Month: December 2013

Information Dominance Fail


by digby

For some reason I find this to be hilarious:

American intelligence and law enforcement investigators have concluded that they may never know the entirety of what the former National Security Agency contractor Edward J. Snowden extracted from classified government computers before leaving the United States, according to senior government officials.

Investigators remain in the dark about the extent of the data breach partly because the N.S.A. facility in Hawaii where Mr. Snowden worked — unlike other N.S.A. facilities — was not equipped with up-to-date software that allows the spy agency to monitor which corners of its vast computer landscape its employees are navigating at any given time.

Six months since the investigation began, officials said Mr. Snowden had further covered his tracks by logging into classified systems using the passwords of other security agency employees, as well as by hacking firewalls installed to limit access to certain parts of the system.

“They’ve spent hundreds and hundreds of man-hours trying to reconstruct everything he has gotten, and they still don’t know all of what he took,” a senior administration official said. “I know that seems crazy, but everything with this is crazy.”

Ya think?

“When he was running the Army’s Intelligence and Security Command, [NSA Chief General Keith] Alexander brought many of his future allies down to Fort Belvoir for a tour of his base of operations, a facility known as the Information Dominance Center. It had been designed by a Hollywood set designer to mimic the bridge of the starship Enterprise from Star Trek, complete with chrome panels, computer stations, a huge TV monitor on the forward wall, and doors that made a ‘whoosh’ sound when they slid open and closed. Lawmakers and other important officials took turns sitting in a leather ‘captain’s chair’ in the center of the room and watched as Alexander, a lover of science-fiction movies, showed off his data tools on the big screen.

‘Everybody wanted to sit in the chair at least once to pretend he was Jean-Luc Picard,’ says a retired officer in charge of VIP visits.”

Village hostesses rejoice


by digby

So all day long the cable gasbags have been blabbering about John Boehner telling the wingnuts to pound sand with much “analysis” that says the stalwart Real Men of the GOP have just had enough of this childish behavior and are determined to be the grown-ups in the room the Villagers know them to be. Here’s an example in print:

Ryan’s been talked about as a potential presidential contender, or perhaps a future House speaker. And there’s no doubt that his stock among conservatives on both fronts will drop to some extent as a result of the deal he just made with Murray.

But he seems okay with that — much in the way New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) has been okay this year doubling down on his own argument in favor of getting things done even if it means working with the opposing party. Neither Christie nor Ryan, to hear them tell it, have surrendered their core principles in the process.

It’s not clear what the future holds for Ryan. But what is clear is that he’s adopted an approach to governance rooted in results. And that places him closer to Christie on the spectrum of the potential 2016 GOP presidential sweepstakes than to Cruz or Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.).

What a relief. Finally Cokie and Wolfie and the gang can hang around with their favorite Republicans without feeling uncomfortable. That’s really all that matters.

Except it’s all nonsense. The Tea Party is alive and well and will continue to be alive and well. This piece in the current issue of Democracy by Theda Skopcal explains:

At the grassroots, volunteer activists formed hundreds of local Tea Parties, meeting regularly to plot public protests against the Obama Administration and place steady pressure on GOP organizations and candidates at all levels. At least half of all GOP voters sympathize with this Tea Party upsurge. They are overwhelmingly older, white, conservative-minded men and women who fear that “their country” is about to be lost to mass immigration and new extensions of taxpayer-funded social programs (like the Affordable Care Act) for low- and moderate-income working-aged people, many of whom are black or brown. Fiscal conservatism is often said to be the top grassroots Tea Party priority, but Williamson and I did not find this to be true. Crackdowns on immigrants, fierce opposition to Democrats, and cuts in spending for the young were the overriding priorities we heard from volunteer Tea Partiers, who are often, themselves, collecting costly Social Security, Medicare, and veterans benefits to which they feel fully entitled as Americans who have “paid their dues” in lifetimes of hard work.

On the other end of the organizational spectrum, big-money funders and free-market advocacy organizations used angry grassroots protests to expand their email lists and boost longstanding campaigns to slash taxes, shrink social spending, privatize Medicare and Social Security, and eliminate or block regulations (including carbon controls). In 2009, groups such as FreedomWorks, Americans for Prosperity, the Club for Growth, and Tea Party Express (a renamed conservative GOP political action committee) leapt on the bandwagon; more recently, the Senate Conservative Action Fund and Heritage Action have greatly bolstered the leveraging capacities of the Tea Party as a whole. Elite activities ramped up after many Tea Party legislators were elected in 2010.

Here is the key point: Even though there is no one center of Tea Party authority—indeed, in some ways because there is no one organized center—the entire gaggle of grassroots and elite organizations amounts to a pincers operation that wields money and primary votes to exert powerful pressure on Republican officeholders and candidates. Tea Party influence does not depend on general popularity at all. Even as most Americans have figured out that they do not like the Tea Party or its methods, Tea Party clout has grown in Washington and state capitals. Most legislators and candidates are Nervous Nellies, so all Tea Party activists, sympathizers, and funders have had to do is recurrently demonstrate their ability to knock off seemingly unchallengeable Republicans (ranging from Charlie Crist in Florida to Bob Bennett of Utah to Indiana’s Richard Lugar). That grabs legislators’ attention and results in either enthusiastic support for, or acquiescence to, obstructive tactics. The entire pincers operation is further enabled by various right-wing tracking organizations that keep close count of where each legislator stands on “key votes”—including even votes on amendments and the tiniest details of parliamentary procedure, the kind of votes that legislative leaders used to orchestrate in the dark.

I see no evidence that this has changed. This one budget is just a tactical retreat in the wake of the government shutdown battle. The troops are tired, they need to rest up for the long march to the 2014 election. Unfortunately, the Villagers have rediscovered their love affair with Boehner and Ryan and we’re back to square one with the Village narrative. Not that it matters all that much. But it does push the Democrats and they start talking about meeting the “moderates” halfway. And look where that’s gotten us.

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Are we seeing the beginning of a divide and conquer strategy on wealth inequality?

by digby

I wonder if anyone else has been struck by the oddity of the president and other elite luminaries responding to Elizabeth Warren’s populist message for the middle class with rhetoric and policies to help the poor? If one were the least bit cynical, one might think it was a strategy to divide the left along the usual lines — by offering the only solution as being limited to taking from average workers to help the truly desperate. Leaving the very wealthy alone. Of course.

This is illustrated by the recent budget deal in which federal workers and veterans were forced to “sacrifice” even more than they already have, ostensibly in order to restore a small number of the discretionary cuts that are ravaging programs for the poor, especially children. (It should be noted that the veterans cuts are likely to be restored in some fashion in the Senate — that constituency is just too valuable to the Republicans.)

I suppose I am being too cynical. Helping the poor is a bedrock progressive value and lord knows, we should be doing more of it. But Warren’s critique is much more radical than that — she’s trying to rally the 99%, the vast middle class along with the poor, into seeing that they need to focus their attention — together, in solidarity — upwards. And that is very dangerous to the status quo.

If anyone doubts that the American middle class is in trouble this Bill Moyers Frontline that followed two families over the course of 20 years should bring them up short and make them recognize that the pressures that are being brought to bear on the middle class are no longer theoretical. They are clearly losing ground and it isn’t getting any better. We shouldn’t let the financial elites divide us from the central issue of wealth inequality — that it’s the rich who are hoovering up more and more while everybody else is paying the price:

This is a crisis. And it’s going to take more than creating some tax credits for early childhood education and extending the food stamp program. It’s going to take some radical solutions, solutions we are a long way from seeing in our mainstream political discourse.

This Frontline is a must see. Take the time to watch it if you can.

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Rick Santorum was a US Senator

by digby

Soul-Crushing Reminder: Rick Santorum would be a below-average WND columnist, yet he beat Harris Wofford. pic.twitter.com/hVUTlOkfJs— Jamison Foser (@jamisonfoser) December 13, 2013

Anyone who doesn’t know who Harris Woffard is should google him. Let’s just say that he’s a teensy bit smarter than this goofball.

Bipartisan Hypocrisy

by digby

Ezra Klein wonders how Republicans can be such hypocrites about health care when Obamacare turns out to be exactly what they wanted all along:

Republicans have zeroed in on two things that people really will hate about insurance under Obamacare: The high deductibles and the limited networks.

“As consumers dig into the details,” Robert Pear reports in the linked article, “they are finding that the deductibles and other out-of-pocket costs are often much higher than what is typical in employer-sponsored health plans.”

What’s confusing about this line of attack is that high-deductible health-care plans — more commonly known as “health savings accounts” — were, before Obamacare, a core tenet of Republican health-care policy thinking. In fact, one of the major criticisms of Obamacare was that it would somehow kill those plans off. “Obamacare may be fatal for your HSA,” warned the Heritage Foundation on 2010. “Health Savings Accounts Under Attack” blared Red State.’

When Republicans were forced to come up with alternatives for Obamacare, high-deductible plans were core to those proposals. “Conservatives have suggested deregulating Obamacare’s exchanges to make it easier to provide policies with high deductibles,” wrote Ramesh Ponnuru. One of those conservatives was right-wing darling Dr. Ben Carson. “In order to right the ship, we need to return the responsibility for good health care to the patient and the health care provider,” he said. “One of the best ways to do this is through health savings accounts, which patients can control.”
This always baffled Obamacare’s supporters. “The minimal, or bronze, insurance option allows out-of-pocket spending of up to $12,500 for a family of four,” wrote Jonathan Cohn. “Those are some pretty high deductibles!”

Now that those high deductibles are here, Republicans have decided that they are, if anything, too high. Just one more broken promise.

Obama’s pledge that “if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor” is also under fire. The issue here is that insurers entering the competitive health marketplaces are tightening their networks in order to cut costs and improve quality. It’s worked: Premiums in the marketplaces are far lower than was expected when Obamacare passed.

This, too, is a success for a longtime conservative health-policy idea. Insurance exchanges have been in every major Republican health-care bill since the early 1990s. They were in Paul Ryan’s 2009 health-care proposal. They’re the basis of the GOP’s plan for Medicare reform.

Yes, Republicans are hypocrites. And if you give them an inch they’ll take a mile. News at 11.

But what about the Democrats? Are they not hypocrites as well? Here’s an example of how they used to characterize the high deductible (HSA) concept:

Health savings accounts by definition favor the wealthy and/or the healthy. For those that never go to the doctor, or who can afford the high out-of-pocket costs incurred when using health savings accounts (you need to pay $1,050 as an individual or $2,100 for a family before your insurance will cover the rest), health savings accounts are great. Wealthy and/or healthy individuals can put a bit of money away, tax free, into their health savings account and then draw from it to pay their astronomical out-of-pocket costs when they decide to go see a doctor. If you’re healthy, the doctor’s visit doesn’t happen very often. If you’re wealthy, who cares if it happens very often, you can afford it.

And as for the smaller network issue, I think we all know that Obamacare proponents, starting with the president, didn’t exactly sell it as a cost savings device based on narrowing your choice of doctors. In fact, Democrats condemned Republicans for trying to deny Americans access to whatever doctors they wanted to see — or making them shop around for cheaper health care in general.

Now, I’m not saying that Republican caterwauling isn’t far worse. It is. The Democrats adopted the Heritage Foundation plan and they’re still screaming. This is how they move the country right. It’s very effective. But Democrats appropriating Republican ideas and defending them is also a form of hypocrisy, particularly when they then scold their own voters for being upset with aspects of the end result.

What’s done is done and perhaps this was always the best we could do in this profit fetishizing culture of ours. But with the GOP shrieking about Obamacare being akin to a communist takeover, I can’t help but wonder where the Democrats will draw the line. Will they continue to appease them as they have so far? After all, we just came through a very close call with Social Security cuts and raising the Medicare age, both of which were, for the first time proposed by a Democratic administration in budget negotiations. That Rubicon has been crossed. Why won’t Obamacare be subject to the same dynamic as the New Deal programs which have been fully woven into the fabric of American life?

The lesson for progressives is that you have to accept that the Republicans will never, ever raise a white flag and admit that you have won. They just keep shamelessly pushing the envelope. But the Democrats, on the other hand, are always looking for a deal. Any deal. And that’s how we have become the inequality capital of the first world. Let’s not pretend that this happened only because of Republican hypocrisy.

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Poor Megyn

by digby

The woman who flogged the bogus black panther story for months is now whining that people are “race-baiting” her because she said Santa and Jesus were white.

KELLY: This would be funny if it were not so telling about our society, in particular the knee-jerk instinct by so many to race-bait and to assume the worst in people, especially people employed by the very powerful Fox News Channel.

I don’t think anything more really needs to be said. I just wanted to document the stupid. It’s a dirty job but somebody’s got to do it.

I don’t think she’s yet wrapped her mind around the fact that Santa Claus is a fictional character. Wait until she finds out that reindeer can’t fly.

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A sweet moment between a boy and his mom

by digby

She said exactly the right thing: “it’s ok, it’s ok, it’s ok:”

Here’s hoping that someday this won’t be a traumatic event filled with fear and pain but rather a simple declaration over dinner that elicits nothing more than a “have you met someone?” We’re getting there.

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Popular populism

by digby

As most readers know, I’m a big believer in the power of rhetoric to help change the course of the national agenda over time. It’s important that leaders speak in terms that can help people understand their world in ways that at least open the door to new policies.  Conventional wisdom is built slowly, it rarely just spring up spontaneously. So this is good:

President Barack Obama wants to sound like a different kind of Democrat.

He’s connecting to progressive populism with an aggressive, spending-oriented, activist government approach to the economy personified by Elizabeth Warren and Bill de Blasio. Obama’s already backed raising the minimum wage, the start of what White House officials say will be a 2014 domestic agenda — including his State of the Union address and budget — that centers around income inequality and what the government is doing to increase economic mobility.

That means changing how he talks about some familiar items, including the Affordable Care Act and the universal pre-kindergarten plan from his 2013 State of the Union, as well as pitching an array of new proposals flowing from this new emphasis.

Obama needs his base invested to help him recover from his low poll numbers and give his party a platform as Democrats try to make the House competitive and hold onto to their majority in the Senate. And those in the coalition that won Obama two elections — young people, African-Americans, Latinos, single women and immigrants — are precisely the ones hit hardest by the doldrum economy.

The Dow keeps breaking records while unemployment’s still at 7 percent. Bankers are getting bigger bonuses while a Bloomberg News poll Wednesday showed 64 percent of people saying America no longer offers an equal shot. Angry voters have elected the tea party, and they’ve elected de Blasio mayor of New York, put Warren in her Senate seat and Ted Cruz in his. People who’ve watched Obama and recent election results closely say there is a danger of the country — and the Democratic Party — getting past him.

The president has been paying attention to the kind of response generated by Warren and de Blasio, the latter one of several new mayors meeting with Obama at the White House on Friday.

“He senses the same thing they do,” said a White House official.

I’m happy to see this. If he’s setting the table for a robust debate on these issues it’s all to the good as far as I’m concerned.

But we’re not total idiots — it’s also important to at least attempt to put your money where your mouth is. Here’s dday:

The Obama Administration is close to nominating Sharon Bowen, a Wall Street securities lawyer, to become one of five commissioners on the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), according to multiple sources who have learned of the nomination. Bowen would replace outgoing commissioner Bart Chilton, an outspoken voice for tougher regulation; he was instrumental in beating back bank lobbyists and writing unexpectedly robust rules for derivatives and restricting proprietary trading. But advocates for tighter rules on Wall Street, who are working on the nomination and requested anonymity, expressed concern to The New Republic that Bowen, a partner in the New York office of Latham & Watkins, which has represented several big financial institutions, has little background in derivatives, commodities or agricultural markets—the core subjects of CFTC regulation—and no track record for reform.

Her nomination, combined with the replacement of Chairman Gary Gensler by another securities lawyer without significant derivatives expertise, Timothy Massad, would put two “blank slates,” as one source put it, in charge of a commission that has acquired massive new responsibilities under the Dodd-Frank financial reform law for policing derivatives trading.

Come onnnn. Does even the most obvious and simple stuff require progressives to go to the mattresses?

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Dreaming of a white, white Christmas

by David Atkins

Stewart humiliating Megyn Kelly. Again. Enjoy:

They just keep digging themselves a deeper hole.

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