Month: July 2012

The GOP’s big secret:funding a non-extremist or two

by digby

This is interesting:

The National Republican Senatorial Committee paid for an ad that attacks the Republican budget in Congress last month — and appears to have spent quite a lot doing it.

At the time, NRSC officials did not comment on the commercial run by the Montana Republican Party on behalf of Rep. Denny Rehberg, who is challenging Democratic Sen. Jon Tester.

The spot, with an initial cost of $200,000, could only have been funded by large transfers from the NRSC, since the the Montana GOP did not have enough cash on its own. The latest federal campaign filings show that the national team transferred $540,000 to the local party — $315,000 on June 19, the day before the ad started to run, then $45,000 on June 21 and $180,000 on June 25.

While the Montana Party is free to spend the money it gets from Washington how it wants, it’s clear that the big shots in D.C. knew of the message in the ad, at least after the fact, and the spot continued to run.

And it’s quite a message for Republicans to be delivering. The ad notes that “Rehberg refused to support a Republican budget plan that could harm the Medicare program so many of Montana’s seniors rely on,” referring to Rehberg’s opposition to the budget of Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), the chairman of the House Budget Committee.

It’s interesting because the Democrats do this all the time, of course. They actually spend more money on right wing Dems than liberals and make no bones about it. But the Republicans are ashamed of any moderation and go to great lengths to hide it. Their base gets very riled up. Here’s an example:

Massachusetts Tea Party activists are not happy with their state’s Republican establishment.

At a meeting for the Leicester/Holden/Paxton/Rutland Tea Party group, grassroots leaders accused the Massachusetts GOP of being “too moderate” and “too elite,” according to a report from GoLocalWorcester.

The state’s GOP leaders are a bunch of “country club Republicans,” said Jim McGrath, co-chairman of the LPRH Tea Party. Amongst other concerns, McGrath expressed concern that they hadn’t done enough for state representative races.

Another local conservative activist, Dana George Reed, characterized the party in an interview with the local Worcester website as “moderate to liberal,” which, of course, is a derogatory statement in the right-wing activist world.

So, assuming that the “center” is in that sweet spot where the two parties meet, I think you can see why it keeps moving rightward. While the Republicans do it with reluctance and distance themselves from any activity that shows the need to moderate in order to get elected, the Democrats celebrate their “moderation” and even identify themselves with it. Over time it inches to the right and the Democrats willingly own it.

For instance, here’s what’s considered so “moderate” that the Republicans have to hide their involvement in it:

“Rehberg refused to support a Republican budget plan that could harm the Medicare program so many of Montana’s seniors rely on.

You cannot refuse to support Paul Ryan’s dystopian budget and still be considered mainstream in the GOP. There used to be room for non-Randian extremists, but no more. And what that means is that when the inevitably agree to some “bargain” it will be much further right that we can imagine. And the whole village will extoll it for its moderation.

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Citizen Storm Troopers

by digby

So tell me. If the theatre was full of armed people, could they have fought this off? Or should we all be required to dress like this when we go out in the street?

I can’t help but be reminded of another situation where people did fight back and the carnage was substantial anyway:

The North Hollywood shootout was an armed confrontation between two heavily-armed and armored bank robbers, Larry Eugene Phillips, Jr. and Emil Matasareanu, and patrol and SWAT officers of the Los Angeles Police Department in North Hollywood, Los Angeles, California on February 28, 1997. It happened when responding patrol officers engaged Phillips and Matasareanu leaving the robbed bank. Seventeen officers and civilians sustained injuries before both robbers were killed. Phillips and Matasareanu had robbed several banks prior to their attempt in North Hollywood and were notorious for their heavy armament, which included automatic rifles.

United States patrol officers at the time were typically armed with a 9mm or .40 caliber pistol on their person, with a 12-gauge shotgun available in their cars. Phillips and Matasareanu carried fully automatic rifles and wore body armor. Since most handgun calibers cannot penetrate body armor, patrol officers had a significant disadvantage until SWAT arrived with equivalent firepower; they also appropriated several semi-automatic rifles from a nearby firearms dealer to help even the odds. The incident sparked debate on the appropriate firepower for patrol officers to have available in similar situations in the future.

350 trained, armed cops were on the scene at one time. The confrontation lasted an hour. Is it really reasonable to believe that arming regular citizens with pistols is the answer to dealing with situations like this?

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One man’s loophole is another man’s job creatin’

As a member of the “Gang of Six,” Senator Mike Crapo of Idaho has emerged as something of a hero among advocates of bipartisanship, one of three conservative Republicans working with three Democrats to cut the deficit by closing loopholes that allow businesses and households to avoid paying taxes.

Yet earlier this year, the senator made sure that a $3 billion loophole — protecting “black liquor,” an alcoholic sludge used as fuel in timber mills and factories — remained open in the negotiations over the highway bill that President Obama signed this month. Many budget experts criticize the loophole as a tax dodge because it allows the sludge to qualify for an energy subsidy created to wean the country off imported oil for vehicles, which black liquor does not do.

On Capitol Hill, lawmakers casually point to closing loopholes as the answer to much that ails the country. Negotiations to avoid automatic military spending cuts in January, to enact sweeping deficit reduction and to lower corporate and personal income tax rates all hinge on closing unidentified loopholes.

But the back-room actions on black liquor point to just how difficult it will be to lower the budget deficit through painless changes in the tax code. Even for a self-proclaimed deficit hawk like Mr. Crapo, one man’s loophole can be another’s vital constituent interest.

An Idaho company “feared losing the write-offs could affect employment decisions,” said Lindsay Nothern, a spokesman for Mr. Crapo.

There will always be a good reason for the loopholes, no matter how low you make the rates. This is the currency of local politics. If they agree to this nonsense just be aware that what they are really doing is cutting spending and lowering revenue, period. And that is nonsensical if the point is to cut the deficit.

It makes perfect sense, however, if you are trying to drown government in the bathtub.

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Here’s a fascinating discussion about marriage (and whether women are being selfish little beyotches and ruining everything by refusing to do it) on the best news show on television.

Unconscionable and unacceptable

by David Atkins

They say that guns don’t kill people–people kill people. They say that we don’t need gun control laws because murder is already illegal, after all. If that’s the case, we might as well let people have sarin gas, tanks and bazookas, too, as long as we’re going to let this happen:

Batman massacre suspect Joseph Holmes bought 6,000 rounds of ammunition and a 100-round magazine for an assault rifle used in the shooting on the Internet in recent weeks, the Aurora police chief said Friday night.

A drum-style magazine for an AR-15 assault rifle was recovered at the movie theater, said police Chief Dan Oates at a news conference.

Holmes bought four guns recently from area retailers and 6,000 rounds of ammunition and several magazines that fit the assault rifle on the Internet, Oates said. He said 3,000 rounds were .223-caliber bullets for the AR-15. The chief said he didn’t know where Holmes obtained the full suit of body armor and gas mask he was wearing when arrested.

With the 100-round magazine, “he could have gotten off 50 to 60 rounds — even if it was a semi-automatic — within one minute,” Oates said.

“All the weapons he possessed, he possessed legally,” the chief said. All the ammunition and the clips were legal as well, he said.

Oates said a revised count of victims show 70 injured and 12 dead. A few of those injured were hurt from trauma that didn’t involve gunshots, he said.

I’m no ballistophobe. I own a rifle handed down to me by my grandfather; I have firearms training, took a gun safety class in college, and I’m a fairly decent shot.

But nothing like this should even begin to be allowed to happen. There is zero excuse whatsoever for allowing some random kid to have an AR15, a 100-round magazine and 6,000 rounds. That’s not a self-defense or hunting gun. That’s a murder machine, no different from high-grade explosives or military grade anthrax.

There’s just no excuse for allowing a random civilian to have access to that kind of firepower.

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An antidote

by digby

Humans aren’t all bad:

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“It’s the enabling attitudes of the political left”

by digby

A comment from a right wing blog on the president’s speech today:

“senseless” and “beyond reason,” adding, “We may never understand what leads anybody to terrorize their fellow human beings…

Nonsense. Of course we know what motivates some of these atrocities, it’s the enabling attitudes of the political left, the stoking of envy, jealousy, and discontent by community organizers that take an angry mob of people into a bank lobby and demand low interest loans be made to people who have no money. Of course many of those loans then go to the very movement leaders who organized the angry mobs in the first place.

It’s the class warfare rhetoric of Obama and his leftist party loyalists who blame the rich for someone’s dire circumstances. It’s the rhetoric of leftists who insist that education is every man’s right and once educated to government standards that individual then has a right to employment at a ‘living wage’. Never mind that a ‘living wage’ is never enough no matter how high the pay scale.

Now we have to sit and listen to these same leftists tell us that government can protect us, that police departments are only minutes away, that if only government agents had the power to disarm everyone, that these atrocities would never happen. Unfortunately, government agents never seem able to actually disarm the criminal, or the terrorists. But what Obama wants us all to believe is that we are defenseless sheep who can not defend ourselves, that our best strategy is to run away and hide.

The truth is, our self defense is our own responsibility. These atrocities would be over in 30 seconds if we were not a nation of cowards who have been trained to let our superiors do our fighting for us. It then becomes a situation where our superior’s use the power of government to destroy their enemies rather than protect us from people who would do us harm.

We need to regain our courage, learn to defend ourselves and stop waiting for government to come to our rescue.

They have all the answers if only we would listen.

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What could go wrong?

by digby

iPhone buzz:

In this news story about it the inventor is quoted as saying that he tried it on himself and “it hurt.”

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Politicizing the tragedy

by David Atkins

This from Digby bears repeating a second time:

We aren’t shocked anymore when children are killed. It’s become a normal part of American life. The taboo has shifted from horror at the shootings to horror at talking about shooting. This is called “politicizing tragedy” as if these mass murders are an act of nature rather than an act of human evil or madness (or both) enabled by easy access to the tools of mass murder.

But let’s not go there. We will mourn the casualties the way we mourn the deaths of those in hurricanes and tornadoes. Gun violence is now a “natural” event in America, as unpredictable as the weather, and there’s nothing we can do about it except gather together in the aftermath to help the victims. Indeed, the only enduring threat these events foretell is from those who would question a culture that deifies the gun as if it were a religious symbol rather than a lethal weapon.

When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, nobody said that we should just pray for the victims and do nothing about it. When terrorists used planes full of people as missiles and killed thousands of Americans, few suggested that it was an inevitable tragedy that shouldn’t be politicized. The country took action to prevent those things from happening again. In fact, the nation went far beyond the bounds of decency and reason to do so, locking up entire races of Americans, starting needless wars and ramping up an expensive and unnecessary police surveillance state. Multiple Constitutional rights were and continue to be violated.

But very few went out of their way to suggest that the only reaction to these tragedies should be solemn mourning. These incidents involving heartbreaking loss of innocent life were intensely political, and appropriately so. In fact, to have done nothing in the wake of 9/11 and Pearl Harbor would have seemed to most Americans to have shown callous disregard for the victims, and disdain for the lives of victims of similar attacks to come.

There is no reason that these almost routine gun massacres in America should be viewed any differently. Those who wish to take steps to ensure that the next massacre be prevented–and they are entirely preventable–are showing the greatest respect for the lives of the victims. They’re the ones who are trying to make sure that they didn’t perish in vain, and that similar future massacres don’t claim any more innocents. It is intervention of the most necessary kind.

Prayers and sympathy are nice. But they accomplish nothing, and show no greater respect. Prayers won’t help the victims or stop the next massacre. Call it politics or any other term that seems fitting, but it’s long past time we started making sure this sort of thing cannot happen again. It’s the right thing to do.

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Blowing past a billion

by digby

Meanwhile, back in the horserace:

Less than four months until Election Day, the battle for the White House already has crossed the $1 billion mark — as the presidential candidates, political parties and the two super PACs closely aligned with President Obama and Republican rival Mitt Romney race to collect political cash.

The biggest spending is yet to come in a presidential race that could hit an eye-popping $3 billion, said Bob Biersack of the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks campaign money. Much of it may never be fully disclosed as it flows through “social welfare” groups active in politics this year.

How many jobs do you suppose this is creating? How much demand? Just asking.

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