Month: September 2012

Kicking the bargain can down the road

by digby

Dday flagged this piece from The Hill today which may or may not be good news:

A bipartisan group of senators is negotiating a roughly $55 billion debt “down payment” that would temporarily turn off automatic spending cuts and buy Congress at least six months to work out a bigger deal.

The down payment would be linked to a deficit-reduction framework that would bind committees with jurisdiction over spending and taxes to an action plan, say sources familiar with the negotiations.

If a deal is reached and leaders sign off on it, Congress could approve the plan in a lame-duck session.

This is a kick the can move, which I think is better than anything else they might have on offer. But it’s by no means the end of the story. There are a whole lot of details to be figured out and who knows what they’ll agree to.

But as a general rule it’s better not to do deals in the lame duck session. It rarely works out well for the folks. And just because they’re setting up a “framework” doesn’t mean they are bound to it, so let’s see what it is. But this would at least give organizers some time to develop a plan to oppose this. As Ed Rendell said this morning the granny-starvers are already well on their way.

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Four years ago, the GOP gave us this

by digby

Just think about this for a moment. Four years ago at this time the Republican Party not only thought this person was qualified to be the first woman president, they held her up as the avatar of American motherhood and family values:

It’s about time our president stood up for America and condemned these Islamic extremists. I realize there must be a lot on his mind these days – what with our economy’s abysmal jobless numbers and Moody’s new warning about yet another downgrade to our nation’s credit rating due to the current administration’s failure to come up with a credible deficit reduction plan. And, of course, he has a busy schedule – with all those rounds of golf, softball interviews with the “Pimp with the Limp,” and fundraising dinners with his corporate cronies. But our nation’s security should be of utmost importance to our Commander-in-chief. America can’t afford any more “leading from behind” in such a dangerous world. We already know that President Obama likes to “speak softly” to our enemies.

If he doesn’t have a “big stick” to carry, maybe it’s time for him to grow one.

– Sarah Palin

Makes you proud to be an American, doesn’t it?

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The modern GOP in a nutshell

by David Atkins

Everyone is talking today about Mitt Romney’s overly aggressive, horribly bungled attack on the President over the Benghazi embassy attack.

What’s received less press is this tweet from RNC Chairman Reince Priebus:

Obama sympathizes with attackers in Egypt. Sad and pathetic.

That’s the actual, nominal head of the Republican Party speaking, not some radio shock jock.

There is politics. There are lies, exaggerations and half-truths aplenty in politics. But then there are times when playing this sort of mendacious politics is even more offensive than usual. The death of a U.S. Ambassador is one of those times.

But this this is who they are, and what the official Republican discourse has been reduced to. It’s time the press started reporting the callous, lying extremism of the mainstream Republican Party for what it is.

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Teachers have no friends among the journalistic elite

by digby

I’m sorry to blast Alex Wagner’s show two posts in a row, but this segment on the Chicago teachers strike is so smugly biased and ill-informed my head is exploding:

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Wagner: As 26,000 chicago teachers enter the third day of their strike there is no sign of an agreement between the union and chicago public school officials, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is calling on both sides to come to a deal. Policies that the Obama Administration supports are at the root of this dispute. The teachers are to the pushing for more pay, but instead are fighting evaluations that are tied to student performance. This is always, Governor Rendell, a tricky mathematics, if you will. The question of education reform versus teachers unions, obviously a place for both. It’s particularly tricky for the administration, given the fact they definitely need the support of labor going into November.

Rendell: I don’t think this issue in the state of Illinois will affect the electoral vote of illinois but it’s an important issue because Rahm Emanuel is showing again, that Democrats can stand up to unions when their demands are unreasonable. I hear it’s not economics. The economics in this contract are good for the teachers. It’s the demand that’s really untenable and the American people think that teachers like everybody else should be evaluated.

Lindgren: What I’m guessing Rahm is betting on the thing that will resolve this, the power of the chicago parents association.

Wagner: right

Lindgren: Which I’m guessing is supremely unhappy day three of their schoolchildren, I think they’re getting baby sat four hours a day and then let out into the, you know, to … where.

Rendell: He happens to be right. Teachers should be evaluated. What the unions should be doing is trying to work with them to frame the evaluation in the fairest way possible to their members. That’s what unions should be doing.

Wagner: It’s worth noting what the chicago is proposing, student performance on standardized tests count toward 25% of teacher assessment would go to 40% in five years. It’s hard to say look, we don’t want to be evaluated. You just need to keep paying us what you’re paying us.

John Heileman: A shockingly untenable position. There really are at this point in the world of teachers unions those getting with the program and those that are digging in their heels and resisting the program. There are unions that have looked at race to the top, have looked at the fact that a lot of the demands unions have made in the past have gotten in the way of things we should be focussed on, kids and their education, and they are working with reformsers to be adaptive to the new realities. others have dug in their heels. The chicago union right now looks retrograde, looks ridiculous. Rahm will win this battle.

Lindgren: I would say that one thing is for sure, it is very hard to be a Chicago schoolteacher, so I think the fact that like they have fought for a lot of these gains, will they have to give up some of those things I’m sure they will.

Rendell: but evaluations —

Heileman: nobody is asking to give anything up.

Lindgren: they are asking them to give up a 4% pay raise.

Wagner: They are, as you noted in the break, making an average of $76,000.

Rendell: look —

Wagner: let me say one thing. The narrative is somehow the teachers unions do not have the children at heart.

Time magazine reporter: No, absolutely. I think the bottom line is going to be a long and high stakes game of chicken and worth remembering what happened in washington where there was a similar game, reform was pushed through in part because there were pay rises but the mayor lost his job.

Wagner: I’m not betting against Rahm Emmanuel on this one. If there’s someone i don’t want to find in a dark alley at night to play a game of chicken with, Rahm Emanuel.

Heileman: smart woman.

I could be mistaken, but I think those are all supposed to be either Democrats or journalists. If I didn’t know better I’d think I was watching a roundtable at the GOP convention.

We are at a point at which teachers are clearly seen as the biggest assholes in the world who should be happy to work in terrible conditions and be willing to be fired when kids don’t thrive in that environment. I could never have imagined that when I was a kid. Seriously, teachers used to be considered the backbone of our culture and one of the foundations of the middle class. Now they are “retrograde and ridiculous” according to the privileged chattering classes who can’t even be bothered to inform themselves of the real issues.

Here, read this lovely essay by Corey Robin about why people hate teachers. Read this piece by Rick Perlstein about what’s really happening in Chicago. And read this Mother Jones explainer so you’ll know when elitist jerks like John Heileman go spouting off half cocked.

Then go take a walk. I’m going to.

Update:

I keep hearing about how difficult it is to fire “bad” teachers and they should be able to get rid of tenure and union guarantees so the kids don’t suffer. I wonder how many people understand that “bad” is in the eye of the beholder?

Let me tell you about my brother-in-law, a highly educated high school English and Drama teacher who teaches in Alaska. He assigned a book of Native Alaskan tales to senior students which included a vaguely sexual allegory. This is a school district with a a substantial subculture of conservative evangelicals, many of whom are extremely active in the district and have a slight majority on the school board. One of the parents complained. My brother-in-law went through months of harassment and nearly lost his job. It was the union that saved him.

You see, what you think of as bad teachers — lazy, uninterested, whatever — is not necessarily what other people think of as bad teachers. They want to be able to fire my brother-in-law with no recourse because he assigned a book that offended them. And I’d imagine some would like to fire a teacher who teaches evolution or Shakespeare too without having to deal with all that difficulty that a union requires. This was why academics and teachers fought for tenure in the first place.

I realize that the “teaching to the test”/evaluations issue is different. But the effect of breaking the teachers unions — which is what this is fundamentally about, just ask Ed Rendell — will result in “good” teachers being endangered in exactly the same way as everyone seems to want for the “bad” teachers.

If union bashing is supposed to be about what’s good for the children, I think people need to think a little bit more deeply about what this really means.

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9/11 Is What Happens When Modern Republicans Rule

by tristero

I was so totally wrong. With tremendous confidence, I told a friend of mine on 9/11 that Bush would be forced to resign within a week due to his negligence in protecting the country. Shocked, my friend responded, as so many did – even months afterwards – that there was no way Bush could have prevented the attacks, no way he could have predicted or known. Of course he could have, had he and his henchmen been paying attention, I said.

Like I said, I was wrong. Well, about the resigning part, that is.

…the administration’s reaction to what Mr. Bush was told in the weeks before that infamous briefing reflected significantly more negligence than has been disclosed. In other words, the Aug. 6 [2001 brief entitled Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” ], for all of the controversy it provoked, is not nearly as shocking as the briefs that came before it.

Oh, one more thing. After no one dared to move a finger to push Bush out – despite the obvious fact that he had demonstrated a criminal level of incompetence – I cynically sneered that if there was an attack under a Democratic president, Republicans would seize the opportunity to pillory him. Shocked, my friends said that Republicans would naturally rally behind the president and the country during a foreign policy crisis, no matter who was in power.

Uh huh.

MSNBC is becoming a font of brainless CW on week-days

by digby

Exhibit A, from today’s Now with Alex Wagner:

Ed Rendell: I’m the co-chair of the campaign to fix the debt with Judd Gregg and we’ve got now 2,000 of the 5,000 major corporations signed on to the campaign we’ve raised 26 million dolars for a PR campaign right after the election to try to get peopel to focus. I think the American business community is going to weigh in with Republicans and say “enough, we want this done.”

Alex Wagner: that would be a bold strike by the business community

[More stupid irrelevant cross talk about nothing … see below]

Wagner: Luke, before we let you go, the president talks a lot about the fever breaking. I know you just gave us a sort of pessimistic view of the next couple months. But do you think the fever could break inside the Republican party come next year if in fact he is re-elected?

Luke Russert: well, it’s a question we talked about a few days ago on your show which is if Mitt Romney loses, what is the catharsis within the Republican party? Do they become more conservative and say, “you know what we nominated a guy who was way to liberal, way too moderate” or do they say “we need to reform ourselves and not be so rigid.” And that’s honestly a question which I think is very hard to fathom which direction they’ll go this far out …

Rendell: Don’t you think if the president’s re-elected, he can frame the issue by saying I want to do Simpson-Bowles, some form of it, I want to do it now, let’s all get in and do our jobs. Then the Republicans have a real Hobson’s Choice..

Russert: If both sides agree to jump in the deep end holding hands. But you’ve seen, is there the impetus to get to that magic number 217 votes in the House, it’s hard to say…

Rendell: if the president and the Democrats are on board, and the Republicans say no

Russert: If they’re on board in terms of raising the Medicare age

Rendell: uh huh, uh huh

Russert: possibly, possibly. Then you could say the Republicans will be out in the woods for the 2014 midterms. It’s tough, it’s tough. We all thought this would happen in the summer of 2011 and you saw that that deal died. Mr Woodward wrote a whole book about it.

Wagner: Some questions are even too difficult for the sage of Capitol Hill…

Indeed. But in this case, one can only hope that his read is correct and the surer bet is that House Republicans are is insane as ever and that there are enough sane Democrats to stop this hideous thing. Simpson-Bowles in all its “forms” has got to be thrown on the ash heap, period. Nothing could be worse for the economy or for the future of this country.

The most important piece of this conversation actually came before that excerpt above and it came from New York Times Magazine editor Hugo Lindgren who said this:

Lindgren: What’s interesting is that there is still no real pressure on the political establishment by the bond market.I mean there’s still not. And until there is, that’s what’s forcing things in Europe. Yields went crazy. And there’s not that. The US treasury bond is the last safe haven in the world. And there’s no real market crisis yet for US debt so…

One would think that would be an interesting point and that people on this panel would wonder why and consider if that fact might be meaningful in all this. But no. Instead, John Heilman started ribbing Lindgren, saying he sounded like he was a trader on the desk at Goldman Sachs and sounding like Alan Greenspan instead of a journalist. (Not kidding.) And the whole panel laughed and laughed. And then he did it again in the stupid crosstalk I referenced above, making some silly remark about Lindgren wearing a tie.

Apparently, it’s a big mistake to talk about what’s actually happening in the economy and the markets when you’re discussing the important topic of slashing the shit out of important government programs.

Nothing to see here, folks, move along …

*I’ll put up the video when it becomes available.

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I smell John Bolton

by digby

To those still wondering if Romney might be a kinder, gentler foreign policy president, think again:

Yesterday we noted that Mitt Romney, down in the polls after the convention, was throwing the kitchen sink at President Obama. Little did we know the kitchen sink would include — on the anniversary of 9/11 — one of the most over-the-top and (it turns out) incorrect attacks of the general-election campaign . Last night after 10:00 pm ET, Romney released a statement on the attacks on the U.S. embassies in Egypt and Libya. After saying he was “outraged” by these attacks and the death of an American consulate worker, Romney said, “It’s disgraceful that the Obama administration’s first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks.”

Yet after learning every piece of new information about those attacks, the Romney statement looks worse and worse — and simply off-key. First, Romney was referring to a statement that the U.S. embassy in Egypt issued condemning the “efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims.” But that embassy statement, which the White House has distanced itself from, was in reference to an anti-Islam movie and anti-Islam pastor Terry Jones, and it came out BEFORE the embassy attacks began. Then this morning, we learned that the U.S. ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens, and others died in one of the attacks.

He doubled down this morning, anyway:

This is vintage Bolton. He’s a psychopath. And he’s advising Romney. On the other hand, I’m sure there are other psychopaths advising him too, so who knows?

Update: From twitter, I gather that the wingnuts are thrilled. This could be the one thing that gets the base excited about Mitt. Nothing they love more than dangerous, bellicose foreign policy rhetoric.

Some good news for 9/11 responders

by David Atkins

This has been a long time in coming:

Several types of cancer have been added to a list of ailments covered by a government program benefitting first-responders and survivors of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The final rule, issued on the eve of the 11th anniversary of the terrorist attacks, now incorporates around 50 types of cancer.

Dr. John Howard, director of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, first proposed the addition of cancer to illnesses covered by the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act in June, making the ruling official on Monday.

Initially, cancer was excluded from the list of illnesses covered by the $4.3 billion fund because there was not enough scientific evidence to prove that cancer was a medical condition resulting from exposure to dust, debris, and toxins at Ground Zero in the days after the attack. Now, however, after further review and input from various scientific organizations and trade unions, Howard’s proposition has been approved.

According to the rule, of those enrolled to receive funds under this act, the cancer rate is 21 percent higher than the national average. About 60,000 people are covered by the act, including police offices, firefighters, cleanup crews, and eligible survivors of the attack. The rule will be effective 30 days after its Sept. 12 publication in the Federal Register.

It’s about damn time. Especially after years of insistence from the Bush Administration that there was no cancer risk, and then Senate Republicans blocked healthcare coverage for first responders.

It’s still incredible to me that a political party that wants to deny cancer coverage for the heroes of 9/11 while giving tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans can still win a dogcatcher’s race. It takes a special strain of ugly to vote for and associate with people like that. I don’t understand them, I don’t make them my friends, and I wouldn’t ever want to.

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QOTD: Jay Z

by digby

I guess when you’re worth nearly half a billion your perspective changes:

When you just say that ‘the 1 percent is that,’ that’s not true,” Jay-Z said. “Yeah, the 1 percent that’s robbing people, and deceiving people, these fixed mortgages and all these things, and then taking their home away from them, that’s criminal, that’s bad. Not being an entrepreneur. This is free enterprise. This is what America is built on.”

I’m not sure who it is that’s condemning the entrepreneur. Most people are just asking that they support the broader society that helped them get to where they are today. Not everyone can be a hip-hop superstar.

What is it about vast wealth that gives these people such thin skins?

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The hideous, un-Christian Right

by digby

I’ve heard this sort of whispered about in wingnut circles, but I’ve never seen one come right out and say it before:

“The number of children who are born subsequent to a first abortion with handicaps has increased dramatically. Why? Because when you abort the first born of any, nature takes its vengeance on the subsequent children,” said Marshall, a Republican.

“In the Old Testament, the first born of every being, animal and man, was dedicated to the Lord. There’s a special punishment Christians would suggest.”

His “statistic” is total bullshit, of course. But that’s par for the course with these fine fellows isn’t it? Just make things up to make your point.

But it’s an especially disgraceful un-Christian way to characterize disabled kids — as punishments for their mothers’ alleged misdeeds. It’s been a while since I went to church, but I don’t think most Christians believe that.

What horrible people these are.

Update: Per Rightwing Watch, this statement is from 2010. Which just goes to show you that the War on Women is nothing new.

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