Month: October 2012

QOTD: Ed Rendell

by digby

This is the man who has been living on TV for the last few weeks, especially MSNBC, speaking for the Democrats:

“If President Obama loses the election — and I’m not sure he will, I like to say he’s a slight favorite — but if he loses he lost it because when the Simpson-Bowles Commission report [came out], he didn’t do anything with it initially. … He didn’t grab it by the horns and go with it,”

And in case you’re wondering about his Pete Peterson Catfood Campaign, here’s the latest:

More than 80 chief executive officers of U.S. companies, including Cisco Systems Inc., Microsoft Corp.and Loews Corp., are now supporting a campaign to reduce U.S. federal deficits through spending cuts and tax increases.

The Campaign to Fix the Debt announced its expanded list of CEO support today. Among the campaign’s leaders are Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, the co-chairmen of President Barack Obama’s 2010 fiscal commission.

“What we’re trying to do is drive support for the radical middle,” David Cote, CEO of Honeywell International Inc., said on a conference call with reporters.

Congress has been deadlocked over deficit reduction. Obama wants a plan that combines some changes to spending programs with higher taxes on top earners. Republicans want cuts to entitlement programs and oppose tax increases.

“They are likely to be relatively successful in setting the terms of the discussion,” said Michael Linden, director of tax and budget policy at the Center for American Progress, a Washington group typically aligned with Democrats. “No amount of CEO pressure or any pressure, frankly, from sort of outside groups is going to make a difference if Republican congressional members simply won’t agree to new revenue.”

Ah, but what if they will? After all, they have bigger fish to fry. Dday found bipartisan tweedle dee and tweedle dumb (Saxby Chambliss and Mark Warner) also begging CEOs to join the deficit party. He points to this post by Felix Salmon showing just what a self-serving little soirée it is:

This is ridiculous. There are lots of serious threats out there to the economic well-being and security of the United States, and the national debt is simply not one of them. Nor is it growing. The chart on the right, from Rex Nutting, shows what’s actually going on: total US debt to GDP
was rising alarmingly until the crisis, but it has been falling impressively since then. In fact, this is the first time in over half a century that US debt to GDP has been going down rather than up.

So when the CEOs talk about “our growing debt”, what they mean is just the debt owed by the Federal government. And when the Federal government borrows money, that doesn’t even come close to making up for the fact that the CEOs themselves are not borrowing money.

Money is cheaper now than it has been in living memory: the markets are telling corporate America that they are more than willing to fund investments at unbelievably low rates. And yet the CEOs are saying no. That’s a serious threat to the economic well-being of the United States: it’s companies are refusing to invest for the future, even when the markets are begging them to

Dday points out that they are just using this phony debt crisis to lower their own taxes.

Also too, that means they are willing to tank the economy once again.  These are the people we are supposed to admire for their great business savvy. In fact, half the country thinks we should elect one of these bozos as president.

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Yes, these anti-abortion zealots do *not* make sense

by digby

So, I see that Amy Sullivan is unsurprisingly explaining to liberals why they are misunderstanding Richard Mourdock:

Despite the assertions of many liberal writers I read and otherwise admire, I don’t think that politicians like Mourdock oppose rape exceptions because they hate women or want to control women. I think they’re totally oblivious and insensitive and can’t for a moment place themselves in the shoes of a woman who becomes pregnant from a rape. I think most don’t particularly care that their policy decisions can impact what control a woman does or doesn’t have over her own body. But if Mourdock believes that God creates all life and that to end a life created by God is murder, then all abortion is murder, regardless of the circumstances in which a pregnancy came about.

Take a look again at Mourdock’s words: “I came to realize that life is that gift from God. And…even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.” The key word here is “it.” I think it’s pretty clear that Mourdock is referring to a life that is conceived by a rape. He is not arguing that rape is the something that God intended to happen.

Rick Santorum said something similar:

“What he was saying is that God doesn’t make mistakes, yes it was a horrible thing, but, you know, God let that happen,” Santorum said. “That’s the thing that Christians believe — that it’s God’s will. And it’s a horrible thing, but sometimes bad things happen.

“I think to take it for anything other than that,” Santorum said, “that somehow God wants people to get raped, is a complete mis-characterization of that comment.”

I’m not a religious person so I can’t speak to the theology here, but as a logical person I can only hold my head in my hands and moan. God doesn’t make mistakes but he didn’t intend for a rape to happen. It’s God’s will but sometimes bad things happen. All of this is supposed to be true simultaneously.

I’m sorry, if it’s God’s will and he doesn’t make mistakes then he must have intended the rape as well as the pregnancy. You can’t have it both ways and say he is omnipotent and all powerful and let him off the hook on that half that equation while you insist that the pregnancy is inviolable because God intended it.

This doesn’t matter to me because I am not a believer and I don’t care what “God’s will” is supposed to be. But for anyone who does believe, that logical inconsistency should require some deeper consideration before blurting it out in public and expecting people to accept it as an argument.

These people see women as an abstraction and blastocysts and fetuses as real, which makes it quite clear that they do devalue women and seek to control them. Their motivation for that is irrelevant to me. The fact that Mourdock doesn’t think about the living, breathing human being (aka gestation vessel) who is being told she must give birth to her rapist father’s child means that he is a complete and utter failure as a person and is totally unqualified to represent the 50% of the population he so blithely dismisses.

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Who are the true austerians?

by digby

Matt Yglesias reports on latest austerity apologetics from the UK:

The failure of austerity policies in the United Kingdom is a bit of an embarassment for proponents of austerity in the United States, so austerians like Veronique de Rugy have beat a tactical retreat toward arguing that the problem in Britain is too many tax hikes.

And I agree—those tax hikes were misguided because austerity was misguided and so a fortiori tax-side austerity was also misguided.

But as a simple matter of arguing honestly and clearly, if your policy prescription is “deficit reduction but without any tax increases” then deficit reduction isn’t actually your policy prescription at all.

Agreed. So, if we were to apply this observation to the deficit reduction plans in the US, we would see that the only people who are serious about reducing the deficit are the Democrats since they are the ones who want to slash spending and raise taxes while the Republicans only want to slash spending.

Which brings us back to Yglesias’ first point: “tax hikes were misguided because austerity was misguided.” What the Democrats are proposing is to do exactly what the UK did — tax hikes and spending cuts. And they are back in recession.

No, the situation isn’t exactly the same. We have different issues and are at different stages in the economic cycle. But unless you think this economy is now booming it’s still a bad time for austerity.

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Summing up Mr. Romney, Generic Candidate

by David Atkins

Hunter at Daily Kos:

There is now less than two weeks to go before this election season is, at long last, over. Regardless of the outcome, however, at least one thing has now been conclusively proven: post-truth politics works. It may or may not win elections, but it has been granted credibility by the press, and by the pundits, and by the electorate. That is not particularly shocking, mind you; we’ve been merrily skipping along this path for a good long time now, and were bound to get here eventually, but thanks to truly massive amounts of cash and insincerity, we made damn good time. We are less than two weeks before the election, and even if you had a gun to my head I could not tell you what one of the two candidates for leadership of this nation (1) has as his core, avowed principles, (2) is proposing as actual legitimately credible path forward, economically or in any other realm, or (3) would really do if elected, regardless of whatever he and his campaign was saying about (1) or (2).

What does Mitt Romney stand for? What are his core beliefs? Why does this man want to be president? Does he merely like the shape of the room?

We often have elections in which candidates bend their personal beliefs or past history in order to appear more palatable to a wider electorate, but I cannot remember one that featured a candidate so apparently devoid of those beliefs. If Mitt Romney has a position on various social issues, there is precious little evidence of what it might be. If he has any actual plan for the nation other than a few entirely self-serving planks about his own taxes and how to regulate his own and allied industries, he has yet to give credible voice to it. Mitt Romney may be, if his own campaign is to be believed, the most generic person to have ever lived. There is apparently not a damn thing that he might have believed ten years ago that he feels the same way about today—and that includes his own signature accomplishments, by the way. Here is Mitt Romney, of RomneyCare, now the standard bearer against ObamaCare. Here is Mitt Romney the moderate, now Mitt Romney the “severe” conservative, now Mitt Romney the cipher. Here is the man who spent an entire summer campaigning on a twenty percent tax cut, only to toss it all away as soon as the debate season has started, claiming it is a tax cut that will not actually be a tax cut because it will just be a shifting of taxes that has no actual tax impact, which leads to the obvious question of why even bother with the thing, much less hold it up as your signature campaign theme only weeks earlier. He surrounded himself with the most neo of neoconservative foreign policy advisers, ultra-hawks who have continued to grace American op-ed pages with all the various reasons why America needs three wars instead of two, etc,. etc—and upon reaching the foreign policy debate, promptly flushed it all down the campaign toilet, apparently unable or unwilling to describe any foreign policy approach other than the bold and mostly inexplicable we should spend more money on boats plank.

There has not been a single case where, when Mitt Romney was pressed on a past inconvenient action, or belief, or issue, the Etch a Sketch did not simply shake off all the old assertions in favor of some new ones. Problem solved.

There are two separate issues here. First is the obviousness of the lies. The you didn’t build that campaign continues to be the crowning, Orwellian achievement there—a swiftboat-styled editing of something that happened not decades ago, but something that happened right before our very eyes, with no shame whatsoever on the part of the liars. That is post-truth politics, summed up. The second issue is the politics of Ultimate Vapidity, the push to so empty the candidate of values and beliefs that he stands for literally nothing, a campaign heralding an expensive suit on a translucent man. You might presume that the pick of Paul Ryan for the vice presidency might signal an appreciation for Ryan’s remarkably brutal cull-the-herd approach to the social safety net; you would be equally correct to presume it to be nothing more than the latest empty pander to the groups that need pandering to. There is no way to tell. It is at least telling, however, that after that selection Mitt Romney did not suddenly start promoting the ideas of Paul Ryan; instead, Paul Ryan began to be studiously genericized, like Mitt Romney.

I do not believe Mitt Romney is an ultraconservative. I do not for a minute think Mitt Romney has put enough thought into his own political beliefs to even have an opinion on them.

I think that Hunter is being a little too kind to Mitt. Taibbi had similar thoughts after the Great Etch-a-Sketch Debate, but I think his original expose on Romney nailed down the man’s true convictions, such as they are.

But Hunter’s piece isn’t really an indictment of Mr. Romney. It’s an indictment of the press that has allowed this post-truth environment to exist. A press that is far more interested in the horserace and in political maneuvering than in the the actual policies of the candidates. After all, a journalist who actually understood and cared about tax policy wouldn’t let Romney off the hook on his equivocations about imaginary deductions. She’d insist on answers until Romney stormed off the interview.

The American Presidency may be the most important job in the world. It has the most scrutinized job interview process in the world. The press is ultimately the arbiter of the job interview, with the final hiring decision left to the American people.

And at the end of the job interview, we still have no idea how one of the applicants would approach the job.

That’s a good reason not to hire the applicant. But it’s an even better reason to fire the interviewer.

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Legitimate rape: the musical

by digby

A long, slow, incremental plan to send women to back alleys again

by digby

Food for thought from a great piece by Irin Carmen in Salon:

Here’s what’s important to know about the right’s plan for Roe: It will be slow, and it will be indirect — to avoid a backlash — but the inexorable goal is to overturn it and ban abortion wherever possible. With an eye toward the court’s oldest member, women’s rights pioneer Ruth Bader Ginsburg, antiabortion activists would be counting on a President Romney to appoint one or more justices who would upset the fragile 5-4 balance that currently maintains the federal right to an abortion. In the meantime, they’ve been working hard to lay the groundwork to get a case before the Court that would allow justices to revisit, and possibly overturn, Roe. 

“The antiabortion groups are busy trying to fill the pipeline with cases that could present vehicles to revisit the abortion issue, either tangentially or frontally,” says Supreme Court expert and author Linda Greenhouse, who has written extensively about Roe. “And the pro-choice groups, on the other hand, are not appealing even adverse rulings, because they don’t want such a vehicle to get to the Court” — even the current, shakily pro-choice court. “Right now,” says Greenhouse, “we have a standoff.”

And yes, the Court could “return it to the states” which should satisfy all the states’ rightists. But it won’t. The next day the zealots would deploy their armies to start dismantling it in the states where it would remain legal. (Some states already have it banned on their books.)

The anti-abortion zealots have a plan. And they are patiently carrying it out. They may even have the majority on the court already that will overturn it. (Kennedy certainly seems to be concerned these days with dizzy broads being unable to make such momentous decisions without suffering a breakdown afterwards.)

Here’s what to keep you eye on:

The Trojan horse that worries prochoice legal scholars the most are the so-called “fetal pain” laws, which ban abortion at around 20 weeks, well before viability, on the scientifically-spurious, and currently constitutionally irrelevant, basis that a fetus experiences pain at that point. They’ve in seven states, including Indiana, Kansas and Nebraska. Like the Partial Birth Abortion Bans, these laws promise to put focus on rarer, but less politically palatable, later abortions.

After declining to take the anti-abortion bait in several states, CRR and the ACLU are challenging a version of the law in Arizona that effectively bans abortion at 18 weeks and has a very narrow health exception. (The Ninth Circuit agreed to enjoin the law and will hear the case next month.) The stated intention of the law’s defenders is for the Supreme Court to eventually take the case and totally reframe its approach to abortion rights to take into account what happens to the fetus before viability. But prochoice litigators are betting that the Supreme Court wouldn’t hear it. Says Smith, “It would be outrageous if they took it, because there’s no conflict in the circuits. It would be a hugely activist move.”

For now, all of these battles are being fought below the public radar in lower federal courts, where the ranks of liberal judges are thinner than they might be, thanks to Obama’s slowness in making nominations and the determined Republican opposition to those he does nominate. Judicial discretion is key here. The Casey decision held that a state could do anything but impose an “undue burden” on a woman who wants an abortion, but as Northup puts it, “What an undue burden is is very much in the eye of the judge that’s hearing the case.”

Ah, who needs liberal judges anyway?

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The GOP’s other ground game

by digby

As we start to shift focus to the ground game I’d urge Democrats not to rest on their laurels. And the press should not rest on its narrative. Once again, this article by Addie Stan from last month tells why:

Liberal pundits often make the mistake of comparing the GOTV efforts of competing Democratic and Republican campaigns, as conducted by the parties and their candidates, concluding that the Democratic efforts are far superior. At the party and candidate levels that may be true, but the Republican turnout operation exists largely outside of the party structure, through organizations such as Reed’s, and the Koch-backed Tea Party group, Americans For Prosperity. Unlike unions, whose budgets are limited by the size and scope of their membership, FFC and AFP could have access to however much money they need to get the job done.

As Stan documented at the time, Reed’s organization, along with Americans for Prosperity, was responsible for the Walker victory in Wisconsin — a state where the unions were very mobilized. (Reed was extremely upset by this article, by the way.)

The victory narrative from the 2008 campaign is that the Obama team closely studied the playbook assembled by Karl Rove (now a Republican sugar daddy in his own right) for the 2004 Bush campaign, and appropriated a number of its methods.

So who is Ralph Reed studying? The Obama campaign of 2008. As Reed told the activists who attended his Faith and Freedom Coalition conference in Washington last June, in 2008, the Obama campaign “ran circles around us.”

“I founded Faith and Freedom Coalition because I vowed that as long as I was alive, we were never going to get out-hustled on the ground again,” he said.

In Florida alone, Reed said, his organization had identified 200,000 unregistered conservative Christians, and FFC planned not only to sign them up, but to make sure they voted, even if they had to drive them to the polls himself. And it’s not just religious voters he’s after; any right-wing voter will do, and Reed is determined to find them all.
[…]
As Robert Arnakis of the Leadership Institute explained at a recent workshop conducted by the Faith and Freedom Coalition in Washington, D.C., told two dozen activists, “You know, we don’t want to turn out all voters. The fact of the matter is, we want to turn out voters who think like us and who vote like us.”

And they are using all the social media tools at their disposal along with the traditional churches and social conservative organizations.

I bring this up again, because I keep hearing on TV that the Democrats don’t have anything to worry about because their ground game is so much better than Romney’s. People are counting election offices in swing states and looking at the number of early voters and extrapolating from some pre-set formula that for all his money, Romney’s at a disadvantage.

Maybe he is. But there is a rushing river of right wing money in this race and a huge amount of it has gone toward making their traditional religious right GOTV practices into a modern GOP operation that exists outside the Party. I wouldn’t assume that the situation on the ground is the same as 2008.

Oh, and FYI:

FreedomWorks for America had its best month yet in September, getting there with even more small donors than usual. And it’s on its way to even bigger numbers in October.

The group, a conservative super PAC with tea party roots, is an anomaly among super PACs in its emphasis on small-donor funding. In September, unitemized contributions, or those of $200 or less, made up 47 percent of contributions to the super PAC, exceeding its 35 percent average for the year.

Even larger contributions to the group were relatively small in September. There were many $250 donations and only five contributions of $10,000 or more that didn’t come from a FreedomWorks affiliate. The largest donation, $750,000, came from Mary Stiefel, a retiree from Pinecrest, Florida. This was her first contribution of the year, although she gave the group $5,000 in 2010 and has contributed to seven 2012 campaigns across the country.

Yet even without contributions from the Sheldon Adelsons and Bob Perrys of the super PAC world, FreedomWorks for America managed to raise about $3 million last month and spent about $4 million.

FreedomWorks spokesman Adam Brandon says that part of the group’s strategy is to expand a network of supporters that totaled 45,000 people last year.

“Small donors tend to be very stable. They become part of the community,” Brandon said. “What ends up happening with these small donors is not only do they donate but they also volunteer…We are building a machine that on the day after the election is stronger than the day before.”

FreedomWorks’ network of small donors is all the more impressive when compared to other major super PACs’ fundraising statistics. As the table below shows, none of the other active super PACs raising as much or more money this election cycle comes close to having as large a share of funds from unitemized contributions. (Super PACs connected to labor unions are not included because they are in large part fueled by members’ dues, which are difficult to compare to individual donations to other super PACs.)

Brandon says that unlike other super PACs — for instance, the three big dogs, American Crossroads, Restore Our Future, and Priorities USA Action — FreedomWorks uses its funds for phone banking and lawn signs instead of television ads.

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The Hill catches on to the Grand Bargain betrayal

by David Atkins

Looks like The Hill finally caught on to what we’ve been yelling about for months:

Major labor unions and dozens of liberal groups working to elect President Obama are worried he could “betray” them in the lame-duck session by agreeing to a deal to cut safety-net programs.

While Obama is relying on labor unions and other organizations on the left to turn out Democratic voters in battleground states, some of his allies have lingering concerns about whether he will stand by them if elected.

The liberal groups are planning to launch an aggressive campaign immediately after Election Day to pressure Obama and Senate Democrats not to endorse any deal that cuts Medicare and/or Social Security benefits.

They say Republicans are also being targeted, but acknowledge that Democrats are more likely to respond to the lobbying campaign.

The coalition has yet to be formally announced, so organizers are reluctant to speak publicly about the effort or disclose the full membership of the coalition.

It is expected to include the AFL-CIO, the Service Employees International Union, Campaign for America’s Future, members of the Strengthen Social Security coalition and dozens of other groups, according to sources familiar with the effort.

No kidding. Most on the left are putting all their energy into getting Democratic candidates elected, and assuming that will well and they can take a break for a while.

Some of us know better. Step 1? Defeat Mitt Romney. Step 2? Defeat the Grand Bargain (with unwitting Tea Party help.) It’s going to be a slog all the way through January.

What’s most depressing about all this to this 31-year-old blogger is that I’ll just be working to stop cuts to programs that might be there for me if I live to see 65 (or whatever age they may raise the cap to.) None of this even covers the prospect of discretionary spending cuts that would immediately affect the lives and prospects of those under 65. Discretionary spending needs to be almost doubled, not slashed.

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About our sad little Navy

by digby

Kevin Drum:

In 1916, America controlled about 11 percent of the world’s naval power. In 2010, we controlled about 50 percent. We may have fewer ships than we did during World War I, but we carry a way bigger stick than we did back then. Measured in the only way that makes sense, American naval strength today is greater than it’s ever been in history.

Keep in mind that Romney didn’t make his comment off the cuff. Insisting that the US Navy is a tiny little flotilla these days is in his stump speech and building a bunch of new ships for no good reason is a big agenda item.

One might wonder why, but you don’t have to look much farther than this.

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Lizard brain tactics

by digby

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry:

This summer, a group of well-financed conservative activists had an idea for what they hoped would be a last-minute game changer in the presidential race. They would put out a DVD that made a compelling case against Mr. Obama in battleground states, sending it to voters through a carefully targeted direct mail campaign or as an insert in Sunday newspapers in the weeks before Election Day.

They went to the unusual length of arranging a focus group to test anti-Obama films. Conducted by Frank Luntz, the well-known Republican research analyst, a 30-person focus group looked at three choices: Dinesh D’Souza’s “2016: Obama’s America,” which theorizes that the president’s political beliefs were shaped by the radical “anticolonial” views of his Kenyan father; “The Hope and the Change,” a softer critique of the president that features interviews with disaffected former Obama supporters; and “Dreams From My Real Father,” which posits the implausible theory that the president’s real father is Mr. Davis, and that Mr. Davis indoctrinated him with Marxist views early on.

Republicans have struggled in this election with two powerful and competing impulses: to hammer a president they dislike intensely with a strong indictment of his record, but to be restrained enough to win over independent voters, who generally like Mr. Obama. Those who commissioned Mr. Luntz’s research, according to people with firsthand knowledge of their motives, wanted to determine whether any of these films would do the trick and be worth backing. Mr. Luntz declined to say who commissioned his research.

The only one that didn’t turn people’s stomachs was the “Hope and Change” one which is running currently on cable stations. But that didn’t stop the wingnuts from distributing their hideous garbage anyway:

But even though no major Republican activists stepped forward to finance its distribution, voters in Ohio and Florida have reported receiving the DVD.

Mr. Gilbert will not say where he received the money to distribute his movie — he claims to have sent out four million copies. “It’s a private company, so we don’t disclose who’s part of it,” he said. He also blamed the mainstream media for not looking deeper into the story he uncovered, telling The New York Times, “I hope you’re not angry or jealous that I beat you to it and might win the Pulitzer Prize.”

His work has already received a lot of attention in corners of the conservative media, including on the radio programs of Monica Crowley and Michael Savage.

One voter from Stuart, Fla., who received the “Dreams From My Real Father” DVD in the mail last week said she was appalled, confirming Republicans’ worst fears about the film.

“I thought, well, I’ll take a look and see what it is,” said the voter, Judy Cindrick. The DVD was addressed to her husband, who was not affiliated with either party on his state voter registration. “But then it got to the part about the president’s mother, and I was like, O.K., I can’t even watch this anymore. This is just something a bunch of crackpots put together.”

If Obama wins narrowly, I’ll be very curious to see if the GOP has the wherewithal to pin some of the blame on these nutballs. Not that it will make any difference. These nutballs are empowered and well financed by other nutballs. It’s far more likely that they’ll blame the Romneybot for his lack of conservative principles.

And anyway, this ridiculous piece of garbage doesn’t differ much from The Clinton Chronicles, which handed out in churches and sold through Jerry Falwell’s “Old Time Gospel Hour” so it’s not like they just came up with the idea. Considering the fact that the country is evenly divided, you also have to figure that it works on some level. It’s entirely possible that for every Judy Cindrick there’s some completely disengaged somewhat bigoted voter out there who figures there must be something to this or they wouldn’t have gotten it in the mail.

Republicans always bank on the lizard brain and at least half the time it’s a pretty good bet.

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