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Month: November 2013

If only we had 100 Elizabeth Warrens, by @DavidOAtkins

If only we had 100 Elizabeth Warrens

by David Atkins

Not to take anything away from Jeff Merkley, Tom Udall and other Senators who have been champions at the forefront of the anti-filibuster campaign for quite some time now, but the straight talk and reliably smart, progressive stances from Senator Warren are always a breath of fresh air. When she talks, even the national media listen. Here’s what she had to say about the abuse of the filibuster:

In the face of all this obstruction, Warren has joined progressive stalwarts such as Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Tom Udall (D-N.M.) in demanding real changes to how the filibuster is used. “So far they have shut down the government, they have filibustered people [President Obama] has nominated to fill out his administration, and they are now filibustering judges to block him from filling any of the vacancies with highly qualified people,” she said. “We need to call out these filibusters for what they are: Naked attempts to nullify the results of the last election.”

Warren went on: “If Republicans continue to filibuster these highly qualified nominees for no reason other than to nullify the president’s constitutional authority, then senators not only have the right to change the filibuster, senators have a duty to change the filibuster rules,” Warren said. “We cannot turn our backs on the Constitution. We cannot abdicate our oath of office.”

If only we had 99 more like her. Or heck–just 59 more would do.

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What is this “undue burden” you speak of?

What is this “undue burden” you speak of?

by digby

Well, this certainly bodes well for the future of reproductive rights:

Splitting five-to-four, the Supreme Court late Friday afternoon refused to block a Texas abortion law that critics say is forcing the closing of one-third of all clinics in the state. The Court had been studying the issue for the past week. The majority said that the challengers had not met the requirement for setting aside a federal appeals court order permitting the law to take effect.

The majority specifically included Justices Antonin Scalia, who wrote separately in a concurring opinion joined by Justices Samuel A. Alito, Jr., and Clarence Thomas. But Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., and Justice Anthony M. Kennedy presumably voted with those three, because it would have taken five votes to act definitively on the plea by doctors and clinics. Roberts and Kennedy did not say they had not taken part. The specific order denying the application (13A452) was unsigned.

The law requires any doctor in the state who is going to perform an abortion to have professional privileges to admit patients to a hospital within 30 miles of the site where the abortion will take place. The challengers had argued that this provision, enforced by a criminal fine of up to $4,000 for a violation, will have a particularly harsh impact in Texas’s rural areas.

Justice Stephen G. Breyer wrote for the four dissenters, including Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor. Their dissenting opinion argued that the Fifth Circuit Court order in the case “seriously disrupts” the status quo in Texas.

Basically, what they’ve done is validate the anti-abortion zealots’ strategy of closing down clinics with any spurious reasoning they can come up with regardless of whether it makes sense.

*Oh, and by the way, there will always be abortions no matter how much birth control is widely available and how much health care and support women get. Always have been always will be. The only question for any decent society is if they will be safe and available.

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GI Jesus and his rock hard abs

GI Jesus and his rock hard abs

by digby

General Jerry Boykin (ret.) is tired of the feminization of his macho hero — Jesus Christ. For realz:

Do you think he looked like the effeminate picture that we always see of him? He didn’t look like that. He had big ole calluses over his hands, right? I imagine he probably lost a nail or two, he probably hit it with a hammer or something.”

“You think his biceps weren’t big bulging biceps, big ole veins popping out of his arms, thin waist, strong shoulders from lifting? He smelled bad! Why? Because he sweated, he worked. You think I’m sacrilegious because I said Jesus smelled bad? No, he was a man! He was a man’s man.”

“He was a tough guy, and that’s the Jesus I want to be like. But we feminize Jesus in the church and men can’t identify with him anymore, not the kind of men I want to hang out with. They can’t identify with this effeminate Jesus that we’ve tried to portray.”

Ok, I think we’re talking about a whole different kind of man’s man with all that “thin waist and strong shoulders” and “losing a nail” and what not, don’t you?

This particular homoerotic undercurrent on the right has always been present. Remember this?

Seeing Jesus as a macho construction worker is fine, I suppose. Whatever floats your boat. (I always preferred the cop or the cowboy myself.) But these people still need to grapple with the “femmy” Jesus message of caring for the poor and sick and all that business of the meek being blessed and inheriting the earth. Jesus might have stunk with the manly essence of the working man (I’d imagine most people did) and he might have had a rock hard 6-pack that would make your average Calvin Klein underwear model look like Rob Ford. But there’s no getting around his hippie message of peace and love.

Sorry General, but he’s just not that into you.

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Do it, Harry. by @DavidOAtkins

Do it, Harry.

by David Atkins

Greg Sargent has good news:

Senator Harry Reid appears set to go nuclear — before Thanksgiving.

With Senate Republicans blocking a third Obama nomination to the powerful D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, a senior Senate Democratic leadership aide tells me Reid is now all but certain to move to change the Senate rules by simple majority — doing away with the filibuster on executive and judicial nominations, with the exception of the Supreme Court – as early as this week.

At a presser today, Reid told reporters he was taking another look at rules reform, but didn’t give a timeline. The senior leadership aide goes further, saying it’s hard to envision circumstances under which Reid doesn’t act.

“Reid has become personally invested in the idea that Dems have no choice other than to change the rules if the Senate is going to remain a viable and functioning institution,” the aide says. That’s a long journey from where Reid was only 10 months ago, when he agreed to a toothless filibuster reform deal out of a real reluctance to change the rules by simple majority. Asked to explain the evolution, the aide said: “It’s been a long process. But this is the only thing we can do to keep the Senate performing its basic duties.”

Asked if Reid would drop the threat to go nuclear if Republicans green-lighted one or two of Obama’s judicial nominations, the aide said: “I don’t think that’s going to fly.”

Reid has concluded Senate Republicans have no plausible way of retreating from the position they’ve adopted in this latest Senate rules standoff, the aide says. Republicans have argued that in pushing nominations, Obama is “packing” the court, and have insisted that Obama is trying to tilt the court’s ideological balance in a Democratic direction — which is to say that the Republican objection isn’t to the nominees Obama has chosen, but to the fact that he’s trying to nominate anyone at all.

The fears expressed by certain Democrats over doing this are largely overblown while the risk of inaction is high.

It’s time to end the obstructionism and let the government function, at least to allow the President the power of appointment.

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They can’t stop flogging deficits

They can’t stop flogging deficits

by digby

And they won’t stop talking about them no matter what the numbers say.

[Jack] Lew was a guest speaker at the Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council on Tuesday, a gathering of business leaders hosted at the Four Seasons Hotel in Washington, D.C. Weighing-in on the budget negotiations between House and Senate conferees, Lew said he doesn’t want to get ahead of the process but believes President Barack Obama’s budget blueprint is the way forward.

Obama proposed a $3.8 trillion budget to Congress in April that includes a mixture of tax increases on the wealthy and controversial cuts to entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare. The aim of the White House’s plan is to reap $1.8 trillion in deficit reduction over the next decade and replace the sequester spending cuts that took effect in March. It would also reduce the cost-of-living adjustments for Social Security recipients.

“I think the president’s budget is a blueprint that were we to follow it would give the
The secretary said that the bipartisan group of negotiators could produce many possibilities by the Dec. 13 deadline, but that an agreement will be a good sign to the public.

“I actually think that anything they do to show that they can work together … would instill some confidence both in the process and in the substance,” he said. “The challenge of doing something really big is that both sides have to do something really hard.

“We’ve made clear that in order to do the kind of entitlement reforms that are in the president’s budget it would require moving a tax reform and raising some additional revenue,” Lew added. “If that’s not a possibility for the Republicans then something large is not likely. But there’s other ways for these conferees to work things out but I’ll leave it to them.”

Yes, yes, yes. I am duly scolded for highlighting this since it’s obvious the Republicans will never agree so it’s pretty much a moot point. And Lew admits that they will probably only be able to get a less ambitious budget through this congress. So why does the administration put this “entitlement reform for revenue” plan forward in every, single public forum making it plain they believe “deficit reduction” is the key to future prosperity and this ridiculous formulation is the painless way to achieve it?

If the president’s budget is as dead on arrival as everyone says, then maybe the president and his people should put it in the trash bin where it belongs and stop using it as the one true north of “responsible” adults. It’s a dangerous document that’s going to take years, if not decades, to shed from the Democratic party’s economic platform. The policy of cutting the hell out of everything for some useless temporary chump change in the lobbyist playground known as the tax code is now “reasonable Democratic centrist” dogma and I don’t know what it’s going to take to get them to recognize that it’s killing any hope for decent economic policy.

Update: At the same event the president reportedly said he (and Republicans) want to do “entitlement reform” so clearly he’s on the same page.

Building an army of happy worker bees

Building an army of happy worker bees

by digby

Who says giant corporations that pay their workers poverty level wages don’t have hearts?

See, this is the difference between McDonalds and Walmart, which was revealed to be doing Thanksgiving charitable work by soliciting donations of canned goods from their underpaid workers to give to their fellow underpaid workers. (I suppose the idea is that some of the elderly associates who are working part time into their 80s to keep a roof over their heads can just mix up some Friskies casserole for themselves and donate another can to the younger ones with family.) Here’s the problem: Walmart is creating “dependence” among its workers by exhorting its employees to share their meager incomes while McDonald’s is teaching their workers how they can lower the stress of not having enough money to live and making them happier to be poor.

When you look at it that way, Walmart is actually endorsing some kind of quasi-socialist collectivism while McDonalds is creating an army of somnambulant drones. I think we know which is the capitalist organization of the future don’t you?

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Yes, everyone hates liberals. But that’s not the end of the story

Yes, everyone hates liberals.  But that’s not the end of the story


by digby

Kevin Drum says:

In other poll news, for the fifth year in a row virtually no one thinks President Obama is too conservative. Only 9 percent of the country would prefer a more liberal president. This is up a whopping two points from early 2010, a year after Obama was inaugurated. This is the fundamental problem for American progressives: the country just doesn’t support a more robust progressive movement than we have now. Until we change that, fantasies of expanding Social Security and electing Elizabeth Warren are going to remain just that.

So let’s change it.

 I would just add that changing it begins with people educating the public about these things that sound like fantasy. You talk about it until people get used to hearing it at which point it changes from “fantasy” to possibility and finally, after a while, sounds like conventional wisdom — at least for a fair number of citizens. People will never know that expanding social security, for instance, is even possible unless someone like Elizabeth Warren starts advocating for it.

So yeah, people don’t identify as “liberal.” In fact, they think they’re supposed to loathe liberals so even if they are Democrats who agree with every item on the progressive agenda most are unlikely to take on that hated label. But if popular politicians like Elizabeth Warren make the case for progressive policies and wear the liberal/progressive label proudly … well, anything can happen.

None of this is news to progressive/liberal activists of all stripes. Everyone knows there is work to be done. But the right wing is busy destroying all the hard work conservatives did over decades making them the default ideology in the country. There is a lot more room to move than there was just a decade ago. So I’m hopeful.

Unfortunately, we have some bigger structural problems to worry about, as Paul Rosenberg discusses in this interesting essay in Salon discussing the wrongheaded assumption among the chattering classes that the Republicans are going to “move to the center” and we’ll have Tipnronnie nirvana. He cites the work of political scientist Thomas Ferguson:

Political action of any sort requires an investment of time and energy, simply to understand what’s going on, Ferguson argues, building on the 1970s work of Samuel Popkin, a non-trivial investment whose burden for average citizens is routinely minimized, overlooked, and/or ignored by most political scientists. A vibrant muckraking press, or a vital labor movement can both lower those costs and make specific benefits more tangible, but even so, there is much more for small special interests to gain by investing not just time and energy, but also pots of money—which is why blocks of big donors play a much larger role in determining the contours of political power, forming the defacto core of political parties.

Among other things, Ferguson notes that if donor groups in neither party will invest in an idea, it will never be seriously debated, no matter how popular it might be. Thus, when it comes to agenda setting, median voters need not apply. They do not create the cafeteria menu, they merely order from it.

A decade earlier, in 1986, Ferguson co-authored a book with Joel Rodgers, Right Turn: The Decline of the Democrats and the Future of American Politics, in which they marshaled evidence showing that Democratic elites abandoned liberalism well before Clinton, during Carter’s term in office. Among other things, they traced the rightward-shifting influence of those elites via precursors to the DLC, the vehicle which ultimate lead Clinton to the White House. While the conventional wisdom portrays Mondale and Dukakis as liberal candidates, whose electoral failures pressed home the need for Democrats to move right “toward the center”, Right Turn helps to highlight how the rightward shift of Democratic Party elites contributed to those losses in advance, rather than following from them afterwards.

“Basically the GOP moved steadily to the right; Dem elites followed right along, pretty much, on economic issues,” Ferguson said of this period, when I asked him to comment for this article. (Indeed, his latest work on the 2012 election shows this same basic dynamic still at play.) “Democratic financing in that period never varied,” he added, “Always led by investment bankers, high tech types, defense.”

Thus, what actually happened—and continues even now—was a rightward shift of the entire political class, regardless of public opinion generally. The “center” elite journalists are talking about is not the center of public opinion, as it pretends to be, but rather, the self-referential center of elite opinion, which they are tasked with helping to construct, legitimate, normalize, and ultimately present as existing without any conceivable alternative.

This is why we need popular political leaders like Warren to go outside the parameters of elite opinion and speak directly to the people. Democracy doesn’t seem to be all that adequate in the face of the ever rightward course set by the moneyed elites of both parties. But it is at least something of a countervailing force. And anyway, what choice do we have but to try?

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The necessity of auxiliary precautions

The necessity of auxiliary precautions

by digby

It appears that some important British citizens are starting to push back on the growing police state powers of their government:

The technology used by Britain’s spy agencies to conduct mass surveillance is “out of control”, raising fears about the erosion of civil liberties at a time of diminished trust in the intelligence services, according to the former Liberal Democrat leader Lord Ashdown.

The peer said it was time for a high-level inquiry to address fundamental questions about privacy in the 21st century, and railed against “lazy politicians” who frighten people into thinking “al-Qaida is about to jump out from behind every bush and therefore it is legitimate to forget about civil liberties”. “Well it isn’t,” he added.

Ashdown talks frequently to the deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, and is chair of the the Liberal Democrats’ general election team. Though he said he was speaking for himself, his views are understood to be shared by other senior members of the Liberal Democrats in government, who are also keen for some kind of broad inquiry into the subject.

This idea is also supported by Sir David Omand, a former director of GCHQ. He told the Guardian he was in favour of an inquiry and thought it would be wrong to “dismiss the idea of a royal commission out of hand”. It was important to balance the need for the agencies to have powerful capabilities, and the necessity of ensuring they did not use them in a way parliament had not intended, Omand added.

Ashdown is the latest senior politician to demand a review of the powers of Britain’s intelligence agencies – GCHQ, MI5 and MI6 – and the laws and oversight which underpin their activities.

In an interview with the Guardian, Ashdown said surveillance should only be conducted against specific targets when there was evidence against them. Dragnet surveillance was unacceptable, he added.

These high-tech dragnets are very useful to governments, especially if they can store the information forever. That way, they can go back and find other pretexts to charge someone (or to pressure their friends and families) once they have someone in their sites. Apparently, everyone has decided that such a circumvention of the rules is a-ok. But, as we’ve seen with the FBI’s sordid history of high level blackmail and not-so-subtle threats, such power is also extremely convenient for those times when government officials decide to target someone for political or personal reasons. In fact, preventing such intrusions for the purpose of “finding” legal cause to harass or arrest citizens is one of the reasons we have a presumption of privacy in our system in the first place.

There is simply no good reason for the government to collect and store this massive amount of information. If you allow them to have it, they will inevitably use it in ways that are unconstitutional and authoritarian.

People love to cite this James Madison quote:

If men were angels, no government would be necessary.

But it’s the next part that really matters:

If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.”

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GOP hunger games

GOP hunger games

by digby

Hmm.  I wonder what Jesus would say to this?

In Southeast Washington Ryan met Bishop Shirley Holloway, who gave up a comfortable career in the U.S. Postal Service to minister to drug addicts, ex-offenders, the homeless — people for whom government benefits can serve only to hasten their downfall, Holloway said:

“Paul wants people to dream again,” Holloway said of Ryan. “You don’t dream when you’ve got food stamps.”

It’s very hard to sleep at all when your stomach is rumbling from hunger. So technically she’s right.

It’s always interesting how Paul Ryan looks for and finds “Christian” leaders who sound oddly like Ayn Rand.

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