Crumbling under the pressure?
by digby
Somebody get this guy a valium:
Speaking at a party at Downing Street, British Prime Minister David Cameron reportedly said he’s had enough. “I have to say that after the events I’ve been facing over the past few days, assassination would be a welcome release.”
Good lord, I hope he’s just talking about the Scottish referendum and not something else …
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The Great Debate
by digby
I’m shocked, I tell you, shocked:
There was precious little suspense about today’s House vote on an amendment to include funds for the training of Syrian rebels in the CR. The debate was heated, sure, but these debates are always slanted toward the people who want to talk. The pro-funding side was so confident that Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger, an Iraq veteran and leadership ally, took to the floor to mock the people who had not wanted this funding sooner.
“I don’t remember these colleagues stepping forward a month ago,” he said. “By many, I was called a warmonger or a guy who wanted to start a war in Iraq.”
That’s because when the president wants to go to war you can depend on the congress to rubber stamp it. It’s a very rare instance when they don’t. But hey, let’s keep pretending that the real problem is the separation of powers not being properly observed instead of the fact that we are a military empire and very few people in the government (or the country) are concerned with that fundamental reality:
Kinzger won his gloating rights when the House voted 273 to 156 for the Syria amendment. That number was not far off, actually, from the 296-133 vote twelve years ago that kicked off the Iraq War. But the Iraq War vote almost suceeded with the votes of Republicans alone, 214 of their 222 members voting “aye.” This time, only 159 Republicans voted for the funds, and 114 voted against them. Democrats were narrowly with the “no” side, splitting 85-71 against the funds.
That’s right. This time more Republicans voted no and more Democrats voted yes. I can guarantee you that the vote would be the other way if the president were a Republican. (Go back to the Kosovo “debates” to see just how these things swing back and forth on a partisan basis.)
There are more Democrats who are consistently anti-war than there are Republicans. They are in a minority in the congress but they do exist. They voted against the Iraq war and they voted against this weird plan today. Good for them.
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A throwdown between oracles
by digby
Is there some reason anyone should care whether one election forecasting model is superior to the other? I don’t see how these models that aggregate polls to predict whether one party or the other will have a majority are anything more than a parlor game.(Or maybe a way for Vegas gamblers to lay odds…)
They’re fun. I enjoy them because I’m a political junkie. But this “fight” between two of the top forecasters seems rather insubstantial to me. After all, political pros rely on their own polling in individual races to determine strategy — these aggregate poll models really have no bearing on anything as far as I know. If they didn’t do what they’re doing — however accurate they might be — and disappeared from the scene tomorrow, would it make a difference?
But hey, maybe I’m missing something about the importance of these forecasts. It certainly seems to have the political establishment up in arms.
It looks like somebody’s clean money is touching somebody’s dirty money after all.
by digby
I haven’t seen many people comment on this so maybe I’m off base. But it seems to me that this is going to cause trouble:
It was one of the trickiest issues when lawmakers were debating Obamacare, in the end, the Affordable Care Act squeaked through congress after lawmakers crafted a compromise about abortion coverage. Customers who wanted to purchase a health plan that covers abortion services would be required to send a separate check to their insurers for that coverage. That way, no taxpayer money would be used to subsidize abortion.
But a new study by the federal Government Accountability Office surveyed 18 insurers.
“All but three insurers indicated that the benefit is not subject to any restrictions, limitations or exclusions,” the GAO reports.
That means the federal government could have been subsidizing plans that pay for abortion.
The administration says it’s done nothing wrong, but will provide guidance in the coming days.
Maybe it’s no big deal and nobody will care. I hope that’s how it goes. But considering what we went through during the health care debate on this issue, I’m having a hard time believing that the anti-abortion zealots are going to let this pass.
In case you don’t recall what went down, here’s a little reminder. You’ll recall that it was pro-life Democrats, led by Bart Stupak in the House who threatened to tank the health care reforms unless the President agreed to insure that the federal government didn’t cover abortion in the bill. The compromise was to make sure that the money of someone who opposes abortion would never even touch the money of someone who wants to buy insurance to cover the procedure thus keeping the taint of Satan from your personal balance sheet.
Recall this also from (the now former) congressman Stupak after the fact. (He wasn’t very bright.)
Michigan congressman Bart Stupak, who played a pivotal role in the passage of the health care bill, said there is something worse than the hatred – including death threats and angry calls to his house – he experienced because of his support for the legislation.“Ultimately, what stings the most isn’t the hatred,” wrote Stupak in a column posted on the Newsweek magazine’s website. “It’s that people tried to use abortion as a tool to stop health-care reform, even after protections were added.”The pro-life Democrat said in the column for the magazine’s May 17 issue that he has “two longstanding personal convictions”: that health care is a right and federal funds should not pay for abortions.He maintained that President Obama’s executive order sufficiently safeguards against the use of federal money to pay for abortions in health care reform. Obama had assured him that the executive order is “ironclad,” he said.President Obama, Stupak and his group of pro-life Democrats worked out a last minute deal in March that exchanged the congressmen’s votes in favor of the health care bill for an executive order stating that no tax dollars be used for abortions.Stupak argued that at that point the health care bill would have passed even if they voted against it. He said his coalition’s agreement with the president was meant to “add pro-life protections” on the legislation.Pro-life groups, however, denounced the deal, arguing that an executive order does not have the force of law and that Stupak betrayed the movement at the most critical time.“We need statutory law,” Stupak recalled the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops telling him after hearing about the deal.The Michigan lawmaker, who has served in Congress for nearly two decades, told the USCCB that President Abraham Lincoln used an executive order to free the slaves and President George W. Bush used one to block embryonic stem cell research.
Maybe nobody in the anti-abortion crowd has gotten the memo on this yet. (If not, don’t say anything …) But I’ll admit I’m a little bit surprised that there hasn’t yet been an outcry over this (as far as I know.) It was a huge fight that left everyone unsatisfied.
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Huckabee!
by digby
My piece for Salon today is about the Republican who’s polling at number one in Iowa right now. No, not Jindahl, not Christie not Ryan, Paul or Cruz. It’s Mike Huckabee and he’s ahead by a mile:
Byron York reported that Huckabee called reporters together yesterday for a wide-ranging conversation about the Middle East (he’s very concerned) and a possible presidential run and it looks like he’s getting back in the saddle. York observes that unlike his run in 2008 where he lamented all the chatter about Iraq, he’s going straight at foreign policy as the focus of his campaign, rather than domestic issues, which would appear to signal that the GOP is getting back in its comfortable groove. (Not that this should come as a surprise — Benghazi!™ was a pretty good first clue.)
Some of this reticence to put their hopes and dreams once again in the other man from Hope is understandable. After all, he declined to join the losing GOP clown show in 2012 after having made a fairly decent showing in 2008. (What most people would call having good political instincts is often seen among the faithful as a sign of disloyalty.) In that race, Rick Santorum was left to carry the banner for the Christian right pretty much by himself and while he did a surprisingly respectable job of sticking it out to the bitter end, there’s really nobody in the world who can see him sitting in the Oval Office, not even his own voters. Huckabee, on the other hand, has long been seen as a serious contender and for good reason. Nobody else in the Republican game today has his particular combination of political gifts. Why they’re almost, dare I say it, Reaganesque.
Read on for some fun Huck quotes and a bonus Youtube of him playing Cat scratch fever with Ted Nugent.
Seriously, I think the guy in underrated and if he does get in, assuming he can raise money, I think he has the potential to successfully weave together the GOP’s various strands. (Of course, if we’re at war anyone with an R after his name can do that simply by waving the flag and displaying America’s big swinging manhood.)
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“You can’t feed a family with GDP”
by digby
That’s Neil Irwin’s line in the piece that accompanies this rather stunning chart:
The census numbers on what American families made last year are as mediocre as they are predictable. We now know that if your household brought in $51,939 in income last year, you were right at the 50th percentile, with half of households doing better and half doing worse. In inflation-adjusted terms, that is up a mere 0.3 percent from 2012. If you’re counting, that’s an extra $180 in annual real income for a middle-income American family. Don’t spend your extra $3.46 a week all in one place.
Going back a little further, the numbers are even gloomier. The 2013 median income remained a whopping 8 percent — about $4,500 per year — below where it was in 2007. The 2008 recession depressed wages for middle-income Americans, and they haven’t recovered in any meaningful way. And 2007 household incomes were actually below the 1999 peak.
But hey, it’s nothing a little war won’t fix, amirite? That is our preferred way of stimulating the economy after all. Keeps us from getting soft.
On the other hand we had a little incident in 2001 and a subsequent war and look at that chart. It doesn’t seem to be working anymore.
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QOTD: John Boehner
by digby
“You might notice I have a few knuckleheads in my conference.”
Everyone knows this is a negotiating tool as much as anything, right? Boehner *says to the Democrats, “Hey, I’d love to help you out here. We want the same things. But the knuckleheads in my caucus just won’t stand for it. I can’t control them, you know that. And I’ve got a lot of good people in these deep conservative districts who could be targeted if they don’t toe the line. If you need our votes you’re going to have to give a lot more than you’ve given or we just can’t get there. What can I do?”
Update: *Note: to be clear this is how I am guessing it works when they are behind closed doors. The quote linked above saying “you might notice ….” he did say today however.
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Old warhorses
by Tom Sullivan
Hear that melody? Sen. Lindsey Graham is conducting the Village Symphony Orchestra in one of Republicans’ favorite warhorses. You’ve heard it before. You’ll hear it again.
“Republicans mount their warhorses” sits atop the WaPo’s online Opinion section this morning. (If you arrived late, music lovers, the VSO just began the ISIS movement.)
The sudden desire for a ground war is a bit suspect, both because many Republicans adopted this view only after Obama came around to their previous view and because many Republicans oppose even the modest funding Obama has requested to train Syrian fighters. (Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) said she opposed “giving even more money to the so-called vetted moderates who aren’t moderate at all.”)
It may be that Republicans embraced the boots-on-the-ground position because Obama rejected it. Whatever the cause, the militancy is spreading — even though polls indicate that while Americans favor military action against the Islamic State, they aren’t keen on ground troops.
Of course, whatever the Kenyan Pretender wants is not enough for Graham and the VSO. Rep. John Fleming (R-La.) wants “all-out-war.” Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.) doesn’t want another “half-pregnant war.” As Dana Milbank observes, the rest of the VSO (or is it the Very Serious Orchestra?) oppose anything less than a new ground war in the Middle East. And soon, because they want to hurry back to their districts to campaign for reelection wearing new campaign ribbons. And hoping war hysteria might distract voters from quizzing them on what they haven’t done in Washington to earn their paychecks.
Maybe I missed the act of war ISIS committed against the United States of America that justifies the war into which (with their new trailer) ISIS wants to goad us. Or has America just gone so far down the rabbit hole that we’ll launch another war because — when in doubt — it’s the one thing this aging empire does by default? Like the clueless civilian Buster Keaton plays in “The General,” who, finding himself in the middle of a Civil War battle, brandishes a discarded saber to rally troops whenever he doesn’t know what else to do?
Imagine
by digby
Imagine if everyone that asked for transparency in the @nfl Demanded that same #transparency in our #government #Benghazi #IRS
— elisabeth hasselbeck (@ehasselbeck) September 16, 2014
Yes it’s all one big assault on our freedoms. Like making insurance pay for contraception. Or firing those Duck Dynasty guys.
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You haven’t seen me in a while. Here’s why.
by David Atkins
It’s been a humbling and awesome experience writing here at Hullabaloo for the last three years. You haven’t seen me around for the last little while, and I just wanted to explain why. I’ll be back after Election Day, but now for the first time in over three years I’m taking a sabbatical from writing, because I’m plowing 14 hours a day into the biggest fight against Big Oil in the entire country, as campaign manager for Measure P in Santa Barbara County. I’ve managed and been field director on a bunch of campaigns before, including a recent hotly contested supervisor race, an Assembly race, and a bunch of local races. But none of them have had the wide-reaching national consequences of this one.
As you may know, California is sitting on some of the nastiest, dirtiest oil deposits in the country. The only way to get at them is by fracking them, acidizing them, or pumping billions of gallons of steam into them (cyclic steam injection). These techniques waste and pollute huge amounts of water during a drought, put human health and the environment at risk, and generate massive carbon emissions.
Some of us have been trying to get a statewide fracking ban passed, but without success so far. So activists in a few counties are taking it upon themselves to try to pass local bans, including in Santa Barbara County–where local oil companies are planning to drill over 7,700 new wells, generating a million cars’ a year worth of carbon emissions just to drill the wells alone. Big Oil knows that if they can stop these local fracking bans, they’ll have a much better chance of blunting momentum toward a statewide moratorium on fracking in California and elsewhere.
That’s why Chevron and other oil companies have already dumped almost $2 million into the campaign to defeat Measure P. This is the same Chevron that was responsible for the famous 1969 oil spill off the Santa Barbara coast that many credit as the birth of the environmental movement.
The oil companies are telling the same lies they always do in these sorts of campaigns: that banning fracking and acidizing will stop all oil production everywhere, that thousands of jobs will be lost, that the county will be at risk of lawsuits, etc. None of it is true, of course, but the truth doesn’t matter. The press dutifully stenographs the arguments of each side, and because Chevron and their pals have the money, they have the megaphone. They’ve got the slick TV ads, the paid social media, the gigantic mail campaign. All so they can keep on fracking and acidizing without even paying an extraction tax.
What we have is people power. Using a lean and mean campaign operation that pays no consultant commissions, we’ve already made over 100,000 phone calls and knocked on over 5,000 doors. We’ve got a fantastic and inexpensive mail program, and a great comms team handling earned media. We’ve got a good Facebook team. But unless something changes we’re still probably going to be outspent by almost 20 to 1 by Big Oil.
Every poll and all our field numbers tell us that the race will be incredibly close. So we’re putting everything we’ve got into our field efforts. I’m just worried it won’t be enough. Right now we don’t have the money for bilingual mail pieces or Spanish-language radio to the very communities who will be most affected by toxic dumping of drilling byproducts. We don’t have the money for local cable buys on TV. To do all of that would take another $50,000 we just don’t have.
Big Oil is counting on low voter turnout and apathy, and they’re counting us being outgunned. I’m doing all I can to stretch every cent, but I could sure use your help.
We need folks to help with remote phonebanks (we have an awesome predictive dialer you can run from home), and we above all need money. We don’t need the millions of dollars other campaigns do, but even just a few thousand more would make the difference between being able to reach various communities where they live, get our message out and respond to their lies, and not being able to.
Thanks, and I’ll be seeing you around the blogs when this crucial election is all over.