Month: August 2012

How do we stop the lying?

by digby

Wow. They just don’t give a damn:

“Our most effective ad is our welfare ad,” a top television advertising strategist for Romney, Ashley O’Connor, said at a forum Tuesday hosted by ABCNews and Yahoo! News. “It’s new information.”…

The Washington Post’s “Fact Checker” awarded Romney’s ad “four Pinocchios,” a measure Romney pollster Neil Newhouse dismissed.

“Fact checkers come to this with their own sets of thoughts and beliefs, and we’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact checkers,” he said.

I’m old enough to remember the days when right wingers used to bemoan post-modernism as the ultimate destruction of Western civilization. When they held forth for hours about the despicable evasiveness of Bill Clinton’s “depends on what the definition of “is” is.” Looks like those days are gone.

This explanation is apparently widely held among true believers on the right — that the fact checkers are biased. In that NPR report I wrote about last week, these people were asked about the welfare ads:

“We think that the fact that the work requirement has been taken out of welfare is the wrong thing to do,” said Peggy Testa, attending a Tuesday rally near Pittsburgh for Romney running mate Rep. Paul Ryan.

When told that’s not actually what had happened, Testa replied: “At this point, [I] don’t know exactly what is true and what isn’t, OK? But what I do know is I trust the Romney-Ryan ticket, and I do not trust Obama.”

Another Romney supporter at the Ryan rally said it’s really tough to know what’s true anymore.

“I think we always have to look at who the fact checkers are,” Ken Mohn said. “There’s lots of … groups that purport themselves to be neutral, nonpartisan, but often are [partisan].”

I think much of this is the Fox effect. It’s very easy for people to believe this when they have an ostensibly respectable “news” source that validates all their biases. When you add in talk radio, which is just one lie after after another, you have the ability to live entirely in a world where any facts that don’t comport with your desired narrative can be chalked up to partisan bias.

Jay Rosen tackles this question on Press Think today and it appears that the media is pretty much stymied about what to do about it. He reports that Michael Sherer at Time Magazine thinks we should all “call out our own” because only then will these people stop. And if it weren’t for the fact that the right has built an entire industry to do the opposite, it might even work. That’s about it. Nobody else has any answers.

People don’t know what to believe so they believe their team. Maybe there’s nothing to be done about that. The Enlightenment is no longer operative. When the very idea of demonstrable reality is abandoned all you have left is authority. And I’m guessing their authority is bigger than our authority. It’s not a happy thought.

For those of you who are still interested in keeping a grip on reality, I highly recommend this piece by Thomas Edsall in the NY Times about Romney’s strategy, which shows that it’s purely designed to gin up resentment among the elderly and working class whites — their only growing demographic. He concludes with this:

On the trail, Paul Ryan argues that “we’re going to make this about ideas. We’re going to make this about a positive vision for the future.” On television and the Internet, however, the Romney campaign is clearly determined “to make this about” race, in the tradition of the notorious 1988 Republican Willie Horton ad, which described the rape of a white woman by a convicted African-American murderer released on furlough from a Massachusetts prison during the gubernatorial administration of Michael Dukakis and Jesse Helms’s equally infamous “White Hands” commercial, which depicted a white job applicant who “needed that job” but was rejected because “they had to give it to a minority.”

The longer campaigns go on, the nastier they get. Once unthinkable methods become conventional.

“You can tell they” — the welfare ads— “are landing punches,” Steven Law, president of the Republican super PAC American Crossroads, told the Wall Street Journal. Law’s focus group and polling research suggest that the theme is not necessarily going to work. “The economy is so lousy for middle-income Americans that the same people who chafe at the rise of welfare dependency under Obama don’t automatically default to a ‘get-a-job’ attitude — because they know there are no jobs.”

As the head of a tax-exempt 501(c)4 independent expenditure committee, Law cannot coordinate campaign strategy directly with the Romney campaign. Nonetheless, he is sending a warning. The welfare theme, Law said, “needs to be done sensitively. Right now it may be more of an economic issue than a values issue: In other words, more people on welfare is another disturbing symptom of Obama’s broken-down economy, rather than an indictment of those who are on welfare or the culture as a whole.”

Will the Romney campaign heed Law’s advice to keep it subtle? The principal media consultant for the pro-Romney super PAC Restore Our Future, which will be running many of the anti-Obama ads over the next ten weeks, is Larry McCarthy, who produced the original Willie Horton ad.

I think there is one thing that might be helpful in changing this: dogging the reputations of people who do it. Romney will not want to be publicly shunned for this behavior or relegated to the wingnut corner of the world when this is all over. But he should be. No one should ever write another word about him without mentioning his dishonest, racist ad campaign of 2012. It should be hung around him like 500 pound albatross so that people understand that you can do this if you want, but you will never escape it.

A lot of them won’t care. But some will. People are motivated by a lot of things in life, but once they reach this level of success, they care about their legacy as much as anything. Romney has sealed his as the heir to Jesse Helms.

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When you lose even the hippies at Bloomberg…

by David Atkins

The noted liberal hippies at Bloomberg have a message for the modern, Ayn Randian Republicans:

As we listen to Republican candidates and voters across the country, we hear something less admirable: carping about people who are on government support. Some speak disparagingly of them as the “moocher class” for paying no federal income taxes while getting food stamps, government health care and unemployment checks…

To all of the above, the moocher class — this election year’s agitprop — is the country’s biggest problem. It’s not. By claiming that it is, Republicans do a disservice to the party and to the national debate.

The U.S. in fiscal 2012 will spend about $210 billion on food stamps, unemployment insurance and welfare. Add in Medicaid and the tab swells to about $485 billion. Still, it’s small beer compared with the $1.3 trillion the U.S. will spend on Social Security and Medicare alone. Include $700 billion for defense, and the moocher class’s bounty looks even smaller.

And that doesn’t account for the ample government benefits — farm subsidies, oil and gas allowances, and other corporate welfare — many moocher-class critics get, or the tax breaks for mortgage interest, employer-provided health insurance and charitable contributions.

The moocher-class mythologists forget that the U.S. just went through its worst recession in 75 years, and that unemployment has exceeded 8 percent for almost four years. The U.S. is on the verge of having a permanent jobless class made up largely of middle-age workers whose occupations have been destroyed because of automation and globalization.

The moocher fabulists also ignore data showing that U.S. incomes have stagnated for a decade, and that inequality has skyrocketed. The top-earning 1 percent of households now bring home about 20 percent of total income, versus about 10 percent in 1970. Recent studies conclude that upward mobility is easier in Europe than in the U.S. So much for Republican nightmares about the U.S. becoming a European-style welfare state.

The Pew Research Center reported last week that the U.S. middle class just experienced a lost decade, shrinking for the first time since World War II. Its median household income fell 4.8 percent to $69,487 in 2010 from an inflation-adjusted $72,956 in 2001. Median wealth (including retirement savings and home values, minus debt) tumbled an even greater 28 percent, to $93,150 from $129,582, largely because of the housing crash.

Another party shibboleth is that Obama’s stimulus spending shifted wealth from “makers to takers.” It’s more accurate to say that the stimulus — by most economists’ reckoning, required medicine — was a giant earmarking exercise that sent tax dollars back to the districts of lawmakers in both parties. Without it, an economy that shrank 6.3 percent in 2008 would have fallen into an abyss.

This was written by the editors at Bloomberg, and there’s much more there than this excerpt.

It’s important to remember that the “business community” in the United States is not united behind the extreme rightist vision, even in the wealthy FIRE sector. Modern conservatism is the a radical creation of a subset of a radical subset of well-heeled greedheads and sociopaths, and only survives with the votes of the increasingly aging people who resent the idea that we’re all equally human with equal rights.

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“I know you are but what am I” politics

by digby

Exhibit A:

Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, one of his party’s elder statesmen and leading strategists, today accused Democrats of playing the “race card” in accusing Republicans of making race a subtext of the campaign.

Democrats have argued heatedly that Mitt Romney’s unexpected new focus on welfare policy, his reference to President Barack Obama’s birth certificate, and his embrace of Donald Trump — who campaigned on the latter subject — represent thinly-coded appeals to working-class white resentment of a black president.

“Name a campaign in the last 25 years where the Dems didn’t play the race card,” Barbour told BuzzFeed. “Surprise!”

Here’s Newt “food stamp president” Gingrich to take it to its full PeeWee Hermanesque glory:

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Meet the Aristocrats!

by digby

This is how wealthy people form aristocracies:

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and his wife, Ann, have used sophisticated estate- planning techniques for more than a decade to minimize taxes and amass at least $100 million for their family outside of their estate.

The couple created trusts as early as 1995, when Romney was building wealth as chief executive officer of Bain Capital LLC. They packed one for their children with investments that stood to appreciate and set up another for charity that provides a tax deduction and income. The candidate’s retirement account, valued at as much as $87.4 million, may benefit his heirs for decades.

“It’s beneficial for your kids and grandkids to push the money downstream,” said David Scott Sloan, chairman of the national private wealth services estate-planning practice at the law firm Holland & Knight LLP in Boston. “The Romneys appear to be doing things that are similar to what other high-net-worth families do.”

Wealthy couples use strategies allowed under the federal tax system such as moving assets to trusts so that the money may be subject to little or no gift and estate taxes, Sloan said. The Romney family trust is worth $100 million, according to the campaign. That money isn’t included in the couple’s personal fortune, which the campaign estimates at as much as $250 million.

Romney’s use of the tax code to minimize levies for his family has drawn scrutiny from Democrats portraying him as an elite person of wealth who is out of touch with many Americans.

Imagine that. Most Americans have to sell all their assets so they can qualify for Medicaid and get into a nursing home in their elder years. These fancy trusts aren’t relevant to their lives. But for Mitt and the rest of the insanely wealthy .001%, preserving their wealth for the fruit of their loins is what it’s all about.

I keep coming back to this:

From the pharaohs of ancient Egypt to the self-regarding thugs of ancient Rome to the glorified warlords of medieval and absolutist Europe, in nearly every urbanized society throughout human history, there have been people who have tried to constitute themselves as an aristocracy. These people and their allies are the conservatives.

The tactics of conservatism vary widely by place and time. But the most central feature of conservatism is deference: a psychologically internalized attitude on the part of the common people that the aristocracy are better people than they are. Modern-day liberals often theorize that conservatives use “social issues” as a way to mask economic objectives, but this is almost backward: the true goal of conservatism is to establish an aristocracy, which is a social and psychological condition of inequality. Economic inequality and regressive taxation, while certainly welcomed by the aristocracy, are best understood as a means to their actual goal, which is simply to be aristocrats.

You can’t have a better example of this than the Romneys.

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Tracking the eye of the stupid

by digby

I’m sure you are all aware that the Republicans have long sought to defund all the weather services because they’re a big waste of money and a conspiracy to turn everybody into commies. Yes, I know it’s ridiculous.

So, here’s Rush to explain to you how they’re working hand in glove with the Democrats to make Republicans lives miserable:

‘And I noticed that the hurricane center’s track is — and I’m not alleging conspiracies here. The hurricane center is the regime; the hurricane center is the Commerce Department’:

It’s the government. It’s Obama.

And I’m noticing that that track stayed zeroed in on Tampa day after day after day. And the Republicans react to it accordingly over the weekend, canceling the first day of the convention. What could be better for the Democrats than the Republicans to cancel a day of this? […]

Okay, 6:45 p.m. Saturday night the Republicans announce that they’re canceling Monday. At 6:45 p.m. Saturday night, everybody is still under the impression that Isaac is making a beeline for very close to Tampa. It was an hour and 15 minutes later that the eight p.m. model runs showed New Orleans. I’m alleging no conspiracy. I’m just telling you, folks, when you put this all together in this timeline, I’m telling you, it’s unbelievable.

We have a lot of problems in this country, but it’s a mistake to ever allow talk radio to slip too far down the list. This is a big part of the stupid that’s destroying us.

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Desperation Time

by David Atkins

Mitt Romney has gone full birther–to the great delight of Donald Trump, of course. And he has followed that up by making his false accusations that President Obama is gutting welfare-to-work programs with the even more incendiary claim that Obama is doing it (the thing he’s not doing) in order to “shore up his base.”

Given the unquestioned importance of the minority vote to this election and to future elections, it might not initially seem to make sense for Romney to cater to the extremist cesspool of birtherism and spend so much time flat-out lying in the hopes of capturing a greater share of the white working-class vote. But the truth is, Romney’s all out of options. He hilariously took zero percent of the black vote in a recent NBC/WSJ poll, and a poll released today showed Romney down 65-26 among Latino voters. These numbers are not surmountable and Romney knows it. That means it’s desperation time: Romney has to drive up his share of the working-class white vote, no matter how and no matter what. In a must-read piece in New York Magazine, Jonathan Chait explains the full ramifications of this dynamic:

A Republican strategist said something interesting and revealing on Friday, though it largely escaped attention in the howling gusts of punditry over Mitt Romney’s birth certificate crack and a potential convention-altering hurricane. The subject was a Ron Brownstein story outlining the demographic hit rates each party requires to win in November. To squeak out a majority, Mitt Romney probably needs to win at least 61 percent of the white vote — a figure exceeding what George H.W. Bush commanded over Michael Dukakis in 1988. The Republican strategist told Brownstein, “This is the last time anyone will try to do this” — “this” being a near total reliance on white votes to win a presidential election.

Right. But let’s say that Romney does pull this off based on stoking up race resentment among working-class whites with lies about welfare and subconscious xenophobia. What then? It’s not exactly like he could duplicate that result in four years when minorities are an even larger share of the electorate, all while enacting policies that would keep the base happy at the same time. But as Chait explains:

The “2012 or never” hypothesis helps explain why a series of Republican candidates, first in the House and most recently at the presidential candidate level, have taken the politically risky step of openly declaring themselves for Paul Ryan’s radical blueprint. Romney’s campaign has been floating word of late that it sees a potential presidency as following the mold of James K. Polk — fulfilling dramatic policy change, and leaving after a single term. “Multiple senior Romney advisers assured me that they had had conversations with the candidate in which he conveyed a depth of conviction about the need to try to enact something like Ryan’s controversial budget and entitlement reforms,” reports the Huffington Post’s Jonathan Ward. “Romney, they said, was willing to count the cost politically in order to achieve it.” David Leonhardt floats a similar sketch, plausibly outlining how Romney could transform the shape of American government by using a Senate procedure that circumvents the filibuster to quickly lock in large regressive tax cuts and repeal of health insurance subsidies to tens of millions of Americans.

Blowing up the welfare state and affecting the largest upward redistribution of wealth in American history is a politically tricky project (hence Romney’s belief that he may need to forego a second term). Hence the Romney campaign’s clear plan to suture off its slowly declining but still potent base. Romney’s political-policy theme is an unmistakable appeal to identity politics. On Medicare, Romney is putting himself forward as the candidate who will outspend Obama, at least when it comes to benefits for people 55 years old and up. Romney will restore the $700 billion in Medicare budget cuts imposed by Obama to its rightful owners — people who are currently old.

See? They don’t care if they don’t stand a shot in 2016 or a few cycles afterward, as long as they can ramrod the Ryan agenda starting in January 2013. They don’t care if Romney is a one-term president, just as long as in that one term, he’s able to end Medicare, cut taxes for the wealthy, and generally do anything and everything else that enables a massive transference of wealth from the lower- and middle-class families to the wealthy.

On a side note, this is also why anyone who thinks that Mitt Romney is too moderate for this sort of thing is so horribly wrong. The demographics are such that Republicans have to make hay while the white sun still shines. Grover Norquist said it already: Romney is nothing other than the robo-signer for the Ryan agenda, and 2012 is their last serious chance at getting it done for a long time, given their current base.

Out of wedlock pregnancy is “similar” to rape

by digby

And the hits just keep on coming, this time from the Pennsylvania Republican challenging pro-life Bob Casey:

Republican Tom Smith spoke at the Pennsylvania press club luncheon Monday afternoon. The defining moment occurred a few moments after the formal program when, asked about abortion amid a group of reporters, Smith seemed to suggest that having a child out of wedlock was analogous to rape.

Smith, a former coal company owner from Armstrong County who is challenging freshman Democratic Sen. Bob Casey, immediately tried to backtrack his comments.

You can listen to the exchange here, and the following is PoliticsPA’s transcript:

Robert Vickers, Patriot News: In light of Congressman Akin’s comments, is there any situation that you think a woman should have access to an abortion?

Tom Smith: My stance is on record and it’s very simplistic: I’m pro-life, period. And what that Congressman said, I do not agree with at all. He should have never said anything like that.

Vickers: So in cases of incest or rape…

Laura Olson, Post-Gazette: No exceptions?

Smith: No exceptions.

Mark Scolforo, Associated Press: How would you tell a daughter or a granddaughter who, God forbid, would be the victim of a rape, to keep the child against her own will? Do you have a way to explain that?

Smith: I lived something similar to that with my own family. She chose life, and I commend her for that. She knew my views. But, fortunately for me, I didn’t have to.. she chose they way I thought. No don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t rape.

Scolforo: Similar how?

Smith: Uh, having a baby out of wedlock.

Scolforo: That’s similar to rape?

Smith: No, no, no, but… put yourself in a father’s situation, yes. It is similar. But, back to the original, I’m pro-life, period.

Clearly, Smith is a cretinous throwback of the worst kind. I’m guessing that if the argument in Pennsylvania shifts to whether unwed motherhood equals rape or whether there should be an exception for rape and incest, Casey’s going to win it. Unfortunately, women in Pennsylvania won’t because he’s still anti-abortion.

Still, it’s very interesting how so many of these important Republicans are blurting out these opinions. Maybe someone should ask them questions like this more often.

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Imperfect messengers: the Tweety edition

by digby

This is a fascinating exchange on Morning Joe, with Chris Matthews annoying the hell out of everyone with the truth:

My favorite moment is Tom Brokaw coming in with the “he said/she said both sides do it” commentary. The Democrats do it too, of course. And they do make unfair attacks from time to time. But on this issue, it’s the Republicans who have turned it into an art form.

Matthews is often wrong, as we know. And he’s very, very excitable. But in this case, he’s right. The Romney campaign is using a racial strategy, there is simply no doubt about it. Even Priebus, with his ridiculous rationalization that Obama is following “european” policies is part of that whole “foreign” bullshit meme, which Matthews rightly calls him out on. That priebus seems to genuinely believe it only makes it creepier.

Of course, Matthews missed his best shot, which is that if Obamacare is European and that’s a very, very bad thing, what in the hell is the RNC doing nominating the man who authored Romneycare?

This type of argument is so frustrating because its being carried by someone that sounds as though he half nuts and idiot Village elders like Brokaw and know-nothing political celebrities like Mika end up drawing false equivalences and make the two parties sound equally extreme. Still, I’m glad to see someone on TV point out what’s happening in clear terms.It ain’t Walter Cronkite, but it’s better than nothing.

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The GOP is one big happy family

by digby

Aaaand, the Grand Old Party comes together after all now that their True North has joined the ticket. Whoda thunk it?

Thousands of pumped delegates flocked into this hurricane-wary city over the weekend far giddier about the prospects of beating President Barack Obama than they were four years ago — or even four months ago.

Have they finally fallen in love with Mitt Romney — their emotionally unavailable standard-bearer — after a lackluster courtship? Not quite.

For many, it is the other guy who is filling the passion gap for them.

“I liked Romney, but I love the ticket,” said Linda Lepak, a lawyer from Oklahoma and self-described conservative who started out as a Rick Santorum supporter. “Paul Ryan can win back the hearts and minds of the young people in the country. I have five grown children, and he speaks to them. He’s just awesome. It’s made me excited.”

Indeed. Ryan’s everybody’s dreamboat:

As the tea-party movement agitated for fiscally conservative ideals, it often found itself at odds with Republican party leaders. But as the GOP convention opens this week, tea-party activists say they like what they see.

The Republican ticket now includes Paul Ryan, whom tea-party supporters view as one of their own. The GOP platform squares with their values. And some of the speakers who will be showcased in Tampa are heroes of the movement, notably Texas Senate candidate Ted Cruz and Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.).

Not everything is to their taste. Some tea-party activists have never fully warmed to the GOP’s presumptive presidential nominee, Mitt Romney.

But in many ways, the convention marks an alignment between the Republican Party and the tea-party movement that is more complete than some imagined only two years ago, when it was unclear whether tea-party energy would strengthen the GOP or distract it by provoking primary-election fights. Some Republicans even had worried the small-government movement could turn into a third party, siphoning off GOP support.

Speaking of the movement’s influence on the convention, Sal Russo, co-founder of the political action committee Tea Party Express, said: “In baseball, it’s called a grand slam.…I would say this is a triumphant tea-party convention.”

No word from the Koch overlords, but I’m guessing they’re pretty happy too.

But the campaign can’t take any group for granted so they’re going to do a lot of outreach to some of their regular voters who’ve felt left out of all this:

In the flurry of other news, a major strategic decision from the Romney campaign has emerged in a series of reports over the weekend. In brief, the dismal economy won’t be enough to boot President Obama from office, the Romney camp has decided. Something more is going to be necessary. And the ‘more’ is going to be the ‘culture war’, specifically a new campaign angled on race and President Obama as an alien presence in American life. In other words, for the sprint to November 6th, get ready for Birtherpalooza with a hard-edged focus on race, President Obama as a foreign threat to American values and so much more.

If anyone thought this wasn’t going to happen, I’ve got some beautiful beachfront property in Fukushima to sell them.

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When Does Pregnancy Begin? You Decide!

by tristero

On abortion, this is where we are today:

A new law was signed by Arizona Governor Jan Brewer on Thursday that has abortion advocates up in arms. The new law, titled Women’s Health and Safety Act deems a woman pregnant 2 weeks before conception.

Actually, I suspect the law Brewer signed is far too liberal. Let’s discuss some basic biology here:

A woman has fertile eggs in her womb. Even before puberty, a woman has the potential for fertile eggs in her womb. Therefore, a woman is always in a state of pregnancy. Therefore, one can logically argue that a woman actually becomes pregnant two weeks before her own conception.

But for Christians, this clearly finesses the issue, and demeans women by minimizing the truly essential nature of her pregnant state. After all, women existed as a twinkle in the Eye of God from the very, very beginning – in 4004 BC, of course. Which means that all women have been pregnant two weeks before the world began – i.e., roughly Christmas, 4005 BC.

But this is a democracy, people, views differ. So let’s vote! What do you think?

Is a woman pregnant:

A. From 2 weeks before conception (the extreme liberal view)?
B. From two weeks before the moment of her own conception (the moderate position)?
C. From two weeks before the beginning of all time (the Christian view)?

Before commenting, remember: Honest people can disagree so let’s keep the conversation civil and respect all sides in this serious debate. And always, be as thoughtful as you can be on this important subject.