Month: May 2012

When 40% is a win

by digby

Can we all see what’s wrong with this picture from MSNBC’s web site?

Now, that is not to say that a convicted felon with a Davy Crocket hat instead of hair getting 40% of the vote against the incumbent Democratic president in a primary isn’t news. But if he’d actually beaten him, I think we would have been hearing a whole lot more about it today.

h/t to JH

Youth knowledge of contraception inadequate

by David Atkins

The Guttmacher Institute emails me today:

INADEQUATE KNOWLEDGE ABOUT CONTRACEPTION IS COMMON AMONG YOUNG ADULTS

New Study Suggests Improving Contraceptive Knowledge
May Positively Influence Behavior, Reducing Risk of Unplanned Pregnancy

More than half of young men and a quarter of young women who participated in a 2009 survey displayed serious gaps in knowledge about common contraceptive methods, according to “Young Adults’ Contraceptive Knowledge, Norms and Attitudes: Associations with Risk of Unintended Pregnancy,” by Jennifer Frost et al. of the Guttmacher Institute. The authors found that the lower the level of contraceptive knowledge among young women, the greater the likelihood that they expected to have unprotected sex in the next three months, behavior that puts them at risk for an unplanned pregnancy. These findings come on the heels of a study that found that women in their 20s have the highest risk of experiencing an unintended pregnancy.

The authors relied on data collected through telephone interviews with a nationally representative sample of 1,800 unmarried women and men aged 18–29 as part of the 2009 National Survey of Reproductive and Contraceptive Knowledge, which aimed to better understand the characteristics associated with risky contraceptive practices among young adults.

The analyses also reveal that although most unmarried young adults are trying to avoid pregnancy, many are not taking the necessary precautions to do so or have conflicting attitudes about pregnancy and contraceptive use. Sixty-nine percent of young women and 45% of young men were highly committed to avoiding pregnancy. Some 25% thought that using condoms every time one has sex is a hassle, 60% underestimated the effectiveness of oral contraceptives and 40% held the fatalistic view that using birth control does not matter. The more strongly men and women agreed that regular condom use is “too much of a hassle,” the more likely they were to expect to have unprotected sex.

This would bother the right-wingers if they were actually interested in reducing abortions instead of trying to control sexual behavior.

But hey, no big deal. This stuff won’t be relevant once we ban contraception and institute abstinence-only education.

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The moderate shuffle

by digby

THINKPROGRESS: What do you think is happening here?

DANFORTH: An effort by some, and apparently a large number, 60% in Indiana, to purge the Republican Party and to create something that’s ideologically pure and intolerant of anybody who does not agree with them — not just on general principals, but right acrorss the board.

THINKPROGRESS: Do you stand by your view that GOP is beyond hope?

DANFORTH: If this trend succeeds, yeah. What they will be left with, if indeed they want to purge the party of all but people who have a particular ideological slant… it’s not a way to win elections, it’s not political sustainable. It might make them feel good for a time but doesn’t work, it hasn’t worked. It didn’t work in Nevada or in Delaware in last election. They won nominations but couldn’t win elections. I don’t know how you win elections without getting 51% of the vote. I don’t see how you’re gonna get 51% of the vote if you make it clear that people in your own party, who don’t absolutely agree with everything you want to do, aren’t wanted.

With Lugar’s defeat, it’s to be expected that we’d see a lot of this coming from former “moderates” and Villagers. The idea here is that the Republicans are destroying themselves by being too extreme. And maybe that will be the case.

But let’s turn the tables. Suppose Lieberman hadn’t decided to run as an independent and win with Republican votes? Would he not have written exactly the same thing as Lugar did here, or said what Danforth did above? Suppose California Democrats had their shit together and ousted Dianne Feinstein for a real liberal. The whining would be just as deafening.

This cult of the moderates assumes a constant shuffling faction that moves back and forth between the parties to pick the “best ideas” and create compromises that both parties can live with. But it hasn’t worked that way for quite some time. We have a system in which the Republicans have become more and more conservative, even the moderates — and so have the Democrats, as they seek to chase a center that moves further and further away. The center isn’t a fixed place, it is simply the place at which some members of the two parties can meet. The right has made a strategic decision to govern their caucus from as far right as possible in order to move move that center toward them.

The fact that Dick Luger is considered some kind of mushy moderate is a case in point. He’s not. He’s a conservative who had iconoclastic views on arms control, guns and a couple of other discrete topics. He has a reputation for bipartisanship but he voted for the Clinton impeachment, the most purely purely partisan power play of his entire time in office. Get a load of this pile of tripe:

During this trial, I have concluded that the prosecutors made their case. I will vote to remove President Clinton from office not only because he is guilty of both articles of impeachment, but also because I believe the crimes committed here demonstrate that he is capable of lying routinely whenever it is convenient. He is not trustworthy. Simply to be near him in the White House has meant not only tragic heartache for his wife and his daughter but enormous legal bills for staff members and friends who admired him and yearned for his success but who have been caught up in his incessant `war room’ strategies to maintain him in office. Senator Feinstein begins her censure resolution with the appropriate word `shameless.’ The President should have simply resigned and spared his country the ordeal of this impeachment trial and its aftermath.

We have been fortunate that this damaged presidency has occurred during a time of relative peace and prosperity. In times of war or national emergency it is often necessary for the President to call upon the nation to make great economic and personal sacrifices. In these occasions, our President had best be trustworthy–a truth teller whose life of principled leadership and integrity we can count upon. Some commentators have suggested that with the President having less than two years left in his term of office, the easiest approach is to let the clock expire while hoping that he is sufficiently careful, if not contrite, to avoid reckless and indefensible conduct. But as Senators, we know that the dangers of the world constantly threaten us. Rarely do two years pass without the need for strong Presidential leadership and the exercise of substantial moral authority from the White House.

Of particular concern are the implications of the President’s behavior for our national security. As Commander-in-Chief, President Clinton fully understood the risks that he was imposing on the country’s security with his secret affair in the White House. Even in this post-Cold War era, foreign intelligence agents constantly look for opportunities for deception, propaganda, and blackmail. No higher targets exist than the President and the White House. The President even acknowledged in a phone call with Ms. Lewinsky that foreign agents could be monitoring their conversations. Yet this knowledge did not dissuade the President from continuing his affair. With premeditation, he chose his own gratification above the security of his country and the success of his presidency. Then he chose to compound the damage by systematically lying about it over the span of many months.

I believe that our country will be stronger and better prepared to meet our challenges with a cleansing of the Presidency. The President of the United States is the most powerful person in the world because we are the strongest country economically and militarily, and in the appeal of our idealism for liberty and freedom of conscience. Our President must be strong because a President personifies the rule of law that he is sworn to uphold and protect. We must believe him and trust him if we are to follow him. His influence on domestic and foreign policies comes from that trust, which a lifetime of words, deeds, and achievements has built.

President Clinton has betrayed that trust. His leadership has been diminished because most Americans have come to the cynical conclusion that they must read between the lines of his statements and try to catch a glimmer of truth amidst the spin. His subordinates have demeaned public life by contending that `everybody does it’ as a defense of why the President has erred so grievously. But every President does not lie to a federal grand jury. Every President does not obstruct justice. The last President to do so was President Nixon, and he had sufficient reverence for the office to resign before the House even voted articles of impeachment.

We didn’t hear from old Dick about the partisan Supreme Court stealing the 2000 election either. In fact, Dick was there the whole time the GOP was radicalizing itself and didn’t exactly fight it. He had to know what these people were. But apparently, it was all good until they turned their guns on him.

And it simply cannot be said that it hasn’t been working for them. The elections have been ping-ponging since 1992, and as long as each time everyone inches a little further right, especially on economics, they are the big winners over the long haul. I look forward to the day when this big denouement arrives and the country realizes that the Republicans have finally gone to far. I’ve been looking forward to it since 1980. Call me crazy, but I think that strategy might not be working out as we might have liked it to.

Update: Nate Silver has done an analysis that’s quite interesting. But oh Lord, this is just wrong. From Ed Kilgore:

On the eve of Richard Lugar’s landslide loss in an Indiana Senate primary, Nate Silver published an analysis of the recent turnover in Senate Republican ranks sorted by their relative ideology. The word “relative” needs to be stressed; using DW-Nominate ratings, Nate splits the GOP Senate Caucus as it existed after the 2004 elections and assigns half of it the “moderate” label. That’s how you get Rick Santorum listed as a “moderate.”

I think that says it all, don’t you?

Be that as it may, Kilgore points out that the analysis is interesting because it shows that it isn’t the wingnuts who have been “purging” the moderates in primaries — it’s a generational changeover, mostly fueled by retirements. There are reasons for the subsequent shift to the right, but it’s not just because voters are assholes who don’t understand how the world works.

Kilgore writes:

If you want to understand fully how long this “drift” has been going on, you could check out a piece I wrote way back in 2001 (when Jim Jeffords’ defection from the Caucus cost Republicans control of the Senate) looking at the composition of the Senate Republican Caucus 25 years earlier, in 1976, when nearly half were genuinely “moderates” or even “liberals” (Javits, Case, Brooke, Weicker, Schweiker, Mathias and Percy) by then-prevailing standards, and the chamber itself was presided over by vice-president Nelson Rockefeller, the very bete noire of movement conservatives.

I mention this primarily because some political observers still seem to think the current ideological rigidity of the Republican Party is a sudden phenomenon created by the startling appearance of a Tea Party Movement in 2009. The often-unstated premise is that the GOP can be returned to its senses by a healthy general election defeat or two—or perhaps a win if it forces Republicans to come to grips with the responsibilities of governing.

Sorry, but I see no reason to think any sort of “course correction” is inevitable. The latest ideological lurch of the Republican Party came after two consecutive cycles in which the party was beaten like a drum. But it also drifted to the right during every recent Republican presidency; there’s a reason that GOPers were muttering about the “betrayals of conservative principle” their chieftains were exhibiting during W.’s, second term, his father’s one term, and yes, even Ronald Reagan’s second term. Like the tax cuts for the wealthy that are their all-purpose economic policy proposal, a shift to the right has become the all-purpose response to any political development over more than three decades. The Tea Party Movement is simply the latest incarnation of the conservative movement, which has been thundering against RINOs all the way back to the days when they actually existed.

Yup.

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So president Obama finally admitted what we all pretty much assumed which is that he is in favor of same-sex marriage. It’s a mainstream Democratic position and his reluctance always seemed fairly inauthentic. This is a very good thing, especially in light of the vote last night in North Carolina. Leadership is important and it was long past time he spoke out. It’s a historical moment and one worth savoring.

Bobo’s eyes were full of … money

by digby

Buyer: David Brooks

Price: $3.95 million

Details: The New York Times op-ed columnist and wife Sarah are trading up — from their longtime home near Bethesda’s Burning Tree Club to a century-old (exquisitely renovated) five bedroom, four-and-a-half bath house in Cleveland Park. It includes a two-car garage, iron and stone fence, generous-sized porch and balcony, and what appear to be vast spaces for entertaining. The timing seems to have been right: After only a few days on the market, their old place (which also boasts five bedrooms) is under contract for $1.6 million.

Isn’t that special? Somehow I don’t think Brooks is going to have to eat at Applebee’s any time soon. Not that he doesn’t identify with those who do, oh no. And just because he can buy four million dollar houses doesn’t mean that he shouldn’t be worried about the message being sent to the peasants if we of give irresponsible, unemployed homeowners a break.

And speaking of which: if you read nothing else today, read Charles Pierce’s ode to Bobo’s dog named Moral Hazard and his master’s ridiculous misunderstanding of economics:

Master couldn’t possibly be thinking of moving into the new family manse while leaving him here to sleep in the pantry. He didn’t ask for much. The porch or the balcony would be just fine with him, better than this stuffy old place, reeking as it did of stale sherry and the previous night’s foie gras. He would find a lovely piece of outdoor furniture on the porch and that would be where he would spend his days, when he wasn’t walking the fence line. He would stay there, calm and alert, basking in the sun, and all the other dogs passing by would say, “There lives a wealthy man… and his dog.” Moral Hazard began singing that song from Fiddler on the Roof to himself. Ya-da-diddle-diddle-dum, he sang. Yeah, that would be cool.

The country is divided when different people take different sides in a debate. The country is really divided when different people are having entirely different debates. That’s what’s happening on economic policy.

Less Filling! Tastes great! It’s a breath mint! It’s a candy mint! You got peanut butter on my chocolate! You got chocolate in my peanut butter! Thanks for dropping by again, Captain Obvious. I believe this lead sentence was written with alphabet blocks.

Many people on the left are having a one-sided debate about how to deal with a cyclical downturn. The main argument you hear from these cyclicalists is that the economy is operating well below capacity. To get it moving at full speed, the government should borrow and spend more. The federal government is now running deficits of about $1 trillion a year. Some of these cyclicalists believe the deficit should be about $1.4 trillion.

And, yes, fans, we have our first Mock Category of the ballgame! As it happens, I don’t know many people on The Left who are arguing that there is anything “cyclical” about what happened to the economy. Most of the people I know believe that the economy got looted by some greedy — and thus far, largely unindicted — bastards in the financial industry who stole what they didn’t wreck. Most of the people on The Left that I know don’t see anything “cyclical” in 30 years of Brooks-approved tax policies, and outright economic moonshine, all of which was calculated to send the nation’s wealth zooming upwards on a rocket sled to the people at the top, and which have succeeded beyond Arthur Laffer’s fondest dreams. Most people on The Left look at what happened to the economy over the past decade, and find themselves debating only one thing — the dunking stool or the pillory. Our lines are open.

Do read on. It’s so worth it.

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Dressage politics

by digby

Fergawdsakes:

I guess it’s all they’ve got. I’ll be interested to see how the Democrats react. I wish I didn’t suspect they’re going to end up being defensive and start explaining how they believe in traditional values and common ground and blah, blah, blah. I’m just waiting for the Greenberg-Carville focus groups showing that Democrats are in trouble with Reagan Democrat soccer moms so they need to downplay any support for contraception, the suggested wording being: “I’m in favor of women being religiously free to choose to stay home and have a large family” or “birth control should be safe, legal and very expensive and hard to obtain.”

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Cognitive dissonance

by David Atkins

Jon Stewart and team, brilliant as usual:

I know all the kool kids say there’s no difference between Obama and Romney. It’s fashionable these days. But no matter Obama’s faults (and yes, they are many) there is something deeply terrifying about letting soulless liars and public policy failures like Romney anywhere near the Oval Office. Just looking at the politics of the domestic auto industry is enough to make a rational person want to curse Republicans for generations. It’s so disgusting that it needs the softening of comedy to make it digestible. And for that we can thank the likes of Stewart, Colbert and their writers.

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The problem with “states’ rights” Part 745, North Carolina edition

by digby

So the “traditionalists” won another one. North Carolina’s Amendment One was approved overwhelmingly by the people. And it’s a really bad one. It doesn’t just ban same sex marriage, it bans domestic partnership laws, which is really cruel. It’s hard to argue that it’s all about the “sanctity” of marriage when they go out of their way to ensure that LGBT citizens are denied the basic right to benefits like health care and equal treatment in child custody and adoption.

Here’s an article on how this will play out for some real humans who live in North Carolina:

For same sex couples in the South, North Carolina has stood out as a bright light of possibility, where domestic partner benefits have been recognized in some cities and by some private companies.

Libby and Melissa Hodge moved to North Carolina from Georgia in 2008 — where a similar marriage amendment was passed in 2004 — in hopes of a more secure life for their daughter, 4.

The women married in Vancouver in 2006, but have yet to live in a state that recognizes their marriage.

After Georgia’s amendment passed, they began looking for jobs in what they thought would be a friendlier state. Eventually, Libby Hodge found a job with the city of Durham, one of several local governments in North Carolina offering benefits to domestic partners; she now receives health coverage that covers Melissa Hodge’s biological daughter. (The Hodges requested that the child be referred to only by her middle name Elaine.) The Hodges planned for a second parent adoption, so that Libby could be also be legally recognized as Elaine’s parent, providing more financial security for the child.

But in 2010, the North Carolina Supreme Court ruled against a second parent adoption in families headed by a same-sex couple, making an adoption far more difficult. And if Amendment 1 passes in May, Elaine will lose her health benefits through Libby’s plan. For Elaine to be covered by Melissa’s plan could cost an additional $500 a month.

The Hodges are feeling additional financial uncertainty because the amendment would raise questions about how the courts would deal with not only child custody issues but also about visitation rights and end-of-life arrangements.

“It’s hard to know where the ripple will stop if something goes wrong,” Libby Hodge said. “We still don’t know exactly what the effects of the amendment will be, and we don’t know how to plan for that. You just pray that nothing ever goes wrong.”

Unmarried straight couples living together would also lose any domestic partner benefits they might have if the measure is passed. But they have a potential solution: getting married. The Hodges now say that because of the uncertainty with their finances, they might have to move again, although both would prefer to stay in the South, near their extended families in Georgia.

The possibility that other workers could move out of state is a concern for Cathy Bessant, a global technology and operations executive at Bank of America, which is headquartered in Charlotte. In a video that Bessant recorded for the Coalition to Protect North Carolina Families (an opponent of the amendment), she said the measure would have “a disastrous effect” on the ability of businesses in the state to compete for jobs and economic growth.

“What Amendment 1 does is make it look like we’re a state that ignores both the needs and the preferences of the next generation of America and the world’s workforce,” Bessant said.

Everyone says that gay marriage is in the bag. It’s a done deal, we can feel confident that this battle is pretty much won, it’s just a matter of getting it on the books. But 30 states now have constitutional amendments banning same sex marriage to one degree or another. And as we know, it isn’t just the old South. My own land of fruits and nuts just did it in 2008.

This is the essence of retrograde, reactionary politics and there’s a long history of these “sovereign” states exercising their “rights” to deny minorities their freedom at the hands of the very people who use the word like a weapon when it comes to having to pay an extra five cents in taxes. There’s not a thing new about this.

This is why we have to depend upon the United States Supreme Court to enforce the fundamental American value that we protect the constitutional rights and liberties of minorities against the prejudices of the majority. Unfortunately, the Roberts Court is hardly likely to be the one to do it. But that’s how it’s going to have to happen, at least in order to extend the rights enjoyed by straight Americans to our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters all across America.

I’m not saying it won’t happen. Of course, I believe it will. But it’s not going to be settled until the court rules.

Here’s Michelangelo Signorile interviewing the sponsor of the Amendment in case you’d like to know what motivated him:

In one bright spot, we have a North Carolina Blue America winner tonight, Patsy Keever, who will not be faced with a run-off and will challenge Patrick McHenry in November.

Update: Think Progress points out that the last time North Carolina amended their constitution on the issue of marriage, this was it:

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The Hill is supposed to be the ultimate inside political baseball publication. And yet they write something this wrong about the Primary Accountability Pac:

The group could be a major player in the race: They’ve spent more than $200,000 apiece on a number of races, and can claim at least some credit for knocking off Reps. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), Don Manzullo (R-Ill.) and Jean Schmidt (R-Ohio).

They actually backed Kucinich against Kaptur and lost. Since they are in the business of taking out incumbents of both parties one could argue that they were in a win-win situation, since both Kucinich and Kaptur were incumbents, forced to run against one another as a result of redistricting. But the fact is that they spent money on behalf of Kucinich, not Kaptur. So, they get no credit for that one.

Real Housewives of America

by digby

I was not one who particularly enjoyed the 2008 election, what with being out of step with just about everybody on that one. Unlike David’s, my endorphins never rushed for Obama or Hillary (and God knows what they did in reaction to McCain, but it wasn’t good.) In fact, I would say that my endorphins don’t rush for any politician, but I have to confess that Norman Solomon kind of makes them dance just a little bit. (Sadly, it could just be hot flashes …)

Anyway, despite all that, I confess that it was, at least, an interesting election, high energy, filled with lots of things to write about, even if I did hate a good part of it. This one is just … well, Matt Taibbi says it best:

Obama versus Romney is the worst reality show on TV since the Tila Tequila days. The characters are terrible, there’s no suspense, and the biggest thing is, it lacks both spontaneity and a gross-out factor. In Reality TV, if you don’t have really sexy half-naked young people scheming against each other over campfires in the Cook Islands, you need to have grown men eating millipedes or chicks in bikinis drinking donkey semen. And if you don’t have that, you really need Sarah Palin.

This race has none of that. Biden is the best character in the series, but for exactly that reason the Obama administration would be wise to bury crazy Joe in a salt mine until the election is over. (The networks have skillfully teased the Frasier-style future spinoff show from this election – the inevitable Hillary-Biden race in 2016 – but they’re keeping most of that action under wraps for now). Romney will no doubt stoop to some truly appalling attacks before the election season is over, but he’ll do so out of sheer, boring calculation. He’s not insane, which is a tremendous insult to a Republican politician.

Anyway, you can expect the media efforts to drum up interest in the election to really heat up in the next few weeks. The Republican race is over now and the networks need to fill those hours. The presidential race is always a great illusion, designed to distract people from the more hardcore politics in this country, the minutiae of trade and tax and monetary policy that’s too boring to cover. When the presidential race is a bad show, people might not have any choice but to pay attention to those other things. And this year’s version is the worst show in memory. It’ll be interesting to see how it plays out.

Actually, it won’t be. It’s like one of those Housewife reality shows where everyone is obscenely wealthy and they create phony feuds and stage screaming fights and then magically become bffs the next season. It’s kind of a trainwreck that you can’t keep your eyes off of at first, but then you just end up falling asleep in front of the TV.

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