biblically expressed will, … to have a woman rule the institutions of the family, the church, and the state?’ ” Johnson’s email said…

[H]e refused to back away from the substance of the email, saying “I was sharing my personal reflections with a friend…[T]hey were reflections on over 25 years of formal, theological study [based in] classical Christian doctrine.”

After Bachmann left the race, several of her advisers pointed to sexism as a contributing factor. “We did believe that sexism — I use the stronger word misogyny — was at play,” said Peter Waldron, her faith outreach coordinator.

Waldron said that several influential pastors called for her to drop out of the race, reasoning “that a female could not be a civil magistrate.” Johnson himself is a pastor at a central Iowa church.

Now where would they get an idea like that?

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Straight up racism, no dogwhistle necessary

by digby

James Fallows has some reader follow-ups to an earlier discussion of Newtie’s “food stamp president” quip. And they’ve made me rethink whether or not this is a real dogwhistle.

One of his readers says that it wasn’t racist in the least, that it was simply a dry, philosophical point about the virtues of hard work. This, of course, is nonsense. I quoted this yesterday, but it bears repeating since this is all taking place in South Carolina, the home of Lee Atwater, who famously said this:

Atwater: As to the whole Southern strategy that Harry S. Dent, Sr. and others put together in 1968, opposition to the Voting Rights Act would have been a central part of keeping the South. Now [the new Southern Strategy of Ronald Reagan] doesn’t have to do that. All you have to do to keep the South is for Reagan to run in place on the issues he’s campaigned on since 1964 and that’s fiscal conservatism, balancing the budget, cut taxes, you know, the whole cluster.

Questioner: But the fact is, isn’t it, that Reagan does get to the Wallace voter and to the racist side of the Wallace voter by doing away with legal services, by cutting down on food stamps?

Atwater: You start out in 1954 by saying, “Ni**er, ni**er, ni**er.” By 1968 you can’t say “ni**er” — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I’m not saying that. But I’m saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me — because obviously sitting around saying, “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Ni**er, ni**er.”

This brings me to the Fallows reader who changed my mind on this. This South Carolinian claims that Newtie’s “food stamp president” isn’t a real dogwhistle at all (which implies something designed to fly under the radar.) He says this is just straight up racist, and I think that’s probably right.

If Newtie were saying this about a white president, it would indicate sympathy or pandering to African Americans, a standard slam against liberals. But the president himself is a black man, which changes the context considerably. After all, as Fallows points out he could have picked any number of ways to express the idea that he’s been bad for the economy: “foreclosure president”, “bailout president”, “pink-slip president”. Picking food-stamps goes directly to Atwater’s comments above, where the questioner even brings up food stamps as a way to appeal to the Wallace voter.

Atwater thought these racist appeals would be totally abstract by now, and for many people it is. But when you have a black president in a time of economic turmoil in which millions of people have lost their jobs, using phrases like “food stamp president” isn’t abstract at all.

Recall what Gingrich originally said:

More people are on food stamps today because of Obama’s policies than ever in history. I would like to be the best paycheck president in American history. Now, there’s no neighborhood I know of in America where if you went around and asked people, “Would you rather your children had food stamps or paychecks,” you wouldn’t [SIC] end up with a majority saying they’d rather have a paycheck.

And so I’m prepared, if the NAACP invites me, I’ll go to their convention and talk about why the African-American community should demand paychecks and not be satisfied with food stamps. And I’ll go to them and explain a brand new Social Security opportunity for young people, which should be particularly good for African-American males — because they’re the group that gets the smallest return on Social Security because they have the shortest life span.

Foodstamps = African American. No daylight there. He couldn’t have been more clear.

By Atwater’s standards, we’re going backwards.

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Uh oh

by David Atkins

This doesn’t sound good:

Top White House officials are warning liberal and labor leaders to brace themselves for President Obama’s budget proposal.

Gene Sperling, director of the National Economic Council, sought in meetings last week to lift the left’s gloom about Washington’s crackdown on spending by promising that the president this year will focus on job creation rather than deficit cutting.

Obama staffers sought to present their budget plan as a glass half full. According to sources familiar with the briefings, they promised that the president will focus on jobs and the economy, instead of deficit-cutting, which dominated last year’s debate on Capitol Hill.

Obama has signaled in recent weeks that he plans to run a populist reelection campaign. He will need to keep liberal activist and labor groups — important parts of the Democratic base — energized for his strategy to work.

In his first three years, Obama had a free hand to suggest spending levels for government programs in his annual budget blueprint. But that is not the case this year because the administration is constrained by the budget deal reached in August to raise the debt limit.

He must stick to the $1.047 trillion spending cap he agreed to with GOP leaders, which means he will call for less discretionary spending than he did last year.

Senior administration officials fear a backlash from the left and are trying to prepare their allies to expect a disappointing budget, sources say.

“A senior White House person said we weren’t going to be happy with the budget, but they’re doing the best they can” given the spending caps set by the 2011 Budget Control Act, said one source.

On the one hand, the White House is doubtless correct on its face that its hands are tied by the constraints of the debt ceiling deal to reduce a discretionary spending budget that is already preposterously low.

On the other hand, it isn’t as if the President didn’t have a direct hand in ramping up the Grand Bargain deficit hysteria that led to the debt ceiling deal in the first place.

And the consequences?

Obama took fire from the left flank of his party last year after he unveiled his budget proposal.

Members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), including Illinois Democratic Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr., ripped Obama’s budget proposal. CBC Chairman Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.) said at the time, “We cannot win the future by leaving our most vulnerable behind.”

Democrats accused the president of endangering the lives of low-income people.

“It would have real-world consequences for some pretty powerless people,” Rep. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) said. “People would literally freeze.”

I don’t agree with those who say that President doesn’t care if people freeze in their homes. But I do think the President has bought into the delusional asset-based economic model that freaks out over budget deficits lest the Bond Trader Overlords be displeased. He has also bought into the idea politically that if he plays it cool and lets the other side play the extremist hand, he’ll end up looking like the adult in the room. I think he probably figured that he could use his personal charisma to reach a deal with Republicans that didn’t involve people losing their home heating assistance.

The former has been a disaster for the economy. The latter has probably been fairly successful for the President politically speaking, as it was for Bill Clinton. That in turn may help keep the crazies out of absolute power for another four years.

But maintaining the status quo isn’t exactly acceptable when the country is on a 30-year downward trajectory. We needed more than that. Instead, we’re going to get cuts to the discretionary budget that may be unavoidable now, but weren’t inevitable before the Grand Bargain talk got started.

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Mittbot and his daddy

by digby

Perlstein has a great piece on Mitt and his daddy in Rolling Stone that is not to be missed:

In my first weekly online column for Rolling Stone, I’m here to write about another loser and son: George and Mitt Romney – both almost-certain Republican presidential nominees. Pollster Lou Harris said late in 1966 that George Romney, then governor of Michigan, “stands a better chance of winning the White House than any Republican since Dwight D. Eisenhower.” Then, just over a year later, he was humiliated with a suddenness and intensity unprecedented in modern American political history (of which more below). His son was 19 years old. What makes Mitt – né Willard – Romney, run? Much, I think, can be understood via that specific trauma.

I wrote a Los Angeles Times op-ed four years ago, just before Romney dropped out of the 2008 race, arguing that he would “go down as the most robotic big-ticket presidential candidate in history.” I chalked it up to psychobiography: Even more than most kids, Mitt couldn’t help but view his dad as a messiah – because much of America did, too. George Romney’s first appearance on the cover of Time, in 1959, came just before Mitt’s twelfth birthday. As CEO of the Americans Motors Corporation, he had single-handedly set Detroit on its ear by calling its products “gas-guzzling dinosaurs.” The first full biography of him came out in 1960. Soon after, he became Michigan’s James Madison, heroically leading a bipartisan effort to redraft the state’s messed-up constitution. By 1963, he was governor, a Republican in a Democratic state, a politician so beloved that John F. Kennedy was terrified at the thought of running against him in 1964. After his reelection in 1966, he ran 54-46 in a hypothetical 1968 match-up with Lyndon Johnson.

His calling card was his shocking authenticity; his courage in sticking to his positions without fear or favor was extraordinary.Read on …

This is some fascinating history that, I think, probably gets closer to what makes the Mittbot tick than anything I’ve seen. The way he sees it is that daddy lost by being too principled. He is determined not to make that mistake:

Mitt learned at an impressionable age that in politics, authenticity kills. Heeding the lesson of his father’s fall, he became a virtual parody of an inauthentic politician. In 1994 he ran for senate to Ted Kennedy’s left on gay rights; as governor, of course, he installed the dreaded individual mandate into Massachusetts’ healthcare system. Then he raced to the right to run for president.

Perlstein points out that the one area in which he seems to be utterly authentic is his fealty to wealth and capitalism — and that’s a reaction to his father too.

Read the whole thing. It’s all good.

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Blue America Contest

by digby

Howie sez:

As you’ve probably read by now, New Jersey progressive candidate Ed Potosnak withdrew his challenge to Leonard Lance yesterday to take a job as the executive director of the New Jersey League of Conservation Voters. He was one of Blue America’s favorite candidates, both in the 2010 cycle and again this year. We’ll miss him, but we know he will accomplish a lot in his new job. Here’s what he told me last night when he came up with the idea for this contest to help out a Blue America candidate.

Ed has some extra money in his campaign war chest, and he’s offered to give the maximum amount allowable from one campaign to another, $2,000, to the Blue America candidate who gets the most contributions in the next 24 hours. So take a look at our ActBlue page and contribute– whether a dollar or $1,000, it still counts as one “vote”– and the candidate who gets the most “votes” will get a $2,000 dollar check from Ed’s campaign.

The rules for this contest: Just contribute any amount to any candidate on this page and it will count as a vote for that candidate. And yes, you can vote for more than one if you want to. In 24 hours we count up all the votes (again, not the dollar amounts, but the votes), and the candidate with the most gets the check from Ed’s campaign.

*I keep hearing that there are no progressives out there who are against the wars and for civil liberties. That’s just not true. Look at the Blue America roster and you’ll find a whole bunch of them.

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Retraction and contraction: why conservatives are scary

by digby

Perhaps we should all stop for a moment and contemplate how an advanced nation can suddenly take this regressive turn:

In the three months since the Israeli Health Ministry awarded a prize to a pediatrics professor for her book on hereditary diseases common to Jews, her experience at the awards ceremony has become a rallying cry.

The professor, Channa Maayan, knew that the acting health minister, who is ultra-Orthodox, and other religious people would be in attendance. So she wore a long-sleeve top and a long skirt. But that was hardly enough.

Not only did Dr. Maayan and her husband have to sit separately, as men and women were segregated at the event, but she was instructed that a male colleague would have to accept the award for her because women were not permitted on stage.

Though shocked that this was happening at a government ceremony, Dr. Maayan bit her tongue. But others have not, and her story is entering the pantheon of secular anger building as a battle rages in Israel for control of the public space between the strictly religious and everyone else.

At a time when there is no progress on the Palestinian dispute, Israelis are turning inward and discovering that an issue they had neglected — the place of the ultra-Orthodox Jews — has erupted into a crisis.

And it is centered on women.

“Just as secular nationalism and socialism posed challenges to the religious establishment a century ago, today the issue is feminism,” said Moshe Halbertal, a professor of Jewish philosophy at Hebrew University. “This is an immense ideological and moral challenge that touches at the core of life, and just as it is affecting the Islamic world, it is the main issue that the rabbis are losing sleep over.”

The list of controversies grows weekly: Organizers of a conference last week on women’s health and Jewish law barred women from speaking from the podium, leading at least eight speakers to cancel; ultra-Orthodox men spit on an 8-year-old girl whom they deemed immodestly dressed; the chief rabbi of the air force resigned his post because the army declined to excuse ultra-Orthodox soldiers from attending events where female singers perform; protesters depicted the Jerusalem police commander as Hitler on posters because he instructed public bus lines with mixed-sex seating to drive through ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods; vandals blacked out women’s faces on Jerusalem billboards.

Without wading into Israeli politics, let’s just say that this is disturbing on any number of levels. But one thing is clear: fundamentalist religious influence always leads to the repression of women.

Hates so good

by digby

Here’s some video of an arrogant white man lecturing a black man about what black people have a right to be offend by — on Martin Luther King day:

I especially liked the laughter at his nasty, sarcastic “well, first of all, Juan…”

Those dogwhistles were so loud that my neighborhood dogs all started howling in unison. (It sounded like “Dixie”.)

This is what they love about Newt and why he continues to do well in these debates. He just hates so good.

Also too: “Andrew Jackson had a pretty good idea about what do with America’s enemies: Kill them.”

He’s a historian dontchaknow.

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Colbert’s latest Super PAC ad

by David Atkins

Stephen Colbert–or rather, the Super PAC totally not coordinating with him–is proving to be the master troll of the Republican presidential nomination. With Colbert unable to appear on the ballot himself or even to stage a write-in campaign, this latest ad is equal parts chutzpah and brilliance:

Even Republicans are starting to realize what a nasty piece of work Citizens United has turned out to be. True, it helps them over the long run, but there’s more to even Republican politics than puppets dancing on the end of plutocrat strings. There are factions and kingdom-building egos aplenty who spend decades building up their careers, and might not enjoy seeing themselves put at risk if secretive and whimsical multi-millionaires decide they hold a grudge or would rather they were removed. Colbert is helping to make this point clear in a way that everyone can understand.

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Failing Up

by digby

If I didn’t know better, I’d think these people were looting their own company in anticipation of a massive failure:

Goldman Sachs will stoke the fury over bankers’ bonuses this week when it increases the proportion of revenues paid to staff despite what could be its worst year for earnings since 1999.

The bank – which will report its final results for 2011 on Wednesday – has already set aside 44 per cent of the $22.76bn (£14.89bn) of revenues it generated during the first nine months of the year to pay staff. The lion’s share will be shared by a small number of elite level “partners”.

If pay remains at that level in the fourth quarter, the final compensation ratio will show a significant rise over the 39.3 per cent of revenues handed out by Goldman in 2010, when the total pay out was $15.38bn.

Although the average salary for the first nine months enjoyed by Goldman employees is down to $292,397 from $370.056 in the first three quarters of 2010, that the bankers’ share of revenue is rising will anger critics.

This would counter banking industry arguments that remuneration policies are set up to reward those who generate good performance for all the bank’s shareholders rather than just to keep senior staff in the manner to which they have become accustomed.

You don’t say. And here I thought these job creators had a claim to every last penny that’s generated. Workers, shareholders be damned. Let them go out and loot somebody else’s company. Isn’t that how it’s supposed to work?

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RFK announcing the death of Martin Luther King

by digby

I guess I’ve been listening to too many GOP candidates recently because I can’t imagine a modern politician making a speech like this off the cuff. And then he too was shot down just months later.