Month: December 2013

But our rich people are exceptional!

by David Atkins

As Digby posted earlier, wingnut CEO of Home Depot and incredible narcissist Ken Langone is very concerned that Pope Francis just doesn’t understand how exceptional are the American rich. As Digby says, there’s something pathological in his reaction.

I think I can explain what’s going on. It cuts to the heart of American conservatism.

Langone’s reaction is part of a growing response among American Catholics to Pope Francis’ economic statements: that Pope Francis just doesn’t understand true capitalism in a moral nation, because all he knows about rich people he learned from the corrupt kleptocrats in Argentina. This explanation is very prevalent among devout Catholics on conservative blogs and forums who need to square their conservatism with the Pope’s infallibility. Our rich people don’t behave like that. Theirs do. We’re exceptional, doncha know. Pope Francis is talking about their rich people.

I’ve written before that while they may not seem to be connected, a belief in libertarianism requires racism to be sustainable because the effects of inadequate economic regulation are too obvious in developing countries. To believe that small government libertarianism can work in the United States is to believe that Americans are made of finer and more moral stuff than the inferior folk who just couldn’t make it work:

The negative effects of the lack of a central government are so obvious in developing countries that wherever the social order fails as in Somalia, it must have been due to bad religion, or the defect of having been born to an inferior race.

Ron Paul fans must reassure themselves that such things would never happen to white, Christian folk. They’re immune from the Somali problem by virtue being of different stock and different values, you see.

There’s a unifying principle behind libertarianism, American exceptionalism and racism: that white Americans through God’s grace and inspiration can create a holy libertarian city on a hill without government, one that has never existed and could not exist elsewhere. Everything liberal and progressive helps to corrupt that purity and destroy God’s promise for America and for freedom.

There is nothing you can do with people like that except defeat them politically and destroy their ideas in the public square. You cannot compromise or reason with them.

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The US is good place for women … but not as good as Burundi

by digby

… but if she wants economic equality and political representation, not so much:

In the 2013 World Economic Forum (WEF) Global Gender Gap Report, which measures women’s economic, political, educational, and health equality, the United States ranks at number 23 out of 136 countries around the world. The country falls behind many Nordic countries as well as Nicaragua, Cuba, and Burundi, among others.

The country also falls at number 17 out of the 49 high-income countries measured. Its ranking has dropped over the years, down from number 22 in 2012 and 17 in 2011, although not all countries are counted each year. While its overall scored improved over last year, its ranking dropped thanks to faster improvements in other countries.

The U.S. ranks at number six for “economic participation and opportunity” and ties for the top slot with many other countries for educational attainment, but it falls at 33 for “health and survival” and 60 for political empowerment. The country made a slight gain in women’s representation in Congress this year and there were also small gains in women’s labor force participation rate and the gender wage gap. The report notes, “The United States has fully closed its gender gap in education and health.”

Where it doesn’t take top rankings is on the economic and political front, both of which go to the Nordic countries. Iceland, Finland, Norway, and Sweden hold the top spots. The report notes, “Although no country has yet achieved gender equality, all of the Nordic countries, with the exception of Denmark, have closed over 80% of the gender gap and thus serve as models… [T]hese countries emerge as top performers and true leaders on gender equality.”

No wonder. The place is full of socialist feminazis. (And, unlike the macho US, a bunch of girly-man Vikings, apparently, which seems odd …)

Seriously, this is just ridiculous. We are, at this point, a socially backward, global military giant that is no longer really a first world country. “We’re number one!” is sounding sillier and sillier.

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Prediction ‘O the Day: Joe Lieberman

by digby

Via Crooks and Liars we’ve got none other than Holy Joe, sounding as if he’s really looking forward to the Rapture:

LIEBERMAN: Yes, I want to talk about the legislation introduced in the Senate now sponsored by almost 50 members, which would impose tougher new sanctions on Iran if these negotiations fail.

President Obama has threatened to veto over it; the Iranians say if it passes, they’ll walk away from the table. I believe bipartisan majority in both houses of Congress will adopt these tougher sanctions on Iran. The president will not veto it and Iran will not walk away from the table. That’s the good news.

The bad news is I think that the tougher sanctions will not convince Iran to find a diplomatic way to end their nuclear weapons project and I think there is a better than even chance that before the end of 204 the U.S. and/or Israel will take military action to disable Iran’s nuclear program.

Uhm, Happy New Year?

Nice little church you have here. Be a shame if anything happened to it.

by digby

Hey, Holy Father. I gotcher compassion for ya, rightchea:

In an interview on CNBC on Monday, Home Depot founder and devout Catholic Ken Langone said that the Pope’s statements about capitalism have left many potential “capitalist benefactors” wary of donating to the Church or its fundraising projects.

According to Langone, an anonymous, “potential seven-figure donor” for the Church’s restoration of St. Patrick’s Cathedral is concerned that the Pope’s criticism of capitalism are “exclusionary,” especially his statements about the “culture of prosperity” leading to the wealthy being “incapable of feeling compassion for the poor.”
[…]
“I’ve told the Cardinal,” Langone said, “‘Your Eminence, this is one more hurdle I hope we don’t have to deal with. You want to be careful about generalities. Rich people in one country don’t act the same as rich people in another country.’”

Cardinal Dolan told CNBC that he had, in fact, spoken to Langone, and had told him that “that would be a misunderstanding of the Holy Father’s message. The pope loves poor people. He also loves rich people.”

He then thanked Langone for bringing this anonymous donor’s concerns to him, and insisted that “[w]e’ve got to correct — to make sure this gentleman understands the Holy Father’s message properly.”

Langone further said that, in the future, he hopes Pope Francis will “celebrate a positive point of view rather than focusing on the negative.” He does worry, though, because of “the vast difference between the Pope’s experience in Argentina and how we are in America. There is no nation on earth that is so forthcoming, so giving.”

Think about it: the allegedly devout Catholic who owns Home Depot presumes to threaten the Pope! Clearly, he feels he’s an equal. Actually, the poor Pope isn’t quite up to his level, is he? And yet at the same time he’s bruised by the Pope’s cruel comments about the culture of greed leading to lack of empathy.

This is a perfect illustration of a psychiatric condition known as Narcissistic Personality Disorder:

Symptoms of this disorder, as defined by the DSM-IV-TR include:

Expects to be recognized as superior and special, without superior accomplishments

Expects constant attention, admiration and positive reinforcement from others

Envies others and believes others envy him/her

Is preoccupied with thoughts and fantasies of great success, enormous attractiveness, power, intelligence

Lacks the ability to empathize with the feelings or desires of others

Is arrogant in attitudes and behavior

Has expectations of special treatment that are unrealistic

Other symptoms in addition to the ones defined by DSM-IV-TR include: Is interpersonally exploitative, i.e., takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends, has trouble keeping healthy relationships with others, easily hurt or rejected, appears unemotional, and exaggerating special achievements and talents, setting unrealistic goals for himself/herself.

Narcissists have such an elevated sense of self-worth that they value themselves as inherently better than others, when in reality they have a fragile self-esteem, cannot handle criticism, and often try to compensate for this inner fragility by belittling or disparaging others in an attempt to validate their own self-worth. Comments and criticisms about others are vicious from sufferers of NPD, in an attempt to boost their own poor self-esteem.

Another narcissist symptom is a lack of empathy. They are unable to relate, understand, and rationalize the feelings of others. Instead of behaving in a way that shows how they are feeling in the moment, they behave in the way that they feel they are expected to behave or what gives them the most attention.

There is simply no way to explain the endless whining of the greedheads in our culture any other way. They are suffering from a serious medical problem and need help.

Pants wetting redux

by digby

On terrorism in Russia:

Rep. Michael Grimm (R-Staten Island/Brooklyn) decried the attacks, saying that with the Olympics in the offing “we must not let the terrorists incite fear …”

Sounds good. The whole point of terrorism is to make your enemies panic.

Unfortunately it’s working. Grimm continued:

“We cannot sweep these threats under the rug, like we did with Benghazi or the warnings from Russia on the Tsarnaev brothers behind the Boston Marathon bombing. Each time we fail to recognize these threats, we not only risk the lives of innocent Americans, but appear weaker and vulnerable in the eyes of the enemy.”

The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming! Run fer yer lives!

Or else we’ll look weak and vulnerable …

Update: Grimm has at least one politician he can look up to for his leadership and uncompromising terrorism policy:

“I am certain that we will fiercely and consistently continue the fight against terrorists until their complete annihilation”, Putin said, according to Russian news agencies.

Cool heads prevailing all around.

Pathetic “fines” won’t cut it

by David Atkins

As anyone who is paying attention knows by now, the slap-on-wrist “fines” being levied against criminal corporations aren’t doing much to curtail illegal behavior:

Five years after all those bailouts for big banks, major financial institutions like JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America agreed to pay many billions of dollars in fines this year to settle claims involving a range of wrongdoing, from questionable mortgage practices to trading fiascos.

Others corporate titans have paid out, too. Johnson & Johnson agreed to pay $2.2 billion to settle claims that the company marketed a drug for unproved uses and paid kickbacks to doctors. Another big drug company, Glaxo SmithKline, agreed to pay $3 billion and pleaded guilty to criminal charges that it illegally marketed drugs.

The list goes on. But amid all the headlines — and there have been many in recent years — the question remains: Do big fines actually prompt corporations to mend their ways? Many ordinary people certainly want companies to be held accountable. But for corporations, fines sometimes seem like the cost of doing business. That is because the costs often pale next to the profits that companies stand to make by doing the things that get them into trouble in the first place

What’s more, the penalties often come years after the supposed infractions came to light.

“You’d really like to see the fine in an immediate way such that it is really very observable,” says David F. Larcker, a law professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, “but even if it’s years later — once you go in there and do the analysis — you might find out the same practices are still going.”

Unless the federal government actually threatens the executives of criminal corporations with jail time, nothing is going to change. Fear is the only thing that keeps a sociopath in line.

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The GOP admits Benghazi!™ is all about Clinton

by digby

I knew that Benghazi!™ was all about getting the Clinton scandal machine up and running and now the Republicans are openly admitting it:

Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-Ga.) on Monday joined the growing chorus of Republicans claiming that an in-depth New York Times report on Benghazi, Libya, was published to protect former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ahead of a possible presidential run.

And that’s because the New York Times has always been so very friendly to the Clintons …

…[A]t the expense of shocking you, dear reader, it all began with the New York Times–specifically with a series of much-praised articles by investigative reporter Jeff Gerth: groundbreaking, exhaustively researched, but not particularly fair or balanced stories that combine a prosecutorial bias and the art of tactical omission to insinuate all manner of sin and skulduggery. Accompanied by a series of indignant editorials, Gerth’s work helped create a full-scale media clamor last December for a special prosecutor. 

Testimony in recent Senate hearings showed that the Resolution Trust Corporation’s Whitewater investigation began in direct response to the Times coverage; the hearings themselves resulted in large part from the Clinton Administration’s panicky reaction to reporters’ queries about the RTC probe, Gerth’s among them. Absent the near-talismanic role of the New York Times in American journalism, the whole complex of allegations and suspicions subsumed under the word “Whitewater” might never have made it to the front page, much less come to dominate the national political dialogue for months at a time. It is all the more disturbing, then, that most of the insinuations in Gerth’s reporting are either highly implausible or demonstrably false.

Let us return briefly to those thrilling days of yesteryear–specifically the 1992 primary season. On March 8, 1992, Jeff Gerth’s initial story about Whitewater appeared on the Times front page under the headline CLINTONS JOINED S.& L. OPERATOR IN AN OZARK REAL-ESTATE VENTURE

Funny, I don’t recall the wingnuts railing against the liberal New York Times during the decade it was being led around by the nose by Arkansas operators and Republican operatives. (Or when it was speculating about the bedroom habits of the couple in 2007, for that matter.) I guess it’s rediscovered its partisan liberal heart.

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DC needs to butt out of California-31

by digby

One of my biggest gripes against the Democratic Party is its insistence on getting involved in primary races when it has no reason to do it other than some personal preference on the part of a DC dignitary. There is no better example of this than the race in California’s 31st congressional district.

The seat is currently held by a right wing Republican so you might think it makes sense for the Party to intervene if they think they have a chance to take it back but only with a candidate who “can win.”  But this is not the case. This is a Democratic seat (Obama beat Romney 57-41%) that is only in the hands of a Republican because of California’s inane jungle primary system and mismanagement by the DCCC. Let me have Howie explain what happened as only he can:

Gary Miller, a multimillionaire, crooked Confederate Civil War reenactor from Arkansas was always an odd pick for the new Inland Empire district carved 2 years ago out of the districts of retiring congressmen David Dreier and Jerry Lewis and defeated Blue Dog, Joe Baca. The only reason Miller won is because DCCC Chairman Steve Israel insisted on backing a pathetic empty suit, the appointed mayor of Redlands, Peter Aguilar. Aguilar was rejected by Democratic voters and lost to two Republicans. He even came in third in Redlands! 

Steve Israel almost looks like he wants to keep Miller in the seat; he forced the DCCC into the awkward position of endorsing the wealthy but socially conservative Aguilar again, despite the obvious progressive choice, Eloise Gomez Reyes.

CA-31 is the single bluest district in the country– by far– with a Republican incumbent…

This is a hard core Democratic district that fell into Republican hands because the Democrat who ran last time was so weak he lost to two Republicans.  And the DCCC is backing the same loser again! There is no practical reason to do this. One of the Democrats running will definitely make it into the General this time and he or she will win it. 

Look at this:

Democrats in Washington have no business deciding in advance who that Democrat opponent should be.

Reyes is more authentically progressive than Aguilar, although he’s wearing the label like he’s Barbara Lee’s long lost son (which says that the party knows the district wants that.) His record shows that he’s pretty much … nothing. He seems to simply be driven by ambition for higher office without any sense of what he cares about or wants to accomplish. But DC wants him badly and one can only assume its because they know he’s more amenable to the direction of the power brokers. There is literally no other rationale for their interference or the help they’re giving him in raising money.

Eloise Gomez Reyes can take out Gary Miller just as easily as Pete Aguilar and if she wins she will be a much more independent progressive than he will ever be. I imagine that’s the problem. And progressives should be pissed off about that. There are lots of races that need the DCCC’s help right now. This isn’t one of them. They should butt out.

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The subtext of pajama boy

by David Atkins

Jay Michaelson has an interesting and incisive take on the right-wing freakout over “pajama boy.” Before we get into Michaelson, let’s take a look at some of the conservative propaganda out there:

From Pajamas Media:

From the Cornyn v. Stockman primary:

Flyover culture:

Get it? Now, to Michaelson:

The Right went apoplectic, calling Pajama Boy “a metrosexual in a plaid onesie,” “an insufferable man-child,” and various other vaguely sexist and homophobic epithets. Apparently, real men don’t wear pajamas.

Or glasses. What’s interesting about the Right’s freakout about men who don’t measure up to the standards of the 1950s is how Pajama Boy’s obvious Jewishness has been subsumed by these other characteristics.

Yes, Virginia, Pajama Boy is a member of the tribe. Look at him. Pale Ashkenazic skin, Jew-fro’d black curls, Woody Allen specs. Even the smart-ass expression on his face screams of the Wise Son from the Passover Seder.

Parenthetically, the model himself is one Ethan Krupp, an Organizing for America staffer who is, in fact, Jewish. But whether Krupp himself is circumcised or not, Pajama Boy is semiotically Jewish, even stereotypically so.

In fact, Pajama Boy stands at a centuries-old nexus of anti-Semitism and misogyny. As scholars including Sander Gilman and Daniel Boyarin have shown, Jewish men have been accused of being unmanly for hundreds of years – including by other Jews, such as the early Zionists, whose muscular Judaism was a direct response to diaspora Jewish emasculation. This is an old, old motif.

The Jew is the Other is the Effeminate is the Liberal. He is the urbanite, the parasite, the usurer, the lawyer. His effeminacy corrupts the Volk or the Heartland or the real American values. He wouldn’t know how to drive a pick-up truck if it was on cruise control. And he definitely votes for Obama.

Really, what’s “metrosexual” about Pajama Boy, anyway? The fact that he’s wearing pajamas? Drinking a hot beverage? No – it’s the way in which he so perfectly fits the Right’s image of the liberal Jewish girly-man. There’s a real “masculinity,” and then there’s whatever it is that Pajama Boy is embodying. (For the record, I have no idea whether Krupp is gay or straight. Neither do his haters.)

Needless to say, in this brave new world of Eric Cantor and the Republican Jewish Coalition (whose executive director makes over half a mil – must be a real man), the Jewishness of Pajama Boy is conspicuously absent from the vitriol. But as soon as you see it, you can’t un-see it. Which makes you wonder what the Review’s Charles Cooke – in another line conspicuously omitted by the discussions of this issue – meant when he said “the advertising machine behind the Obama administration seems not to really know what normal human beings are like.”

Normal human beings are gentiles. They spit or smoke tobacco, they speak plainly, and they are manly men who don’t wear pajamas, don’t raise their eyebrows, don’t support affordable healthcare, and definitely don’t flay their arms around like Woody Allen. Or Shylock. Real men. Not Jews.

Whether or not the Pajama-Boy bashers are unconsciously anti-Semitic or not, I don’t know. Consciously, they are against everything “Judaism” stands for, at least as construed by its enemies: outsiderness, cosmopolitanism, liberalism, a progressive rather than nativist agenda, an opposition to the notion that there is one kind of “normal” person, a sympathy for the underdog and the immigrant as opposed to the successful and the privileged, and, yes, a rejection of a certain gendered, masculinist understanding of justice wherein the strong survive and the weak are trampled underfoot like the untermenschen they are.

That fascistic outlook has long been a part of far-right conservatism – whether in revisionist Zionism, contemporary French/Hungarian/Greek nationalism, American Republicanism, or German fascism. Real men are strong, and the weak don’t deserve our pity. Let them get sick for lack of healthcare; they probably deserve it. And as for women, and the parasitic “Jewish” men who resemble them? They are to be suppressed and domesticated, not empowered. Patriarchy is good. Sexism is natural. Get out of your onesies, America. And put on your jackboots.

Conservative activist Ali Akbar groused on twitter yesterday that people really don’t like conservatives, and are “taught to hate them.” Given the politics and tactics of the American Right that statement is a little rich. But insofar as it has a kernel of truth, it’s this: starting in the late 1940s the world realized that setting up a culture war between Christian nativist conservative gun-loving Anglo-Saxon child-bride-marrying testosterone factories on one side, and minorities, independent women, and cosmopolitan, liberal secular “outsiders” on the other might not be such a good idea. We’ve seen that movie before, and our reaction was to say “never again.”

But with conservatives, the old saying is apt: Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.

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It ain’t over folks

by digby

The far right is multiplying:

If Ted Cruz seems like a one-of-a-kind, give it time. A slew of young, hard-charging, Tea Party-endorsed Senate wannabes is looking to knock off the Republican establishment again in 2014. Some have better chances than others, but all have the unmistakable Cruzian commitment to refusing to toe the Republican Party line and make headlines while doing it. If you haven’t heard of them yet, you will.

Read on. They don’t sound like real threats but you just never know. This is an off year election in the second term of the president which usually results in losses for his party. And the right wingers are always more energized in these elections. A couple of them could sneak in.

I’m afraid that what some liberals persist in thinking of as a necessary exercise in “heightening the contradictions” is actually just  normalizing crazy. At this point all it will take for any of these loons to be accepted as “mainstream” by the political establishment will be if they don’t grow horns or literally spit blood on the Senate floor. Look at Paul Ryan.

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