Month: December 2012

The Times They Are A’Changing 

by tristero

Well, we can hope at least:

Fifty-three percent of people, including 22 percent of Republicans, said the GOP’s views and policies have pushed them beyond the mainstream. The number is up dramatically from previous years. In 2010, fewer than 40 percent thought the party was too extreme.

The kicker, of course, is that the Republican party hasn’t changed one wit since 2010, or in many many years before that. It’s just finally, finally, people may be starting to catch on.

QOTD: LOLGOP

David Atkins

More guns, no video games, plenty of men. No wonder Afghanistan is so peaceful.
— LOLGOP (@LOLGOP) December 20, 2012

You can add lots of religion and prayer in schools to that, too.

Oh, I forgot: they’re not white and Christian, so the rules don’t apply, right? Actually, yes they do.

Conservatism is a dramatic failure everywhere it is tried, be the people white or brown, Christian or Muslim, here or half a world away.

Mike Lux tells the tale:

Us progressive insiders are failing. Only an uprising- a real uprising, like with the SOPA bill last year- will turn the tide and stop this bad deal that cuts Social Security. 

Progressive insiders have been trying our best, doing what we do. We have reminded Democrats of all the promises they have made to not cut Social Security benefits. We have had the policy discussions about why this is a bad idea for poor and middle class seniors and seniors-to-be. There have been full page ads in the Washington Post, and coalition meetings aplenty to coordinate lobbying strategies. There have been discussions with Democrats about why this is bad for them politically, showing them all the polls that make that point. Appeals to morality and the Democratic legacy on Social Security have been made. But as of now, it has all been for naught. The President is moving forward with his plan, Nancy Pelosi has jumped on board, and things are rolling. The way DC works, if the Republicans say yes (and they very well might, it has been their goal to cut Social Security benefits ever since it was created), this will happen. Unless the people speak out very, very loudly. […] 

I’m not telling you this so you will get angry at the system: like I said, it is what it is. I’m telling you this so that everyone is very clear: if you want to save Social Security from serious benefit cuts that will cause seniors to go hungry and have their utilities shut off, you have to act. You have to rise up and raise hell, because otherwise this train is going down the tracks- it won’t be stopped unless a lot of people get in the way NOW.

The Capitol Switchboard number is 202-224-3121. The White House number is 202-456-1414. You can sign a petition here. But it is going to take people doing more. Make sure your parents, grandparents, and everyone else you know does something. Talk to people at work and at church and everywhere you go. Join up with groups that are fighting the battle like MoveOn and Working America. Show up at your congressperson’s office and let them know what you think. Organize a picket outside that congressional office. Do not hold anything back if you care about this issue. And maybe, just maybe, if enough of us raise some hell, this train headed down the track to cutting Social Security benefits, to taking money out of the hands of vulnerable innocents who had nothing to do with the deficits, will be forced to stop.

We’ve got to try, folks. This train is going off the rails but it’s still possible to stop it.  If the Republicans get wind that the Democrats are feeling the pressure and balking, they’ll stiffen their spines too. Nobody wants to be responsible for this hideous deal.

Update:  Here are 250 economists saying there is no empirical basis for reducing the Social Security COLA.  This is a highly controversial measure that is not being taken to reduce the deficit or to appease Republicans who pointedly did not include it in their own offer. It will not strengthen Social Security despite Nancy Pelosi’s clumsy attempt to explain this away. There’s no good reason to do it.

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When the most clear eyed person in DC is Dan Burton you know you’ve gone through the looking glass


by digby

Gee, maybe the Progressive Caucus ought to ask Dan Burton to talk to President Obama and Nancy Pelosi:

If a fiscal cliff deal isn’t struck by the end of the year, President Barack Obama will be in such a strong bargaining position that Republicans will be forced to accept the expiration of the Bush-era tax cuts for income above $250,000, Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.), an arch conservative, predicted Thursday.
[…]
“Let’s say that we don’t do anything,” said Burton, gaming it out in conversation with reporters off the House floor. “He lets us go over the fiscal cliff. They’re going to blame Republicans. And then the president’s going to be the savior.”

Obama, reasoned Burton, will be able to use the bully pulpit, including his State of the Union address, to force Republicans into accepting a deal that’s worse than they could get now.

“If we go over the fiscal cliff, the president just comes back and says, ‘OK, we’re going to give tax cuts to everybody under $250,000.’ Who’s going to vote against that? Everybody’ll vote for that. Everybody. Because it will be just a fait accompli. You won’t be voting on whether you’re going to do away with a tax cut, you’re going to be reimposing tax cuts for everybody under $250,000. So the Republicans are in an untenable situation.”

If the economy takes a hit before the State of the Union, he added, Obama could hammer them in that speech. “The president just says, ‘Well, those guys, those Republicans are just killing everything. They’re gonna make taxes go up on 98 percent of people,’ and then he comes back in three or four weeks when he gives his State of the Union message and says, ‘I’m going to reimpose those tax cuts,’ and then if the economy goes to hell, everyone’s going to say, ‘It’s those Republicans.'”

Uhm, yeah.

In fact, before the Republicans wake up, maybe the president should rethink his bizarroworld strategy. Here’s Greg Sargent:

I’m not sure it’s widely understood just how angry some of the major stakeholders on the left are about the latest turns in the fiscal cliff talks. The sight of the White House offering more concessions to John Boehner, only to be met with more GOP intransigence in the form of his absurd Plan B, is stirring bad memories of 2011 and has some on the left insisting that the only proper response is for Obama to rescind his most recent offer.

Case in point: The AFL-CIO wants Obama to pull back his proposal to raise the income threshold on the tax hikes to $400,000 and to rescind the offer of Chained CPI on Social Security.

“He needs to recognize what everyone else recognizes, which is that he made an overly generous offer to Boehner, and Boehner threw it back at him,” Damon Silvers, the policy director for the AFL-CIO, told me this afternoon. “The appropriate response is to tell Boehner the offer is no longer valid.”

Frankly, I think it’s probably too late. The Republicans are now fully aware that the 2011 deal still beckons. The only question is whether or not their wingnuts will go along this time.

What a mess.

Moving your goalposts all the way behind the other team’s goal lines

by digby

So, between what I’m seeing on TV and reading on my twitter feed, I’m feeling the big cave-o-rama coming on among alleged liberals on the Chained-CPI horror show.(Here’s how Greenwald gamed it out last month, and it’s sadly coming true.) Luke Russert and his  friends on MSNBC could barely contain their hysterical laughter when asked if the Democrats in congress would hold fast and refuse to give the president the support he’d need if it comes to a vote:

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

(Go to about 3 minutes in to hear “the sage of Capitol Hill’s” so-called insights.) This is all very exciting I’m sure, and the nicely comfortable and wealthy celebrities on TV certainly do find the “dealmaking” fascinating. But, let’s look at some dollar figures which will impact people who aren’t  lucky enough to be famous pundits, shall we?

Fifty-four million depend on Social Security – 1 out of every 6 people. About 2 out of 3 seniors depend on Social Security for most of their income, and one-third of seniors rely on it for at least 90% of their income. The average benefit is about $13,000 a year—less than full-time, minimum-wage work.

NRA Is To Mental Health as Berlusconi Is To Integrity

by tristero

On Friday, the NRA will say to the grieving parents in Newtown that they shouldn’t blame those poor innocent little assault weapons for the slaughter of their children. And they will likely also tell them that if we want to control gun violence, one real topic America should be addressing is our nation’s “mental health.” Uh huh.

To be sure, the leaders of the NRA are among the people least qualified in this country to discuss mental health. But they do know that if they can derail the discussion for sensible gun control by turning it to another topic, then nothing is likely to happen to stop the spread of guns.

The NRA will choose to distract us with “mental health” because they know it is a very knotty subject. Treatment for the mentally ill, unlike an assault weapons ban, has numerous very real and very serious civil rights issues. And with the likes of the NRA setting the agenda, the mind boggles at the  prospect of the endless debates in our future over sick rightwing fantasies (lobotomize black rapists! force unchaste teenagers to wear chastity belts!) about how to improve the “mental health” of this country.

In short, if the NRA succeeds in changing the subject from gun control to their crackpot notions of mental health (or any other subject), nothing will happen either to control guns or to improve access to effective treatment of the mentally ill.

“Either it’s gun control or mental health” is a ludicrously false dichotomy. Enact sensible gun regulation now. And let’s use the momentum from the success of gun control to work seriously to confront the numerous other problems this country has, including the unspeakable corruption of our economic life, our racism, our sexism, and our pointless discrimination against same-sex couples. And also let’s focus on the crisis of healthcare in this country, which includes shamefully bad mental health services.

And let’s do all this by wasting as little time as possible “engaging” extremists like the NRA and the modern Republican party. Their only contribution to serious discussion is to paralyze it.

Be sure also to read Digby’s brilliant post from a few days ago.

Cliff Schechter tells it like it is

by David Atkins

Democrats in D.C. need to listen to Cliff Schechter:

Polls are crystal clear (including the GOP’s approval rating on this–just north of Norovirus!) on how we should solve the debt non-crisis–raising taxes on those who have benefited most from what this country has to offer, cutting defense, not touching earned benefits. They’re earned for a reason, boys and girls.

So while as I said up top, I am much happier with the Obama Administration’s bargaining posture this time around (although, frankly, when compared to giving up the public option and gobs of needed stimulus before starting to negotiate, it wasn’t all that tough a record to beat), we need to get a few things clear. Obama won in a 332 to 206 electoral-vote landslide, by over 4.7 million votes. He has “political capital” as George W. Bush said of himself after winning the weakest reelection in modern times in 2004, not clearing the 270-threshold by enough to limbo under and winning the popular vote by less than 2.8 million. Democrats also picked up seats in a heavily gerrymandered House and 2 seats in the Senate, a near-impossible feat when defending more than twice as many of them.

In addition, taxes go up automatically if we do nothing, and there are ways, if the Obama Administration is willing to use them (perhaps, for once, Democrats should try asking themselves what Republicans would do?), to raise the debt ceiling without Mr. Orange in the House. So not only should there be very little compromise here, but here is what smart, progressive governance would actually look like in the current situation, if you consider there the leverage is:

1) Lower the Medicare age to 40

2) Bulk negotiation and reimportation of prescription drugs for Medicare

3) Double Social Security benefits (per the New America Foundation)

3) Add an additional tax rate for over $1 million per year of 50%, let’s call it the “First Term Reagan” tax rate, end the ridiculous Romney-ish “carried interest loophole” (per Warren Buffett)

4) Decriminalization of recreational drugs–you know, to save the billions wasted in criminal justice costs, if not for moral reasons (per Richard Branson)

5) Cut defense spending by at least $110 billion as Rep. Jan Schakowsky has called for (explained best by Red Dawn…sort of)

6) Get out of Afghanistan–yesterday (explained best by common sense, experiences of the last century and War Of The Worlds)

That, of course, is just a start.

Not all of these are politically possible, of course, but they should certainly be baselines for negotiation and executive threats. It is simply astonishing that after an enormous landslide in 2012 we’re sailing right down the austerity course without much of any ballast from the left. Politics in this country are very broken.

Hullabaloo Anniversary Holiday Fundraiser

by digby

This probably isn’t the best day to do this, but I might as well go with it no matter how angst riddled we all are about the possible Grand Bargain, gun violence and all the rest: yes, it’s that time of year, the time when I ask for your support to keep going for another one. If you’re getting out your check books or credit cards today to do some Christmas shopping, and you value what you read each  day here (even if it’s only to get the blood pumping in anger) I’d be eternally grateful if you’d throw a few bucks into the kitty so we can carry on.

You can click on the donation buttons, or if you prefer, you can use the snail mail address over on the left.
I don’t know if anyone knows or cares, but I’m coming up on the 10th year anniversary of publishing this blog. That’s kind of nuts isn’t it?  Unlike Atrios I don’t have anything fun like “wanker of the decade” to celebrate with — and since we’re in the middle of mourning the horrible massacre of little children and the potential of a long awaited sell-out on Social Security, I suppose being amused is rather beside the point anyway — but I’m going to run some “greatest hits” over the next few days as a way of marking the somewhat dubious milestone of covering politics 24/7 for a decade. And I need your donations to keep it going. In fact, it’s vital — I can’t do it without you.
Today, I think it’s appropriate to take a trip down memory lane to January of 2009, just before the inauguration while everyone was still delirious over the Obama victory. I wrote the following:

Sunday, January 11, 2009

Fiscal Madness

by digby

I can’t believe what I saw yesterday: CNN showed a Shock Doctrine documentary called I.O.U.S.A. It is an amazing piece of propaganda, which, if it isn’t designed to destroy any chance of enacting a necessary stimulus, will persuade more than a few Americans that the biggest problem we face at this moment is long term debt caused by entitlements — and nothing short of massive spending cuts can save us. Here’s the press release:

Wake up, America! We’re on the brink of a financial meltdown. I.O.U.S.A. boldly examines the rapidly growing national debt and its consequences for the United States and its citizens. Burdened with an ever-expanding government and military, increased international competition, overextended entitlement programs, and debts to foreign countries that are becoming impossible to honor, America must mend its spendthrift ways or face an economic disaster of epic proportions.

Pointedly topical and consummately nonpartisan, I.O.U.S.A. drives home the message that the only time for America’s financial future is now.

I suspect that people who read this blog know why that’s deeply dishonest and why the timing for this crusade couldn’t be worse. It’s obvious to those who are following this story that what’s required to avert a far worse recession and quite possibly a depression, is for the government to do the opposite of what these deficit obsessives say must be done. But I don’t think everyone in the country has that understanding.

I say this is a shock doctrine documentary because it is nearly impossible for me to believe that it is a coincidence that the deficit hawks have put together this slick “non-partisan” documentary and well financed campaign to cut spending at the moment of what many people believe is America’s greatest economic peril since the 1930s. They are, quite obviously, attempting to use the crisis to dismantle the social safety net and avoid doing the real work of reforming the financial system. Shock Doctrine 101.

And when I say slick and non-partisan, it really is. The show also featured a panel with none other than the smarmy village saint Bill Bradley and the Clinton era deficit maven Alice Rivlin. Of course, it also included hedge fund king and deficit fetishist Pete Peterson and his little dog ex-CBO GAO chief David Walker. (Walker seems to be halfway aware that he might not be on the right track, but he’s committed to this project.) It couldn’t be more in keeping with the post-partisan, non-ideological zeitgeist. 

Except it’s ideological to the core.

One would think this message is so dissonant that no one could possibly find it persuasive. After all, they are worrying about some potential future catastrophic event while we are in middle of a current calamity. But it’s actually very clever —you can see by the press release that it sounds like they are talking about the current problem, even though their prescription is exactly the opposite of what is required . Indeed the diabolical effect of this project and its timing is that it’s designed to make people believe that government spendingis the cause of the current economic crisis.

And it’s smart. What they are prescribing makes more intuitive sense to many people than what is actually necessary to solve the problem. We are all coming to terms with the fact that we are going to have to stop spending beyond our means and pay down our debt in order to get our financial houses in order. Why shouldn’t the government have to do the same thing, especially if it’s facing an imminent “balloon payment” with all those retirees and sick people getting ready to explode the debt? We all know that the government has been spending like drunken sailors and it stands to reason that’s why we find ourselves in this crisis, right?

The sainted Bill Breadley said it right out on the program:

People understand that if they run up debts in their own lives, it’s no different than when the government runs up debts the same way.

Americans have been mentally trained over the past few decades to believe drivel like that— the free market is always the preferred method to solve economic problems, that the government should be run like a business (or your household budget) and, most importantly, that government is the cause of problems, not the solution. This deficit obsession plays into all those beliefs and makes it very difficult to explain in the middle of the crisis that the government isn’t a business or a household and needs to go further into debt in periods when everyone else is trying to escape it. And, needless to say, it also sounds like the tax ‘n spend libruls are at it again.

I’m sure it hasn’t escaped anyone’s notice that the deficit scolds are coming out of the woodwork now that the Republicans brought us to the brink, slashing taxes for the wealthy, larding their own contributors with earmarks, solidifying the notion that military industrial complex spending is a sacred, untouchable icon, and fetishing and deregulating the market until they finally brought the whole system to its knees. They certainly didn’t say much about the debt while it was adding up these last eight years.

They did the same thing during the 80s, which is why Cheney uttered “Reagan proved deficits don’t matter. (What was left out was “for Republicans.” Democrats are endlessly and relentlessly harassed about deficits — as they clean up the big mess the deficit spending Republicans leave behind.)

They’ve reanimated the yellow peril, which is only fitting. Last time, we were told that Japan was taking over the country by buying up all of our real estate. This time it’s the Chinese buying up all our bonds. (In 92, Perot put a little zesty mexican salsa in the recipe.) It’s always something. The foreigners are going to kill us in our beds unless we cut social security and medicare. And if we even think of enacting any new “entitlements” (a conservative buzzword designed to make you think people are getting something they don’t really deserve) it’s pretty clear that the Asian hordes are going to destroy our way of life (if the muslims don’t get to us first.)

One of the fundamental characteristics of shock doctrine economics is extreme complexity for which a simple, intuitive solution is proposed. It’s hard to argue with and it’s hard to resist. Here are famous people who really seem to understand what’s going on and the solutions they propose just sound like common sense. Even Joe the Plumber can see how right their view is. Unfortunately, they’re completely wrong — at least if you care about the country as a whole and the suffering of the millions of people who will have to endure their “solutions.”

It’s highly unlikely that they will fully have their way on this. We are in deep trouble and there are a lot of very smart people who know the deficit is the least of our problems at the moment and that “entitlement reform” is one sure way to deepen the panic and make personal spending contract further than it needs to. (There’s a lot of wealth among seniors and near seniors. I can’t imagine that chit-chat about how social security is going broke is particularly good news to people who’ve just lost a good portion of their portfolios in the real estate plunge and the stock market crash.)

But these people are going to cause us a lot of trouble no matter what, which comes as no surprise to me. I’ve been writing about this for years. It’s one of the reasons why I believe in liberal rhetoric (and, yes, the dreaded “ideology.”) If you don’t bother to educate people counter to the myths and propaganda they hear from the right, they have nothing to hold onto except faith in the Democrats in the face of arguments that have been built layer by layer over many years. (And having faith in Democrats really take courage.) The fact that they refuse to do this doesn’t automatically spell failure for Democratic policies, but it makes it many times harder to succeed.

They don’t even seem to intend to do tank the stimulus, just restrict it. What they are doing is setting the stage for entitlement cuts and a swift, premature pullback on government spending — thus extending the crisis. And if the Democrats are cowed by these people (they always are — they hate being called spendthrifts) there will be enough egomaniacs in the congress to hamstring the administration and force them to adopt these “common sense” methods of running the economy — which is precisely how we got into this problem in the first place.

We have a real crisis on our hands, but this campaign to cut the deficit is a very clever sleight of hand — the problem, as we all know, is income inequality and free market ideology run amok. If they can misdirect the public to “reforming government” instead, they might be able to take the heat off enough to get back in the saddle before anyone notices.

Unfortunately, it’s on the menu:

I asked the president-elect, “At the end of the day, are you really talking about over the course of your campaign some kind of grand bargain? That you have tax reform, healthcare reform, entitlement reform including Social Security and Medicare, where everybody in the country is going to have to sacrifice something, accept change for the greater good?”

“Yes,” Obama said.

“And when will that get done?” I asked.

“Well, right now, I’m focused on a pretty heavy lift, which is making sure we get that reinvestment and recovery package in place. But what you described is exactly what we’re going to have to do. What we have to do is to take a look at our structural deficit, how are we paying for government? What are we getting for it? And how do we make the system more efficient?”

“And eventually sacrifice from everyone?” I asked.

“Everybody’s going to have give. Everybody’s going to have to have some skin the game,” Obama said.

“Structural deficit” is the exact wording used in I.O.U.S.A.

FDR went with “we have nothing to fear but fear itself,” but Obama is adopting “everybody’s going to have to have to sacrifice.” It’s an unusual way to get people through a period of extreme economic insecurity, but maybe it will be character building.

That was almost four years ago and a lot of water has passed under the bridge in that time. But the battle to beat back this Grand Bargain has been waged nearly every day on this blog, by me and dday, when he was here, David Atkins in the last couple of years, tristero and various other contributors. ( I wish I could say that we’d won it — but it ain’t over ’til it’s over.) It hasn’t always been popular. There were a whole lot of people who said I was negative and obsessive for focusing on it so early. But from the minute I saw that documentary and read Obama’s comments before the inauguration, I knew this was going to be an ongoing fight and I knew that liberals were going to tear themselves to pieces trying to figure out how to deal with it.

It’s not that I haven’t been wrong about this many a time — most obviously when I made the assumption that John Boehner would not walk away from Obama’s horrific Grand Bargain offer in 2011. (Even after all these years I underestimated just how crazy the right wing really is …) But, right or wrong,  I think there is value in paying the kind of close attention we pay here and having a skeptical (and yes, perhaps jaded) approach to what the politicians — and more particularly, the political media, are all saying. The old liberal blogosphere has largely morphed into new and exciting forms, but I think there’s still a place for the kind of commentary and activism we do here.

All of this is to say that I’d like to keep doing it and I need your help.  Ten years is a long time to do this thing, and I’m fairly shocked that I haven’t burned out. But I seem to find it as satisfying as ever. I certainly couldn’t have done it without all of you donating each year to my annual Christmas fundraiser.  I’d be extremely grateful for your support one more time.

And Happy Hollandaise everyone!

cheers,

digby

BTW: Comments will be back in the New Year, along with a new look.  In the meantime, you can always write me at the email listed on the left.  I try to answer all of them.

This will remain at the top of the page today.  Please scroll down for new items.  Thx.
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The Dem leadership steps right on the third rail

by digby

Obama had better hope that Boehner can get almost every Republican to sign on to his offer or we’re going over the cliff. Pelosi and Wasserman-Shultz are on TV channeling George Orwell saying that this Chained-CPI “strengthens Social Security” but the rest of their caucus is rebelling. Bold Progressives has the story:

A defiant Congressional Progressive Caucus — which has 75 Members in the House — pushed back, releasing a statement declaring:

Members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) are standing up against a proposal to cut Social Security benefits by changing the way we calculate inflation…Tying Social Security to chained CPI is a benefit cut and members of the CPC will not vote for a deal that cuts the benefits that millions of Americans rely on.
This Progressive Caucus statement follows similarly bold statements from individual Caucus members in the preceding 36 hours. Some are below (emphasis added):

Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), CPC co-chair:

“Chained CPI makes life harder for millions of retirees, weakens Social Security and doesn’t reduce the deficit by a penny. It’s a Beltway fig leaf that I will never support, and I call on my colleagues to make their feelings known as soon as possible before this becomes yet another piece of conventional wisdom that makes things worse.”

Click over to read the whole story. I don’t know how many other Dems will back the President if he manages to get Boehner to accept the plan, but it’s not going to be as easy as it’s been in the past. Most of these people understand that SS and medicare are the third rail even if the White House has forgotten it:

“I was out there on the street with him that day,” recalled Jim Jaffe, Rostenkowski’s longtime press secretary. “When you see the video with the old lady chasing him down the hill, I was there. It was a wonderful media moment.”

It was not so wonderful for Rosty, as the powerful chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee was known. The moment, nearly 21 years ago to the day, was captured in an iconic video clip that has served ever since as a warning to lawmakers about the way seemingly good intentions in Washington can go very bad back home.

The Medicare Catastrophic Coverage Act, first unveiled by President Ronald Reagan, became law in July 1989. The measure provided seniors on Medicare with protection against catastrophic medical expenses and coverage of prescription drug costs. The benefits were to be paid for exclusively by the elderly receiving them, with high-income seniors paying an extra premium surtax.

Soon after Congress passed the law on an overwhelmingly bipartisan vote, Rosty returned to his district. It was there, after a fairly civil meeting with seniors resentful over having to pay higher taxes for coverage they either already had from a former employer or didn’t want, that he was accosted by an angry mob of Social Security recipients.

As the Chicago Tribune reported the next day, Aug. 19, 1989:

Congressman Dan Rostenkowski, one of the most powerful politicians in the United States, was booed and chased down a Chicago street Thursday morning by a group of senior citizens after he refused to talk with them about federal health insurance. Shouting “coward,” “recall” and “impeach,” about 50 people followed the chairman of the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee up Milwaukee Avenue after he left a meeting in the auditorium of the Copernicus Center, 3106 N. Milwaukee Ave., in the heart of his 8th Congressional District on the city’s Northwest Side.

Eventually, the 6-foot-4-inch Rostenkowski cut through a gas station, broke into a sprint and escaped into his car, which minutes earlier had one of the elderly protesters, Leona Kozien, draped over the hood. Kozien, one of more than 100 senior citizens who attended the gathering, said she had hoped to talk to Rostenkowski, her congressman, at the meeting.

But Rostenkowski clearly did not want to talk with her, or any of the others who had come to tell their complaints about the high cost of federal catastrophic health insurance. “These people don’t understand what the government is trying to do for them,” the 61-year-old congressman complained as he tried to outpace his pursuers.
“This was a setup,” said Jaffe, who can be seen in the video ducking into the backseat of the car. “They were standing with made-for-television signs about how he had sold them out.”

They repealed the law.

That was 25 years ago, but you’d think they’d at least remember the Tea Party protests which were also mostly seniors, but I guess memories are extremely short on Capitol Hill.

Remember, Social Security doesn’t contribute to these deficit numbers. The Democratic leadership is just doing it to appease a bunch of cold hearted conservatives. And if they succeed the supporters of those col-hearted conservatives are going to blame it all on the Democrats. Brilliant.

Oh please spare us the puerile macho fantasies right now

by digby

I said this the other day, but I’m going to repeat it. Yes, we do need to censor Hollywood. Not because it’s influencing mass murderers to go out and kill, but because watching war movies and cop shows on a loop has made the right wing believe that bullets never hit the good guys and that all real men are like Rambo and can handle every situation with his super-duper martial arts and bow and arrow skills.

Case in point:

There was not a single adult male on the school premises when the shooting occurred. In this school of 450 students, a sizeable number of whom were undoubtedly 11- and 12-year-old boys (it was a K–6 school), all the personnel — the teachers, the principal, the assistant principal, the school psychologist, the “reading specialist” — were female. There didn’t even seem to be a male janitor to heave his bucket at Adam Lanza’s knees. Women and small children are sitting ducks for mass-murderers. The principal, Dawn Hochsprung, seemed to have performed bravely. According to reports, she activated the school’s public-address system and also lunged at Lanza, before he shot her to death. Some of the teachers managed to save all or some of their charges by rushing them into closets or bathrooms. But in general, a feminized setting is a setting in which helpless passivity is the norm. Male aggression can be a good thing, as in protecting the weak — but it has been forced out of the culture of elementary schools and the education schools that train their personnel. Think of what Sandy Hook might have been like if a couple of male teachers who had played high-school football, or even some of the huskier 12-year-old boys, had converged on Lanza.

Seeing as the gunman was determined to mow down anyone who got in his way I’m fairly sure we’d see a Sandy Hook with a couple of dead ex football players and some husky 12 year olds along with the 26 other victims. If there were any 12 years old, but since Sandy Hook only went up to the 4th grade, we’d have to depend on macho 9 year olds to rush the gunman.

I’m not even to get into that moronic trope about a “feminized” culture. I’m fairly sure that women have been caring for and educating small children oh — since time began. Even when the big strong macho Rambos of the tribe went off to hunt, they were usually left without even one janitor with a bucket to save them. Up until the time that we put semi-automatic weapons in the hands of madmen, they were quite able to protect kids this age.

I’m supposed to be the namby-pamby gun hater, but I’m fairly sure that I have more respect for their power than these dizzy wingnuts with their hero fantasies. Expecting people to run toward a hail of bullets and almost certain death is sick. We don’t even expect trained soldiers to run headlong, unarmed toward someone with a gun. When they do it anyway it’s so extraordinary that they get medals for it.

People do it anyway some times,to be sure. They instinctively try to protect the weak or those they love. But this notion of “training” people to commit suicide as a way to protect others from madmen with ridiculous amounts of firepower is more than stupid. It’s dangerous.

oy.