David Gergen — a friend of Gen. David Petraeus as well as the woman he reportedly had an extra-marital affair with — said on “Face The Nation” this morning that great men have affairs — and that those relationships can be very important to them in difficult times.
“I would hope people would remember that there have been other great leaders in this country … Remember President Eisenhower, when he was General Eisenhower, Kay Summersby, how important that relationship was to him,” Gergen said.
“Remember Franklin Roosevelt and Lucy Mercer, how important that relationship was to him during the second World War.
“I think we have to be understanding that, as the saying goes,” Gergen stammered, “the best of men are still men, men at their best.”
“We have our own set of village rules,” says David Gergen, editor at large at U.S. News & World Report, who worked for both the Reagan and Clinton White House. “Sex did not violate those rules. The deep and searing violation took place when he not only lied to the country, but co-opted his friends and lied to them. That is one on which people choke.
“We all live together, we have a sense of community, there’s a small-town quality here. We all understand we do certain things, we make certain compromises. But when you have gone over the line, you won’t bring others into it. That is a cardinal rule of the village. You don’t foul the nest.”
Does anyone think it’s time we talked about what they are going to cut yet?
by digby
The chastened GOP is now ready to discuss making the supreme sacrifice of (temporarily, of course) closing a couple of loopholes in the tax code. It’s tough on them. After all, this is about millionaires being asked to give up a tiny little portion of their fortunes, which could even mean they will be short a million or so of what they planned to leave to their grandkids in 20 years. I mean, that’s really gotta hurt, right?
“To have a voice at the bargaining table, John Boehner has to be strong,” said Representative Tom Cole of Oklahoma, one of the speaker’s lieutenants. “Most members were just taught a lesson that you’re not going to get everything that you want. It was that kind of election.”
The divide between Mr. Obama and Mr. Boehner appears wide. In their Saturday addresses, the president demanded immediate House passage of a bill approved by the Senate that would extend the expiring Bush-era tax cuts for households earning under $250,000, while the speaker said raising tax rates on anyone would be unacceptable.
But beneath the posturing, both men were keeping open avenues of negotiation. Mr. Obama was careful to call for more revenue, not higher tax rates, a demand that could be fulfilled by ending or limiting tax deductions and credits, a path Mr. Boehner has accepted.
The question over what to do about the expiring tax cuts would be swept aside if the parties could reach an agreement before then to overhaul the tax code completely — and render obsolete the current structure of six income tax rates, all of which would rise on Jan. 1.
So we have the general outlines of what revenues Boehner and the Republicans are willing to accept. Good to know. Does anyone have any idea what cuts the president and the Democrats are willing to accept in return? It seems as though it might be time to have a little chat about that because it appears that they’ve all agreed to accept some temporary chump change as a Big Victory and the Republicans may very well have wised up enough to recognize that now’s the time to take the deal.
So, what do you think the Republicans will demand for the tremendous sacrifice of closing a couple of loopholes? What will be the price for this huge sacrifice?
I don’t know, but I do know that the president once before agreed to 2 dollars in cuts for every dollar in revenue. He’s said just recently that as Commander in Chief he can’t go along with big defense cuts, so don’t look for much money there. So, where are the cuts going to be? I’d think we could have at least as energetic discussion of that as these ephemeral revenues everyone’s so obsessed with.
I’m sure you’ve heard the old chestnut about cockroaches and Cher surviving the Apocalypse? As the James Bond movie franchise celebrates its 50th year with the release of Skyfall, you might as well add “007” to that short list of indestructible life forms. Many of us have literally grown up watching six actors battle a gaggle of “Bond villains”, bed a bevy of “Bond girls”…and generally facilitate the audience’s expectation to see lots of cool shit blow up real good by the end of the film. We could argue all day about who was the best Bond (Sean Connery) Bond villain (Gert Frobe), or best Bond girl (Diana Rigg!), but that’s purely subjective. Love him or hate him, it’s a fact of life that as long as he continues to lay those gold-painted eggs for the studio execs, agent 007 is here to stay.
It might surprise you to learn that not only is the franchise still very much alive and well, but that I would rank Skyfall amongst the very best in the series. Helmed with great intelligence and verve byAmerican Beauty director Sam Mendes, this tough, spare and relatively gadget-free Bond caper harkens back to the gritty, straightforward approach of From Russia with Love (the best of the early films). That being said, Mendes hasn’t forgotten his obligation to fulfill the franchise’s tradition of delivering a slam-bang, pull out all the stops opening sequence, which I daresay outdoes all previous. Interestingly, the film’s narrative owes more to Howard Hawks than it does to Ian Fleming; I gleaned a healthy infusion of Rio Bravo in Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and John Logan’s screenplay.
In this outing, Bond (Daniel Craig) has gone into self-imposed exile and crawled inside of a bottle (not unlike Dean Martin’s drunken and dispirited lawman in Hawks’ film) after uncharacteristically blowing a mission and suffering a near-death experience. However, when a diabolical cyber-terrorist (Javier Bardem) with a very personal grudge against M (Dame Judi Dench) begins wreaking havoc directly on the MI6 HQ, the presumed-dead and barely fit for duty 007 reluctantly comes out of hiding to offer his help. Still, M doesn’t exactly greet the prodigal son with open arms; he must first prove that he can get his mojo back (the subtext of rebirth serves as a device for rebooting the mythology of a couple significant franchise characters, including a passing of the torch).
Craig has finally settled comfortably into the character; his Bond feels a little more “lived in” than in the previous two installments, where I felt he was a little stiff and unsure about where he should be at times. Most notably, I was glad to see one element return to 007’s personality: a mordant sense of humor. Bardem is a great Bond villain; his characterization mixes the cool intelligence and creepy charm of Hannibal Lecter with the nihilism and disconcerting cruelty of The Joker (topped off with a blonde fright wig). Ralph Fiennes is in fine form as a government overseer, and it’s always a treat to have the great Albert Finney on board. Naiome Harris is excellent as a fellow MI6 agent. This is one of the most beautifully photographed Bond films in recent memory, thanks to DP Roger Deakins (one particularly memorable fight scene, staged in a darkened high rise suite and silhouetted against the backdrop of Shanghai’s neon nightscape, approaches high art). I think the Bond geeks will be pleased; and anyone up for pure popcorn escapism will not be disappointed. Any way you look at it, this is a terrific entertainment.
If you’re poor and you live in the South, there’s a good chance health care reform won’t reach you. Intransigent Republican governors from Florida to Texas remain steadfastly resistant to President Barack Obama’s plan to expand Medicaid to their neediest constituents.
The health care reform law Obama enacted in 2010 depends heavily on Medicaid, a joint federal-state health benefits program, to reach the goal of near-universal health care. If every state participated, 17 million uninsured people would gain coverage through Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program between 2014 and 2022, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The law extends Medicaid to anyone who earns up to 133 percent of the federal poverty level, which is $14,856 this year.
But at least a half-dozen governors say they simply won’t go along with the law. When the Supreme Court upheld Obamacare in June, justices ruled states could opt out of the Medicaid expansion. The decision threatens to leave 3 million of the poorest Americans without health coverage, the Congressional Budget Office predicts.
Florida Gov. Rick Scott, Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal and Texas Gov. Rick Perry — all Republicans — are on record so far as resistors to expanding Medicaid, according to an analyses updated Thursday by the Advisory Board, a Washington-based health care consulting company.
Readers of this blog know that I have long been anguished over the Medicaid provisions of the law. Insuring large numbers of the working poor was the main incentive for progressives to support the bill, but it was always been obvious that the funding of it was the most vulnerable part. The Supremes’ decision that states could drop out was just another layer of insecurity for a group of people who desperately need health insurance and will now wind up in limbo.
The greatest irony, of course, is this:
The states least likely to join in the Medicaid expansion also happen to be among those whose residents are in the greatest need. The poor and uninsured in these parts of the U.S. will likely continue to go without unless their political leaders have changes of heart.
Texas had the highest rate of uninsurance in the nation last year: 24 percent, according to census data compiled by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. In Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and Louisiana, it was 20 percent. Nineteen percent of Mississippians were uninsured in 2011. Nationally, 16 percent of people had no health insurance last year. In Massachusetts, which enacted a comprehensive health care reform program in 2006, only 4 percent of residents are uninsured.
States that refuse to cover more poor people will do so despite the fact that Uncle Sam will pick up most of the tab. From 2014 to 2016, the federal government will pay 100 percent of the cost of covering newly eligible people, after which the share will gradually go down to 90 percent in 2022 and later years.
If I didn’t know better, I’d think some of these governors are trying to get their uninsured working poor to “self-deport” to other states. I wonder how well they’d get along without those low wage workers. They may just find out.
Jared Bernstein reports from the “fiscal cliff” trenches where he just spent an entire day debating conservatives. He offers these insights as to the state of play:
–It is big–HUGE–for conservatives that the President has not mentioned higher rates since Tuesday, including in his comments yesterday. His spokesperson did say that he’d veto a bill that fully extended all the cuts, but the White House has been careful not to come down on one side or the other of the rates/base question. His opposition is quite emboldened by this.
My view: I’m not saying he should say “my way or highway” but he should clearly open negotiations with them next week with the plan he ran on: rate expiration on households above $250K (the top 2%).
–I encountered two camps of Republicans on this: dynamic scorers, full stop, and partial dynamic scorers. The former are those who say: just lower the tax rates and watch the revenues flow in…problem painlessly solved! They’re very, very wrong, and thankfully most of the folks I argued with yesterday are in latter camp. In fact, this is their concession from the election: the recognition that we cannot achieve a sustainable budget path on spending cuts and dynamic scoring fairy dust alone.
–Some, though not Leader Boehner yet, are starting to make sounds about taking unearned income, like capital gains and dividends, which current enjoy favorable treatment in the tax code, off the base-broadening table. That’s exactly what the President and his negotiating team should suspect: the bait and switch of the tax reform trap–they lure you in with broader base rhetoric but once it’s over, you’re left with just the lower rates. That’s why I suspect this tactic leaves R’s with a mini-Romney math problem.
–They are not constrained by meeting the $1 trillion in revenues over 10 years we’d get from upper-income rate sunsets. Sen. John Kyl, for example, on the Larry Kudlow show, cited Sen. Toomey’s budget plan as a great place to start. That raises $250bn in new revenues, one-quarter of the top rate sunset amount.
–The President was absolutely right to begin his comments with the imperative of any deal protecting and strengthening the current recovery through additional jobs measures. My experience from yesterday: he will not find willing partners on this among Republicans.
–Yesterday, CNBC anchor Brian Sullivan made what I thought was an intuitive point that’s under-appreciated: it would be a lot simpler and cleaner to just raise the top rates than to have a battle of which loopholes to close. The point above about taking unearned income off the table underscores Sullivan point. Me, I’m a huge advocate for simplicity in the code. Once they start moving around income definitions, watch out.
The counter-argument here, which I appreciate, says: OK, then let’s just cap deductions. That’s pretty simple, clean, and progressive, but probably doesn’t yield the revenue we need without breaking the $250K barrier. There may well come a time to break that barrier. But this is not that time.
Both sides are willing to complicate the “revenue” picture in order to give themselves the ability to claim victory. The Democrats can say they got the only thing that mattered: the rich will “pay a little bit more.” The Republicans can say they won because spending was slashed, likely including some spending on the so-called entitlements. The Village can hail it as a model of bipartisan comity which is all they care about.
Only one side will really have won, however. The closed loopholes or deduction will soon open up somewhere else in the tax code. The spending cuts will be forever.
Update: I’m watching Ali Velshi’s show on CNN right now, and he’s interviewing Amy Guttman, author of The Spirit of Compromise. She claims that the president has a responsibility to disappoint the extremists in his own party and make a deal on the fiscal cliff; if he can get a Great Compromise, he will make history. Considering the current make-up of this lame-duck congress that would mean that the Democrats should just give the Republicans everything they want and call it a day.
Bernstein obviously sees that writing on the wall here. By making tax hikes for the rich their hill to die on — and now preemptively taking ratehikes off the table, the Dems signaled that they are pretty much willing to take any temporary, phony “revenue” in exchange for massive spending cuts. The question will be, as always, whether the Republicans are smart enough to see this for the policy win it really is.
In a sane world, we’d pass a jobs and infrastructure bill, void the stupid sequester, lift the debt limit without conditions, extend the Bush tax cuts for the middle class (adding another one to replace the expiration of the payroll tax cut) and put off all spending cuts until we see what results from a growing economy and the expiration of the Bush tax cuts on the rich. They could deal with the long term deficit by adding more cost controls on to Obamacare and they could “shore up” social security by lifting the cap on SS contributions. They could also take a good hard look at our military empire.
The first time he ran for Congress, Alan Grayson lost the primary. Two years later Blue America encouraged him to run again and he did. Derided by the political Establishment in Florida and in DC, he beat their favorite in the primary and went on to beat the incumbent Republican congressman in the November general. He then went on to inspire millions of Americans desperate for political leaders who could and would stand up to the conservative consensus that dominates Beltway politics. And when Grayson lost in 2010, he started working on the 2012 race. Blue America was with him every step of the way.
And on Tuesday we celebrated when he won the biggest congressional comeback in American history– a 62.5% victory that saw him win the vote in every municipality in Florida’s 9th district. He won among men and he won among women; he won the youth vote and he won the senior vote and he won the votes of people in between. He won among white people, among black people, among Hispanics and among Asians. He won the urban vote, the suburban vote and the rural vote and he won over 60% of the vote in Orange County, in Osceola County and even in red-leaning Polk County! 3,205 individual contributions from Blue America donors added up to $57,190 for Alan this year.
And Alan wasn’t our only big win this cycle. After we helped a young reform-minded El Paso City Councilman, Beto O’Rourke, oust longtime corrupt incumbent Silvestre Reyes in a primary that sent shock waves through the DC Establishment, Beto went on this past Tuesday to roll up an awe-inspiring two-to-one landslide, beating his Tea Party opponent 65.5 to 32.8%. Aside for raising money for Beto, we also introduced him to Alan Grayson and Jared Polis so that he would have a base among other reform-minded Democrats in Washington and not just the corrupt, corporate-oriented glad-handing party leaders.
As you know by now, all three of the people Blue America backed for Senate, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Tammy Baldwin, won incredible victories. Bernie was reelected with over 70% of the vote. Elizabeth was the only Democrat to dislodge a sitting Republican senator– Wall Street’s favorite member of the Senate, no less– and Tammy Baldwin beat back a 4-term governor to become Wisconsin’ first woman senator, and the first openly gay person to even win a Senate seat in America.
In 2010, Annie Kuster and Rep. Carol Shea-Porter were both victims of the Tea Party wave that swept over New Hampshire. Tuesday that wave reversed itself and both outstanding grassroots progressives won congressional seats and helped turn New Hampshire dark blue again– with a new Democratic governor and an overwhelming victory in the state legislature. And across the country in California, state Senator Alan Lowenthal, a principled and determined progressive, who got no help from the DCCC, won a powerful 10 point victory over Climate Change-denier Gary Delong.
Blue America is very proud of all our winners, of course– and very proud of our members who gave and gave and gave and gave so generously and so consistently. We’re also incredibly proud of the candidates who didn’t win their races but who fought hard, usually against overwhelming odds and with no help from the DCCC or the Beltway Establishment or the state parties that take their cues from Washington. Rob Zerban gave Paul Ryan the biggest fight of his career and came closer to ending it than anyone who’s ever challenged him before. Rob will be back. And Rob isn’t the only one we will be working with again. Some of our youngest first-time candidates, Aryanna Strader, Lee Rogers, Nate Shinagawa, have assured me that what we’ve worked so hard to build, won’t be wasted. Lee took on the powerful and entrenched chairman of the House Armed Services Committee and gave him the first close call of his long, corrupt career. Will McKeon even run again? None of these candidates had any help from the DCCC; all of them outperformed expectations and made a mark. The morning after his near victory over Tea Party debt collector Tom Reed, the DCCC asked Nate Shinagawa to suit up for 2014, which indicates that might actually support him next cycle. I’m certain, with your help, Blue America will.
Let me share with you a note I got on Wednesday morning from Aryanna Strader our candidate in PA-16, who waged a lonely battle against entrenched incumbent Joe Pitts:
6:30 AM and the morning after a hard fought election. The sun just barely peeked out of the grey clouds and I heard the rustle of bed sheets and small voices. I walk into my children’s room to talk to them. The first words out of their mouths: “Mom! Did ya win?” And unfortunately my response was, “Not this time.”
As the words left my mouth I saw faces sink and tears come to the eyes of my 7 year old son. “But Mom, you worked so hard, I saw it, people believe in you. How come you didn’t win?”
I sat for a moment to try and figure out how to best explain this to my kids. As their eyes watched me and their arms were around me I realized just a few months ago my son had already given me the answer.
“Good guys always win in the end.”
What I explained to Donovan was that this is just the beginning. The hard work and effort of everyone involved in this campaign, from him and his sister, to the countless volunteers, to my fellow veterans across the Nation, is not for loss.
No matter where the next mission takes us, we are more prepared than ever before. We know that the challenges we are facing as a Nation are great and I will keep fighting for my fellow veterans to ensure that when they return home they get the help they need and deserve. I will continue to fight for those in poverty because I know there is a little girl out there who is just like me… ready to work hard to lift herself up if only we’d give her a fair shot.
For people like my mom who worked their entire lives, just so they could take care of their families and now, all they want is to retire with dignity and without struggle. And for the women who came before me, blazing a path in the fight for equality, for fair pay, and the right to choose.
We owe it to them all.
With that, I want to you give you so much of my thanks and gratitude. It is all your support during the course of this campaign that I know this fight won’t end just because an Election Day has passed.
Donovan is right: Good guys do always win in the end and with your help, the good fight ahead of us all will prove it.
Aryanna
And we’ll be there for her. And for Rob Zerban. This is what he said on election night:
“This fight was never about a single election or a single person. This campaign was about the middle class, working people, and the American Dream itself. So we must be proud of this campaign and this movement we’ve built together. And we must not allow these efforts to have been in vain, because the people of the First District deserve representation that belongs to them, not to the moneyed and powerful special interests. You have my word, I will remain a part of that fight. Earlier tonight, I left a message for Paul Ryan to concede this election. But there is a grander, much larger battle ahead of us– and that battle, I do not concede.”
Thanks to all the readers of this blog who contributed to Blue America. It was important. Just ask Alan Grayson:
This morning, Grayson said in a statement that speaks volumes about his dedication to the ideals embodied in the men and women who put him back in office, “Let’s not fall into the trap of thinking that one Democrat is as good as any other, that we’re all interchangeable parts. We’re not. Some of us have a head, and a heart, and a spine, and some of us don’t. Blue America concentrates on helping the Democrats who deserve our help, the Democrats who can make a difference. Blue America’s encyclopedic knowledge of every Congressional race means that they do your homework for you. When you support Blue America, you’re supporting the best of the best, in the most important races in the country. It sure made a difference in our election.”
Mitt Romney’s message is I am going to take away Medicare from everybody under 55, I’m going to cut Medicaid for everybody but about a third, and I’m going to do that to finance a giant tax cut for me and my friends, and the reason I’m doing that is because half the country contribute nothing to the national endeavor.
Then about four minutes in, something even more attention-grabbing after Scarborough bloviated about Thatcher and Reagan appealing to the common man:
Since the loss of the election, we have heard an enormous amount of discussion from Republicans on television and newspaper columns about immigration as an issue…but all of us who are allowed to participate in this conversation, we all have health insurance. And the fact that millions of Americans don’t have health insurance, they don’t get to be on television. And it is maybe a symptom of a broader problem, not just the Republican problem, that the economic anxieties of so many Americans are just not part of the national discussion at all. I mean, we have not yet emerged from the greatest national catastrophe, the greatest economic catastrophe since the Great Depression. And what are we talking about? The deficit and the debt. And these are important problems, but they’re a lot easier to worry about if you are wealthier than you were in 2008, which most of the people on television now are again, if you are securely employed, which most of the people on television now are. But that’s not true for 80% of America. And the Republican Party, the opposition party, needed to find some way to give voice to real urgent economic concerns held by middle class Americans. Latinos, yes, but Americans of all ethnicities.
None of the panelists on Scaraborough–not Joe himself, not David Gregory, not Chuck Todd, none of them–dared to answer Frum’s devastating indictment of them. Not of the Republican Party, but of them. It was uncomfortable, and then blithely ignored.
Remarkable.
After five full minutes of inside baseball speculation on Republican leadership games during which Frum looked like he might pull a Howard Beale (check out the look on Frum’s face at 11:09 of the video!), he finally got a chance to speak again
I believe the Republican Party is a party of followership. The problem with the Republican leaders is that they’re cowards….The real locus of the problem is the Republican activist base and the Republican donor base. They went apocalyptic over the past four years. And that was exploited by a lot of people in the conservative world. I won’t soon forget the lupine smile that played over the head of a major conservative institution when he told me that our donors think the apocalypse has arrived. Republicans have been fleeced and exploited and lied to by a conservative entertainment complex….Because the followers, the donors and the activists are so mistaken about the nature of the problems the country faces the nature–I mean, it’s just a simple question. I went to Tea Party rallies and I would ask this question: “have taxes gone up or down in the past four years?” They could not answer that question correctly. Now it’s true that taxes will go up if the President is re-elected. That’s why we’re Republicans. But you have to know that taxes have not gone up in the past. And “do we spend a trillion dollars on welfare?” Is that true or false? It is false. But it is almost universally believed. That means that the leaders have no space to operate.
And to think that the guy who coined the phrase “axis of evil” is now the moral conscience of the Republican Party.
Oh, heck. It turns out that Chuck “Wall Street” Schumer isn’t a working class hero after all:
The election, what did it say,” he continued. “You elected a Republican House, and what was their watch-word: cut spending. You elected a Democratic Senate and a handsome victory for President Obama. What was our platform? The wealthy should pay a little bit more and there should be new revenues. Just marry the two. The trick will be if Speaker Boehner’s instincts to preserve the Republican Party and preserve the nation in a certain sense, will prevail over the hard right. He needs some help.”
Schumer said in return, Democrats would be willing to negotiate changes on matters close to their party, such as Medicare and Medicaid, and indicated Obama might say as much in an address from the East Room of the White House on Friday.
Dday quips:
So Republicans get the same tax rates, and Democrats… no wait, Republicans ALSO get spending cuts (from a discretionary baseline that’s the lowest in 60 years) and unspecified “changes” to Medicare and Medicaid. This is a deal?
Anyway, old Chuck is still behaving true to form. In a way it’s rather comforting. Counting on him to tank the Grand Bargain is a very disorienting proposition.
director Sam Mendes, this tough, spare and relatively gadget-free Bond caper harkens back to the gritty, straightforward approach of 
(the best of the early films). That being said, Mendes hasn’t forgotten his obligation to fulfill the franchise’s tradition of delivering a slam-bang, pull out all the stops opening sequence, which I daresay outdoes all previous. Interestingly, the film’s narrative owes more to Howard Hawks than it does to Ian Fleming; I gleaned a healthy infusion of 
in Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and John Logan’s screenplay.