Month: April 2014

When Christie met Joy

by digby

I think somebody forgot to inform Chris Christie that the whole point of a “roast” is to sit there and laugh at the insults everyone is hurling at you. That’s how you show you’re a good sport. But Christie isn’t a good sport and apparently he just can’t hide it:

The Newark roast wasn’t going well, either. The speakers aimed much of their fire at Christie. “You knew whose ass to kiss,” Stone said, referring to Christie’s trip to Vegas. “ ‘Whatever you say, Sheldon! Whatever you say!’ ” Vince August, a New Jersey judge turned comedian, noted, “It really is an honor to be standing next to what could be the next President of the—.” He shuffled some papers on the lectern. “I’m sorry, these are the wrong notes. I’m doing a roast next week with Jeb Bush.” Even Byrne got in a dig, about Christie’s waistline. “Somebody referred to that bronze statue of me that’s in the courthouse,” he said. “Actually, that was supposed to be Governor Christie, but they didn’t have enough money to pay for all that bronze.”

Joy Behar, the former co-host of “The View,” was even more pointed. “When I first heard that he was accused of blocking off three lanes on the bridge, I said, ‘What the hell is he doing, standing in the middle of the bridge?” After another barb, Christie interrupted her. “This is a Byrne roast,” he said. He stood up and tried to grab her notes. The audience laughed awkwardly. “Stop bullying me,” Behar said as he sat down. Christie said something out of earshot and Behar responded, “Why don’t you get up here at the microphone instead of being such a coward?” Christie stood up again and moved in front of the lectern as Behar retreated.  “At least I don’t get paid for this,” he said.

Christie sat down and Behar continued, though she was noticeably rattled. “I really don’t know about the Presidency,” she said. “Let me put it to you this way, in a way that you’d appreciate: You’re toast.”

He has a long history of ugly aggression against everyone but he seems to especially like playing to bros and intimidating women. This is just the latest example of it.

That anecdote is part of a much longer piece about Christie by Ryan Lizza in the New Yorker that’s well worth reading.

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QOTD: An honest Republican

by digby

Sahil Kapur caught this one telling a hard truth:

“If you want to say the further and further this gets down the road, the harder and harder it gets to repeal, that’s absolutely true,” the aide said. “As far as repeal and replace goes, the problem with replace is that if you really want people to have these new benefits, it looks a hell of a lot like the Affordable Care Act. … To make something like that work, you have to move in the direction of the ACA. You have to have a participating mechanism, you have to have a mechanism to fund it, you have to have a mechanism to fix parts of the market.”

At some point these guys are going to start taking some of the credit for this thing. After all, it’s a program that tracks closely with certain policies pushed by conservative health care wonks in the not too distant past and it was passed though an arduous negotiation between representatives of the health care industry and conservative members of congress. The conservative Supreme Court then came along and made it possible to partially gut the one major expansion of the government’s commitment to serve the poor — the main element of the reforms that progressives could not walk away from.

And, as with most heavy government lifts, the conservatives let the Democratic Party to do all their dirty work after which they came along and reaped the electoral rewards from the public’s nervousness about big change. They do the same thing with “deficit reduction.” After all, the last time the GOP tried to actually do something about a deficit was in 1990 — and the president who pushed it was vilified by his own party for his trouble. And the Democratic government which followed through three years later suffered a massive defeat in the mid-terms — a story which was to repeat itself in 2010 over the necessary health care battle. (It must be remembered that health care in the late 2000s was scheduled to be eating more and more of the nation’s GDP and something had to be done. Republicans couldn’t do it — they are forced to pretend that “the market” will fix everything.) The way it works is that Democrats do the hard stuff (whether it’s liberal or conservative) the Republicans immediately run against them, blaming them for doing it.

The saddest group of all is the left wing of the Democratic Party which ends up supporting the conservative/centrist agenda knowing that incremental change is better than none at all — and then having to be tarred as useless hippies by the centrists and conservatives in their own party and commies and worse by the Republicans. Talk about a thankless job.

All you have to do is look at this hideous chart to see just what a scam it is:

The “compromise” they ended up with in 2014 was $1,012. And Paul Ryan quietly celebrated with a nice cold bottle of Veuve Clicquot.

Obviously, when it comes to health care, it looks as though the fight will end up being worth it for the improvement it brings to the private insurance market (and those working poor people the states allow to sign up for the Medicaid expansion — the one true progressive piece of the legislation.) It’s hard to argue that we’d  be better off if it hadn’t happened. But there is little doubt that this is essentially a conservative/centrist solution to a problem that full-blown progressive policies would solve more efficiently and more comprehensively. But with one party being conservative and the other party being half centrist/conservative — and both parties answering to the Big Money Boyz — this is the extent of the playing field.

And in this case, unlike the obsession with austerity, it actually adds up to a real, if incremental, improvement for some people. Now it’s up to the progressives to keep pushing for more.

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The good old days of high inflation

by digby

I think there is more than a little bit of truth to what Joe Weisenthal says here about why so many older people are obsessed with non-existent inflation:

The real reason is that worrying about inflation makes people like Chuck Grassley feel young again.

Grassley is 75 years old. The last time inflation was a real problem in the late ’70s/early ’80s, Grassley was in his early-to-mid 40s, a point in his life when he presumably had a lot more testosterone production, and was in much better shape.

BTW: This doesn’t just go for Grassley; there’s a huge crop of supply-siders who came of age under Reagan, who still go on TV all the time whining about inflation, all of whom were at their career/virility peaks during the Reagan/inflation years.

So for them, worrying about inflation is like buying a Lamborghini or marrying a young wife. It makes them feel good and young again.

I think a lot of people form a solid, unmoving “theory of everything” at some point in their lives and just never question it again. This isn’t exactly the same thing as fighting the last war (which is an even more pervasive phenomenon) but it’s similar.

However, there are other more important and obvious reasons why so many of these people continue to fight inflation even when it’s clearly not an issue. The main reason is that it benefits the .01% as Krugman suggests — and our worship of the .01% in this culture makes a whole lot of not so bright people assume that what they say is good for the country is actually good for the country. After all, if they weren’t people of the highest moral character and intelligence, God wouldn’t have allowed them to be so rich, right?

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How dare anyone object to plutocracy?

by David Atkins

Like most honest observers, Democrats in Washington have been strongly critical of the Supreme Court’s further gutting of campaign finance laws in the McCutcheon case.

This is how The Hill sees fit to characterize that stance.

I suppose that’s the sort of reaction you get in “the town” for even making a peep against the plutocratic dominance of the Roberts Court.

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Rand and Ted’s excellent Tea Party adventure

by digby

In case you missed it, I wrote a piece for Salon today about the Paul vs Cruz battle for the soul of the Tea Party:

There’s been a lot of chatter recently about certain GOP presidential hopefuls’ religious pilgrimage to Sheldon Adelson’s Venetian palace in Las Vegas to beg for dispensation from the Republican Jewish Coalition and ask for financial support from billionaire Adelson — who promises to spend millions on the person who professes his willingness to outlaw online gambling, unequivocally support Israel and bust unions whenever possible. But another GOP religious mission last week got less notice, though it may be more significant in determining who wins the GOP primary: Senator Ted Cruz traveled to Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University and gave what everyone considered to be a fiery sermon about the gathering threat to religious liberty in America.

That address was received much more rapturously than the last time a 2016 presidential hopeful appeared at Liberty U — when Rand Paul made his infamous Wikipedia-lifted “Gattaca” speech – and points up one of the two major battle lines between the two main contenders for the Tea Party primary. In this first skirmish, it is obvious that it’s Cruz who has his finger on the pulse of the Christian Right.

But what’s that got to do with the Tea Party, you might ask? The movement is supposedly kaput, having retreated with its proverbial tail between its legs after Ted Cruz embarrassingly read “Green Eggs and Ham” on the Senate floor. And anyway, Liberty U is the Christian Right, not the Tea Party.

But that fundamentally misunderstands what the Tea Party actually is.

Click over to read the whole thing. It’s got stuff about three legged stools and pogo sticks and hawks and doves and all kinds of numbers about Tea Partiers and Republicans. The upshot is that Cruz is right in the sweet spot. I’m not sure what Paul’s doing but whatever it is it will not result in the GOP being more sane — or him getting the nomination for president. Republicans don’t like him any more than we do.

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QOTD: an innocent man who spent time on death row

by digby

From an op-ed in the New York Times:

The death penalty will never work. It will always be possible to execute an innocent person. I know. I spent almost nine years in prison, and two years on death row, for a crime I didn’t commit.

I was a Marine veteran with no criminal history. But I was arrested for the rape and murder of a child, then convicted and sentenced to death based on the mistaken identification of five eyewitnesses.

If it can happen to me, it could happen to you.

You’d think more people would get this but they don’t. In fact, they figure if you are caught in the maw of the legal system odds are you deserve whatever you get. if you didn’t do the crime you’re accused of you probably did something else. The system doesn’t make those kinds of mistakes.

And as for this guy, well he was finally exonerated, wasn’t he? No harm no foul. Surely all people who are innocent have and will get a similar happy ending. Because God. Or something.

This fellow’s full story here. He was exonerated by DNA evidence. Evidence which is not present at every crime scene. Evidence which not every jurisdiction will allow to be retested.

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White House makes the right call: don’t give them the ammo

by David Atkins

The White House has finally figured out what many of us already knew: deficit reduction and reducing the overall cost of Obamacare isn’t worth the perception that Democrats are “cutting Medicare”–even if it is only cuts to the bloated, privatized and unfair “Medicare Advantage” program:

The Obama administration announced Monday that planned cuts to Medicare Advantage would not go through as anticipated amid election-year opposition from congressional Democrats.

The cuts would have reduced benefits that seniors receive from health plans in the program, which is intended as an alternative to Medicare.

Under cuts planned by the administration, insurers offering the plans were to see their federal payments reduced by 1.9 percent, which likely would have necessitated cuts for customers.
Instead, the administration said the federal payments to insurers will increase next year by .40 percent.

The healthcare law included $200 billion in cuts to Medicare Advantage over 10 years, in part to pay for ObamaCare.

The Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) on Monday said changes in the healthcare market meant it did not need to make those cuts to Medicare Advantage this year.

It cited an increase in healthy beneficiaries under Medicare, which it said has lowered projected costs for that program.

“Medicare Advantage” is a specially subsidized, private version of Medicare that is essentially a backdoor first step to privatizing Medicare entirely. It’s good that the Obama Administration wants to make cuts to it, in part to even the playing field with traditional Medicare. But those cuts should be made in order to shift the money to traditional Medicare, not to the ACA or deficit reduction. That charge that Democrats are cutting Medicare in order to give healthcare to “those people” is much more politically damaging than the charge that the ACA is too expense. Better to eliminate the Medicare Advantage cuts entirely during a tough midterm, then eliminate the subsidy to Medicare Advantage and shift the benefits to traditional Medicare instead.

The GOP would go ballistic, of course, but who cares? The point is to ensure that they cannot so easily lie about Democrats wanting to “cut Medicare.”

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Tweet ‘o the day

by digby

Yeah, baby! We’re still beating those lousy Chi-Coms all to hell:

US got 50 more billionaires on the Forbes list & total bill. wealth increase of $450b. China got 38 more billionaires & wealth up by $135b.
— Branko Milanovic (@BrankoMilan) April 7, 2014

Our billionaires are so much better than their billionaires. Makes me proud to be an American.

On the other hand, they are still beating us in environmental degradation, government authoritarianism and worker exploitation so we still have something to shoot for. But I’ll put my pennies on our guys on that too. They’re very good at what they do. And they are certainly doing everything they can to be number one in every way.

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Republican officeholder shoots friend in the face incident of the week

by digby

And just think, he’s a “safety guy”:

A pro-gun Oklahoma lawmaker (R) says he’s “mad at myself” for accidentally shooting another hunter last month, according to the The Oklahoman.

“I just felt horrible about it. I just was sick,” said Rep. Steve Vaughan, who wounded the man in the head with a 12-gauge shotgun as he was aiming at a pheasant.

“I’m a safety guy,” he said. “Gosh, I’m as safety as I can be. I was so mad at myself for even thinking about shooting the bird in this direction where I knew he was down in there.”

The lawmaker took full responsibility for the incident and said he didn’t realize the other hunter, Drew Ihrig was injured until he appeared nearly a half hour later holding up a rag to his face.

“I said, ‘You know, everybody’s shooting, (and) I don’t know that it was me, per se, but I would say it probably would have been because the bird did go that direction and I did shoot that direction,’” Vaughn said.

This is the same guy who wrote a bill to expand the right of business owners and employees to use deadly force when they feel scared. I’m sure they’ll all be “as safety as they can be.”

There is a lesson here: don’t go bird hunting with Republican lawmakers. They are reckless fools with a gun in their hands.

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A celebration of themselves

by digby

Margaret Sullivan wrote a good piece last week on the problems of reporters getting too close to their sources. I have spent years talking about the “Village” culture of Washington, but as she points out the same can be said of the New York finance world, Hollywood and Silicon Valley. It’s more than just a problem with doing real journalism, although that certainly a real problem. It’s also the feedback loop between journalists and other elites wherein they all think they represent Average Joe Americans and see their interests as aligning with the middle class. Which they clearly do not.

But there is no greater example of inter-elite schmoozing than the embarrassing White House Correspondents dinner. Sullivan describes the problem exactly:

Several years ago, The Times decided to stop attending the annual White House correspondents’ dinner — a star-studded Washington schmooze fest. At the time, the Washington bureau chief, Dean Baquet, explained: “It had evolved into a very odd, celebrity-driven event that made it look like the press and government all shuck their adversarial roles for one night of the year, sing together (literally, by the way) and have a grand old time cracking jokes. It just feels like it sends the wrong signal to our readers and viewers, like we are all in it together and it is all a game.”

Although some have mocked The Times for trying to seem holier than thou, it was a good call. The current Washington bureau chief, Carolyn Ryan, told me she has no plans to reverse the decision.

Mark Leibovich, the Times political reporter who wrote “This Town,” a book about the inbred culture of Washington, thinks The Times was right to stop participating. After all, it’s not just one dinner but pre-parties and post-parties for days on end.

Meanwhile, “the media has never been in lower esteem,” he said. “We’re celebrating what, exactly?”

Well, they’re celebrating themselves, silly. They’re celebrities too, just like Beyonce or Tom and Gisele — or Barack and Michelle. And it’s fairly obvious that this is all a game to (most of) them and they’re all in it together.

As Sally Quinn famously put it:

This particular community happens to be in the nation’s capital. And the people in it are the so-called Beltway Insiders — the high-level members of Congress, policymakers, lawyers, military brass, diplomats and journalists who have a proprietary interest in Washington and identify with it.

They call the capital city their “town.”

And they forget that it’s our country.

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