Month: May 2014

Just don’t call me late for dinner

by digby

The Republicans called health care reform Hillarycare and then Obamacare. Finally the Democrats gave in and took the name too. But they always knew this would be an issue — in the beginning:

A new NBC-Marist poll in Kentucky shows Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) barely leading challenger Alison Lundergran Grimes (D) in their closely-watched U.S. Senate race, 46 percent to 45 percent.

But the more important numbers in the survey are about ObamaCare.

The poll finds that registered voters dislike ObamaCare by a wide margin, 57 percent to 33 percent. No surprise, right?

However, when voters were asked to give their impression of “Kynect,” the state exchange created as a result of the health care law, the findings were very different with a plurality in favor, 29 percent to 22 percent.

In the end, Obamacare will be part of the lexicon. Some people will undoubtedly always hate it. But there’s a good chance this will change to a positive among most Americans.

.

“The Endarkenment”

by digby

Over the week-end I wrote about the frightening fact that presidential aspirants to the Republican nomination such as Marco Rubio are climate change deniers. And I pondered what that says about the state of our politics and the future of the planet. I’m not the only one who found that comment horrifying.

But nobody gets to the heart of the matter like his fellow Floridian Alan Grayson:

It’s insane, but that’s what passes for political discourse these days. It’s a complete rejection of facts, evidence and logic – the “Endarkenment.”

He’s not being hyperbolic.And if you need further proof:

Christian Post blogger Michael Bresciani writes this week that changes in the climate are indeed taking place, but not due to human activities such as fossil fuel emissions. Instead, he says extreme weather is the result of “homosexuality, abortion [and] general sexual preoccupation,” which according to Bresciani is bringing about the End Times and the coming of the Antichrist.

See? It’s all good.

Update: And Rubio’s not alone.  Senate candidates are hedging too.

.

Tweet ‘O The Day: exceptional!

by digby

Partly a post-WWII catch-up story for the non-US countries, but still the divergence, recent flattening are startling pic.twitter.com/S56NPB6ji5
— Cardiff Garcia (@CardiffGarcia) May 12, 2014

Startling doesn’t really describe it. Something has gone very wrong. And it isn’t Obamacare.

.

Supreme polarization

by digby

This article in the New York Times about the polarized Supreme Court is an interesting read. It analyzes how it came to be that we no longer see the sort of ideological shape shifting you used to see among the justices. But this should tell you something about which direction the current “polarization” favors:

“When Kennedy leaves,” Professor Devins said, “it’s going to move the court a whole, whole lot to the left, if the president is a Democrat, or slightly to the right, if it’s a Republican.”

Kennedy’s not going anywhere any time soon which means that this is a very conservative court with tremendous power to work its will in a time of stark polarization in the country. What could go wrong?

Also too, I have a sneaking suspicion that the more or less decent treatment of Democratic nominees

Oh, and I’m not buying that the liberals were just as responsible for the polarization as the conservatives. They are ideological these days — but it was a clear cut case of self-defense. After all, here’s how Justice Scalia gets his news:

“I get most of my news, probably, driving back and forth to work, on the radio,” he said. “Talk guys, usually.”

One of the most powerful men in the world is informed by the likes of Hannity and Limbaugh.

.

Appealing to the beyotches

by digby

So, evidently the Republican bro party has decided thy need to appeal to the wimminfolk so they’re trying a different tack in their advertising: they’going for emotion instead of sheer reason as they usually do. You know, like this famous GOP ad purely designed to make a rational argument:

They’re giving in on their usual commitment to pure logic because the beyotches just aren’t able to follow. They’re “telling stories” now so the ladies can understand politics. That’s nice.

But this is truly amazing:

Not only is the content of the ads changing, but so are the places in which they appear. Jim Margolis, a veteran Democratic ad-maker, says it’s no longer enough to air an ad on daytime TV, or even the nightly news, to reach women.

“We are using data and analytics to try to determine what are the actual programs that women are watching, Margolis says. “And to try to determine, as well, what are those issues, for that particular group, that are going to be the most resonant, that they’re going to find the most compelling.”

Wherever women are digitally, Margolis says, political ads will find them. A woman who is a Democratic target voter in a Senate battleground state might see campaign ads all day online.

“When you log on in the morning to check the weather, there’s a pretty good chance that somebody is going to be talking to you right there,” he says.

Your browsing history can say a lot about you, Margolis says, including your gender, interests and issues that matter to you.

Are you kidding me? They are just now trying to figure out which programs women are watching? And this is the first time they’re targeting online based on browser history? WTH?

Note that this is a Democrat saying this. Which explains a lot.

.

Rand Paul threading the foreign policy needle

by digby

Over at Salon this morning I wrote about Rand Paul’s “foreign policy.” That’s in scare quotes because it’s incoherent. And incoherent foreign policy is frightening.

One of the articles of faith among both the libertarian true believers and the mainstream media is the idea that Senator Rand Paul is a man who does not play the usual partisan political game. The true believers think this comes from a deep well of integrity and intellectual consistency. The mainstream media mostly sees him as a “wacko-bird” to use their favorite maverick John McCain’s term. In neither case does it occur to them that Rand Paul is quite serious about becoming president.

Did I mention scary? He doesn’t appear to be running to make a statement or influence the Party. He’s running for real. Paul knows he can’t win with a libertarian isolationist policy like his father’s. So he’s trying to finesse his way into some kind of hybrid “realist-non-interventionist” yet patriotic and hawkish role that makes absolutely no sense to anyone. Perhaps he figures he can confuse everyone so much they won’t notice.

But foreign policy and national security are very important to conservative ideology and they brook very little in the way of dissident thought. In case you hadn’t noticed …

More pocket change from the Kochs

by David Atkins

The Koch Brothers checked their pants pockets at the end of the day and found some spare cash, which they’ve decided to toss into corrupting democracy because why not:

The Koch brothers’ main political arm intends to spend more than $125 million this year on an aggressive ground, air and data operation benefiting conservatives, according to a memo distributed to major donors and sources familiar with the group.
The projected budget for Americans for Prosperity would be unprecedented for a private political group in a midterm, and would likely rival even the spending of the Republican and Democratic parties’ congressional campaign arms.

The group already has spent more than $35 million on ads attacking vulnerable Democrats in key Senate and House races, according to sources, including Sens. Kay Hagan of North Carolina, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and Mark Pryor of Arkansas. The $125 million projection comes from a memo obtained by POLITICO, labeled as a “Confidential Investor Update” provided to major donors in March, but a source familiar with AFP called the figure a “very conservative estimate. We’re on track for more than that.”

Keep in mind that these guys are “worth” over $100 billion.

Think about that. I’m sure many readers of this blog routinely give well over 3% of their net worth every year to help win elections. For Charles and David Koch, that would mean over $3 billion dollars. $125 million is just a little over 1/1000th of their total net worth. Think about what 1/1000th of your net worth is. The Kochs could pretty much buy every significantly contested election in the United States, every election cycle, for decades. All while barely noticing it.

It’s a wonder they don’t do it. Maybe they should. Maybe that’s just the sort of hubris that it would take to wake the country up to what’s happening, and just how much of the money our productivity and demand has produced that the economic overlords have legally stolen.

Maybe that’s why they don’t do it, after all. They corrupt the system just enough, without actually pushing it totally over the edge. Yet.

.

Go Elizabeth

by digby

Warren smacks down Trey Gowdy:

I know a little bit about the way Trey Gowdy pursues oversight. I was on the other end of it when I was setting up the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and I was called to testify before the House. As the Huffington Post reported at the time, Gowdy’s interrogation of me “seemed to lack the basic facts” about the agency he was attempting to oversee. I’d like you to read their reporting on one of these exchanges just so you know what this Benghazi “investigation” is likely to look like:

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) grilled Warren on whether the bureau would make public the complaints it gets. She answered that the complaint issue was a work in progress, but that at the very least, there was progress in creating a system for large credit card companies. 

“Are any of the complaints public?” Gowdy demanded. 

“Congressman, we don’t have any complaints yet,” Warren said of the still-nascent agency. “What we’re trying to do is build the system.” 

Gowdy also seemed to think that Warren had written the Dodd-Frank law, and he was determined to know what Warren meant by defining “abusive” practices as something that “materially interferes” with the ability of a consumer to understand a term or a condition. 

“That suggests to me that some interferences are immaterial. Is that what you meant by that?” he asked a momentarily perplexed-looking Warren. 

“Congressman, I believe the language you are quoting is out of the Dodd-Frank act,” she said. “This is the language that Congress has adopted.” 

Still, Gowdy insisted on her answer, although the definitions and regulations required by the law are still being written.

As a Senator, I take oversight seriously because it is powerfully important. But Trey Gowdy gives oversight a bad name. The House GOP is on a waste-of-time-and-resources witch hunt and fundraising sideshow, shamefully grasping for any straw to make President Obama, former Secretary Clinton, or Secretary Kerry look bad. This stunt does a disservice to those who serve our country abroad, and it distracts us from issues we should be taking up on behalf of the American people.

Here’s more from Paul Waldman on Gowdy. He’s an interesting character. Or perhaps, more accurately, a typical GOP clown:

Since House Speaker John Boehner announced the creation of a select committee to investigate the Benghazi affair, Republicans have been saying it will be a serious investigation, while Democrats have been saying it will be a partisan circus. To get a sense of who might be right, I spent some time watching YouTube videos of Rep. Trey Gowdy, the heretofore obscure second-term Tea Party congressman from South Carolina whom Boehner named to lead the committee.

There are a lot of these videos of Gowdy in congressional hearings, posted by conservatives, with titles like “Gowdy DESTROYS Obama Admin Stooge!” He’s obviously very popular among the base. To call Gowdy prosecutorial would be an understatement. Uniformly angry and outraged, these videos show Gowdy always seemingly on the verge of shouting, he’s so damn mad. Like any good lawyer, he never asks a question to which he doesn’t already know the answer. But when a witness gives him an answer other than the one he expects, he repeats his question at a slightly louder volume and angrier pitch, as though the question hadn’t actually been answered.

I’m already bored by this. I wonder if everyone else in the country is too? But it looks like we’re going to get a Big Show with this fine fellow cracking the whip. I suppose he won’t be literally shooting any watermelons but Dan Burton will definitely be there in spirit.

.

Free not to make nice

by digby

A dazed and confused Bobby Jindal feeds the persecution complex:

“Make no mistake — the war over religious liberty is a war over free speech. Without the first, there is no such thing as the second.”

He then discussed the Duck Dynasty controversy. “You may think that I was defending the Robertsons simply because I am the governor of their home state, the great state of Louisiana,” he said. “You would be wrong about that. I defended them because they have every right to speak their minds.”

The real issue is that “liberals” are doing everything in their power to “silence debate.” The new left in America is completely intolerant of people of faith,” Jindal said. “The left no longer wants to debate. They simply want to silence us.”

Without religious liberty there is no such thing as free speech? Ok…

I won’t bother to point out for the umpteenth time that free speech is only protected from censorship by the government. I’m sure Jindal has no problem defending private businesses from firing people who say things the owner doesn’t like.

But that’s a technical, legal argument. His greater point is that the left is trying to keep people from speaking out if they have cultural differences with them. Perhaps that’s so. They often raise a stink when right wingers trash talk and insult them. And so does the right.

That’s the ultimate purpose of freedom of speech, you foolish man. Both sides can raise a stink against the other one if they want to and the government has no say in it. Let the insults fly and the boycotts roll. Everybody get mad as hell. It’s as American as Krispy Kreme.

This never gets old

:

Pandering or true belief, it doesn’t matter. They’re trying to kill us.

by digby

I don’t know if there’s anything scarier than this:

It’s bad enough that neanderthal wingnuts out in the world believe this. But the fact that the leaders of one of the two political parties that rule the most powerful nation on earth also seem to believe it (or at least are willing to pander to those neanderthals) is just astonishing.

It’s a miracle we haven’t blown ourselves up.

And we still could.

THE FIVE STAGES OF GLOBAL WARMING

1. Denial
2. Guilt
3. Depression
4. Acceptance
5. Drowning
— God (@TheTweetOfGod) May 8, 2014