Month: August 2012

If only it was just campaign rhetoric

by digby

It’s getting to the point where I’m hoping the Republicans manage to vote in a bunch of tea partiers because the president keeps promising to “compromise” in ways that will betray his own party and the only thing that will stop him from making horrible deals are people who hate him with such a passion that they’ll destroy their own agenda rather than let him take credit for it. How else am I supposed to react when he says thing like this?

What I’m offering the American people is a balanced approach that the majority agrees with, including a lot of Republicans. And for me to be able to say to the Republicans, the election is over; you no longer need to be focused on trying to beat me; what you need to be focused on and what you should have been focused on from the start is how do we advance the American economy — I’m prepared to make a whole range of compromises, some of which I get criticized from the Democratic Party on, in order to make progress. But we’re going to need compromise on your side as well. And the days of viewing compromise as a dirty word need to be over because the American people are tired of it.

That’s, I think, a message that will resonate not with every Republican, but I think with a lot of fair-minded Republican legislators who probably feel somewhat discouraged about having served in one of the least productive Congresses in American history.

And I hear — not in public, but in private — that many of them would like to go ahead and get some stuff done because they recognize that our children and our grandchildren have a stake in us being able to get this work done.

If you wonder what the Democratic party has been reluctant to support him on, he talked a little bit a week or so ago about how they don’t get enough credit for caving on their most important priorities:

He particularly believes that Democrats do not receive enough credit for their willingness to accept cuts in Medicare and Social Security, while Republicans oppose almost any tax increase to reduce the deficit.

Now one could chalk all this up to election year rhetoric, in which he’s just trying to position Romney as a nut and himself in the middle, except for the history of the past three and a half years in which he has said over and over again that he really wants to do this. In fact, he’s been saying it since before he was inaugurated.

Here’s a reminder of what he’s had in mind since January 10th, 2009:

I asked the president-elect, “At the end of the day, are you really talking about over the course of your presidency some kind of grand bargain? That you have tax reform, healthcare reform, entitlement reform including Social Security and Medicare, where everybody in the country is going to have to sacrifice something, accept change for the greater good?”

“Yes,” Obama said.

“And when will that get done?” I asked.

“Well, right now, I’m focused on a pretty heavy lift, which is making sure we get that reinvestment and recovery package in place. But what you described is exactly what we’re going to have to do. What we have to do is to take a look at our structural deficit, how are we paying for government? What are we getting for it? And how do we make the system more efficient?”

“And eventually sacrifice from everyone?” I asked.

“Everybody’s going to have to give. Everybody’s going to have to have some skin in the game,” Obama said.

During the Grand Bargain negotiations two years later, he put that all on the table:

That night, Obama prepared his party’s congressional leaders. He warned Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) that he might return to the position under discussion the previous Sunday — that is, cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid in exchange for just $800 billion in tax increases. Would they support him?

The Democratic leaders “kind of gulped” when they heard the details, [WH chief of staff William] Daley recalled. … Reluctantly, Reid and Pelosi agreed to do their best to support the plan

The wingnuts balked at the measly tax increases and the whole thing went up in flames. Thank goodness.

This is why we need a strong progressive bloc in congress. We simply cannot count on the Tea Party to continue to be stupid enough keep centrist Democratic presidents from using their own base as a bargaining chip in phony debt negotiations. Some day these conservatives are going to wake up and realize that working with them is a great way to advance their agenda. (The president seems convinced that will happen right after the election…)

But sadly, we probably won’t have a strong progressive bloc in November. The Party is seeing to it that far more New Democrat/Blue Dog style conserva-Dems will be elected to the congress than progressives. And we know they won’t stop any of this. So keep your fingers crossed that these congressional wingnuts stay insane enough to keep the “centrists” from doing their worst. It appears that it’s all we’ve got.

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Freedom plus groceries

by digby

I was watching the Spitzer show on DVR this morning and guests were all talking about what fakers the Republicans are on deficit reduction. And it’s true. They care about destroying programs that benefit average people and cutting taxes. But if it were a choice between tax hikes and maintaining our global military empire and burgeoning police state, there is no doubt that they are very happy to deficit spend. It’s not debt they hate, it’s redistribution of wealth.

But these “they don’t care about the deficit” conversations are starting to worry me. It’s not that it isn’t true that the Republican Party doesn’t care about deficits. But when Democrats make the charge the implication is that they do. “We are the real deficit cutters, the responsible ones, the grown ups in the room who will ask for sacrifice,that everyone has skin in the game. If you agree that debt is the greatest problem we face, vote for us!” (Who needs conservatism?)

The Democrats did some heavy lifting at the beginning of the 90s and first helped George Bush Sr pass a deficit reduction bill which ushered in the era of Gingrich and then put their own careers on the line to raise taxes under Clinton. Then a tech boom hit, the economy soared and they ended up leaving a surplus for the Republicans to squander on tax cuts and wars the minute they got back into office. This is what happens when Democrats decide that the people will reward them for their mature, responsible commitment to shrink the debt above all other concerns. They do the heavy lifting and the conservatives sweep in and reap the rewards.

I’m reminded of Rick Perlstein’s piece of a few years back called “How can the Democrats win?”:

This beast we call “liberalism”—in its genus Americanus, at least—is a notoriously complicated animal. Its philosophy is rooted in the notion of human beings as autonomous agents. With the realization that formal autonomy meant little without the means to sustain a decent life, its practical definition in this century came to encompass the various kinds of government arrangements democratically devised to share the social burden. What we now mean by the word was summarized with unmatched elegance by Maury Maverick, the Texas congressman who led a caucus in the 1930s that tried to push the New Deal to the left. He called liberalism “freedom plus groceries.” As a definition, it cannot be improved upon—although scholars may prefer John Rawls’s formulation, that for justice to thrive the minimum worth of liberty must be maximized.

The groceries part, the different ways in which liberals devised to vouchsafe enough material resources for everyone (whatever the divergent conceptions of “enough”), makes for a complex history. I won’t get into the technicalities except to note the existence of the commitment as one of liberalism’s constants and to observe that such a commitment almost invariably requires a political imagination geared toward the long term.

Liberalism isn’t against balancing the budget, per se. But neither is that what it is supposed to care about over all other things. Indeed, it’s supposed to care about “freedom plus groceries” above all others. And even if it were assumed that in order to advance its true vision it must retire the debt first, recent history shows that the minute it does, the other side immediately raises it again. This is because railing against the debt is intrinsic to the promotion of the conservative agenda, which is to eliminate redistribution of wealth. Unless Republicans change their radical trajectory, the deficit Democrats are nothing but their cleaning ladies.

Debt can be crippling. But right now we are suffering from an epic economic slump and focusing on debt will make it worse. Money is cheap, growth is possible, reform is necessary. Playing into the Republicans’ hands by vying for the title of who can be the biggest deficit hawk at a time like this is not only bad policy it’s politically idiotic. Nothing works better for the long term victory of conservatism.

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American exceptionalism in action: gunfights in the streets

by digby

There has got to be a better way:

“We recovered whole bullets from two of the victims, Mr. Kelly said at an event in Harlem. “Actually, we think a total of the three out of the nine bystanders were struck with bullets, the rest were struck with fragments of some sort.”

Mr. Kelly’s comments reinforce the picture that began to emerge on Friday: that in acting quickly and with deadly force, the police prevented the gunman, Jeffrey T. Johnson, 58, from inflicting more harm but in so doing also were responsible for many of the injuries.

Three of the victims were still in the hospital on Saturday, two at Bellevue Hospital Center, the other at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell hospital.

All three were reported in stable condition, the police said.

Mr. Kelly added: “As far as shots being fired yesterday, we had a witness that said that Johnson fired at the police. But the final count of the shells, it appears that that is not the case.”

“The two rounds — one in the magazine, the other ejected from the weapon, neither of those rounds had a firing pin hit, so those rounds were not attempted to be fired, as we can tell right now,” he said in response to questions on whether Mr. Johnson’s gun was fired after he killed Steven Ercolino, 41. “We believe the gun was still functioning. The gun was not fired, that’s correct.”

Asked about how the police responded to the confrontation, Mr. Kelly said, “I believe it was handled well.”

Ok.

I don’t know what could have been done differently, but one thing is clear: it’s a miracle that innocent bystanders weren’t killed in that hail of gunfire. And these were trained police. Imagine how often this happens if every yahoo is armed and ready to shoot as the gun nuts keep insisting is the only thing that can keep us safe.

You would think that a modern nation like the United States could come up with something better than gunfights in the streets to deal with crazy people, but we seem to think it’s not just the only way, it’s the preferred way.

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Why do they hate the troops so much?

Last week I published a post about the bogus charge that Obama is relaxing work requirements for welfare and I included a comment from a rally attendee:

Precious examples of the Republican soul

by David Atkins

Yesterday I posted a story about California’s move to adopt online voter registration. The link I pulled was from my local paper of record, the Ventura County Star.

As you might imagine, the comments from conservatives predictably went off on the usual paranoia about nonexistent “voter fraud.” Granted, the comments from so-called conservatives on most major news websites are appalling, but sometimes it’s worth highlighting them because we must constantly remind ourselves of the base to which most Republican politicians are appealing (to his credit, local Republican county clerk Mark Lunn fully supports the online voter registration push.)

It’s worth reminding ourselves in part because as long as it’s people like these before whom Republican politicians must grovel to win votes, there is no hope for the “reasonable compromise” in government so sought by media elites. So on to the sampling:

From RevTrueGrit (conservatives never use their real names to comment, often trying to pick names that sound badass to themselves, but comical to everyone else…)

More lib voter fraud!!And all the illegals can vote for there
European president Obama,Very sad days Jan 2013 the cliff is here!!

and

Maybe he can make another new law where he can be
King Obama and be president for the next 30 years,
Glad to see ice suing this fraud admin.
Obama removed 2012

Unindoctrinated wants to let you know that only old white property owners should vote. And that President Obama is a “child:

If you are too immature to register, or not interested enough to register, you should not be voting in the first place. Bleat.

These people are after 18 and 19 year olds, the impressionable, the spoiled, the rebellious, the lazy, the inexperienced; it’s not hard to appeal to the naive. Bleat.

Think about this, hand everything over to your children (accounts, bill paying, planning, shopping…) how long do you think I will take for everything to fall apart? That’s what I thought. Bleat.

By urging uninterested children to vote, and voting for children (our president) how long do you think it will take for everything to fall apart? That’s what I thought. Bleat.

Freedom1 has a different racist paranoid conspiracy:

What if the individual doesn’t have any data on file with the DMV? Now I understand the urgency for Mr. Obama’s new “Dream Act” light being pushed through – got to let them get drivers licences so the system will recognize their signature regardless of their citizenship status or “right” to vote. Very clever. Of course in California it really doesn’t matter – the Dem’s “run” the state (right into the ground)!

Yep. That’s why we’re pushing the DREAM Act. You got us.

Adam_1 is a pillar of humanity who would doubtless be very offended if you called him a racist:

This is a great idea! With computer technology our precious illegal aliens can register to vote, apply for food stamps, make an appointment at one of our overrun emergency rooms, register their anchor babies at one of our lousy public schools, and rip off us hard-working American taxpayers in so many ways. Fantastico!

Yes, with the magic of computer technology, migrant farm workers and the people begging for work outside Home Depot will hop right online to register themselves to vote and bypass security with secret hacker skills, despite limited English skills. Also “hard-working American” could never be a synonym for “white”, could it? Nah.

whosebone steps in for your daily dose of birtherism:

only bring it up change because his bc has been PROVEN to be a manufactured document, he is using a PROVEN fraudulent social security number, and his selective service registration document has been PROVEN to be doctored.

VCforlife is very Christian also:

There have been many Democratic organizations convicted of voter fraud. Most recently in Nevada. In Washington State, the Democratic Party was busted for hiring illegal aliens to register fellow illegals. You and your fellow Liberals can deny the truth. But, we will not. The reason the Democratic Party is fighting for no ID’s to vote, is they want to bus in illegal aliens to polling places. All I know is the Democratic Socialist Marxist Party have no moral compass. If Liberals do not believe a fetus is human life why would you think they care about voting fraud, child molestation(teachers), drug use(Obama),rape(Clinton), murder(Ted Kennedy).

And that’s just one article. On a public news site, not a swampy Republican blog. Comments on the left just don’t even begin to match that level of mean-spirited paranoid ignorance.

As long as this is what the Republican Party is made of, Republican politicians will keep moving rightward, and compromise will be impossible. The only question is whether the media will ever tell the truth about what is going on.

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Hands off crazy

by digby

From … uh … coochwatch.com

The right wingers have been saying for years that nobody cares about feminism but a bunch of dried up old hags. They were wrong.

Good luck Republicans. If you lose them at this age, they’re gone forever.

h/t to IG

It’s not Ike’s Party anymore

by digby

If you’re still looking for proof that the Republican Party has moved to the right, take a look at this 1956 GOP platform.

Zaid Jilani at Bold Progressives writes:

On Labor and Wages: The platform boasted that “the Federal minimum wage has been raised for more than 2 million workers. Social Security has been extended to an additional 10 million workers and the benefits raised for 6 1/2 million. The protection of unemployment insurance has been brought to 4 million additional workers. There have been increased workmen’s compensation benefits for longshoremen and harbor workers, increased retirement benefits for railroad employees, and wage increases and improved welfare and pension plans for federal employees.” It called for changes to the anti-union Taft-Hartley Act to “more effectively protect the rights of labor unions” and to “assure equal pay for equal work regardless of sex.”

On Welfare and Health: The platform demanded “once again, despite the reluctance of the Democrat 84th Congress, Federal assistance to help build facilities to train more physicians and scientists.” It emphasized the need to continue the “extension and perfection of a sound social security system,” and boasted of the party’s recent history of supporting “enlarged Federal assistance for construction of hospitals, emphasizing low-cost care of chronic diseases and the special problems of older persons, and increased Federal aid for medical care of the needy.”

On Civil Rights, Gender Equality, and Immigration: The platform supported “ self-government, national suffrage and representation in the Congress of the United States for residents of the District of Columbia.” With regards to ending discrimination against racial minorities, the party took pride that “more progress has been made in this field under the present Republican Administration than in any similar period in the last 80 years.” It also recommended to Congress “the submission of a constitutional amendment providing equal rights for men and women.” Its section on immigration actually recommended expanding immigration to America, supporting ”the extension of the Refugee Relief Act of 1953 in resolving this difficult refugee problem which resulted from world conflict.”

I’m afraid that’s proof that the Democratic Party has moved right as well. Nobody of either party ever mentions the ERA or changes to Taft-Hartley, much less brags about raising Social Security benefits.

Crazy people getting guns is central to our freedom

by David Atkins

Looks like we’ve learned a little more about the Aurora shooter:

The first glimpse of a once-promising career beginning to unravel emerged Thursday during a hearing in the case against James E. Holmes, accused of killing 12 and injuring 58 in a packed movie theater last month.

Assistant Dist. Atty. Karen Pearson revealed that 24-year-old Holmes, once a doctoral student in an elite neuroscience program at the University of Colorado Denver, had failed oral exams on June 7, made unspecified threats serious enough for campus police to be notified, and had his access to university buildings on the Anschutz Medical Campus revoked. He withdrew from the university June 10…

James Holmes, the accused shooter in the Aurora movie theater shooting, reportedly saw three mental health professionals at the University of Colorado before the massacre took place. KCNC-TV’s Rick Sallinger reports.

I understand that the NRA has won the battle over gun control. Democrats have declared defeat. No one dares challenge the NRA, which means we can expect more and more senseless, pointless and avoidable deaths as the “price of freedom.”

But for the love of all that is holy, there should surely be bipartisan consensus about the idea that people who are so deranged that they’ve been barred from various institutions, reported to police and had to consult multiple mental health professionals, maybe shouldn’t be able to buy rifles, high capacity magazines and thousands of rounds of ammunition. Right? Surely even Republicans should have the basic decency to agree on that.

But I guess not.

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“not a sparrow falls to the ground in the drafting of a national party platform that is not approved by the nominee and his or her staff”

by digby

So, it’s just ridiculous, is it, to believe that because the Republican platform has been extreme in the past that Mitt Romney could have influenced it this time? Ed Kilgore points out what should be obvious to anyone:

As someone involved in Democratic conventions (including on two occasions the platform process) for a long time, I can confidently assert that it is a fact, of which the entire CNN staff appears ignorant, that not a sparrow falls to the ground in the drafting of a national party platform that is not approved by the nominee and his or her staff. That Team Mitt did not choose to publicly challenge the traditional “constitutional ban with no exceptions other than life of the mother” language does not absolve it of responsibility for it. Romney’s extraordinary “flexibility,” shall we say, on the abortion issue over the years is hardly news, but the basic point that Romney is indeed complicit in an extremist platform if he doesn’t bother to explicitly distance himself from it is sound, even if Anderson Cooper doesn’t “get it.”

It should not be news that the Romney campaign wants to have it both ways so they are allowing the wingnuts to have their day with the platform while they say they don’t agree with it. But apparently it is. If Romney didn’t want that platform to say what it says, it wouldn’t say what it says.

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