Month: November 2013

An iconic report card

by digby

A blog joke was born:

For those who weren’t following the news of those days, it’s hard to get just how giddy and sycophantic the press corps was toward these endless phony-baloney presidential photo ops.  The “secret drop-in” in the dead of night to serve the troops Thanksgiving dinner was especially bad.  And Atrios memorialized it with that “self-evaluation” report card (which had been in the news as an unrelated story).

*I don’t know if everyone also recalls that the famous image of Bush serving the turkey was actually a picture of him carrying a decorative turkey centerpiece. The revelation of this fact evidently still irks the right wingers, which makes me happy.

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QOTD: jackass edition

by digby

Who else but Kanye West?

“Man, let me tell you something about George Bush and oil money and Obama and no money. People want to say Obama can’t make these moves or he’s not executing. That’s because he ain’t got those connections. Black people don’t have the same level of connections as Jewish people. Black people don’t have the same connection as oil people.

“You know we don’t know nobody that got a nice house. You know we don’t know nobody with paper like that we can go to when we down. You know they can just put us back or put us in a corporation. You know we ain’t in situation. Can you guarantee that your daughter can get a job at this radio station? But if you own this radio station, you could guarantee that. That’s what I’m talking about.”

Somehow, I think Kanye’s going to have enough to get him through whatever hardships he’s going to face.  He’s reportedly worth a hundred million dollars.

And he certainly knows people with a nice house. This is where he’s currently staying with his girlfriend and her family:

But that’s only temporary until his 11 million dollar mansion is fully renovated:

Obviously Kanye is planning a run for president.

You know, I get the point he’s trying to make about money.  But he’s a very wealthy meathead who sounds like a fool talking that way.  There are a lot of reasons why being the first black president creates unique problems.  Lack of access to money isn’t one of them.

And he’s also, apparently, a bigot.

sigh …

British plutocrats get into the Objectivist game, too

by David Atkins

Whether it’s the U.S. or Britain, the plutocratic class isn’t even trying to hide the contempt anymore:

The growing gulf between rich and poor is inevitable because millions of people are too stupid to get on in life, top Tory Boris Johnson suggested tonight.

Mr Johnson said that the resentment felt towards the super rich in the wake of the financial crisis and “fives years of recession” was irrational.

“It would be wrong to persecute the rich, and madness to try and stifle wealth creation and futile to try to stamp out inequality,” he said.

The Mayor of London, who dreams of being Prime Minister, said that the Government had a duty to care for those who could not look after themselves and give everyone else the chance to get on.

But he also said: “It is surely relevant to a conversation about equality that as many as 16% of our species have an IQ below 85, while about 2% have an IQ above 130.

“The harder you shake the pack, the easier it will be for some cornflakes to get to the top.”

Also, this courtesy The Mirror:

It seems that the more the top 1% has, the more insecure they are about it (they do know deep down they don’t deserve it, after all), and the more they defensively lash out at everyone else.

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Solidarity with the whole human race

by digby

This joint statement from AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka and Stephen Blair, the Catholic bishop of Stockton and a member of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ domestic policy committee, is another welcome sign of an important and growing economic coalition:

Unions and Catholic leaders have long found common cause in advocating for policies that defend the dignity of workers and protect immigrant families. Over the past several years, we have worked together to win congressional approval of comprehensive immigration reform legislation. Although such legislation has passed the U.S. Senate in an overwhelmingly bipartisan fashion, the House of Representatives is now delaying consideration of either the Senate bill or its own version of reform.

While we commend President Barack Obama’s strong commitment to humane and responsible reform, we now stand together again to urge him to halt the deportations of immigrants who would achieve legal status and eventual citizenship under the Senate bill. It is inconsistent to advocate on behalf of immigrants and their families on one hand – including giving them an opportunity for citizenship – and devastate and separate their families through enforcement actions on the other.

A philosophically diverse coalition of business, faith and labor leaders has joined Obama in a clear call for making urgent legislative changes to a broken system, and we remain committed to achieving passage of comprehensive immigration reform. We must not allow extreme positions outside the American mainstream to define the debate and hinder the achievement of the common good, which calls for comprehensive immigration reform.

Despite our optimism that Congress will eventually do the right thing, we remain deeply troubled that the number of undocumented immigrants deported since Obama took office five years ago will soon surpass 2 million people. This represents a moral and political failure. Simply put, tearing apart tens of thousands of children from parents is morally unacceptable.

We are a nation of laws, but also a nation guided by enduring principles and the practical sense to fix what is broken. A strictly punitive approach to immigration is an imprudent and impractical response that ignores the root causes driving migration, such as trade policies that benefit multinational corporations over workers. Global poverty and unstable governments all contribute to complex challenges that will not be solved by higher walls or tough rhetoric.

Moreover, the economic case for an immigration overhaul is strong. Despite the ugly myths and fear stoked by anti-immigrant groups, the fact is that comprehensive reform will be good for American workers, families and our economy.

Most immigrants work hard, pay taxes and contribute to our communities. But in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago alone, low-wage workers in immigrant-heavy industries lose about $56 million per week in wage theft from unscrupulous employers. The best defense against workplace exploitation is bringing immigrants out of the shadows.

In this regard, we support immigration policies that offer immigrant workers a fair and just path to citizenship, so that their human rights are protected and the wages for all workers rise.

The low wages and fear that trap many immigrants and U.S. citizens in dead-end jobs have only gotten worse with declining union membership and growing income inequality. Fixing our broken immigration system will help all workers, strengthen a shrinking middle class and set our nation on a more stable path to compete in a diverse global economy. In fact, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that immigration reform with a path to citizenship would generate an additional $1.5 trillion to the economy over the next decade.

It’s time to reject false choices and inconsistent and immoral enforcement policies. Let’s secure our borders at the same time that we provide an earned path to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants. We can protect both American-born workers and aspiring Americans by fixing an immigration system that encourages manipulation and abuse by employers. The status quo is unacceptable.

As labor and faith leaders, we urge all people of good will not to rest until the fight for a fair and just immigration system is won.

“Just enjoy it while you can”

by digby

At one point Dennis Hartley tried to put together a list of great Thanksgiving movies and these were all he could come up with (so he went with food movies instead, which I can totally appreciate): The House of Yes, Hannah and Her Sisters, The Ice Storm , Planes, Trains and Automobiles and Alice’s Restaurant. 

Well, I happen to love Hannah and her Sisters. It’s on my all-time Top Ten list so I have no problem finding a Thanksgiving movie to watch.

Here’s why I love it:

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Right wing hissy fit for T-Day

by digby

So the right wing is clutching itspearlsover the fact that the president used the term “teabagger”. The humanity.

Here’s what he wasted his valuable time doing:

But here’s the thing.  He was quoting the guy who wrote the letter:

Thomas Ritter, a fifth-grade school teacher from Irving, Texas, has sent the president a note criticizing Obamacare – the controversial law offering health care to the uninsured, which has become the butt of jokes following a disastrous launch last month.

‘This bill has caused such a ­divisive, derisive and toxic environment… The reality is that any citizen that disagrees with your ­administration is targeted and ridiculed,’ the Texas man wrote to the commander-in-chief.

Ritter went on, saying that he had been hesitant to write to the president for fear of ‘retribution,’ according to the New York Post’s Page Six.

‘I watched you make fun of tea baggers and your press secretary make fun of Ms. [Sarah] Palin which was especially beneath the dignity of the White House,’ the teacher fumed. ‘Do the right thing not the political thing. Suggest a bill that Americans can support.’

I’m sure the president should have thought twice about repeating that term, even though they routinely call him Hitler. He should know by now that they are allowed to act like animals because they are right. The rest of us must mind our manners.

But what continues to gall me about this is the fact that, as David Neiwert fully documented, they are the ones who started using the term in the first place:

Here’s Fox News doing a story about a Tea Party initiative called “Teabag the fools in Washington.” I’m not kidding:

Can you imagine the right ever letting us off the hook if we made that kind of error?

Anyway, today’s Thanksgiving and it’s not nice to dwell on such things. So, I thought I’d just reprise a famous Michael Bérubé protest song from the Teabagger Wars of 2009:

The night the country died

In the deep of a Sunday night
In the land of the health care bill
When the free republic died
And they talk about it still

When a man named Al-Barack
Took his fascist voting bloc
And he called his gang to war
With the forces of the law

I heard my grandma cry
I heard her pray the night the country died
Brother what a night it really was
Brother what a fight it really was
Glory be

I heard my grandma cry
I heard her pray the night the country died
Brother what a night the people saw
Brother what a fight the people saw
Yes indeed

And we took our tea in bags
Through the streets around the Hill
As we screamed at blacks and fags
Chanting, “n****r kill the bill.”

There was Boehner on the floor
And threats of civil war
But by midnight it was done
And the socialists had won

I heard my grandma cry
I heard her pray the night the country died
Brother what a night it really was
Brother what a fight it really was
Glory be

I heard my grandma cry
I heard her pray the night the country died
Brother what a night the people saw
Brother what a fight the people saw
Yes indeed

Then there was no sound at all
But a hush upon the Mall
For as the clock struck one
The death panels had begun
And then at the break of day
Obama took grandma away*

The night the country died
The night the country died
Brother what a night the people saw
Brother what a fight the people saw
Yes indeed

Oh, ok, here’s another one from one of his commenters:

I dreamed they passed the Bill last night,
Those friends of Mao and Ché.
Says I, “You didn’t have no votes.”
“We had enough,” says they.
“We had enough,” says they.
“When Scott Brown won,” says I to them,
Them standing by my bed,
“You folks were looking mighty blue.”
Says they, “We’re turning Red.”
Says they, “We’re turning Red.”
“The talking heads denounced your Bill,
They shot it down,” says I.
“Takes half the votes to kill a Bill,”
Says they, “It didn’t die.”
Says they, “It didn’t die.”
And standing there as big as life
Each face split by a smile,
They says, “What they forgot to kill
Went on to reconcile,
Went on to reconcile.”
“The Bill ain’t dead,” they says to me,
“The Bill ain’t never died.
When working men are sick in bed
The Bill is at their side,
The Bill is at their side.”
“From San Diego up to Maine,
In every mine and mill,
Where workers need some health care help,”
Says they, “You’ll find the Bill,”
Says they, “You’ll find the Bill.”
I dreamed they passed the Bill last night,
Those friends of Mao and Ché.
Says I, “You didn’t have no votes.”
“We had enough,” says they.
“We had enough,” says they.

I can’t believe they’re still on exactly the same page four years later. Oy. This is going to be a long war.

These “teabaggers” sincerely believe that health care reform is the worst thing that ever happened to this country. And that means they’re nuts.

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Game Changers and Double Downs

by digby

This conversation on Up with Steve Kornacki about campaign “game changers” was interesting (and not just because he quoted me at the top of the segment:)

I’ve thought about this quite a bit. I’m sympathetic to the idea that most of the time the presidential election is pre-ordained because of external conditions and the candidates are either riding the tide of good times or swimming against it. By the time of the general election we most often do know who’s going to win just based on the general mood of the country. Even without looking at polls I usually predict the winner pretty early on that basis (unless they steal it …) But I remain unconvinced that this is the whole story. Even aside from the good points that Sasha Issenberg makes about how the narrative of the winning campaign informs us about the approach to governance of the eventual winner, I still think campaigns themselves could surprise us, even though they haven’t yet. There just haven’t been enough of them measured in this way ultimately to prove it.

Be that as it may, the numbers are what the numbers are and they show as of now that the winners of presidential elections can be correlated to certain factors having to do with the economy and (I assume — I haven’t read he book) national security. But author John Sides says something in his comments above that’s very important and which I don’t think most people quite understand: the only elections they feel can be predicted with this specificity are presidential general elections. And yet I see pundits and other observers applying these findings to elections of all sorts and that’s definitely a big mistake. All you have to do is look at presidential primaries to see just how volatile elections can be and how important campaigns are to the outcome.

I hope that people will come away from this understanding that elections at all other levels are still very much dependent on what we call campaigns and political talent, however you define that. There are wave elections and referendums on certain policies of the party currently in charge. But the factors that go into any winning specific race are highly individual and even our favorite numbers crunchers are not going to be able to predict them based on polling alone.

Anyway, thanks to Steve Kornacki for calling out my post (and picking one that sounds halfway literate.)

Btw: Heuristic

Stereotyping for Real Americans

by digby

Lulz. To conservatives, every liberal is a wealthy vegetarian with the brain of a Hollywood starlet:

The Thanksgiving Guide to Making Conservative Arguments Liberals Can Understand

By: Timothy Carney

Your Baby Boomer aunts are unshakable in their faith in Hillary Clinton. Your nephew Trevor won’t stop spouting vapid Democratic talking points in favor of Obamacare.

When Thanksgiving talk turns political, do you feel like you and your liberal relatives can’t communicate?

It’s okay. I can help you. I was born in Greenwich Village to a lawyer dad and community-organizer mom. I used to live on Capitol Hill, and now I live in Montgomery County in Maryland. I even served a year as an MSNBC contributor. This is all to say, I speak liberal.

You won’t win over your lefty in-laws with appeals to liberty. Those warnings about hubris that tickle your Edmund Burke nerve will ring hollow with Nephew Trevor, who is still infected with his 2008 case of Hope & Change. You need to speak their language.So let me offer my conservative and libertarian readers the first annual Thanksgiving Guide to Making Conservative Arguments in Liberals’ Language.

Regulators will ban your organic kale.

Your liberal relatives generally trust government regulations to solve problems. They don’t sweat the costs to the economy as much as you do. Throw in a healthy distrust of Corporate America — often even an unhealthy disdain for it — and progressives (this is what they call themselves these days) end up regarding regulation as a force for good.

You can plant a seed of skepticism about regulators’ ability to do good, though, by pointing to the salad course Trevor brought. The organic, local, sustainable kale in it might be impossible to get after the Obama administration’s food safety rules go into effect.

The Food Safety Modernization Act that Obama signed is finally being implemented, and it has locavores up in arms. Quote Nathanael Johnson at Grist (your relatives know this site): “Everyone wants safer food, but some small farmers fear the rules could force them out of business.”

Proposed federal rules on manure-spreading and water-testing seem tailored for industrial farming, impossible for smaller farms to meet. As you discuss this, throw in references to author Michael Pollan.

At work here are two dynamics common to regulation: They’re called “regulatory capture” and “the overhead smash.”

Obama’s food safety czar is Michael Taylor, former top lobbyist for Monsanto. (You’ll be amazed at the power of the word “Monsanto” with some of your relatives.) Industrial farms and major food processors hire the best lobbyists and thus get a seat at the table when the FDA writes the rules. Thus, the biggest players in the regulated industry have “captured” the agency that regulates them.

“The overhead smash” is my phrase for the tendency of regulations to add to overhead — the fixed costs of doing business — which smashes smaller competitors while protecting the big guys. In the food safety realm, small farms are begging to be exempted from these rules that only big farms can afford.

In case your aunts think this is an aberration, point them to similar phenomena in the realms of handmade toys, taxi services, bakers, hair-braiders, casket-makers and so on.

Also too: tell them that Social Security is racist so they’ll stop supporting it.

If you’d like a liberal guide to talking with your right wing relatives that isn’t just snarky, stereotypical nonsense, check out Chris Hayes Very Very Special Thanksgiving Dinner Special Show from last night.

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Gobble, gobble

by digby

The Congressional Progressive caucus sent this out so you will have something to show your right wing relatives today:

Haha. Happy Turkey Day everyone.

Demographic winter in action

by David Atkins

If you ever wanted to know what the electoral college in 2012 would have looked like if only white men could vote, here’s an eye-opener for you:

When you hear Tea Party types say they “want their country back,” it’s a pretty good bet this is what they mean. Some people in this country feel very threatened by modernity.

As a white man, I have to say it’s pretty embarrassing.

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