Month: July 2013

Heads we win, tails you lose

by digby

Greg Sargent reports on a letter signed by a third of Senate Democrats expressing support for Janet Yellen for Fed chair. iI’s a very nice letter, no ultimatums, just simply an saying that Yellen is a highly qualified choice and they like her.

Here’s the response:

According to a person familiar with the situation, the White House has not made a decision and probably won’t until the fall; the White House also viewed the letter as counterproductive and that some Senators said they would support Summers if he is the pick, the source adds.

I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt here and assume they mean it’s “counterproductive” because the Republicans will recoil in horror at confirming anyone the liberal faction supports. This has not not historically ever been an issue with Fed appointments, but whatever. Maybe this wrecking crew will decide its time and see a woman as a perfect target even though their reputation with that half of the population is already badly damaged.

But really, did liberals fall off the arugula truck this morning? If that’s the message, we’re being played. This administration has shown over and over and over again that if liberals don’t make a huge fuss they will always take the path of least resistance. Now they say that if we make a huge fuss it will poison the well? How convenient.

The only way liberals could be expected to strategically stand down in a situation like this would be if they trusted the administration. And when it comes to women’s issues, they would be idiots to do it. That’s how we got the Stupak debacle in the health care bill.

I’ll take my chances with the idea the Obama doesn’t want “the first black president and staunch protector of the Old Boys Network” on his tombstone and push him hard, publicly and often. If he doesn’t care about his legacy, there’s not much we can do. You’d think he’d care a little bit about the Party that helped him get where is today though. They do need the support and activism of the half of the population that is sick and tired of seeing these guys promote their pals over more qualified women.

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Chris Christie announces that it’s Giuliani Time

by digby

So Chris Christie went full-Rudy at a GOP Governor’s meeting in Colorado today and took a swipe at Rand Paul:

This strain of libertarianism that’s going through parties right now and making big headlines I think is a very dangerous thought. You can name any number of people and (Paul is) one of them…These esoteric, intellectual debates — I want them to come to New Jersey and sit across from the widows and the orphans and have that conversation. And they won’t, because that’s a much tougher conversation to have…The next attack that comes, that kills thousands of Americans as a result, people are going to be looking back on the people having this intellectual debate and wondering whether they put …(trails off)

Surprised? You shouldn’t be. Christie’s whole schtick is about being the biggest bully on the block. Hopefully, it will disabuse some he-man-loving Indies and Dems (of the Mccain swoon variety) of the idea that he’s some kind of hybrid Republican. He’s the real thing, all the way.

This analysis by Alec MacGillis is right on. It concludes with this:

Finally, follow the money. Christie’s big backers – the millionaires and billionaires who were urging him to run in 2012 – are from the school of conservatives who are liberal on social issues such as same-sex marriage but take a hard-line orthodoxy on tax-cutting and favor an aggressive security posture at home and abroad. The classic example of this type is Paul Singer, the hedge fund titan who helped lead the push for Christie in 2012 and who, at a 2010 fundraiser, railed on and on about “the Obama administration’s inadequate support for Israel.”

This is the realm from which Christie hails. It is why it is wrong to simply cast him as a softie moderate because he’s willing to walk on the beach with Barack Obama. On the national security front, Christie is anything but soft, and as the remarks in Aspen reflect, he’s more than willing to play rough with appeals to the emotions. Yes, the debates in Des Moines and Manchester could be fun.

That’s correct. Christie is anything but a softie moderate just because he isn’t a hardcore social conservative. Of course he’s a national security hawk. That’s how Republicans always demonstrate they have a big swinging stick and are willing to use it.

As for his millionaire donors, they may support gay marriage or other social issues, but not at the expense of having their taxes slashed or building a huge national security state that will protect their economic interests. They’ll gladly put up with some rubes who care about Jesus if they’ll go along with their agenda. And so will Chris Christie.

And, by the way, those same Big Money donors don’t support the Democrats they support because of social issues either. They could all be gay, pro-choice crusaders but they don’t sign huge checks on just that basis. So, let’s not kid ourselves.  Their agenda is bipartisan.

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The Yellen-Summers decision: “driven by gender” does not mean what they think it means


by digby

This says it all:

Richard W. Fisher, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, said this year that if the president chose Ms. Yellen, the decision would be “driven by gender.”

I think most of us can see just how insulting that is to a woman of Yellen’s qualifications. It’s also really, really stupid. Amanda Marcotte says it best:

Oh, he admits she’s qualified for the job, but hastened to add, “There are other capable people.” Which seems to suggest that Obama should exhaust every male candidate before settling on a female one, a course of action that would not be “driven by gender” because men don’t have a gender.

Exactly. It’s so telling that men never seem to think that their preference for men in certain positions might have something to do with gender. Apparently, the fact that women make up half the population of the human species and yet men are still in at least 85% of the positions of power in the world is just a reflection of their superiority as individuals:

For years, economic policy making has been dominated by a small, close-knit group of men who have known one another since the Clinton administration, if not before. In addition to Mr. Summers, Mr. Geithner and Mr. Sperling, the group includes Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew; Daniel Tarullo, a Fed governor who has taken a leading role on financial regulation; and Jason Furman, currently nominated to be the head of the Council of Economic Advisers.

Numerous current and former administration officials have described the world as cloistered. A series of women who have worked alongside those men have ended their tenures saying that they felt excluded and ignored. Recent examples include Sheila C. Bair, who ran the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation during the financial crisis; Elizabeth Warren, who led the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau but was passed over for nomination as its first director in favor of a deputy, Richard Cordray; and Ms. Romer, who left the administration in 2010.

“I was always officially where I should be,” Ms. Romer said of her White House experience. “When there was a quick meeting on the phone, or the side meeting, that’s when you felt like maybe business was being done or maybe I was being left out of things.”

Similarly, Ms. Yellen clashed with Mr. Sperling during the Clinton administration, when she ran the Council of Economic Advisers and he the National Economic Council, with the two engaging in turf battles and Ms. Yellen at times feeling pushed out of important decision-making, colleagues at the time said.

Several former administration officials, who spoke about personnel policy only on the condition of anonymity, strongly disputed the idea that the White House was institutionally sexist, that Mr. Obama did not value the promotion of women or that women were excluded because of their gender.

But they acknowledged that women on the economic team had tended to hold advisory roles, rather than policy-making roles. They also said that women tended to be further to the left than the more centrist Rubinites that have generally prevailed in policy debates.

I don’t know if listening to the women on his team would have made a difference, but listening to the Wall Street cabal he did listen to has not served us all that well. If he cares about the economy as much as he says he does, he might want to broaden his horizons.

The fact is that all the reasons the boys club thinks Yellen’s personality isn’t the right one for the Fed are just wrong. She’s a much better match. Summers is a bull in a China shop who doesn’t even have the discretion to keep his sexist assumptions about women scientists to himself in a roomful of women scientists. Unless they’re willing to get rid of all the women who are involved with the Fed and economic policy, (and hey, maybe that’s the plan) putting Summers in there is a recipe for disaster.

Given that both are highly experienced but one is a macho blabbermouth who can’t get along with anyone and the other is a thoughtful, deliberate, careful person with a gift for finding consensus, you’d think this wouldn’t be a question of gender at all. And the fact that it is, is frankly fairly shocking. Fed chairman is clearly no job for a blunderbuss like Larry Summers. Only an old boy network that simply wants to keep their own in power would even suggest such a thing.

President Obama has long been suspected of being wobbly on women’s issues. His record is, at best, mixed. He clearly wants to leave a civil rights legacy with advances for LGBT citizens and inspirational leadership for people of color and I admire him for it. But he’s got work to do with women. He should be seeking every opportunity to appoint qualified women to powerful positions. And when they are more qualified by dint of superior temperaments, there’s really no excuse for him not to.

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Right, Left and the NSA

by digby

Bring on the authoritarian secret judges:

The recent leaks about government spying programs have focused attention on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and its role in deciding how intrusive the government can be in the name of national security. Less mentioned has been the person who has been quietly reshaping the secret court: Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.

In making assignments to the court, Chief Justice Roberts, more than his predecessors, has chosen judges with conservative and executive branch backgrounds that critics say make the court more likely to defer to government arguments that domestic spying programs are necessary.

Ten of the court’s 11 judges — all assigned by Chief Justice Roberts — were appointed to the bench by Republican presidents; six once worked for the federal government. Since the chief justice began making assignments in 2005, 86 percent of his choices have been Republican appointees, and 50 percent have been former executive branch officials.

Though the two previous chief justices, Warren E. Burger and William H. Rehnquist, were conservatives like Chief Justice Roberts, their assignments to the surveillance court were more ideologically diverse, according to an analysis by The New York Times of a list of every judge who has served on the court since it was established in 1978.

According to the analysis, 66 percent of their selections were Republican appointees, and 39 percent once worked for the executive branch.

“Viewing this data, people with responsibility for national security ought to be very concerned about the impression and appearance, if not the reality, of bias — for favoring the executive branch in its applications for warrants and other action,” said Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat and one of several lawmakers who have sought to change the way the court’s judges are selected.

I honestly don’t think they care even the slightest bit about the appearance of bias. They think they’re doing God’s work and that’s that.

This is interesting in light of the allegedly changing views of the hard right base of the GOP on these issues:

It wasn’t long ago that a wide majority of tea party Republicans thought that the government wasn’t doing enough to protect Americans from the threat of terrorism. Now, five years into Barack Obama’s presidency, the conservative contingent of the GOP is far more concerned about threats to civil liberties, according to findings released Friday by Pew Research Center.

The survey found that Americans overall have shifted in their views of anti-terrorism efforts. In 2010, Pew showed that a plurality of 47 percent of Americans didn’t think anti-terrorism policies went far enough to protect the country; today, an identical percentage said such policies have gone too far in restricting civil liberties.

But the flip was even more pronounced among the tea party. Sixty-three percent of tea party Republicans in 2010 said anti-terrorism policies did not go far enough to protect the country. In Pew’s latest, however, 55 percent of tea partiers said they’re more concerned about the restrictions to civil liberties.

Democrats have undergone a mild flip on the issue. Nearly half of the party said anti-terrorism policies weren’t doing enough to protect the country in 2010. Today, there is a near even split on the issue: a slight plurality of 42 percent of Democrats said those policies go too far in curbing civil liberties, while 38 percent said they don’t go far enough to protect the country.

Honestly, I take that with a grain of salt. When I see the far right become civil libertarians in opposition to GOP policies I’ll believe they really mean it. The only parts of the Bill of Rights these people traditionally care about are the Establishment clause and the 2nd Amendment. They are rolling with the zeitgest that sees President Obama overreaching. If one of their avatars like Ted Cruz wanted to do worse they’d be all for it.

Still, it is something of a relief that some Democrats, at least, are moving beyond their partisan loyalties and back to their principles. But not all, not by a long shot:

The obituary of Rep. Justin Amash’s amendment to claw back the sweeping powers of the National Security Agency has largely been written as a victory for the White House and NSA chief Keith Alexander, who lobbied the Hill aggressively in the days and hours ahead of Wednesday’s shockingly close vote. But Hill sources say most of the credit for the amendment’s defeat goes to someone else: House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. It’s an odd turn, considering that Pelosi has been, on many occasions, a vocal surveillance critic.

But ahead of the razor-thin 205-217 vote, which would have severely limited the NSA’s ability to collect data on Americans’ telephone records if passed, Pelosi privately and aggressively lobbied wayward Democrats to torpedo the amendment, a Democratic committee aid with knowledge of the deliberations tells The Cable.

“Pelosi had meetings and made a plea to vote against the amendment and that had a much bigger effect on swing Democratic votes against the amendment than anything Alexander had to say,” said the source, keeping in mind concerted White House efforts to influence Congress by Alexander and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. “Had Pelosi not been as forceful as she had been, it’s unlikely there would’ve been more Democrats for the amendment.”

With 111 liberal-to-moderate Democrats voting for the amendment alongside 94 Republicans, the vote in no way fell along predictable ideological fault lines. And for a particular breed of Democrat, Pelosi’s overtures proved decisive, multiple sources said.

“Pelosi had a big effect on more middle-of-the road hawkish Democrats who didn’t want to be identified with a bunch of lefties [voting for the amendment],” said the aide. “As for the Alexander briefings: Did they hurt? No, but that was not the central force, at least among House Democrats. Nancy Pelosi’s political power far outshines that of Keith Alexander’s.”

But despite the minority leader’s instrumental role in swaying the vote, you won’t find her taking credit: She’s busy protecting her left flank from liberal supporters of Amash’s amendment — some of whom openly booed her at last month’s Netroots Nation conference where she defended President Obama’s NSA surveillance program.

She did follow up with a strongly worded letter to the president, so that’s good.

By the way, those liberal-to-moderate Dems should probably take the temperature of their constituents before they assume that hippie punching is their path to victory. If they think they can get elected with the “silent majority” of Americans who believe the government should have unlimited spying powers, they should look at that Pew Poll. It’s not all that obvious that such a majority exists at the moment. They will get hit from both the left of their own party and the Tea Party for taking this stand. Should be fun.

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Don’t panic: it’s just the poles melting

by David Atkins

Seriously. The North Pole. It’s a lake now. (Check out the video at the link.)

Also, Antarctica’s permafrost is melting. Don’t anyone get alarmed too fast:

Things are getting ugly on Earth’s underside.

Antarctic permafrost, which had been weathering global warming far better than areas around the North Pole, is starting to give way. Scientists have recorded some of it melting at rates that are nearly comparable to those in the Arctic.

Scientists used time-lapse photography and LiDAR to track the retreat of an Antarctic ice cliff over a little more than a decade. They reported Wednesday in the journal Scientific Reports that the cliff was “backwasting rapidly.” The permafrost that made up the cliff was found to be disappearing nearly 10 times more quickly than was the case during recent geological history. And the rate of melting is picking up pace.

But hey, it’s just the planet, right? If we actually do something about it, we might increase the deficit somehow. Which would be awful because rich people might have to be taxed, and that would mean less trickle trickling down. Icewater trickling into the oceans from the poles is another matter. That’s good as long as we can keep the oil burning.

So, no planet for you. And whatever you do, don’t panic.

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Conservative movement: everything old is new again

by digby

Ok, now they’re really serious:

Believing they are losing the messaging war with progressives, a group of prominent conservatives in Washington—including the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and journalists from Breitbart News and the Washington Examiner—has been meeting privately since early this year to concoct talking points, coordinate messaging, and hatch plans for “a 30 front war seeking to fundamentally transform the nation,” according to documents obtained by Mother Jones.

Dubbed Groundswell, this coalition convenes weekly in the offices of Judicial Watch, the conservative legal watchdog group. During these hush-hush sessions and through a Google group, the members of Groundswell—including aides to congressional Republicans—cook up battle plans for their ongoing fights against the Obama administration, congressional Democrats, progressive outfits, and the Republican establishment and “clueless” GOP congressional leaders. They devise strategies for killing immigration reform, hyping the Benghazi controversy, and countering the impression that the GOP exploits racism. And the Groundswell gang is mounting a behind-the-scenes organized effort to eradicate the outsize influence of GOP über-strategist/pundit Karl Rove within Republican and conservative ranks.

Lulz. I’m going to guess most of these buffoons think they’ve come up with something new. But the truth is that the conservative movement has been stealing the money of their followers with this exact message for decades now.

This is from Richard Viguerie 2010:

Read Rick Perlstein’s big piece called “the Long Con” if you doubt me. This is how the Big Money Boyz keep the rubes engaged.

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Profits and paternalism


by digby

Apparently, our government really wants young women and girls under the age of 17 to be forced to endure childbirth against their will:

Late Monday night, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) finalized its decision to give pharmaceutical giant Teva Pharmaceuticals three years of exclusive rights to sell its brand name Plan B One-Step emergency contraception pill over-the-counter to women of all ages. The agency will also allow less expensive generic versions of the morning after pill to be sold without a prescription — but those will only be available to women aged 17 years and older for the next three years, after which the restrictions will lapse.

Under the new regulations, generic versions of single pill emergency contraception may be stocked on drug store shelves, but will require women to present identification proving that they’re at least 17 to buy it. That means that women under 17 seeking emergency contraception will only have the brand name option available to them while Teva still has its market exclusivity. Generic versions of the morning after pill cost about $20 or $30 less than the $60 Plan B.

Eventually, they will not be able to stop young women and girls from being able to prevent pregnancy. It’s just hard for me to believe that anyone would want to stop them from doing it.

It isn’t about “the border.”  It’s about “the other”


by digby

I missed this controversy last week and I confess that even with what I know of my fellow Americans it surprised me.  Mark Anthony sang the national anthem at the All-Star game and really upset some people. Here’s a smattering of the commentary:

Mark Anthony was born and raised in New York. He’s of Puerto Rican background — and they too are American citizens. This little episode lays bare the real issue people have with immigrants and let’s just say it clearly isn’t about “jobs” or “welfare.” It’s racism, pure and simple.

But what really amazes me is that these racists must be baseball fans or they wouldn’t have been watching. So what must they think of the vast number of Hispanic players polluting the playing fields of America’s pastime? Why we even have players from Communist Cuba out there and some of them don’t even speak good English fergawdsakes! I’m afraid these patriots are going to have to give up watching baseball if they want to keep America pure for Real Americans like themselves. It’s full of players of all races and nationalities and has been for decades.

There have always been racists like the ones who treated Jackie Robinson like dirt when he first played for the Dodgers. Today, we have a young black Cuban defector phenomenon named Yasiel Puig playing for the same team and he is adored by the fans. The racist jerks are limited to making cracks on twitter.  I can’t even imagine what the reaction would be if they tried that in the stands at Dodger Stadium.  The fans would not be amused, I’m sure. That’s progress.

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State power matters


by digby


The following is a post I wrote back in 2012 as a Quote of the Day from activist and author Norman Solomon. I’m reprising it today because I find it necessary from time to time to explain why I don’t see trying to elect progressives to congress is either a corrupt act or one that is entirely feckless.


This comes from an extended interview with Solomon about what makes a healthy progressive ecosystem:


Q: Many on the left are dismissive of representative politics in the US. They feel that the electoral arena – at least at this moment – is a pointless endeavor. How would you convince those reading this to give up an aloof posture, especially when public opinion of Congress is so low?

Norman Solomon: We need to occupy – literally and figuratively – Congressional seats for the 99 percent. Social movements need a healthy ecology, which means a wide array of activities and manifestations of grassroots power. That includes progressives in Congress. I say on the campaign trail that we need our feet on the ground and our eyes on the stars of our ideals.

It’s not good enough to have one or the other. State power matters – we’ve seen that from county and state offices to Washington, D.C. And, as somebody who has written literally thousands of articles, 12 books, gone to hundreds of demonstrations and probably organized hundreds of demonstrations, I believe we always have to be protesting; we always have to be in the streets. It’s not either-or. I want our feet on the ground to include change for government policies. Laws matter. Whether or how they are enforced matters.

I think people sometimes confuse their own individual preferences, talents, strengths and interests with the totality of what an effective movement needs to do. In Latin America, we have seen the tremendous power of combining social movements that permeate the grassroots with the ballot box. Whatever their shortcomings, if you look at what’s happened in Brazil in terms of hunger and in other countries in the southern cone and elsewhere that not more than a couple decades ago were ruled by vicious dictators, they have been implementing genuinely progressive policies. We have an opportunity here to get beyond dualistic thinking and start thinking of synergy rather than this counterposing of our options, which creates a false either-or scenario.

Right now there is a tremendous awakening in this country about income inequality. People are fed up with war, and so many people are seeing that the status quo is a prescription for more suffering. We have to see this time as not for being dogmatic about one tactic or another, but seeing that in the context of non-violent, small-d democratic action here. Another way to put it: it is a historic mistake for progressives to leave the electoral arena to corporate Democrats and Republicans.

Each to his or her own talent and interest. But perhaps we could extend a little good will (or at least refrain from assuming bad faith and corruption) toward those who come at this from different directions? 


I write whatever I want. I am not employed by any political organization. And yes, I do think there is utility in having some progressives power in politics.What Solomon says is correct: state power matters.  


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“They just don’t know how to handle their cash”

by digby

Charles Koch wants to eliminate the minimum wage, and McDonald’s gives employees a sample budget. Stephen thinks they’re on to something:

The Colbert Report
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