Month: December 2012

Psycho victim blamers

by digby

I guess we’re all supposed to be personally armed at all times with a loaded gun.  Even in our houses, while caring for infants and children:

NBC sports anchor Bob Costas believes that Kasandra Perkins’ life could have been saved had her boyfriend, Kansas City Chiefs Linebacker Javon Belcher, not had access to a firearm. The CEO of the National Rifle Association, on the other hand, thinks the situation might have resolved itself had both Belcher and Perkins had guns.

“The one thing missing in that equation is that woman owning a gun so she could have saved her life from that murderer,” LaPierre told USA TODAY Sports on Thursday […]

That is so deeply absurd I’m surprised he doesn’t start giggling maniacally when he says it. Does anyone sane believe such a thing? That everything would have ok if only there had been more guns at the scene? Where a tiny three month old baby lived?

They keep saying this ridiculous thing as if it makes sense. But the truth is that they just don’t care about innocent victims of gun violence. By saying that this woman could have saved herself if only she were armed at all times, even in her own home, they’re basically saying that anyone who can’t be bothered to pack heat constantly and be prepared to use it at a moment’s notice has only themselves to blame if they get shot.

After all, they could say, “well, unfortunately the price of freedom is very high, so those are the breaks” which is also sick, but at least it’s closer to something that resembles their true belief. But they don’t. The always say that there would have been less bloodshed if only the shooting victims had defended themselves by shooting the other person first. And that makes no sense at all unless you believe that the victims should not only be armed all the times but they should be quick draw artists with the ability to wing the bad guy rather than kill him,just like in the old westerns. And I’m guessing they do. After all, if you really wanted to take responsibility for yourself you’d do that. Being willing to shoot first and ask questions later is what liberty is all about.

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Why Presidential rhetoric on climate matters

by David Atkins

David Roberts, looking at a takes a look at a recent study on climate change and persuasion which found that personal experience with climate-related phenomena can help change the minds of the mushy middle who haven’t decided whether the problem is a serious one, summarizes with the following:

This seems about right. If I could boil it down:

1. Focus on the mushy middle; committed deniers are largely beyond reach.
2. Be opportunistic — make the most of those times when climate chaos makes itself known at a visceral level.
3. Find trusted communicators.

This third one is so key and it’s a huge problem on climate. God bless Al Gore and Bill McKibben and those guys, but they are reaching a fairly circumscribed slice of culture. Storms and the like can unsettle people, leave them open to new or revised information, but even then they will look, not to scientists or activists, but to more familiar, proximate sources of authority and trust. The question on their mind is, “What are people like me supposed to think about things like this?” That’s not a scientific question; it’s not about evidence or argument. It’s about social and tribal connections.

There are, of course, many kinds of communicators that have more cachet with various social groups.

But one of the most important, dare I say “greatest” communicators on the planet would be the President of the United States. He’s incredibly influential. Not with a retrograde 35% or so of the American public, but with at least 60% of the rest.

We’ve already seen recently the power of this very President to affect changes in public opinion on policy. Almost the very moment the President finally came out in full support of marriage equality, support for the position among minorities (particularly African-Americans) shot up substantially.

Rhetoric matters here. Even if the President can’t change the votes of Congress through rhetoric, at the very least he can affect public opinion on a subject with as much misinformation and general apathy as climate change.

In just 30 years his legacy will be more determined by this question than by even the economic one.

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“It’s working”

by digby

HuffPost Hill with a little reminder:

During a press conference demanding unemployment insurance be part of a fiscal cliff deal, Chuck Schumer noted that last December, 5 million Americans relied on federal unemployment insurance, while only 2 million currently do so. “It’s working,” he said. 

Sure, fewer people are on unemployment because more people have jobs, but another reason fewer people are on benefits is that Congress slashed the number of weeks available back in February.

The last time the cost for this necessary funding was the extension of the Bush tax cuts. I wonder what it will cost this time?

Meanwhile, Paul Krugman has this on a new study about the effect of unemployment:

[F]rom the Boston Fed (pdf), it looks at the recent deterioration of the Beveridge curve — the apparent worsening of the tradeoff between vacancies and unemployment. Many people have argued that this is evidence of structural unemployment, of workers not having the right skills or something like that. But the authors show that the worsening of the tradeoff seems to apply to all skill groups, all types of work, and so on. But they also find something else: the short-term unemployment rate has fallen just as we might have expected, it’s long-term unemployment that’s higher than it “should” be. And as Brad DeLong suggests, this is very much consistent with a story in which long-term unemployment makes it hard to get back into employment — exactly the kind of thing we should fear, because it means that failure to address the slump is damaging the economy’s long-run prospects.

“It’s working.”

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Sheldon’s pocket change

by digby

People seem to be shocked by this because it’s so much money:

Nevada casino mogul Sheldon Adelson and his wife Miriam contributed $33 million to two major Republican super PACs in the closing weeks of the 2012 campaign, according to campaign finance disclosure reports filed Thursday with the Federal Election Commission.

I’m just going to reprise this post from last year:

Does everyone understand that Sheldon Adelson is worth 25 billion dollars? He’s the 7th richest man in the United States. 

The following illustration compares an human being against a stack of $100 currency note bundles. A bundle of $100 notes is equivalent to $10,000 and that can easily fit in your pocket. 1 million dollars will probably fit inside a standard shopping bag while a billion dollars would occupy a small room of your house:

Adelson has 25 of those rooms full of money. Even if he does spend a full hundred million, as he’s been reported to be planning, it is the equivalent of a modest week-end getaway for you and me. He really is that rich.

We have never before had so much money concentrated at the top. These are vast fortunes beyond our imaginations. It makes perfect sense that some of these oligarchs would spend tens of millions to buy elections. It’s not that much money to them. There is no shaming them about it.

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Fiscal cliff notes 12/6

by digby

Golly, I sure hope Lawrence O’Donnell is as full of “malarkey” as he sounds because if he isn’t, we’re in trouble:

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When asked what the GOP should get in return for what everyone agrees is an impending cave on the high end tax cuts, O’Donnell explained:

The president offers it every time he lays this out and I think that most of the world doesn’t hear he second part of what what he says. He always says, “I have to have the top rates go up” — and it’s worth noting that he doesn’t specifically say I have to have 36 or 39%, he doesn’t offer a specific number. But he always says, “but we’re willing to do that by significant spending cuts in entitlements.” He says that. He brings it up. He doesn’t say the word Medicare, but that s what he’s talking about. You have Paul Ryan and Boehner saying, we can’t do anything without cuts in Medicare, they specify, they’re happy to say what they want to cut in entitlements. [no they’re not — ed.]

So it’s there. They’re both saying they want to do that. It’s absolutely true that there are some Democrats who will say “absolutely not, I won’t touch medicare in any way in relation to that” but remember, in this kind of package, when it’s bipartisan, you don’t need every Democratic vote just as you don’t need every Republican vote.

At that point Krystal Ball explained that the Democrats are drawing the line at benefit cuts, and O’Donnell helpfully explained that was all bullshit and that there wasn’t any more squeezing to be done out of providers and doctors. Now, O’Donnell is hardly an oracle and much of what he says there is just wrong. I’ve been as harshly critical of the president in this matter as anyone and have followed this story very closely for months and it’s just not correct that the president has openly offered cuts to entitlements every time he demands the tax hike. The reason people haven’t heard it because he hasn’t said it. He has said that he won’t allow the rich to have tax cuts while deficit reduction rests on the backs of the middle class and he’s said that he wants “balanced approach” and that he’s willing to agree to a deal that will make people in his own party mad, but he’s never been that explicit in public. The only reason we know that Medicare and other “entitlements” are likely on the table is because we know that he offered them in the previous debt ceiling negotiations. If he’d ever said this aloud, I think you would have a much different negotiation today.

As I said, O’Donnell isn’t much of an oracle and normally I wouldn’t pay any attention to him, but as you can see from my previous post, he isn’t the only one who’s thinking along these lines. Now that the Republicans are talking tax hikes, the rest of the equation is coming into focus — as a fait accompli.

In other news, the White House took one of the major tools to avoid the debt ceiling standoff off the table today:

White House spokesman Jay Carney put an end to intense speculation Thursday about whether President Obama would do an end run around Congress with one simple line: “This administration does not believe the 14th Amendment gives the president the power to ignore the debt ceiling — period.”

I’m going to guess that means it’s part of these lame duck negotiations which isn’t good news for the home team.

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Surprise, surprise: Some in GOP urge lawmakers to back tax hikes for changes in safety-net programs

by digby

Nobody who reads this blog will be the least bit surprised by this turn of events:

A growing chorus of Republicans is urging House leaders to abandon their staunch opposition to higher tax rates for the wealthy with the aim of clearing the way for a broad deal that would also rein in the cost of federal health and retirement programs.

With less than a month before the “fiscal cliff” deadline, President Obama remains adamant about allowing tax rates to rise for the wealthiest 2 percent of taxpayers. Without such a deal, he is “absolutely” ready to go over the cliff, Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner said Wednesday on CNBC.

The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza outlines the position of the White House in the fight over how to avoid the so-called fiscal cliff, the tax increases and spending cuts set to going into effect at the end of the year.

Many GOP centrists and some conservatives are calling on House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) to concede on rates now, while he still has some leverage to demand something in return. Republicans are eager to win changes to fast-growing safety-net programs, such as raising the eligibility age for Medicare and applying a less-generous measure of inflation to Social Security benefits.

After Dec. 31, tax rates for most Americans, including the wealthy, are set to automatically rise, and this could cost Republicans a key bargaining chip in winning changes to entitlements.

“I and some others are advocating giving the president what he wants,” said Rep. Steven C. LaTourette (R-Ohio). But he stressed that this must be part of a package that slows federal borrowing and reduces the debt by $4 trillion to $5 trillion.

“Quite frankly, some people in this 2 percent who call me, they’re more worried about the fiscal cliff than about the rates going up a couple points. That has bigger risk for them,” said LaTourette, a close Boehner ally who is retiring in January.

Rep. Thomas J. Rooney (R-Fla.) added: “If there are truly real entitlement reforms that are going to preserve Social Security and Medicare for generations to come, it’s going to be very difficult for me to oppose” higher rates for the rich. [imagine that … ed]

An agreement to raise the top tax rate above the current 35 percent would mark a major concession for a Republican Party that has made opposition to higher tax rates a touchstone for more than two decades.

The step would come on top of what was already a significant compromise for the GOP: an offer earlier this week to increase tax revenue by $800 billion over the next decade. That offer involved generating new revenue by closing loopholes and ending deductions for top earners, not by increasing rates.

Now we’re getting down to brass tacks (tax?) Just how far are the Democrats willing to go on cuts once the Republicans say yes to the tax hikes? Since the only people even talking about the cuts have been Bernie Sanders and a few House progressives, we don’t really know.

So, reporters out there should be asking the White House:

Are you willing to go over the cliff if the Republicans agree to your demands for tax hikes but require major benefits cuts in return?

In my view, as regular readers know, the real problem has always been that the Republicans could easily decide to take yes for an answer on millionaire chump change in exchange for big cuts to “entitlements”. By making the tax cuts the hill they will die on, the Democrats have been setting themselves up for a severe backlash by the Villagers for being unreasonable in the face of GOP capitulation if they refuse to deal on that. Sure, they can say it’s “unbalanced” to ask for all these cuts, but they haven’t really been making that argument up to now so it’s not going to sound all that convincing. (And frankly, the Dems have already shown how far they are willing to go on that … and it’s really far.)

Maybe they don’t care about that and will go over the so-called cliff even if the Republican capitulate on taxes but make steep demands on cuts. I hope they do. But this was always the biggest risk of making the tax hikes the be all and end all so it will be a near thing if this happens and they manage to get out of it.

I’m still hoping for Tea Party intransigence on the tax hikes. Going over the cliff because the Republicans refuse to take yes for an answer has always been the best way out of this mess, at least in this first round. Keep those “entitlements” off the table in these fiscal cliff negotiations — it won’t end well.

And in any case, they’ll be back to try to destroy them another day. They never give up.

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Please tell me this is rock bottom


by digby

I can’t get over this one either.  There was a time when the appearance of someone like Bob Dole would have resulted in an outpouring of conservative sentimentality and given a handful of senators the excuse to vote for a treaty on the rights of the disabled, even if their throwback base is full of delusional paranoids. But not anymore:

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This is who they are, through and through:

Cold DeMint tea

by digby

Not only is Jim DeMint quitting the Senate excellent news for our government, the fact that he’s going to run the Heritage Foundation means that no one can ever again argue that its even slightly mainstream.Think Progress has tracked him closely during his years in the Senate and offers the bill of indictment:

1. Stood with Akin after “legitimate rape” remarks. Following Rep. Todd Akin’s (R-MO) infamous statement that victims of “legitimate rape” can’t become pregnant, DeMint was one of the first major conservatives to stand with the Missouri congressman. DeMint even used his political action committee to donate $90,000 to Akin’s campaign and used its network to raise hundreds of thousands more. “We support Todd Akin and hope freedom-loving Americans in Missouri and around the country will join us,” DeMint’s group said.
2. Led the opposition against Obamacare. In 2009, during the height of the GOP’s opposition to health care reform, DeMint told a conference call of conservative activists that, “If we’re able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo. It will break him.” Ironically, DeMint once supported Mitt Romney’s health care reform in Massachusetts, the law on which Obamacare is based.
3. Wants to prevent gay or unmarried teachers from teaching in public schools. In 2010, DeMint “said if someone is openly homosexual, they shouldn’t be teaching in the classroom and he holds the same position on an unmarried woman who’s sleeping with her boyfriend — she shouldn’t be in the classroom.” During his first Senate campaign in 2004, DeMint agreed with the state party’s platform barring gay teachers from public schools, claiming that the government shouldn’t endorse certain behaviors.
4. Pushed a bill outlawing the discussion of abortion over the Internet. Last year, DeMint proposed an amendment to an unrelated bill that would have barred a woman and her doctor from discussing abortion over the internet, even if her health was at risk and tele-conferencing was the most feasible option to receive care.
5. Wants to strip all federal employees of collective bargaining rights. Though most federal employees don’t enjoy the rights and benefits of unionization, DeMint wants to take away even the few bargaining rights they currently enjoy. “I don’t believe collective bargaining has any place in government,” DeMint told ThinkProgress last year.
6. Blocked creation of the National Women’s History Museum. Along with fellow arch-conservative Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), DeMint placed a hold on a 2010 bill to sell land near the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC in order to create the National Women’s History Museum. Coburn justified their move to block the museum by noting that there already exist museums for “quilters” and “cowgirls”.
7. Likened striking Chicago teachers to “thugs” in the Middle East. Speaking at the Values Voters Summit in September 2012, DeMint blasted Chicago teachers who were on strike for a brief period earlier this year. “On my way over, I was reading another story about a distant place where thugs had put 400,000 children out in the streets,” DeMint said. “And then I realized that was a story about the Chicago teachers strike.”
8. Threatened to single-handedly shut down the Senate. In September 2010, DeMint warned his colleagues that he would place a unilateral hold on every single piece of legislation in the Senate, bringing the entire lawmaking process to a grinding halt. Despite being in the minority, DeMint threatened to only allow bills to proceed that his office had personally approved.
9. Used a failed terrorist plot to attack unions. Following the failed “underwear bomber” plot in December 2009, DeMint went on Fox News and used the episode as an opportunity to bash unions. “I am concerned, because it’s related to another issue that we’re dealing with now in the Senate,” DeMint said. “The administration is intent on unionizing and submitting our airport security to union bosses’ collective bargaining.”
10. Argued that people with pre-existing conditions got better care before Obamacare. Speaking with ThinkProgress at a Tea Party rally this year, DeMint argued that Obamacare actually hurt people with pre-existing conditions, despite that fact that it bars insurance companies from denying them care. “I can guarantee you people with pre-exisitng conditions are going to get less health care—lower quality health care—under Obamacare,” DeMint said.
11. “Willing” to cause “serious disruptions” in the economy in order to secure draconian cuts. During last year’s debt ceiling showdown, DeMint appeared on Fox Business and said that, despite the fact that not raising the debt ceiling would cause “serious disruptions,” he was “willing to do that” in order to get major cuts to social programs like Medicare and Social Security.

DeMint was the Tea Party Senator and his quitting to make big bucks to lead the lunatic fringe(don’t they all?)really does signal to me a waning of the Tea Party brand. (Not the far right, of course, they always exist.)

My favorite DeMint interview was this one, which defined the Tea Party movement properly:

David Brody: Are you concerned at all that some of the social conservative issues, abortion and same sex marriage, some of these other issues because they are taking somewhat of a back seat right now at least to the fiscal issues that there are some inherent problems for social conservatives in something like that?

Senator Jim DeMint: No actually just the opposite because I really think a lot of the motivation behind these Tea Party crowds is a spiritual component. I think it’s very akin to the Great Awakening before the American Revolution. A lot of our founders believed the American Revolution was won before we ever got into a fight with the British. It was a spiritual renewal.

Senator Jim DeMint: I’m ‘praying for you’ comes up more than anything else in these crowds so I know there’s a spiritual component out there.

Senator Jim DeMint: I think as this thing (the Tea Party movement) continues to roll you’re going to see a parallel spiritual revival that goes along with it.

David Brody: Just so I understand, when you say spiritual revival how are you terming that? What do you mean specifically as in “spiritual revival?

Senator Jim DeMint: Well, I think people are seeing this massive government growing and they’re realizing that it’s the government that’s hurting us and I think they’re turning back to God in effect is our salvation and government is not our salvation and in fact more and more people see government as the problem and so I think some have been drawn in over the years to a dependency relationship with government and as the Bible says you can’t have two masters and I think as people pull back from that they look more to God. It’s no coincidence that socialist Europe is post-Christian because the bigger the government gets the smaller God gets and vice-versa. The bigger God gets the smaller people want their government because they’re yearning for freedom.

Same old, same old.

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Progressive video game Saturday mornings

by David Atkins

Video games and progressivism haven’t always had a great history. The video game industry has come under assault for sexism, violence, homophobia in the player base, lack of sophistication and a wide variety of other faults.

But what if I told you that several of the best selling and most critically lauded video games were also complex, incredible and very intentional pieces of progressive storytelling that make Avatar seem simpleminded and downright politically moderate? And that they’ve managed to do it in a way that, due to the lower visibility of video games in general and the prejudiced assumption that they’re all mindless festivals of sex and violence, has largely escaped attention on both the left and right? That Youtube comment sections on clips from these videogames quickly turn into arguments about religion, politics and philosophy directly related to the game’s content?

On the next several Saturday mornings I’ll be exploring one video game/series per week, delving into their sometimes astonishingly subversive storylines and explaining to a non-gamer audience just how rich and morally enlightened are the entertainments being consumed by many teens and young adults. The focus won’t be so much on gameplay (that sort of analysis can be found on innumerable other sites) as on storyline and political implications.

This Saturday I’ll be covering the Assassin’s Creed series, the latest installment of which features a half-Native-American half-British hero at the dawn of the American Revolution, arguing with George Washington while fighting for the Patriots who will ultimately drive his people from their lands. In case that doesn’t whet your appetite, this is also a series that features an Arab hero fighting against European invaders during the crusades, imagines all religion as mythmaking, exposes hypocrisies of the Catholic church during a celebration of the Renaissance through the eyes of an Italian hero, and weaves a yarn that ties in Citizens United, the coups against Allende and Mossadegh, and the homophobic persecution of Alan Turing as all part of a conservative conspiratorial propagandistic quest for control of humanity. All this in a videogame?

You bet. See you and your handy joystick controllers this Saturday.

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It’s Not True Until A Republican Accepts It

 by tristero

Marco Rubio, the currently touted Next Best Hope for Republicans, has condescended, very grudgingly, to dip a sliver of a toenail into the reality-based community:

After dabbling in creationism earlier this month, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., clarified that he does believe that scientists know the Earth is “at least 4.5 billion years old.” 

“There is no scientific debate on the age of the earth. I mean, it’s established pretty definitively, it’s at least 4.5 billion years old,” Rubio told Mike Allen of Politico. ”I was referring to a theological debate, which is a pretty healthy debate. 

“The theological debate is, how do you reconcile with what science has definitively established with what you may think your faith teaches,” Rubio continued. “Now for me, actually, when it comes to the age of the earth, there is no conflict.”

Did you catch all the hedging? The “pretty healthy””theological debate?” (There isn’t one, of course, any more than there is a scientific one, just yawping from some rightwing religious loons, ) And check out that “for me,” as if the age of the earth is Marco’s very own personal opinion – and views can legitimately differ.

It is a measure of how bizarre the Republican worldview has become that,  in order to not to offend the base, Marco Rubio feels he has to qualify his acceptance of one of the most established scientific facts of our time.