Paul Ryan is a Very Serious Man
by David Atkins
Paul Ryan is very, very serious.
Not a craven Objectivist liar who knows that people hate his ideas. No sirree.
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"what digby sez..."
Paul Ryan is a Very Serious Man
by David Atkins
Paul Ryan is very, very serious.
Not a craven Objectivist liar who knows that people hate his ideas. No sirree.
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If anyone knows about adoring media, it’s John McCain
by digby
John McCain complaining about Hillary Clinton having an adoring media is just hilarious:
Then again, if anyone knows what an adoring media is like, he would. Here’s Jonathan Alter during the McCain swoon back in 1999:
[I]n essential ways, McCain remains the same spunky, intense and defiant man he was then. He learned in prison that rugged individualism isn’t enough; he relied on others. Yet when he had to, as his fellow POW Orson Swindle says, “He stood alone.”
Biography is not destiny in modern presidential politics. Otherwise Americans would have elected President Bob Kerrey and President Bob Dole. But this is the era of Steven Spielberg’s “Saving Private Ryan” and Tom Brokaw’s “The Greatest Generation.” If McCain can’t convert his life story into a chunk of votes, no one can.
The long-shot battle plan is simple: win New Hampshire with independents; South Carolina with the 400,000 veterans there. Outclass George W. Bush in debates, where McCain’s deeper knowledge of presidential-level issues like foreign policy might pay off. “All the king’s horses and all the king’s men can’t put inevitability back together again,” says McCain consultant Mike Murphy.
Right now, that’s still wishful thinking, but McCain’s outsider message is starting to cohere. The line running from life experience to campaign themes isn’t hard to draw. “He’s a fighter, whether he’s fighting special interests in Congress or getting in the face of prison guards in North Vietnam,” says Dan Schnur, his communications director, simultaneously spinning stories about McCain’s bad temper and summarizing the campaign. “The different elements of his life story reinforce each other.”
McCain skillfully deploys that story by seeming not to exploit it. “It’s just foolish to say, ‘Vote for me because I suffered in war’,” he says. So on the campaign trail the link becomes implicit and inspirational, with each speech including a call for Americans to “sacrifice for something greater than our own self-interest.” The hope is to rekindle some Kennedyesque ideas about public service, but with a conservative gloss to keep it from going gooey.
The animating principle of McCain’s life is honor. It kept him in a Vietnamese prison for five and a half years instead of going home early, as his captors offered. It’s at the root of his passionate efforts to clean up politics and redeem what he sees as his own connection to a corrupt system. It’s why he bonded a few years ago with a onetime antiwar protester, David Ifshin, who was dying of cancer, and why he repeatedly visited former Arizona representative Morris Udall (a Democrat suffering for years from Parkinson’s disease) in the hospital when everyone else seemed to have forgotten about him. Their honor mattered to him, too.
Honor is almost a quaint notion now, associated with a different time. McCain gives it a charming twinkle, and the hope of living on as something more than a platitude. He keeps faith with it, even while sometimes falling short of the standard himself. Like many other POWs, McCain broke under torture and signed a “confession.” On returning to the United States, he cheated on his first wife, Carol, who had been seriously injured in a car accident when he was in Vietnam. Later, he was too wrapped up in work to notice that his second wife, Cindy, was addicted to prescription drugs (box). He let himself get too close to savings and loan executive Charles Keating, who turned out to be a crook. He can be sarcastic and belittling, when he knows better.
But even his failures just seem to deepen the character lines. The life story works politically because McCain wears it lightly. It’s part of his campaign advertising but not his basic stump speech. “I’m always a little embarrassed and nostalgic when I see some of those [Vietnam] pictures,” he says. When asked about his years in captivity, he insists he wasn’t a hero. And, determined to avoid seeming grim, he recalls that he had some good times in prison, re-creating movies with other POWs (“One-Eyed Jacks” was a favorite). In hawking his new memoir, “Faith of My Fathers,” McCain says he wants Tom Cruise to play him in the movie, but his children favor Danny DeVito.
It goes on. And on. And on …
I suppose some member of the mainstream media might have written something this fawning about Hillary Clinton, but it’s a rarity. But during 1999 and early 2000, the boys on the McCain bus acted like a bunch of groupies at a One Direction concert. It was one of the most embarrassing moments in modern campaign history.
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QOTD: General Jerry Boykin
by digby
“The people making this decision are doing so as part of another social experiment, and they have never lived nor fought with an infantry or Special Forces unit. These units have the mission of closing with and destroying the enemy, sometimes in close hand-to-hand combat. They are often in sustained operations for extended periods, during which they have no base of operations nor facilities. Their living conditions are primal in many situations with no privacy for personal hygiene or normal functions.”
What is it about these macho soldiers and their toilet/hygiene obsession? They were the same way with teh gays, all freaked out about somebody looking at their penises.
I have a sneaking suspicion that that the soldiers will be able to figure out these logistics. After all, if they’re engaging the enemy in hand to hand combat, it’s likely this isn’t going to be the number one priority. No pun intended.
Also, it’s General Jerry Boykin:
It’s very hard for me to believe that that nutball has this resume, particularly this part of it:
Boykin served at the Central Intelligence Agency as Deputy Director of Special Activities, and was promoted to brigadier general. He was later made Deputy Director for Operations, Readiness, and Mobilization when assigned to the Army Staff.[4] From April 1998 to February 2000, he served as the commanding general, U.S. Army Special Forces Command (Airborne) at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. From March 2000-2003, he was the commanding general, United States Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center, Fort Bragg, N.C. In June 2003, he was appointed Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence under Dr. Stephen Cambone, Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence.
Now that’s scary.
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Micro-Rhetoric
by tristero
For a very long time, the subtle ways political rhetoric is skewed to marginalize liberals was the sole purview of mere bloggers (such as yours truly). While Salon is not exactly a large mass media publication, it is nevertheless a very good sign that David Sirota is examining the toss-away clauses, the throwaway phrases, that put down and demonize liberal ideas – ideas often held by a majority of Americans.
Much more, please. And let’s see micro-rhetoric discussed in the Times, the Post, and on tv news.
What Alexander Hamilton thought about the filibuster
by David Atkins
The abuse of filibuster is a relatively new phenomenon. But it turns out that the Founding Fathers saw the danger of intransigent minorities blocking the will the majority a long time ago. Alexander Hamilton addressed it in detail in Federalist 22.
About the notion that a bunch of small states can overrule the desires of the larger states with a majority of the population:
The right of equal suffrage among the States is another exceptionable part of the Confederation. Every idea of proportion and every rule of fair representation conspire to condemn a principle, which gives to Rhode Island an equal weight in the scale of power with Massachusetts, or Connecticut, or New York; and to Deleware an equal voice in the national deliberations with Pennsylvania, or Virginia, or North Carolina. Its operation contradicts the fundamental maxim of republican government, which requires that the sense of the majority should prevail. Sophistry may reply, that sovereigns are equal, and that a majority of the votes of the States will be a majority of confederated America. But this kind of logical legerdemain will never counteract the plain suggestions of justice and common-sense. It may happen that this majority of States is a small minority of the people of America;3 and two thirds of the people of America could not long be persuaded, upon the credit of artificial distinctions and syllogistic subtleties, to submit their interests to the management and disposal of one third. The larger States would after a while revolt from the idea of receiving the law from the smaller. To acquiesce in such a privation of their due importance in the political scale, would be not merely to be insensible to the love of power, but even to sacrifice the desire of equality. It is neither rational to expect the first, nor just to require the last. The smaller States, considering how peculiarly their safety and welfare depend on union, ought readily to renounce a pretension which, if not relinquished, would prove fatal to its duration.
About the minority’s destructive ability to constrain the will of the majority:
In those emergencies of a nation, in which the goodness or badness, the weakness or strength of its government, is of the greatest importance, there is commonly a necessity for action. The public business must, in some way or other, go forward. If a pertinacious minority can control the opinion of a majority, respecting the best mode of conducting it, the majority, in order that something may be done, must conform to the views of the minority; and thus the sense of the smaller number will overrule that of the greater, and give a tone to the national proceedings. Hence, tedious delays; continual negotiation and intrigue; contemptible compromises of the public good. And yet, in such a system, it is even happy when such compromises can take place: for upon some occasions things will not admit of accommodation; and then the measures of government must be injuriously suspended, or fatally defeated. It is often, by the impracticability of obtaining the concurrence of the necessary number of votes, kept in a state of inaction. Its situation must always savor of weakness, sometimes border upon anarchy.
And on the ability of a minority to compel the nation against its self-interest in matters of trade, war and peace:
Suppose, for instance, we were engaged in a war, in conjunction with one foreign nation, against another. Suppose the necessity of our situation demanded peace, and the interest or ambition of our ally led him to seek the prosecution of the war, with views that might justify us in making separate terms. In such a state of things, this ally of ours would evidently find it much easier, by his bribes and intrigues, to tie up the hands of government from making peace, where two thirds of all the votes were requisite to that object, than where a simple majority would suffice. In the first case, he would have to corrupt a smaller number; in the last, a greater number. Upon the same principle, it would be much easier for a foreign power with which we were at war to perplex our councils and embarrass our exertions. And, in a commercial view, we may be subjected to similar inconveniences. A nation, with which we might have a treaty of commerce, could with much greater facility prevent our forming a connection with her competitor in trade, though such a connection should be ever so beneficial to ourselves.
Abuse of the majority by an unswerving minority is always a bad thing. Alexander Hamilton knew it. It was a bad thing in California for decades, wrecking the state until the the voters decided not to put up with it any more. The country’s patience with this situation is nearing an end as well. We may not have made huge progress in 2013. But we made some. And we have a great platform to build from for 2015.
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Rethinking the earmark
by digby
I don’t know quite what to think about this. I certainly have thought that calling earmarks corruption was a stretch, since it often resulted in benefits to actual people who live in communities around the nation. It’s true that it was unfair and that some places like Alaska and West Virginia got far more than their fair share due to the pull of their Senators and powerful committee chairmen, but the truth is that those earmarks benefited a whole lot of middle class and poor Alaskans and West Virginians (and yes, rich friends of the politicians too.) So maybe all the demagoguery wasn’t really in the best interest of average people on balance. But then I read this:
People have all kinds of theories for why Washington DC has gotten so dysfunctional in recent years.
There’s the bad economy. There’s the fact that Republicans are in safe, gerrymandered districts, and mostly have to worry about Tea Party challengers in primaries.
But if you talk to DC insiders on both parties, one idea that regularly comes up is: Bring back earmarks.
Earmarks are basically special provisions in laws that provide some gift or reward to a specific Representative, for their district.
The infamous “Bridge To Nowhere” was well known example of earmark abuse, but the thing about earmarks is that it allows sides to “deal.” A congressman’s vote can be “bought” so to speak. Without earmarks, the only thing a Congressman has his ideology.
As one Representative from a liberal district recently told us, without earmarks, all he can do to make his district-members happy is stick to a hard line on progressive goals (like opposing any entitlement reforms). If he can deliver something to his district, then he has some latitude to deal elsewhere.
Ok, never mind. That’s the last thing I want, seriously. Especially since my champions are Democrats who have a hard enough time not making “deals” as it is. I’m fairly sure the Republicans would not only get their goodies but they’d hold fast to the their ideological principles at the same time. Somehow, I don’t think this will work out well for the home team.
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Colbert’s alpha dogs ‘o the week
by digby
“I have been to the mountaintop and found that they heavily redistricted the promised land.”
The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive
I didn’t know they also adjourned in honor of Stonewall Jackson ….
Boy, I sure am glad that racism is dead or that would be incredibly insulting.
Are right wingers endorsing the Black Panthers?
by digby
[L]ast week, spinning on behalf of gun advocates and continuing the far-right’s convoluted attempt to equate Second Amendment supporters to modern-day civil rights protesters, Rush Limbaugh suggested that if civil rights activists had brandished guns maybe the movement could have better protected itself from segregationist foes:
LIMBAUGH: If a lot of African-Americans back in the ’60s had guns and the legal right to use them for self-defense, you think they would have needed Selma? I don’t know. I’m just asking. If (Rep) John Lewis, who says he was beat upside the head, if John Lewis had had a gun, would he have been beat upside the head on the bridge?
Basically Limbaugh, stretching to make an absurd point about guns in America, suggested it would have been better if Dr. King’s non-violent crusade had embraced firearms as a way to advance its cause.
I think these gun fetishists are losing the thread. The idea that Limbaugh would have countenanced African American violence during the civil rights struggle is ridiculous. We know exactly how the average conservative, white jackass reacted during that struggle and they didn’t exactly join the NAACP. Moreover, there was an organization that purported to do exactly what Limbaugh now says was the right idea:
Founded in Oakland, California by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale on October 15, 1966, the Black Panthers initially set forth a doctrine calling primarily for the protection of African-American neighborhoods from police brutality.
I’m fairly sure Limbaugh wasn’t a fan. In fact, he still evokes the name with hushed tones, pretending that they actually exist in some threatening form. Here’s a very recent blast on the subject:
The New Black Panther Party with a $10,000 bounty on a man who hasn’t been charged. I think that’s why there’s the bounty. They’re upset, Dawn, that the legal system is not being fair with them here. Still, it is a… I have to admit, I was shocked when I saw that. I was shocked that… See, I was shocked that there hasn’t been anybody stand up and say, “Whoa, can we cool this down a little bit?” Everybody’s speaking on this… Well, not everybody, but the people making hay out of this are inflaming it and making it bigger — I mean, from the White House on down — rather than try to cool this thing off and slow it down and wait ’til we found out exactly what happened here.
But a $10,000 bounty. And the New Black Panther Party, don’t forget, is the group that intimidated voters in 2008 in Philadelphia and a number of other places, and lawsuits were filed against them for voter intimidation and the Obama Justice Department (the attorney general, Eric Holder) just threw the investigation out. He just brought it to screeching halt. And the assistant attorney general, J. Christian Adams — who was prosecuting the case against the New Black Panthers — quit. He resigned and wrote a book, and we interviewed him. His book was about what was going on in the Obama Justice Department, miscarriages of justice, justice not being blind or colorblind or anything of the sort…
This appears to me to be an open sanction to vigilante-type justice. I know the president’s in North Korea, but he could still say something about this. And when he doesn’t say anything about it, we’re left to question why. And we don’t know the answer to that, either. I remember the Rodney King circumstance. That was back in the nineties when the police officers in Simi Valley were found not guilty. I remember the riots that ensued after that. George H. W. Bush went into action. He mobilized the Justice Department do a civil rights violation investigation into Rodney King to find out whether the Simi Valley Police…
Of course, that caused its own set of circumstances that riled people up. But at least there was an effort back then to quell some of the anger. It wasn’t successful. The riots happened. Reginald Denny was the guy yanked of the truck in LA in front of the helicopter camera. Everybody saw that. But it’s just a puzzling thing to me. Just by virtue of asking the question: Where’s the leadership? Where’s the effort to slow it down, to cool this off, knowing full well it’s a powder keg? I wouldn’t think anybody, any reasonable person would want this powder keg to explode any further than it already has. Some people say that this speaks volumes about the kind of leadership that we have.
Yeah, he would have considered King and Lewis “patriots” during Selma if they’d mowed down some cops. Sure he would.
This is the kind of lugubrious bullshit that only Limbaugh can really pull off. He says it, he knows it’s absurd and he laughs at the liberals when their gorges rise as they hear it. There is nobody better at this particular form of cognitive dissonance. I don’t know if any of his listeners recognize it for what it is — they aren’t the brightest bunch. But at some point their brains will explode.
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Baby steps on the filibuster
by digby
Following up on David’s post below, here’s the deal:
Progressive senators working to dramatically alter Senate rules were defeated on Thursday, with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and his counterpart, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), set to announce a series of compromise reforms on the Senate floor that fall far short of the demands. The language of the deal was obtained by HuffPost and can be read here and here.
The pressure from the liberal senators, led by Oregon Democrat Jeff Merkley and backed by a major coalition of progressive groups, created the political space for Reid to cut the deal with McConnell, which does include changes to how the Senate operates, but leaves a fundamental feature, the silent filibuster, in place.
The deal would address the filibuster on the motion to proceed, which had regularly prevented the Senate from even considering legislation and was a major frustration for Reid. The new procedure will also make it easier for the majority to appoint conferees once a bill has passed, but leaves in place the minority’s ability to filibuster that motion once — meaning that even after the Senate and House have passed a bill, the minority can still mount a filibuster one more time.
Reid won concessions on judicial nominations as well. Under the old rules, after a filibuster had been beaten, 30 more hours were required to pass before a nominee could finally be confirmed. That delay threatened to tie the chamber in knots. The new rules will only allow two hours after cloture is invoked.
The two leaders also agreed that they will make some changes in how the Senate carries out filibusters under the existing rules, reminiscent of the handshake agreement last term, which quickly fell apart. First, senators who wish to object or threaten a filibuster must actually come to the floor to do so. And second, the two leaders will make sure that debate time post-cloture is actually used in debate. If senators seeking to slow down business simply put in quorum calls to delay action, the Senate will go live, force votes to produce a quorum, and otherwise work to make sure senators actually show up and debate.
Better than nothing, but still not much. The story of our time.
That story was written by Grim and Stein over at HuffPost and I think they make a good point in the second paragraph about the liberals making the political space for a deal. This used to be the norm at one time — the left and the right would stake out positions to which neither could agree which meant that the compromise would fall in the middle between the two poles. But at some point in the last few decades, the Democrats became afraid of appearing “unserious” and worried excessively about appearing to be too extreme or two passionate about anything so they eagerly seize the center or center right while the Republicans take the right and far right. The result is obvious. This might be changing with the addition of some more strategic liberals. As David says below, we’re only a few seats away from a more progressive Democratic majority and that’s when we may start to see some real change.
I have always been skeptical of the idea that the Senate would truly reform the filibuster simply because the majority always knows their hold on the majority is tenuous and they might want to block something someday. (I can certainly imagine things I would want a Democratic minority to block.) Still, if the GOP filibuster abuse of the last decade isn’t enough to force a change, I don’t know what would. And it did sort of, albeit a small, insignificant one. Baby steps. Tiny baby steps.
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Filibuster reform near death due to “bipartisanship”
by David Atkins
Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell are near completion of a “deal” that will do very little to correct the crippling abuse of the filibuster while allowing Republicans two poison pill amendments. It’s a terrible disappointment for those who were hoping for an abatement to one of the most destructive and corrupting practices in American government.
One of the more common responses has been to attack Harry Reid for subverting Senate Democrats to make a “bipartisan” deal with Republicans. But despite Senators Udall’s and Merkley’s bold claims, it has never been entirely clear that there were ever a full 51 votes for real reform. So it’s possible that Harry Reid, rather than subterfuging Democrats, is instead counting votes and playing his best hand.
But whether Harry Reid is personally at fault or it’s the result of certain more conservative or comity-obsessed Democrats, the specter of pointless bipartisanship appears to have once again trumped basic principles of good governance.
That said, as important as this issue is, the probable failure of reform in 2013 isn’t the end of the world. While an end to filibuster abuse would allow the Senate to pass message bills more easily, the biggest current obstacle to decent legislation is the Republican House. So at least until 2015, little in the way of major passable legislation is likely to be significantly affected. It will matter more if the GOP advantage in the House is whittled or eliminated, and Democrats maintain control of the Senate.
But the most important outcome is the realization that while we aren’t quite there yet, the newer crop of Democrats like Merkley and Udall is far better than much of the old guard responsible for abetting and supporting the broken system. We’re only a few retirements and progressive primaries away from a Democratic Senate majority progressive enough to make the necessary changes. In the coming days we’ll likely find out which Democrats scuttled reform, and those people will need to be held to account as we prepare for 2014.
Things are getting better. We’re not there yet, and that’s frustrating. But we’re getting there.
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