Month: October 2013

“The best thing is to declare last year’s election a mistrial on ObamaCare”

by digby

Jim DeMint who famously called the ACA President Obama’s “Waterloo” weighs in today with an op-ed telling Republicans they should declare the 2012 election “a mistrial.” This is because the people foolishly failed to vote on the basis of the GOP’s scare mongering about health care reform as they should have. And anyway behaving like assholes is good politics:

I can hear many conservative friends saying to me right around this point: “Jim, we agree with you that ObamaCare is going to wreck the country, but elections have consequences.” I have three responses.

The first is that ObamaCare was not the central fight in 2012, much to the disappointment of conservatives. Republicans hoped that negative economic news would sweep them to victory, and exit polls confirmed that the economy, not health care, was the top issue. The best thing is to declare last year’s election a mistrial on ObamaCare.

Second, the lives of most Americans are not dominated by the electoral cycle. They shouldn’t have to wait three more years for Congress to give them relief from this law, especially when the president has so frequently given waivers to his friends. Full legislative repeal may not be possible while President Obama remains in office, but delaying implementation by withholding funds from a law that is proven to be unfair, unworkable and unaffordable is a reasonable and necessary fight.

There’s a third reason not to stop fighting. Forget the consultants, the pundits and the pollsters; good policy is good politics. If the Republicans had not fought on ObamaCare, the compromise would have been over the budget sequester. Instead, they have retained the sequester and for the past three months ObamaCare and its failings have been front and center in the national debate. Its disastrous launch was spotlighted by our defund struggle, not overshadowed, as some contend. With a revived and engaged electorate, ObamaCare will now be the issue for the next few years.

It’s great sport to make fun of these people. But a whole lot of them really believe this nonsense. And I honestly don’t think they’ve been chastised by their unpopularity at all. Until they are replaced in the congress by people who are less conservative, they have no reason to be. And right now, the threat to most Republicans is coming from the right.

h/t to Greg Sargent who has more on this subject. Wait until you read what they’re saying about immigration reform.

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The stupid runs strong when it comes to Obamacare hysteria

by digby

You’d think that the fact they voted to repeal the whole program 46 times and shutdown the government for two weeks in a quixotic attempt to delay it would make the Republicans just a little bit reluctant to pretend they are sincerely worried about how the Obamacare website is working. But shameless is their name and hypocrisy is their game.

Still, it’s worthwhile to point out that most of the hand-wringing coming from everyone is over the top and that the idea regular Americans are sitting in front of their computers frantically trying to buy health care and can’t is just stupid. Here’s Jonathan Cohn talking about the current angst over “low enrollment” in the first month allegedly because the Federal web site won’t work:

The main reason for low enrollment will be that people don’t sign up for health insurance programs right away. They wait until the last minute. This is true of public insurance and this is true of private insurance. And while you’ve heard people (including me) say this for months, this is one of those cases when numbers tell the story better than words. And there are some numbers very few people have seen.

The numbers are from Massachusetts, the state whose health reforms became the template for the Affordable Care Act’s coverage expansion. The place to look is within what’s known as the “Commonwealth Care” program, which is where people getting private insurance subsidies shopped for plans—in other words, an analogous structure to the new federally run exchanges.

The analogy to Obamacare is far from perfect, in that Commonwealth Care didn’t include wealthier people who didn’t qualify for subsidies. (In the Massachusetts scheme, they essentially had a separate exchange—and enrollment there began half a year later.) Also, the Massachusetts open enrollment period was twice as long. So it’s reasonable to expect that, with a fully functional website, early enrollment in Obamacare private plans would be higher than those numbers above suggest. But the general point stands. Very few people sign up for insurance in the first few months. Most wait until much later in the game.

Yes. And because of all the hoopla over the web site not working, it makes sense to wait doesn’t it? It’s not as if you can use the new insurance. It doesn’t take effect until January 1st. It’s October.

Do you think the mainstream media knows this? I don’t think many of them do. The way they talk people are jamming the web-site because they need to see a doctor right away. And that may be true. But none of them will have their doctor visit covered by insurance until next year. And I’m pretty sure most people know that, even if the talking heads are clueless.

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The right wing just can’t believe that inflation is so low

by David Atkins

There are are two data sets that drive Republicans crazy: the inflation rate, and the yield on U.S. Treasuries. As I have noted before, insofar as it’s possible to prove anything in economics, the proof of whether Republicans are right about debt and deficits lies in Treasuries and inflation.

If, as Republicans claim, stimulus and soft money policy lead inevitably to hyperinflation, then we should be seeing significant inflation. If, as Republicans claim, large deficits lead to distrust of U.S. debt, then the Treasuries market should be suffering. If neither of those are true, then Republicans are just dead wrong. So let’s take a look at the numbers:

Here is the inflation rate:

1.5%. That’s incredibly low. In fact, in a recessionary environment that’s almost dangerously low.

So how are Treasuries doing? Until just last month when Republicans almost drove the United States into default, demand for treasuries was sky high. Treasuries have weakened very recently only because of world economic slowdown and, again, the darkly comic ineptitude with which Republicans threatened the full faith and credit of the United States.

The data continue to drive a sharp stick into the eyes of Republicans. It doesn’t make sense to them and it overturns their world view.

So increasingly, rather than call into question their deeply held beliefs about deficits and stimulus, you see them relying on kooks who claim that the government is lying about the inflation rate, or illegally propping up Treasuries. Or you see them hilariously trying to tie Chained CPI to some evil Marxist plan to hyperinflate the dollar.

These people are just wrong, and economic reality is shoving how wrong they are in their faces at every moment. As the austerity crowd makes yet another push, we mustn’t let them forget it.

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Corporate fukuppy of the week

by digby

This makes New Coke look like a work of PR genius:

As sending positive brand signals go, naming your mascot Fukuppy is probably a step in the wrong direction.

Indeed, it would seem this refrigerator company have had their very own fukuppy with the unfortunate christening of this cartoon egg.

Social media users seized on the winged ovum’s name to ridicule Fukushima Industries’ mascot, with initial reports linking the upbeat ovum with Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

The Fukushima plant suffered a nuclear meltdown in 2011, forcing the evacuation of 300,000 people, and there are still reports of leaks and contamination.

However this innocent egg is actually attached to Fukushima Industries, a company who make refrigerators, based hundreds of miles away in Osaka.

This is why we can ‘t have nice things

by digby

Oh goodie. Here’s Jon Stewart buying into Charles Krauthammer’s stinking pile of right wing propaganda about Social Security.

The Daily Show
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Great. So now thousands of liberals who watch Stewart think a) Charles Krauthammer is some kind of “reasonable” conservative when he is a wingnut hack and b) think his “facts” about Social Security are true.  And that’s mostly because Stewart, like so many rich, comfortable liberals cares more about everyone getting along than understanding what exactly these people are trying to do to ordinary Americans.

Oh well.  If, for some reason, you are like Jon Stewart and believed Charles Krauthammer’s lies about why we supposedly have to throw the elderly out in streets, you can find the real information here.

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Huzzah! Ryan gives up on Grand Bargain. (Wants to concentrate on cutting entitlements)

by digby

This is actually kind of funny:

A new round of budget negotiations starting next week should focus more narrowly on replacing automatic spending cuts rather than attempt to reach an elusive “grand bargain,” House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan said on Thursday.

Ryan told Reuters in an interview that reduced expectations could make the talks more successful than past efforts, such as the failure of the 2011 “supercommittee” to find $1.2 trillion in savings.

“My hope is that it has a better chance because we’ll set more rational expectations of what we’re setting out to achieve,” said Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican.

“If we focused on doing some big grand bargain, like those prior efforts … then I don’t think we’ll be successful because we’ll focus on our differences. Each party will demand that the other compromises a core principle and then we’ll get nothing done.”

Woo Hoo! Happy days are here again, the skies above are clear …

Oh wait:

Ryan, who will lead Republicans on the 29-member negotiating panel that convenes on October 30, said there is a better chance of finding common ground with Democrats on “smarter” spending cuts to replace the across-the-board reductions to discretionary spending. He said these include reductions and reforms to expensive federal benefits programs known as entitlements, such as Social Security, Medicare and some farm subsidy programs.

Looks like the “Grand Bargain” brand has been a little bit damaged …

The good news for Ryan is that at least one member of President Obama’s budget advisory team agrees with him. The bad news is that Harry Reid doesn’t.

So far, the Democrats are holding strong for a tiny bit of chump change from millionaires so they can pretend any deal is “balanced” and so far the Republicans are holding out the sequester cuts as their only offer. Unfortunately, judging from the defensive tone among the Democrats right now, I’m afraid that if the Obamacare “crisis” continues much longer, the Faintheart Caucus will be aching for some “deal” they can cut with the Republicans to distance themselves from their own party. Their desire to be “grown-ups” is reflexive, so it’s always possible they’ll see any tiny dip in the polls (if there is one) as a sign they need to capitulate.

Stay tuned.

Update: Harry Reid agrees there’s not going to be a grand bargain. But he also says there will be no cuts to SS and Medicare in this round.

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Religious Right retreat (if only from our fevered imaginations)


by digby

Ed Kilgore knows better than to get too excited about recent proclamations that the Religious Right is withdrawing from politics. It’s pretty to think so, but it’s highly unlikely, even if the new leadership of groups like the Southern Baptist Convention sounds as if they’re signaling a retreat.

But there are some positive signs:

The best news to me in the profile was actually a reference to the Southern Baptist Convention’s declining membership numbers along with this comment from a professor at my alma mater:

“The religious right was born on the theology of numerical expansion: the belief that conservative churches grow while liberal ones die. That conceit is gone now,” says David Key, director of Baptist Studies at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology.

Part of the power of the Christian Right has always been its inflated reputation among secular observers who figure the only “real” Christians are the conservatives, who are thus the wave of the religious future. Thus conservative evangelical firebrands and Catholic hyper-traditionalists are presumed to speak for many millions of believers who don’t share their views at all. If someone in Moore’s position fears the winds are blowing in a different direction now, that could ultimately mean real change.

This would be very good news on many levels. Religion is a huge part of American life and that’s fine. But the conservative churches have played an outsized role in our public imagination for decades now and it would be hugely beneficial if they were seen as just another religious group instead of the moral arbiters of the entire culture.

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How gibberish will save us

by digby

I’m actually feeling a little bit better about the future of Social Security after reading this interview with Real Estate developer and Tea Party candidate for congress Art Halvorson who’s running to unseat incumbent Bill Shuster in the primary. If this is how the Tea Partiers see the Chained-CPI, I guess we have nothing to worry about:

The president’s proposal for chained CPI, which would reduce future Social Security benefits – what’s your view of that?

It’s classic government – it’s classic big government, so I think that it’s stealing from the American people…the government borrows money with no intentions of paying it back, and so how they – the way they deal with it is they allow the money to inflate…Without a gold standard or any real standard upon which – with just fiat money, the government is free to do that almost without any limitation. I say all that to say the CPI is just one more gimmick that the government has, a tool that they have at their disposal to sort of deal with…unintended consequences of big spending, deficit spending. That’s how they deal with it…It’s reprehensible…They’re perpetuating this establishment inertia, and it’s disgusting…

I have no idea how to interpret that gibberish, but I think it means they really are too stupid to take yes for an answer.

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Deficit fever spikes again.

by digby

Who could have predicted?

In the week following the end of the 16-day government shutdown, major print media outlets shifted their attention to upcoming bipartisan budget negotiations. This coverage of budget priorities was far more likely to mention the need for deficit and debt reduction than economic growth and job creation, despite economists warning that growth is the more pressing concern.

Long-Term Entitlement Costs Account For Significant Portion Of Calls For Debt Reduction. Of the articles mentioning the need for debt and deficit reduction as a priority across all three print outlets, 24 mentioned that addressing costs of entitlements, such as Social Security and Medicare, was necessary.

The good news is that liberals everywhere are super-confident that these cuts to “entitlements” can never happen so there’s nothing to worry about.

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Restoring my cynicism about humanity

by digby

So, I see that a little pressure over Obamacare is sending DC Democrats back into their familiar defensive crouch and they are now (without even being prompted) rushing to condemn rudeness to those nice Tea Partiers.

Here’s a little reminder from last summer of the kind of people our Democratic leaders are so eager to defend:

[A] non-trivial portion of conservative opposition [to immigration] reform is couched in [racist] terms, particularly among the activist crowd organizing against the bill.

It’s ugly, but it happens to be true. One could forgive mainstream reporters for largely dancing around this fact—if these activists didn’t regularly plan large rallies in the shadow of the Capitol building, and then say a bunch of plainly racist and nativist things into a microphone.

Such was the case Monday, where several hundred people gathered in Upper Senate Park to denounce immigration reform as a job-killer. As ThinkProgress noted, a white nationalist named John Tanton organized the rally; he is famous for works such as “The Case for Passive Case Eugenics” and saying that black Americans are a “retrograde species of humanity.”

So, the rally went about as one would expect. Ken Crow, who used to be president of Tea Party of America until he bungled logistics of a Sarah Palin speech and is now affiliated with Tea Party Community, got up and started talking about “well-bred Americans.”

Here is some video of what followed, in which he made a straightforward case for racial purity.

“From those incredible blood lines of Thomas Jefferson and George Washington and John Smith. And all these great Americans, Martin Luther King. These great Americans who built this country. You came from them. And the unique thing about being from that part of the world, when you learn about breeding, you learn that you cannot breed Secretariat to a donkey and expect to win the Kentucky Derby. You guys have incredible DNA and don’t forget it.”

Not only was this said in the presence of hundreds of people on Capitol Hill, but many important Republican politicians were present. Senator Jeff Sessions, who helped lead the opposition to the immigration bill in the Senate, was directly behind me, glad-handing attendees, as I shot this video. Congressman Steve King, who is taking up Session’s mantle in the House, was also there. Both men spoke (Sessions is the keynote), and Senator Ted Cruz is also on the roster. The rally was promoted by major conservative media figures like Laura Ingraham.

In other words, the rally and its place on the political landscape is impossible to ignore. Last month, another hard-right rally featured Representative Michele Bachmann holding up a white baby and talking about the “future of America”—not quite as explicit, but mainly a difference in degree.

There’s no reason for reporters not to clearly explain what these speakers were saying, and be honest about why they oppose immigration reform.

You can see why it’s so rude to compare these folks to white supremacists of the past. Thank goodness Democratic leaders are stepping up in their defense.

Also too: Democrats who reveal the barbaric bad manners of their opposition are being called liars. Because, civility.

If only ACORN still existed so the Democrats could destroy it and prove again to the Tea Partiers just how civil they really are.

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