Month: July 2012

They just want it all

by digby

We keep hearing that the “job creators” will pick up stakes and move elsewhere if they are forced to pay even a penny more in taxes. In fact, they might move if we don’t lower their taxes. And then where will we be?

Lame Duck Terrorism

by digby

You think all this caterwauling about the deficit is just a bunch of useless jibber-jabber that will never go anywhere? Well, we have millionaire Bill Keller basically telling non-millionaire baby boomers to cut their own throats and then “save” the next generation by cutting theirs. For the good of the country, dontcha know.

In this report, we argue that the only way for Democrats to save progressive priorities like NASA, highway funding, and clean energy research is to reform entitlements. The lame duck offers Congress a “Now or Never” chance to set the terms of a budget deal that saves money on entitlements, raises revenue, and protects investments. And the heart of the Democratic brand is depending on it.

I agree that we need to destroy the village in order to save it, but I’m not talking about the same village.

The entire political establishment is aligning to get this momentous change done at the moment of least accountability. And they will say anything to get it done, no matter how dishonest. This is not a choice between highways and clean energy and Social Security. The government can borrow at near zero interest rates to fund those kinds of investments. Social Security can pay out 100% of promised benefits for the next 20 years and if they want to extend that, they can raise the cap so that these millionaires who are so anxious for all of us to “sacrifice” can put some more money in that kitty.

Third Way is a terrible organization in so many ways. But this may be the most dishonest thing they’ve ever done. The idea of pitting future “investments” against future security for the American people is as low as it gets. I know the older folks won’t fall for it because they know very well that social security is what makes the difference between some of them living like animals and living like human beings when they are unable to work anymore. I trust the kids aren’t so dumb that they think cutting their own benefits will somehow help them.

We need investment desperately. And there’s no reason we shouldn’t do what wealthy investors all over the world are dong right now: use cheap money to stimulate the economy and build for the future. This is a very, very big con. I wish I believed that re-electing Obama will insure that this would never be signed into law. Unfortunately, I think we have to depend on the Tea Party. I hate that.

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Mainstreaming McCarthy

by digby

I’d heard about this last week and chalked it up to Loesch and the Breitbart Empire’s ongoing shark jumping contest:

DANA LOESCH: Looking especially at how some of our foreign policy has been handled, Hillary Clinton essentially siding with the Muslim Brotherhood candidate in Egypt, and then it was discovered that her top aide — Huma Abedin — is essentially a member of the female version of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Muslim Sisterhood. All of this — it seems enough to me to pose questions as to why our government is becoming so close with a group that has been so hostile to the United States, has fought against the United States, has sided with terrorists, and is a very oppressive regime that believes in Sharia law.

All right, so she’s just another rightwing liar. Whatever.

And then I turned on the TV yesterday morning and saw her on ABC’s This Week alongside George Will, Ruth Marcus and Donna Brazile as if she were just another establishment Villager. And she was talking:

And — and you want to talk about gaffes. Here we have 41 straight months of unemployment that’s been over 8 percent, which was — the stimulus was supposed to have fixed. In terms of gaffes, it’s not good to have the president get up in front of people during an election cycle and say, well, if you have a small business, you didn’t built that, or as some have tried to say, oh, he took — the Republicans took something out of context. He was talking about the Clinton tax plan, which really actually in context it’s even worse, because he really was referring to his own plan, and the Clinton tax plan, we could — we could get into…

Hookay.

This is just the latest in Driftglass’ enduring series called “Sunday Morning Coming Down” which,among other things, chronicles the mainstreaming of right wing extremism into the public bloodstream. It’s chilling.

I understand that Loesch is an attractive TV presence and craetes the same sort of dangerous frisson that made Ann Coulter such a thrilling green room companion for centrist Village men. But at some point you’d think these bookers would feel just a little bit dirty for putting people like this in America’s living rooms on Sunday morning.

Update:

Isn’t Mitt supposed to be some expert on health care systems?

by digby

Mittbot2012:

“Do you realize what health care spending is as a percentage of the G.D.P. in Israel? Eight percent,” [Romney] said. “You spend eight percent of G.D.P. on health care. You’re a pretty healthy nation. We spend 18 percent of our G.D.P. on health care, 10 percentage points more. That gap, that 10 percent cost, compare that with the size of our military — our military which is 4 percent, 4 percent. Our gap with Israel is 10 points of G.D.P. We have to find ways — not just to provide health care to more people, but to find ways to fund and manage our health care costs.

Apparently someone forgot to tell Mitt how Israel does it:

Rights of the Insured under the National Health Insurance Law

-—Every Israeli citizen is entitled to health care services under the National Health Insurance Law.

—Every resident has a right to register as a member of an HMO of his/her choice, free of any preconditions or limitations stemming from his/her age or the state of his/her health.

—Every resident has a right to receive, via the HMO of which he or she is a member, all of the services included in the medical services basket, subject to medical discretion, and at a reasonable quality level, within a reasonable period of time and at a reasonable distance from his/her home.

—Each member has a right to receive the health services while preserving the member’s dignity, privacy and medical confidentiality.

—Every Israeli resident has the right to transfer from one HMO to another.

—Each member has a right to select the service providers, such as doctors, caregivers, therapists, hospitals and institutes, from within a list of service providers who have entered into an agreement with the HMO to which the member belongs, and within the arrangements in place for the selection of the service providers, and which the HMO publishes from time to time.

—Each member has a right to know which hospitals and institutes, and other service providers, are included in the agreement with the HMO, and what are the selection processes at the HMO.

—Each member has a right to see and to receive a copy of the HMO regulations.

—Each resident has a right to receive from the HMO complete information concerning the payment arrangements in place in the HMO for health services as well as the HMO’s plans offered for additional health services (CIP).

—Each member has a right to complain with the Public Inquiries commissioner at the medical institute that treated the member, to the person in charge of investigating member complaints at the HMO of which s/he is a member, or to the complaints commissioner for the national health insurance law in the Ministry of Health.

—Each member has a right to file suit at the district labor court.

Shhh. Don’t tell Mitt but it’s funded with a progressive health care tax.

What in the world is Mitt doing praising a buncha commies like this? Oh wait, it’s Israel. I’m confused …

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There is no absurdity to which they won’t stoop

by David Atkins

It wasn’t more than a couple of days ago that I said this, apropos of massacre prevention:

But if an armed citizen militia is to protect against outside invasion or internal tyranny, it should theoretically be equipped to do so. Yet few conservatives or NRA members would argue that random civilians should be allowed to own anti-tank weaponry, anti-aircraft missiles or military-grade explosives, much less chemical weapons.

Simply put, traditional firearms are utterly helpless in the face of the might of modern state arms. Which means that either the 2nd Amendment is hopelessly outdated for the modern era, or we need to take the discussion of “Arms” out of the realm of firearms and into the realm of much more potent technology.

The point of saying was to create a reductio ad absurdum for Conservatives: a line that proceeds logically from their current argument, but that even they would be unwilling to cross. The reductio ad absurdum is one of the most potent tactics in rhetoric because it’s perhaps the most effective way of demonstrating the untenability of fallacious arguments that seem reasonable at first, but are actually crazy when put under the spotlight. One’s opponent has two choices: stand by their argument at risk of seeming crazy, or abandon the argument. In theory, either choice forces a retreat or total loss of the debate.

But the rules of debate class don’t really apply to the real world. In the real world where the only judge of the debate is a broken media and ill-informed electorate, there seems to be no penalty for simply clinging to fallacious arguments and adopting the crazy position. That in turn makes the reductio ad absurdum very dangerous, as it simply lets conservatives come to greater acceptance of extreme beliefs they may not have known they had. Case in point, Justice Scalia’s seeming embrace of rocket launchers as Digby mentioned yesterday:

“We’ll see,” Scalia replied. “Obviously the amendment does not apply to arms that can not be carried. It’s to ‘keep and bear’ so it doesn’t apply to cannons.”

“But I suppose there are handheld rocket launchers that can bring down airplanes that will have to — it will have to be decided,” he added.

When I engaged several conservatives on Twitter with this very scenario, all of them took great offense at my equating handheld ballistic firearms with rocket launchers. Give it another week or two, and they’ll come round to Scalia’s apparent point of view.

The same thing has happened during the abortion debate. I used to think it was a great idea to challenge conservatives about their supposed concern for the fetus. After all, the vast majority of conservatives, according to polls, believed that an exception could be made in the case of rape or incest. But they wouldn’t kill a baby born of the same circumstances. Ergo, they must not truly believe that life begins at conception. They must, rather, believe in punishing women for daring to get pregnant outside of wedlock, or refusing to have the husband’s baby within wedlock. So I would tell conservatives to pick one or the other: either they shouldn’t make exceptions in case of a 14-year-old raped by her father, or they could give up the entirety of their supposed “life” argument and admit that it’s all about control of women and sexual prudery.

That was a mistake. It is now almost mainstream conservatism to deny any exceptions at all on abortion, just as it’s apparently within reason for the longest serving conservative justice on the Supreme Court to think the Founders would have demanded that each citizen have the right to carry a surface-to-air missile launcher.

The modern conservative has no boundaries and no shame. Everything from their economic theories to their social positions is based entirely on an ideological faith-based lack of reasoning.

Using a reductio ad absurdum on them doesn’t paint them into a corner. It merely allows them to go deeper down the rabbit hole.

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The burn-out era

by digby

Mark Follman (who, along with the rest of the Mother Jones crew has done an incredible job compiling the data about America’s mass murders) prints a letter from a survivor of a mass shooting in Tennessee a couple of years ago:

Mr. Follman:

I read your article about mass murders and spree killings in the U.S. I’m a survivor of one which you didn’t list. On Sunday morning, July 27, 2008, at Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church, Knoxville Tennessee, Jim Adkisson walked into my church with 70 shotgun shells and opened fire. He killed 2 and injured 7. The only reason he stopped firing was that the gun jammed after the 3rd shot. He was tackled by retired history professor Dr. John Bohstedt.

Maybe the low death toll keeps this incident off the list.

However, I noticed something recently in the news which struck home. Discussion about the shooting in Aurora Colorado has included several people saying “we’ll never forget.” Yet here in Knoxville, I’ve been in more than one circumstance when the subject has come up, and someone will say “oh yeah, I do remember that” as if it’s something that happened a long time ago in a galaxy far far away.

Maybe because I was there, my perspective is a little different. The fact that the anniversary is coming up may be why I’m thinking about it right now.

Anyway, just my opinion, the TVUUC incident might belong on your list.

Best wishes,

William Dunklin
Knoxville, Tennessee

That was the one in which the guy did it because he hated all liberals. (It was a UCC church.)

This depresses me almost as much as the shootings themselves, although I understand the psychology. Life has to go on. But damn, even in the places where his happens I guess it’s now just one of those things. Nothing to be done.

I fear this cultural paralysis much more than I fear the political gridlock. Our whole society seems to be burned out, apathetic and tired. I don’t think anything good will come of that.

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Inkblot: the original LOL Cat

by digby

I don’t know what it is about cats and the internet, but the relationship by this time is obvious. But before there were LOLCats and sleepy Youtube kittens and cheetah cub cams, there was Inkblot. The phenomenon of catblogging was invented by him (and his pet Kevin Drum.)

The New York Times first noticed him way back in 2004:

IN the vitriolic world of political Web logs, two polar extremes are Eschaton (atrios.blogspot.com), a liberal, often anti-Bush site with a passionate following, and Instapundit (www.instapundit.com), where an equally fervent readership goes for hearty praise of the Administration.

It would seem unlikely that the two blogs’ authors could see eye-to-eye about anything. Yet Eschaton’s Duncan Black (known as Atrios) and Instapundit’s Glenn Reynolds have both taken part in a growing practice: turning over a blog on Friday to cat photographs.

“It brings people together,” said Kevin Drum, who began the cat spotlight last year on his own blog, Calpundit (www.calpundit.com). “Both Atrios and Instapundit have done Friday catblogging. It goes to show you can agree on at least a few things.”

Mr. Drum has moved on to write a blog for The Washington Monthly called Political Animal, which, despite its name, features no cats. But for him, watching bloggers step back from partisanship in favor of the warmth of cat pictures is a reminder of the March 2003 day when he discovered that his cats offered an antidote to stressful blogging.

“I’d just blogged a whole bunch of stuff about what was wrong with the world,” Mr. Drum said. “And I turned around and I looked out the window, and there was one of my cats, just plonked out, looking like nothing was wrong with the world at all.”

Grabbing his camera, Mr. Drum photographed his cat, Inkblot, and posted the picture (calpundit.com/archives/000597.html). He soon began doing it each Friday, attracting fans who just wanted to see the felines.

“I had a lot of people who were looking forward to it,” he said. “I started getting e-mails on Friday mornings where people were like, ‘Where’s catblogging? What’s going on?’ “

As often happens in the blogosphere, other people latched onto the idea and ran with it.

Sadly, Kevin shares the bad news:

I hate to write this post, but all of you have been part of Inkblot’s life for so long that I can hardly not do it. One of our neighbors saw the flyers we posted around the neighborhood and called a few minutes ago to tell us that she had seen the body of a cat nearby. We went out to look, and it was Inkblot. There wasn’t much question about the ID.

From the evidence, it looks like he got killed by a coyote. And he hadn’t wandered very far after all. The remains were only a couple hundred feet from our house.

This is sad, sad news. But I want to thank everyone who sent kind thoughts our way, either via comments or email. He will be remembered.

Indeed, he will be. RIP you gorgeous boy.

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Dumb Justice

by digby

Why do people think this man is brilliant?

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia on Sunday said that even “handheld rocket launchers” could be considered legal under his interpretation of the Constitution’s Second Amendment.

In the wake of a massacre in Colorado that left 12 dead and 58 wounded, host Chris Wallace asked Scalia if the Constitution would support assault-type AR-15 rifles and 100-round clips.

The justice explained that under his principle of originalism, some limitations on weapons were possible. Fox example, laws to restrict people from carrying a “head axe” would be constitutional because it was a misdemeanor when the Constitution was adopted in the late 1700s.

“What about these technological limitations?” Wallace wondered. “Obviously, we’re not now talking about a handgun or a musket, we’re talking about a weapon that can fire a hundred shots in a minute.”

“We’ll see,” Scalia replied. “Obviously the amendment does not apply to arms that can not be carried. It’s to ‘keep and bear’ so it doesn’t apply to cannons.”

“But I suppose there are handheld rocket launchers that can bring down airplanes that will have to — it will have to be decided,” he added.

Head ax’s are out because the founders thought they were too frightening, but any weapon invented since then that can be carried (in your arms!) is fine because they didn’t know they were going to be invented and so didn’t think ahead.

He should be impeached for this “originalist” claptrap. But I take it back that he isn’t brilliant. He is. To be able to get away with this sort of logic actually requires a very lively mind.

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Cokie’s Law WaPo 2012 version

If it weren’t for bad luck there’s be no luck at all?