Month: September 2012

Fact Check please

by digby

The AP has got to stop putting interns on its Fact Check desk. It’s getting embarrassing:

“The idea of taking war savings to pay for other programs is budgetary sleight of hand, given that the wars were paid for with increased debt. Obama can essentially ‘pay down our debt,’ as he said, by borrowing less now that war is ending. But he still must borrow to do the extra “nation-building” he envisions.”

Dean Baker responds:

There is not much sleight of hand here. President Obama is working off a baseline set by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) that assumes war spending continues over the next decade. If he doesn’t intend to continue this spending then he is freeing up money relative to this baseline. AP may not like this method of scoring, but it is absolutely standard in Washington policy debates. Changes are measured against a baseline. President Obama is just doing exactly what figures in both parties routinely do in discussing the budget. It would be more appropriate to make its complaint against CBO than against President Obama’s speech.

There are a bunch of similarly bizarre complaints, which Baker handily dispatches. But this “check” on Biden is really weird:

“What they didn’t tell you is that the plan they’ve put down on paper would immediately cut benefits to more than 30 million seniors already on Medicare.”

AP responds:

“THE FACTS: Biden wasn’t referring to any Medicare plan of Romney or running mate Paul Ryan, but to the consequences of fully repealing Obama’s health care law”

Yes, and? He didn’t say it was their “medicare plan” although that’s literalist nonsense. He said they’ve put it on paper and they have. And they say it every single day over and over again. Why is this even controversial? As Baker says:

If it is not their intention to eliminate the benefits in this law for people currently receiving Medicare then they would presumably be able to say something like:

“we will repeal Obama’s health care law, except for the benefits that it provides seniors already on Medicare.”

Romney and Ryan have not ever said anything like this, therefore it is reasonable for Biden and others to assume that their plan is to eliminate these benefits for seniors.

Sheesh.

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“It could have been worse”

by digby

ICYMI: The Daily Show does an Obama Campaign Video, narrated by Larry David:

The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

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I know you’re Honey Boo Boo, but what am I?

by digby

I don’t know why I’m bothering, but this story isn’t complete:

Fox, in their haste to make President Clinton look less influential than a former Toddlers and Tiaras contestant, got the story completely wrong. In fact, Clinton’s convention speech drew 25.1 million viewers across the seven networks that carried his speech. By contrast, Honey Boo Boo drew 2.4 million viewers. Only if you compare Honey Boo Boo’s ratings with Clinton’s ratings among the 18-49 demographic on one cable news network, CNN, did the two tie each other.

The total numbers for the evening as provided by Nielsen showed that not only did total coverage on all networks for Clinton far surpass the ratings for Honey Boo Boo as well as the ratings for Paul Ryan’s speech from the same night of the week during the Republican National Convention, they also beat the ratings for the second half of the opening game in the NFL regular season.

Now, the reason they’re doing this — aside from the fact that everyone wants to say the words “Honey Boo Boo” — is because last week a bunch of people went around saying exactly the same thing about the Republican convention.

Now, those articles all make clear that it’s in the 18-49 demographic while Fox elides that entirely, but the headlines don’t.

So, we have people who read the Huffington Post believing that Honey Boo Boo beat out the RNC and people who watch Fox believe that Honey Boo Boo beat out the DNC. And this is partly why people believe we live in alternate realities half the time.

The obvious fact is that way more humans watched both conventions than watched Honey Boo Boo in that time slot. The bigger question is why would anyone would believe otherwise? It makes no sense.

And I say this as someone who has watched Here Comes Honey Boo Boo and kind of enjoyed it. They all seem to be laughing at the audience as much as the audience is laughing at them. Which is more than I can say about the political networks.

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Romney doesn’t understand his base

by digby

This is incredibly lame, even with the softball question:

I honestly can’t see why average (non-nuts) Republicans could ever vote for this phony. Any Republican presidential candidate who doesn’t reflexively and ostentatiously genuflect before the military and loudly declare his devotion to the troops is totally inept.

Keep in mind, it’s not that he won’t radically increase useless defense spending. That’s GOP Keynesianism and he’s very likely to do it. But as a politician, if he doesn’t understand that the GOP coalition is dependent upon its belief in itself as a better defender of the troops than the hippie team on the other side, then he’s just too incompetent to be president.

I’ve never seen any Republican in the last 40 years, no matter how lame, allow the Democrats to out-Patriot him. But he did it.

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Andrew Sullivan parsed the president’s speech as I did and agrees with my assessment. But where I’m worried, he’s hopeful:

I can’t say I disagree with any of that. Except I’m not a deficit-busting Republican so it doesn’t make me happy.

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The Obama speech in full

by David Atkins

Here it is:

Digby already noted the Grand Bargain hedging we’re all watching out for in the lame duck session. For now, then, I’ll just note the following:

The President had a singular task tonight: take a message of hope and change, and adapt it to the reality of the struggling economy. Attack Romney while looking presidential, not punching down, and remaining statesmanlike. Show empathy without showing weakness.

And I think he accomplished those goals very well, in one of the most progressive speeches I’ve heard him give. It wasn’t the greatest speech he’s ever delivered, but that’s because the message is hard and doesn’t lend itself to the most soaring rhetoric.

He made it clear that the American people (and, I would argue, the citizens of the world) are in a project together, and that we can only succeed in that project if we have faith in it and in one another, without “othering” groups or allowing selfish cynicism to take hold. That’s a daring message for a U.S. president.

It’s also worth noting that in a convention where the words “climate change” seemed conspicuously and intentionally absent, it was the President who directly said “climate change is not a hoax” in his own speech. A low bar, to be sure, but quite interesting.

Now the key is, of course, to make sure that President’s policies match his rhetoric.

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Parsing the Grand Bargain promises

by digby

There are many fine passages in Obama’s speech tonight, of course. I would expect nothing less. He’s great at this stuff and I’m sure he fired up the base and brought over some undecideds too.

But you had to know that I was going to look at what he said about deficits. Here’s the main passage. It’s very interesting. He promised not to cut the safety net in return for tax cuts:

You can choose a future where we reduce our deficit without wrecking our middle class. Independent analysis shows that my plan would cut our deficits by $4 trillion. Last summer, I worked with Republicans in Congress to cut $1 trillion in spending – because those of us who believe government can be a force for good should work harder than anyone to reform it, so that it’s leaner, more efficient, and more responsive to the American people.

I want to reform the tax code so that it’s simple, fair, and asks the wealthiest households to pay higher taxes on incomes over $250,000 – the same rate we had when Bill Clinton was president; the same rate we had when our economy created nearly 23 million new jobs, the biggest surplus in history, and a lot of millionaires to boot.

Now, I’m still eager to reach an agreement based on the principles of my bipartisan debt commission. No party has a monopoly on wisdom. No democracy works without compromise. But when Governor Romney and his allies in Congress tell us we can somehow lower our deficit by spending trillions more on new tax breaks for the wealthy – well, you do the math. I refuse to go along with that. And as long as I’m President, I never will.

I refuse to ask middle class families to give up their deductions for owning a home or raising their kids just to pay for another millionaire’s tax cut. I refuse to ask students to pay more for college; or kick children out of Head Start programs, or eliminate health insurance for millions of Americans who are poor, elderly, or disabled – all so those with the most can pay less.

And I will never turn Medicare into a voucher. No American should ever have to spend their golden years at the mercy of insurance companies. They should retire with the care and dignity they have earned. Yes, we will reform and strengthen Medicare for the long haul, but we’ll do it by reducing the cost of health care – not by asking seniors to pay thousands of dollars more. And we will keep the promise of Social Security by taking the responsible steps to strengthen it – not by turning it over to Wall Street.

There’s a lot of wriggle room in there, and quite a few straw men, but if you read it literally, he specifically promised not to slash those programs in exchange for tax cuts. What he didn’t do was promise not to cut those programs in exchange for tax hikes — which is what the Democrats are seeking.

He won’t agree to tax cuts for millionaires. That’s a good thing. But will he agree to cuts if the Republicans agree to raise some taxes? We don’t know. But we do know that David Koch’s on board with that.

I’m frankly a little bit non-plussed. He named student loans, Head Start, the mortgage interest deduction which I wouldn’t have thought would be on the menu. And maybe they aren’t. But if the line in the sand is “no tax cuts for millionaires,” all those things could theoretically be part of an agreement that raises taxes on millionaires.

Let’s hope this is just paranoid and that he actually promised outright to protect all these benefits. But the construction of the sentences is strange if that’s the case.

Stay tuned.

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John Lewis, American hero

by digby

I wish this speech was in prime time. This Vote Suppression story is so important and John Lewis has so much moral authority only the rankest racist can look at him and defend it:

The following is a copy of a speech, as prepared for delivery, by The Honorable John Lewis, Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, Georgia at the Democratic National Convention on Thursday, September 6, 2012.

I first came to this city in 1961, the year Barack Obama was born. I was one of the 13 original “Freedom Riders.” We were on a bus ride from Washington to New Orleans trying to test a recent Supreme Court ruling that banned racial discrimination on buses crossing state lines and in the stations that served them. Here in Charlotte, a young African-American rider got off the bus and tried to get a shoe shine in a so-called white waiting room. He was arrested and taken to jail.

On that same day, we continued on to Rock Hill, South Carolina, about 25 miles. From here, when my seatmate, Albert Bigelow, and I tried to enter a white waiting room, we were met by an angry mob that beat us and left us lying in a pool of blood. Some police officers came up and asked us whether we wanted to press charges. We said, “No, we come in peace, love and nonviolence.” We said our struggle was not against individuals, but against unjust laws and customs. Our goal was true freedom for every American.

Since then, America has made a lot of progress. We are a different society than we were in 1961. And in 2008, we showed the world the true promise of America when we elected President Barack Obama. A few years ago, a man from Rock Hill, inspired by President Obama’s election, decided to come forward. He came to my office in Washington and said, “I am one of the people who beat you. I want to apologize. Will you forgive me?” I said, “I accept your apology.” He started crying. He gave me a hug. I hugged him back, and we both started crying. This man and I don’t want to go back; we want to move forward.

Brothers and sisters, do you want to go back? Or do you want to keep America moving forward? My dear friends, your vote is precious, almost sacred. It is the most powerful, nonviolent tool we have to create a more perfect union. Not too long ago, people stood in unmovable lines. They had to pass a so-called literacy test, pay a poll tax. On one occasion, a man was asked to count the number of bubbles in a bar of soap. On another occasion, one was asked to count the jelly beans in a jar—all to keep them from casting their ballots.

Today it is unbelievable that there are Republican officials still trying to stop some people from voting. They are changing the rules, cutting polling hours and imposing requirements intended to suppress the vote. The Republican leader in the Pennsylvania House even bragged that his state’s new voter ID law is “gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state.” That’s not right. That’s not fair. That’s not just.

And similar efforts have been made in Texas, Ohio, Florida, Wisconsin, Arizona, Georgia and South Carolina. I’ve seen this before. I’ve lived this before. Too many people struggled, suffered and died to make it possible for every American to exercise their right to vote.

And we have come too far together to ever turn back. So we must not be silent. We must stand up, speak up and speak out. We must march to the polls like never before. We must come together and exercise our sacred right. And together, on November 6, we will re-elect the man who will lead America forward: President Barack Obama.

I’m dead inside, but John Lewis always gets to me. He is a true American hero and always inspires me to keep on going despite the cynicism of the age.

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The Hourglass Society

by digby

When business bets on the middle class disappearing, the people should wake up:

This week brought a different kind of evidence that brings home (literally and figuratively) the trend of America becoming a two-class society. Among other companies, Procter & Gamble is adopting an “hourglass” marketing strategy, with products aimed at high- and low-end consumers, but not much in the middle.
In a marked shift from P&G’s historic focus on middle-class households, “the world’s largest maker of consumer products is now betting that the squeeze on middle America will be long lasting,” The WSJ reports.

This is no small matter or a minor change by a second-tier firm: P&G has at least one product in 98% of U.S. households, The WSJ reports. U.S. sales totaled about $30.5 billion in its latest fiscal year, about 37% of its total, while accounting for 60% of the firm’s $11.8 billion profits.

The company is engaging in what The WSJ calls a “fundamental change” in how it markets products in the U.S. “We’re going to do this both by tiering up in terms of value as well as tiering down our portfolio down,” CEO Robert McDonald says.
As noted above, P&G isn’t the only company coming to the same conclusion: Heinz is following a similar strategy to P&G while Saks is focusing its attention more on high-end consumer vs. ‘aspirational’ shoppers.

Meanwhile, Citigroup has created an index of 25 stocks designed to profit on this hourglass theme, including Estee Lauder and Saks as the top and Family Dollar Stores and its ilk at the bottom. The strategy has returned 56.5% since its inception in December 2009 vs. 11% for the Dow, another statistic reflecting the hollowing out of America’s middle class.

I suppose there will always be a lot of Americans who assume they’ll be among that 1%. (And many of them would rather be dirt poor than see someone he doesn’t like get a government benefit) But this is a disaster for them — and us — whether they know it or not.

By the way, austerity is designed to escalate this process. Why wait?

h/t to Jay Ackroyd

Fact check follies

by digby

Remember when Ezra agonized last week about how much he wanted to be even-handed and fair about Paul Ryan’s speech?

The original pitch was for “the five biggest lies in Paul Ryan’s speech.” I said no. It’s not that the speech didn’t include some lies. It’s that I wanted us to bend over backward to be fair, to see it from Ryan’s perspective, to highlight its best arguments as well as its worst. So I suggested an alternative: The true, the false, and the misleading in Ryan’s speech. (Note here that we’re talking about political claims, not personal ones. Ryan’s biography isn’t what we’re examining here though, for the record, I found his story deeply moving.)

An hour later, the draft came in — Dylan Matthews is a very fast writer. There was one item in the “true” section.

I think that was a bridge too far, actually. He didn’t need to bend over backwards to find some mitigating “truths” among the lies. But to their credit, he and Matthews did end up reporting the facts, which showed that the speech was filled with lies and very little truth.

The AP obviously felt the same kind of pressure from their “fact-check” last week. And they made up for it by attacking Bill Clinton in the most puerile possible way:

CLINTON: “Their campaign pollster said, `We’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact checkers.’ Now that is true. I couldn’t have said it better myself – I just hope you remember that every time you see the ad.”

THE FACTS: Clinton, who famously finger-wagged a denial on national television about his sexual relationship with intern Monica Lewinsky and was subsequently impeached in the House on a perjury charge, has had his own uncomfortable moments over telling the truth. “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky,” Clinton told television viewers. Later, after he was forced to testify to a grand jury, Clinton said his statements were “legally accurate” but also allowed that he “misled people, including even my wife.”

That’s not a fact check. It’s not even a hypocrisy charge. They’re basically saying that “but he lied too once!” This is one of the best examples of the power of playing the refs (which the Republicans did mercilessly last week) and the MSM insistence on equivalence even when it’s completely daft we’ve ever seen.

But that’s not even the worst of it. Jamison Foser explains:

But it isn’t the worst part of the article.* The worst part is the first statement the AP pretends to fact-check:

CLINTON: “When times are tough, constant conflict may be good politics but in the real world, cooperation works better. …Unfortunately, the faction that now dominates the Republican Party doesn’t see it that way. They think government is the enemy and compromise is weakness. One of the main reasons America should re-elect President Obama is that he is still committed to cooperation.”
THE FACTS: From Clinton’s speech, voters would have no idea that the inflexibility of both parties is to blame for much of the gridlock. Right from the beginning Obama brought in as his first chief of staff Rahm Emmanuel [sic], a man known for his getting his way, not for getting along.

That purported statement of fact by the Associated Press may be the most rigidly ideological statement of the convention season, and the biggest whopper.
Barack Obama’s stimulus package was smaller than necessary, and laden with tax cuts, both in an effort to win Republican votes. Republicans opposed it anyway. His health care legislation was an approach long championed by Republicans and conservatives, and implemented years ago by Mitt Romney in Massachusetts. Republicans opposed it anyway. Obama has talked up deficit-reduction, which Republicans supposedly care about, at the expense of jobs, which they clearly do not. They’ve given him no credit for it. He’s made symbolic and substantive concessions to Republican anti-government fervor at a time when the economy desperately needs a helping hand from the government. Republicans call him a socialist anyway. Time and time again, Obama and Democrats extended a hand to Republicans, and Republicans extended a single finger in response. This isn’t any kind of secret: Republicans have explicitly said they won’t work with Obama because they don’t want to give him bipartisan victories.

He goes on to show the volumes of proof backing up his case.

This is the worst “fact-check” ever done and I think the reason it happened is for the reasons Ezra outlined earlier. Instead of just calling it like it is, they bent so far backwards to make Clinton equal to Ryan in mendacity that they fell on their heads. It was bound to happen at some point.

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