Month: April 2014

Looks like the rich GOP donors think they’re the new Karl Roves

by digby

Over at Salon this morning I talk about the fact that many of the rich guys who are funding the Republican Party seem to be really dumb about politics. But that’s not stopping them from taking the reins from the GOP political strategists. After all, they’ve been told they are Gods among men.  By Republicans. They are so smart and so good and so superior (if they weren’t how could they possibly have so much money?) politics should be a snap:

If there’s one thing I thought all Republicans understood, even the rich ones, was that the vaunted “base” was king. After all, it was their expensive propaganda that created it. Those who financed the conservative movement very carefully nurtured the so-called Silent Majority of white people who didn’t hold with all that pointy-headed multiculturalism or welfare queens and feminazis — the hardscrabble Real Americans of the heartland who loved flag and country. If the big GOP donors have been watching “Mad Men” reruns and think they’re financing a movement of Wall Street traders and Junior League housewives, they’re on the wrong channel. They need to turn on “Duck Dynasty” and get themselves some guns.

Read on …

Republicans lie down with racist welfare rancher Bundy, wake up with racist fleas

by David Atkins

Welfare rancher and newly minted Republican hero Cliven Bundy made his case on race relations:

“I want to tell you one more thing I know about the Negro,” he said. Mr. Bundy recalled driving past a public-housing project in North Las Vegas, “and in front of that government house the door was usually open and the older people and the kids — and there is always at least a half a dozen people sitting on the porch — they didn’t have nothing to do. They didn’t have nothing for their kids to do. They didn’t have nothing for their young girls to do.

“And because they were basically on government subsidy, so now what do they do?” he asked. “They abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never learned how to pick cotton. And I’ve often wondered, are they better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family life and doing things, or are they better off under government subsidy? They didn’t get no more freedom. They got less freedom.”

Now the Republican politicians who cozied up to Bundy are suddenly backing away:

he remarks brought about a quick rebuke from Chandler Smith, a spokesperson for Sen. Dean Heller (R-NV). Heller had previously called Bundy and his supporters “patriots” for their actions and challenged Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-NV) description of them as “domestic terrorists.”

Smith told the Times that Heller “completely disagrees with Mr. Bundy’s appalling and racist statements, and condemns them in the most strenuous way.”

Bundy’s speech also seemingly derailed Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott’s (R) apparent attempt to link his gubernatorial campaign to the Bunkerville camp; Abbott had allegedly written a letter to the BLM accusing it of “threatening” to seize land along the Red River in northern Texas.

But after being contacted regarding the rancher’s “Negro” remarks, a spokesperson for Abbott was quoted as saying that Abbott’s letter “was regarding a dispute in Texas and is in no way related to the dispute in Nevada.”

But it’s not as if Bundy’s rhetoric isn’t just a less veiled and coded form of mainstream Republican rhetoric. Herman Cain, E.W. Jackson, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter and many others have all described government subsidies for the poor as a “plantation” oppressing minorities.

Let’s not forget GOP darling Paul Ryan’s take on race relations, either:

We have got this tailspin of culture, in our inner cities in particular, of men not working and just generations of men not even thinking about working or learning the value and the culture of work, and so there is a real culture problem here that has to be dealt with…you need to get involved, you need to get involved yourself, whether through a good mentor program or some religious charity, whatever it is to make a difference. And that’s how we resuscitate our culture.

Republican politicians will try to distance themselves from Bundy, but it’s too late. Bundy really does speak for the conservative base, and uses the same arguments as most of the GOP’s most popular politicians and talking heads. He just uses more honest and forthright language to describe his racist beliefs.

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Downcast Re: Comcast

by tristero

Comcast makes a poorly designed product that people hate and only use because there is no alternative. How do they thrive? From help from their Very Powerful Friends, who grease every wheel in sight.

In reading this op-ed in the Times, what struck me is that the people involved in propping up this awful company with tax bribes and competition-stifling seemed to have no idea that their behavior is utterly depraved.

Unchecked, such clueless corruption is a recipe for disaster. This is not just about Comcast. Sooner or later, the obliviousness of our Overlords will have an impact on something truly critical to the lives of the rest of us, like a collapse in affordable food or energy or shelter.

And then there could be some truly serious ugliness.

Wes Craven, call your office

by digby

This is what I dream of when I celebrate with too much tequila:

Actually it’s a lovely story about the Chinese panda program. They dress up in panda suits that smell like panda so as not to confuse the little bears.

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CIA adventures in the drug trade and a little clemency long in coming

by digby

Here’s a little bit of good news on the civil liberties front via Meteor Blades at Daily Kos:

Deputy Attorney General James Cole announced at a press conference Wednesday the parameters of the Department of Justice’s new clemency initiative for federal prisoners. Only those who have served at least 10 years of their sentences, have not engaged in violence while incarcerated, are not drug kingpins or associated with gangs or cartels will be eligible for clemency.

Given how difficult avoiding violence can be, the criteria for clemency sharply limit how many prisoners could be released. But they could still number in the thousands, many of whom are serving exceedingly long, even life, sentences. All told, there were, as of April 17, 216,265 prisoners held in the federal system.

It’s a start. And it’s the least we can do to heal some of the carnage that was caused by the draconian drug laws that sprang up around the crack epidemic of the 1980s. There are still people moldering in federal prison for possession of small amounts of crack cocaine while those caught with mounds of the powder served token sentences. Needless to say, as is so often the case, African Americans suffered the most since crack was the cheaper form of the drug and opportunistically marketed specifically to them.

One of the main takeaways about the Reagan years was the extent to which his people thought themselves so very, very clever, Iran-Contra being the greatest example of their pathological hubris. They illegally sold weapons to a sworn enemy in the middle east in order to finance one side of a civil war in Central America against the express instructions of the US congress. You have to give them credit for chutzpah.

And one of the scandalous offshoots of that policy was the CIA’s involvement with the Contras and the crack cocaine trade. The government went to great lengths to discredit the reporting on that story but our current secretary of state, then-Senator John Kerry chaired a committee which issued a report that confirmed a good part of it:

The report cited legal cover provided by the CIA to anti-Sandinista rebels in the drug trade as well as accounting for $806,000 paid by the State Department to “four companies owned and operated by narcotics traffickers.” The Subcommittee found that the Contra drug links included:

“Involvement in narcotics trafficking by individuals associated with the Contra movement.”

“Participation of narcotics traffickers in Contra supply operations through business relationships with Contra organizations.”

“Provision of assistance to the Contras by narcotics traffickers, including cash, weapons, planes, pilots, air supply services and other materials, on a voluntary basis by the traffickers.”

“Payments to drug traffickers by the U.S. State Department of funds authorized by the Congress for humanitarian assistance to the Contras, in some cases after the traffickers had been indicted by federal law enforcement agencies on drug charges, in others while traffickers were under active investigation by these same agencies.”

The press paid almost no attention to those findings.

And in similar fashion to what we’re seeing today with the CIA torture report, the CIA went to incredible lengths to insure that the story was well and truly buried years later when it was resurrected by the press. (You can read all about it at Robert Parry’s Consortium news.) The charge was that the CIA had actually been instrumental in bringing crack cocaine to the street of America. It’s a charge that still hangs over the agency regardless of its mostly successful campaign to throw water on the reporting.

And when you think about it, the idea that it was crazy to even consider that the Reagan government would do such a thing is ridiculous. If a government would secretly sell weapons to Iran in order to finance their nice little war, why would anyone think it’s unreasonable to believe they would help their Contra allies sell drugs to black people and then put those same black people in prison for decades for buying them. It’s just the kind of crackerjack mind-fuck the Republicans of that era were known for.

Now, thirty years later, the government has agreed to grant some of the victims of that lunacy clemency. As I said, it’s literally the least we can do. But it’s something. And it’s long overdue.

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Don’t concede the Senate just yet

by David Atkins

Conventional wisdom over the last few months has suggested that Democrats would likely lose the Senate this November. Nate Silver suggested that a GOP takeover would be likelier than not; others more recently have pegged Democratic chances of a hold at just over 50%.

Some new polling, however, suggests that Democratic chances of holding the Senate might not be even as dismal as a coin flip:

Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.), a top GOP target, leads Rep. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) by 46 percent-36 percent in a live-caller poll conducted for The New York Times and the Kaiser Family Foundation. Pryor’s approval rating is at 47 percent with 38 percent disapproving, good numbers for any Democrat in a state as conservative as Arkansas.
The polls likely do not reflect what the electorate will look like this fall, however. In the Arkansas poll, for instance, fully 39 percent of those in the sample say they’re paying little or no attention to the 2014 campaign, despite heavy spending on ads from both sides in the race. One-third of the registered voters surveyed in Arkansas didn’t vote in 2012, a sign the poll’s sample isn’t reflective of what Election Day will look like. Similar problems plague the other polls.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is also in a dogfight, according to the poll. McConnell leads Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes (D) by 44 percent-43 percent in the heavily Republican state. McConnell’s approval rating is at 40 percent with 52 percent disapproving, though President Obama is much worse and possibly dragging Grimes down in the state — his approval rating is 32 percent.

Sen. Kay Hagan (D-N.C.), another top Republican target who’s had millions spent against her, has narrow two-point leads over her two most likely Republican opponents. Hagan leads North Carolina House Speaker Thom Tillis (R) by 42 percent-40 percent, and she has a 41 percent-39 percent lead over Tea Party favorite Greg Brannon. Her approval rating and disapproval rating are both at 44 percent, a sign she’s in a tough position heading into the fall.

Once again, everything is going to hinge on whether Democrats actually turn out to vote or not. And that in turn means that even in red states, Democratic candidates for Senate would do better to provide inspiration to their less likely base voters than to scramble to win the very few remaining undecideds.

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We’re even more exceptional than we knew

by digby

Here’s another fine example of just how exceptional the good old US of A really is. This chart is from Krugman’s blog where he explains that our allegedly “classless” society is not only easily divided by class economically but it’s also surprisingly more divided by class than other advanced countries in terms of policy preferences:

I don’t know about you but I find that rather shocking. I guess the American affluent are just bigger jerks than the affluent in other countries — which also explains something else. Krugman writes:

[T]he main point to understand here is that we now know what it means when people urge us to stop talking about class, or denounce class warfare: it is essentially a demand that lower-income Americans and those upper-income Americans who care about them shut up, and stop messing with the elite desire for smaller government.

I would guess that part of the problem is this insistence among the wealthy that they’re jes’ down home middle class workin’ folk like you and me. (Well, except for the fact that they have so much more money…) They don’t need all those government services so obviously they aren’t necessary.

And those who actually are middle class and support cuts in government spending?  Well, those are the fine citizens who just want that spending cut for “those people”, the ones who don’t deserve it.  Unlike them. That’s a centuries old American problem and there’s no excuse for it.  But there’s also no excuse for our wealthy elites to be so damned selfish.  They are literally the greediest people on earth.

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Thank you for this honor

by digby

Here’s a surprise for an old country blogger: I’ve been awarded this year’s Hillman Prize for Opinion and Analysis Journalism. Who would have thought that could ever happen when I started this ugly little blog 11 years ago? I couldn’t have seen it coming, that’s for sure.

I won’t belabor this except to express my gratitude to the Hillman Foundation, particularly Lindsay Beyerstein and Tom Watson. It’s a great privilege to be listed among such wonderful writers and journalists, especially my friend Jonathan Cohn. I am also indebted to my great blog contributors over the years — David Atkins, Dennis Hartley, David Dayen and Tristero — and my Blue America partners Howie Klein and John Amato for being wonderful friends and collaborators.

And finally, many, many thanks to the generous readers who have supported this blog all these years. That support is what allowed me to stay independent and do this on my own terms which is a very precious and unusual gift in this life. So thank you from the bottom of my heart for making this thrilling day possible for me.

If you want to read about the prize and why they awarded it to me, you can go here.

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QOTD: Rand Paul

by digby

Gibberish on abortion rights:

I think the debate is about when life begins,” Paul said, stating the problem, but not the solution, something he has become very adept at doing. “Is it OK for an 8-pound baby to be aborted one week before delivery? If the mother says she’s anxious and wants to ‘kill myself,’ you can have the abortion one day before it’s due?

Is there anyone on the planet who is agitating for 8 pound babies to be “aborted”? I think we call that childbirth. And the notion that there is a debate about whether “anxious” little wimmin should be allowed to kill themselves a day before the baby is due is obscene.

Look at what he’s really saying there. He’s claiming that the issue at hand is a bunch of dizzy broads who wait until a day or a week before they give birth to have an abortion.

He went on to say that the debate is between those who think that there should be abortion at any moment up to birth and those who think there should never be an abortion. He says the answer is somewhere in between. Well, he’s in luck. We have something called Roe vs Wade which is exactly that. Which he doesn’t support.

Paul should spare his puerile philosophizing and trying to have it both ways. If he’s pro-choice he should say it. If he isn’t he should own up to it instead of passing it off, as he usually does, as a matter of states’ rights. (No, libertarians aren’t supposed to believe that state governments can deny one’s freedom any more than a national government — I don’t know why he’s allowed to get away with this. Government is government.) This gibberish about some non-existent debate over women aborting the day before they’re due is insulting.

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This is their Altamont

by digby

I wrote about the conservative Baby Boomers’ protest fantasy over at Salon today:

Ever since the angry town hall protests in the summer of ’09, the right has been living out its own 1960s-style protest fantasy, pulling up their stadium chairs on lawns and fields all over the country and giving the proverbial finger to “the establishment.” Where their younger liberal cohorts chanted “hell no, we won’t go” these graying boomers cry, “Taxed enough already!” with such fervor one cannot help thinking they’ve been waiting for this chance their whole lives.

But all such good things eventually turn to cow piles and such is the case with the Bundy ranch standoff. This was no Woodstock. It was Altamont. No, there weren’t any stabbings, but they did have a big contingent of bikers called in for “protection.” (Everybody in the place was carrying a firearm or two so who needs knives anyway?) And unlike the party atmosphere of the Tea Party Woodstock festivals, everything about the Bundy Barbeque just seemed gritty and mean by comparison. The Facebook pages devoted to the event don’t show happy gray-haired boomers in tricorn hats waving the flag — they’re covered with disgusting photos of decomposing cows.

Read on…

All of us boomers are old now and there’s nothing we can do about that. But this group is just sad — it took until they were old and gray to finally join the counterculture.

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