Month: August 2013

Honestly is the best policy

by digby

Greg Sargent:

Democrats can continue to stand behind the law’s general goals — expanding coverage to the uninsured; protecting consumers; reining in insurance industry abuse — while signaling a willingness to fix the law as we go along. Indeed, the expert in House races told me Dems must signal this flexibility or put themselves at risk. But he also notes that the GOP position — pushing for full repeal without proposing a meaningful alternative — is also risky, because it could make Republicans look unwilling to solve people’s problems, a potentially toxic position among less partisan voters.

Drew Altman, the president of the Kaiser Family Foundation, which has done sophisticated polling on Obamacare for years, agrees. Dems, he told me, “can stand on the benefits of the law, which are popular, and talk about improving the law. That’s a position which will be popular with the public.”

I think this is right. And if the administration takes this tack it will be more successful than it was during the worst of the recession when it insisted on prematurely declaring victory. Much better to be honest and say that these big programs are not perfect, that they will need to be fixed when something doesn’t work right. It gives you room to make improvements instead of backing you into a corner as it was with the stimulus. I think people understand that.

What is this secret file you speak of?

by digby

I’m so glad that that we can now “trust the professionals” because the history of illegal government spying would make less trusting citizens laugh in their faces for even saying it:

For years, the Central Intelligence Agency denied it had a secret file on MIT professor and famed dissident Noam Chomsky. But a new government disclosure obtained by The Cable reveals for the first time that the agency did in fact gather records on the anti-war iconoclast during his heyday in the 1970s.

The disclosure also reveals that Chomsky’s entire CIA file was scrubbed from Langley’s archives, raising questions as to when the file was destroyed and under what authority.

The breakthrough in the search for Chomsky’s CIA file comes in the form of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. For years, FOIA requests to the CIA garnered the same denial: “We did not locate any records responsive to your request.” The denials were never entirely credible, given Chomsky’s brazen anti-war activism in the 60s and 70s — and the CIA’s well-documented track record of domestic espionage in the Vietnam era. But the CIA kept denying, and many took the agency at its word.

Now, a public records request by FOIA attorney Kel McClanahan reveals a memo between the CIA and the FBI that confirms the existence of a CIA file on Chomsky.

Dated June 8, 1970, the memo discusses Chomsky’s anti-war activities and asks the FBI for more information about an upcoming trip by anti-war activists to North Vietnam. The memo’s author, a CIA official, says the trip has the “ENDORSEMENT OF NOAM CHOMSKY” and requests “ANY INFORMATION” about the people associated with the trip.

After receiving the document, The Cable sent it to Athan Theoharis, a professor emeritus at Marquette University and an expert on FBI-CIA cooperation and information-gathering.

“The June 1970 CIA communication confirms that the CIA created a file on Chomsky,” said Theoharis. “That file, at a minimum, contained a copy of their communication to the FBI and the report on Chomsky that the FBI prepared in response to this request.”

I’ve been told this could never happen today. But I’ve never been told why it couldn’t except for the fact that the law precludes it and “the culture” of the spying world doesn’t allow it. No word on when human nature was perfected or how we’ve managed to expunge the concept of rationalization from those who work for government and are convinced they must “protect us” by any means necessary. I’m sure there must be some evidence to that effect but naturally, it’s a secret. For our own good, dontcha know.

Seriously, this may have been 40 years ago, but Chomsky’s still alive and we have a handy Global War on Terror™ being used to justify doing a whole lot of things they used to cite Global Communism™ on back in the day. I just don’t think it’s rational to “trust” any government not to abuse unaccountable power. There is just no basis for believing that it won’t be abused.

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John Oliver enjoys some tasty Tweety barbeque

by digby

… and it’s delicious:

Not only is Matthews paid money, he’s paid more than five million dollars a year for doing that.

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Let the South Carolina games begin

by digby

I’m going to settle back and enjoy this one:

Believing it to be “God’s will,” South Carolina State Sen. Lee Bright (R) announced Tuesday that he will a 2014 primary challenge to U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R). Over four years in the State Senate, Bright has taken a number of out-of-the-mainstream positions on a wide array of issues, aligned himself with the anti-government William Wallace Caucus, and served as state campaign chair for the presidential campaign of Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN). Bright also is on the board of a right-wing seminary that believes women should be subservient to men, both in the church and in the home.

This is South Carolina, folks, where the dark art of dirty campaigns has been practiced for generations:

If there is a more down and dirty political venue than South Carolina, I haven’t seen it. The state has a long tradition of negative politics. Some date this to Lee Atwater, who once famously accused an opponent who had been treated for depression as someone who had “been hooked up to jumper cables.” But actually the legacy extends at least to the ante-bellum period. After Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner had attacked a fellow senator, South Carolina’s Andrew Butler for a taking a mistress, “the harlot Slavery,” a relative, South Carolina Congressman Preston Brooks, entered the chambers and took a cane to Sumner’s head. He beat the abolitionist so badly that he was unable to return to the Senate for three years and suffered the after-effects the rest of his life. One imagines there are some modern-day Sumners in South Carolina politics, still walking in a daze, wondering what hit them in races where anonymous fliers and phone calls destroyed their careers. This is a state where almost anything goes, even accusing John McCain’s adopted child of being illegitimate, as was done to him in 2000.

This tea partier is a certified loon. But then certified loons tend to be popular in South Carolina. And Graham is vulnerable to a very sleazy whisper campaign the likes of which we haven’t seen since they went after John McCain’s allegedly “illegitimate” but more importantly “black” daughter. (I assume everyone knows she’s his adopted daughter from Bangladesh.) I think most of us know what could happen to Huckleberry.
But South Carolina is also known as the state where insurgencies go to die. When the political establishment down there gangs up on an upstart it isn’t pretty.

The upshot is that this could be a very dirty race. It couldn’t happen to a nicer couple of guys.

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Who says they can’t get anything done in Washington?

by digby

Via TPM:

The government on Monday reported a $97.6 billion deficit for July but remains on track to post its lowest annual budget gap in five years.

July’s figure raises the deficit so far for the 2013 budget year to $607.4 billion, the government says. That’s 37.6 percent below the $973.8 billion deficit for the first 10 months of the 2012 budget year.

The Congressional Budget Office has forecast that the annual deficit will be $670 billion when the budget year ends Sept. 30, far below last year’s $1.09 trillion. It would mark the first year that the gap between spending and revenue has been below $1 trillion since 2008.

Steady economic growth, higher taxes, lower government spending and increased dividends from mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have helped shrink the deficit.

And to think they did it while millions of people were suffering from the crash of the housing crisis and the worst long term unemployment rate since the Great Depression. That’s quite an achievement.

The good news, of course, is that we don’t have to worry any more about all this budget cutting. The deficit is coming down sharply and we can finally relax.

Well … not exactly:

Still, looming budget fights in Congress are complicating the picture. When lawmakers return from their recess in September, they will need to increase the government’s borrowing limit. They will also have to approve a spending plan for the budget year that begins Oct. 1. Republicans and Democrats remain far apart on both measures.

Republicans want President Barack Obama to accept deeper cuts in domestic government programs and in expensive benefit programs such as Medicare and Social Security. Obama has argued that Republicans must be willing to accept higher taxes on the highest-earning Americans.

Deja vu all over again.

I’m just going to reprise this little quote from Stephen Moore I posted last night for everyone to ponder:

The sequester is squeezing the very programs liberals care most about—including the National Endowment for the Arts, green-energy subsidies, the Environmental Protection Agency and National Public Radio. Outside Washington, the sequester is forcing a fiscal retrenchment for such liberal special-interest groups as Planned Parenthood and the National Council of La Raza, which have grown dependent on government largess.

But the fiscal story isn’t all rosy. The major entitlements remain on autopilot and are roaring toward insolvency. Thanks in large part to Mr. Obama’s aversion to practical fixes, the Congressional Budget Office calculates that through July of this year Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid spending are up $73 billion from just last year. This doesn’t include ObamaCare, which is scheduled to add $1 trillion of new costs over the next decade.
[…]
Welcome to the new fiscal reality in Washington. All Republicans need to do is enforce the budget laws Mr. Obama has already agreed to. Entitlement reforms will come when liberals realize that the unhappy alternative is to allow every program they cherish to keep shrinking.

What a fine mess, eh?

The real negotiation isn’t between the “programs liberals cherish” and “entitlements” since they are the same thing. That’s called “lose-lose” for the Democrats and I’d guess even the dumbest of them see just how foolish it would be for them to make that deal at this point. Being the “grown-up” in the room is highly overrated as a vote getter.

The real negotiation is between the defense hawks in both parties and the budget hawks in the GOP joining with the Democratic doves. It’s possible that the military will be able to continue to squeeze its civilian workforce but at some point they are going to face real spending cuts to programs that make their patrons real money. Moore said that the military was going to have to wind down anyway so no harm no foul. But that’s never stopped them from pitching a fit before and I’d guess they’re not going to suddenly decide that it’s their patriotic duty to give up their profits.

But who knows? Sequestration has resulted in real pain for the least able to withstand it and it’s shameful. But the proposed “entitlement” cuts will do the same. There is no easy way out. But then we had the leaders of both parties demagogueing deficits for the past several years with the only question between them being how much chump change the millionaires were willing to temporarily accept in order to paper over the fact that many of the safety net programs were being radically downsized in the middle of an epic recession. This outcome is exactly what you’d expect.

Who says they can’t get anything done in Washington?

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Getting more comfortable by the minute

by digby

Tim Lee at the Washington Post reports:

On Friday, President Obama promised to appoint an “independent group” of “outside experts” to review the government’s surveillance programs.

Today, the president formally ordered the formation of this group, giving us a sense forjust how independent the group would be. The announcement doesn’t inspire confidence that the president is interested in truly independent scrutiny of the nation’s surveillance programs.

The panel will be chosen by, and report to, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. Clapper famously answered “no sir” when Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) asked whether the NSA collects information about millions of Americans. Clapper has since conceded that this answer was “clearly erroneous.”

And there are other signs that the group won’t turn out quite the way the president described it on Friday. Friday’s speech talked about the need for input from outside experts with independent points of view. The president made no mention of the need for outsiders or independent viewpoints in his memo to Clapper.

The stated mission of the group has also shifted. On Friday, Obama said the group would examine “how we can maintain the trust of the people, how we can make sure that there absolutely is no abuse.” But today’s memo makes no mention of preventing abuses. Instead, it will examine whether U.S. surveillance activity “optimally protects our national security and advances our foreign policy while appropriately accounting for other policy considerations, such as the risk of unauthorized disclosure and our need to maintain the public trust.”

Also no mention of making sure the programs adhere to both the letter and spirit of the constitution. It’s still all about “trusting the professionals” (also known as “maintaining the public trust”) and making citizens “comfortable” with broad surveillance programs (also known as training them to be unquestioning and obedient.)

If only that Edward Snowden character hadn’t spilled the beans the president would have been able to make us comfortable with these programs without us even knowing it. Oh heck.

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Running from democracy

by digby

So now they don’t like those Townhalls so much:

Though Republicans in recent years have harnessed the political power of these open mic, face-the-music sessions, people from both parties say they are noticing a decline in the number of meetings. They also say they are seeing Congressional offices go to greater lengths to conceal when and where the meetings take place.

“The whole thing is very anti-democratic, and it’s classic behavior of entrenched insiders,” said Matt Kibbe, the president of FreedomWorks, a Tea Party group that in 2009 helped send legions of demonstrators to town halls. Now, it is trying to draw out seemingly reluctant members by staging public events like mock meet-your-lawmaker meetings with empty chairs. “We’ve lost that Rockwell image of citizen participation in democracy.”

With memories of those angry protests still vivid, it seems that one of the unintended consequences of a movement that thrived on such open, often confrontational interactions with lawmakers is that there are fewer members of Congress now willing to face their constituents.

Members of Congress and their aides were reluctant to talk about the lack of town halls on the record, mindful of the pressure from liberal and conservative groups alike. “Ninety percent of the audience will be there interested in what you have to say,” one Senate Republican aide said. “It’s the other 5 or 10 percent who aren’t. They’re there to make a point and, frankly, to hijack the meeting.”

It’s interesting how that GOP aide sees Townhalls as an opportunity for voters to hear what the congressman “has to say.” Here I thought the Townhall was also an opportunity for the
representatives to hear what their constituents have to say as well.

Every day there is more evidence that the Republicans are starting to have the same contempt for their conservative voters that Democrats have long had for their liberals. The difference, of course, is that the GOP base is well funded by billionaires and the Democratic base isn’t. The right’s going to have a much tougher time marginalizing them.

We do have an odd system here in America.

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White Flour-Wife Power


by digby

KKK 2013 (via Political Carnival)

I am proud to announce that the Realm of Kentucky is hosting a Cross Lighting in the Louisa/Yatesville area. One of our members owns around 10 acres and has been nice enough to host the event. The event will be open to members, family of members and people who have met local leaders that are interested in joining.

The event will be held September 14, 2013, which falls on a Saturday. We do not expect trouble since the event is held on private property. There will be tons of food, fun and of course, the Cross Lighting. We are placing the Cross on a hill on the property which should be seen from a very far distance!

No drugs of any sort are allowed. Donations are not expected, but are welcomed. Please see Kentucky’s Grand Dragon James Roberts for more information about the event.

Here’s a little note Gotta Laff found from the Grand Dragon Roberts:

Parent, its scary to think you are raising children. The United States was founded by white people, the majority being Christian.

Louisa is a low educated town, filled with pill poppers and obese losers. The Klan is needed.

If you want to raise your children to tolerate sodomy and race-mixing, go ahead. The Bible commands against both. The Klan is alive and well.

Good to know.

Oh, and never let it be said that they aren’t decent all-American citizens;

Membership Requirements

Lately I’ve been flocked with dozens of emails asking what our requirements are. Our requirements are very simple. I will cover each one with a paragraph or two. We do not take applications.

Applications leave paper trails. People seeking membership must meet one of our local leaders. This is non-debatable.

You Must Be White – If your parents aren’t fully white; grandparents aren’t fully white and great grandparents aren’t fully white (and so forth), you aren’t white. 1/4 white, 1/8 white and 1/24 white doesn’t cut it. The Bible is clear that mongrels (mix-breeds) are not accepted.

You Must Be Christian – It makes me sick that Klan groups such as the UKA and the IKA allowed Atheists, Pagans and other Christ haters membership. Since 1915, the Klan has only allowed White Christians membership. If you aren’t Christian, the New Empire Knights is not the Klan for you.

You Must Conduct Yourself in a Christian Manner – Drug addicts, drunks, wife beaters, child molesters, homos, bisexuals, swingers, porn supporters, race-mixers and bums are not welcomed. Any current members caught doing the above will be automatically kicked out.

You Must Obey the Law – The New Empire Knights will not tolerate criminals. We are about Christian love, charity and the doing of good works. Being white and proud does not make one racist or evil. Our goal is not to hate nonwhites and others. Our mission is to love and defend the white race.

I hate when my email gets flocked too…

Here’s one of my favorite responses to these sorts of gatherings:

Monday, September 03, 2007

White Flour!

by digby

Via Perlstein, here’s a hilarious story about a Klan rally. For real.

Saturday May 26th the VNN Vanguard Nazi/KKK group attempted to host a hate rally to try to take advantage of the brutal murder of a white couple for media and recruitment purposes.

Unfortunately for them the 100th ARA (Anti Racist Action) clown block came and handed them their asses by making them appear like the asses they were.

Alex Linder the founder of VNN and the lead organizer of the rally kicked off events by rushing the clowns in a fit of rage, and was promptly arrested by 4 Knoxville police officers who dropped him to the ground when he resisted and dragged him off past the red shiny shoes of the clowns.

“White Power!” the Nazi’s shouted, “White Flour?” the clowns yelled back running in circles throwing flour in the air and raising separate letters which spelt “White Flour”.

“White Power!” the Nazi’s angrily shouted once more, “White flowers?” the clowns cheers and threw white flowers in the air and danced about merrily.

“White Power!” the Nazi’s tried once again in a doomed and somewhat funny attempt to clarify their message, “ohhhhhh!” the clowns yelled “Tight Shower!” and held a solar shower in the air and all tried to crowd under to get clean as per the Klan’s directions.

At this point several of the Nazi’s and Klan members began clutching their hearts as if they were about to have a heart attack. Their beady eyes bulged, and the veins in their tiny narrow foreheads beat in rage. One last time they screamed “White Power!”

The clown women thought they finally understood what the Klan was trying to say. “Ohhhhh…” the women clowns said. “Now we understand…”, “WIFE POWER!” they lifted the letters up in the air, grabbed the nearest male clowns and lifted them in their arms and ran about merrily chanting “WIFE POWER! WIFE POWER! WIFE POWER!”

This is the funniest thing I’ve read in years. It’s perfect, sublime.

And if this part is true, then it makes my year:

After the VNNers left in their shiny SUVs to go back to Alabama and all the other states that they were from the clowns and counter demonstrators began to march out of the area chanting ‘WHOSE STREETS? OUR STREETS!”

But the cops stopped the clowns and counter protestors. “Hey, do you want an escort” an African-American police officer on a motorcycle asked. “Yes” a clown replied. “We are walking to Market Square in the center of town to celebrate.”

The police officers got in front of the now anti racist parade and blocked the entire road for the march through the heart of Knoxville. An event called imagination station was taking place and over 15,000 thousand students and their parents were in town that weekend. Many of them cheered as the clowns, Knoxvillians and counter protestors marched through the heart of Knoxville singing and laughing at the end of the Nazi’s first attempt at having a rally in Knoxville.

Declare victory and go home

by digby

I’m going to guess that Stephen Moore’s argument for avoiding a government shutdown will have the most salience with the hardcore conservative base:

The sequester cuts in annual budgets for the military, education, transportation and other discretionary programs have also been an underappreciated success, with none of the anticipated negative consequences.

Discretionary spending soared to $1.347 billion in fiscal 2011, according to the CBO, but was then cut by $62 billion in 2012 and another $72 billion this year. That’s an impressive 10% shrinkage. And these are real cuts, not pixie-dust reductions off some sham baseline. Discretionary spending as a share of the economy hit 9.4% of GDP in fiscal 2010 but fell to 7.6% this year and is scheduled to slide to 6.4% in Mr. Obama’s last year in office.

The sequester is squeezing the very programs liberals care most about—including the National Endowment for the Arts, green-energy subsidies, the Environmental Protection Agency and National Public Radio. Outside Washington, the sequester is forcing a fiscal retrenchment for such liberal special-interest groups as Planned Parenthood and the National Council of La Raza, which have grown dependent on government largess.

But the fiscal story isn’t all rosy. The major entitlements remain on autopilot and are roaring toward insolvency. Thanks in large part to Mr. Obama’s aversion to practical fixes, the Congressional Budget Office calculates that through July of this year Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid spending are up $73 billion from just last year. This doesn’t include ObamaCare, which is scheduled to add $1 trillion of new costs over the next decade.

So the fiscal progress reported here is no excuse for complacency. But it does call into question the wisdom of a government-shutdown confrontation over the budget this fall or a debt-default showdown that runs the risk of suspending the spending caps and sequester and revitalizing an increasingly irrelevant president.

Liberals had hoped that re-electing Mr. Obama, the most pro-spending president since LBJ, would unleash another four years of Great Society government expansion. Instead, spending caps and the sequester are squashing these progressive dreams.

Welcome to the new fiscal reality in Washington. All Republicans need to do is enforce the budget laws Mr. Obama has already agreed to. Entitlement reforms will come when liberals realize that the unhappy alternative is to allow every program they cherish to keep shrinking.

The negative consequences for actual humans are, of course, quite stark. But Moore obviously doesn’t care about that. But other than that his crowing seems fairly well founded. The president doesn’t seem inclined to tout the benefits of deficit reduction anymore. But then he doesn’t have to. It’s done.

The question will be whether the Military Industrial Complex will take this lying down and if the president can subsequently form some kind of coalition for repeal in exchange for “entitlement ” cuts. None of the options are good. But then that was the plan. I suspect that the military will figure out a way to keep their contractors happy regardless. Whether valuable programs will ever be restored is another story.

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QOTD:Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK)

by digby

From Think Progress:

CONSTITUENT: If you fund the government with everything except [Obamacare], Democrats are going to yell and scream all that, “the Republicans are shutting the government down!” […] You can take it to the American people, they will support it.

COLE: […] We’ll see what happens in September when we get back, but my instinct is, you won’t win that fight. It won’t be popular. Never polls popular. What do you tell the people you’re inconveniencing? Most of the people that argue this point are not thinking, why would you shut down the National Weather Center that just saved a whole lot of lives in central Oklahoma by giving us 16 minutes of warning instead of two. Why would you put 15,000 families — that’s families — out of work at Tinker Air Force Base. There are four million important national defense workers. Why would you go to Sulphur, where there are guys in their 80s and 90s who gave this country everything they possibly had in its darkest moment, and say, “sorry, there’s not going to be anybody here showing up to fix your meals or look after you or do the commitments we made.” I don’t think it’s smart politics. Anytime you hurt millions of people, and inconvenience tens of millions more, I don’t think you usually achieve your end. I think they wonder why you did that to them.

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

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