Bulges
by digby
Demographic transformations are dramas in slow motion. America is in midst of two right now. http://t.co/qzhzBhsg53 pic.twitter.com/Idj3byycF2
— Pew Research Center (@pewresearch) March 14, 2015
Let’s hope they don’t cut social security because there is going to be a boatload of us ancient old lady boomers out there for a while.
h/t to @Tarkloon
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The Real Strongmen
by digby
You’ve probably heard that Vladimir Putin seems to have gone missing. Evidently all of Russia is abuzz with speculation.
This story by Julia Ioffe will give you a feel for what’s going on and why they might be keeping it secret even if he’s just ill or otherwise indisposed. But her conclusion sent a chill down my spine:
After 15 years in power, Putin has so personalized the system that it becomes increasingly difficult for his subjects to envision a Russia without him. Nearly half of those Russians surveyed in a recent poll said they wanted to see Putin serve a fourth presidential term, starting in 2018. This number had more than doubled from a poll a few months earlier. And it’s not just about vision. Putin’s system of “manual control”—that is, micromanaging the country—has come at the great expense of Russia’s institutions. The only institutions Putin has strengthened are the security services.
Which tells you why Russian liberals are so worried and, strangely, implicitly hoping for Putin’s reappearance. Two weeks ago, one of their main leaders was assassinated. The other one, Alexey Navalny, has basically admitted that the opposition has been neutered and marginalized. And if Putin’s gone, they certainly won’t be the ones to take power. It will be the real strongmen.
So Putin isn’t the “Real Strongman”? Good lord…
“Debriefing” partners?
by digby
Golly, I wonder what this means?
[T]he CIA director suggested that the agency still participates in shadowy overseas interrogations – which he preferred to term “debriefs” – alongside the CIA’s constellation of foreign intelligence partners.
“There are places throughout the world where CIA has worked with other intelligence services and has been able to bring people into custody and engage in the debriefings of these individuals, either through our liaison partners or sometimes there are debriefings that take place as well,” Brennan said.
Huh. They used to call this rendition. And it was for the purpose of allowing “other intelligence services” like the Syrian Mukhabarat to torture debrief people on our behalf.
They wouldn’t still be doing stuff like that would they?
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ICYMI: Flotus on the floor
by digby
The dance floor!
Don’t tell Mike Huckabee about this…
*dancing starts at about 3:00.
by digby
Good lord:
That’s in the Washington Post.
“Probably” the best? Grrr. No, almost certainly not. Or so people who had thought about the practicalities argued 11 years ago — when it would have been easier than now.
Of course, I had reckoned without the strong argumentative power of this article’s author, one Joshua Muravchik. He assures us (emphasis added):
Wouldn’t destroying much of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure merely delay its progress? Perhaps, but we can strike as often as necessary.
Of course, Iran would try to conceal and defend the elements of its nuclear program, so we might have to find new ways to discover and attack them. Surely the United States could best Iran in such a technological race.
Right, repeated bombing raids “as necessary.” What could possibly go wrong with that approach? Yes, “surely the United States could best Iran.” Surely we could polish off those backward Viet Cong. Surely invading Iraq would work out great. (I haven’t taken the time to see if the author was a fan of invading Iraq, but I have a guess.) Surely the operational details of these engagements are a concern only for the small-minded among us.
How would we think about a “scholar” in some other major-power capital who cavalierly recommended war? How would we think about some other capital-city newspaper that decided to publish it? The Post’s owners (like those of the NYT and other majors papers) have traditionally had a free hand in choosing the paper’s editorial-page policy and leaders, while maintaining some distance from too-direct involvement in news coverage. Jeff Bezos, behold your newspaper.
You do have to love the idea that it’s “no biggie” if we have to “bomb repeatedly.” After all, it’s not as if there’s ever been any blowback from doing such things.
This is, by the way, what they used to call the Pax Americana. What a laugh.
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A duty and a privilege
by Tom Sullivan
At the Daily Beast, Eleanor Clift explains why Wisconsin Republican Jim Sensenbrenner’s bipartisan effort to repair the Voting Rights Act is going nowhere. Sensenbrenner’s H.R.885, co-sponsored by Democrat Rep. John Lewis of Georgia and forty others (including eight Republicans), was introduced on February 11. The bill is “going nowhere,” Clift believes, in spite of the observance last weekend of the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday at Selma’s Edmund Pettus Bridge. John Lewis was among the civil rights marchers famously beaten there by Alabama State troopers.
It is worth noting that H.R.885 specifically exempts laws requiring “photo identification as a condition of receiving a ballot for voting in a federal, state, or local election” from actions that trigger federal jurisdiction over state efforts to abridge the right to vote. The price of that bipartisanship, no doubt.
Clift quotes David Bositis, formerly with the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies:
Asked whether the symbolism of Selma fifty years later might move Congress to act, Bositis said flatly, “It’s not going to happen, nothing’s going to happen…. On balance this is more of a problem for the Republican Party than the Democrats because the people who are being disenfranchised view the Republican Party as hostile to them. It’s hurting the Republican Party.”
The Supreme Court 5-4 ruling in Shelby County v. Holder in June of 2013 opened the door to a spate of voter ID laws. “Voter suppression, that’s the intent, but so few people vote in the United States,” says Bositis, “so all they’re doing is reinforcing the idea that Republicans are hostile to minority groups.” The GOP did very well in 2010 and 2014, but it had nothing to do with voter suppression, he says. Young people and minority voters typically have low turnout in non-presidential years.
[snip]
No election outcomes will be changed with or without the reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act, he declares. Still, it’s important. “The fact that one of the two major political parties is hostile to the rights of minority citizens is a very big deal—and a lot of that hostility is in the center of gravity of the party, which is Southern whites.” They’re not wielding clubs and hoses anymore, he says, and they may not say anything overtly racist. They cloak their objections in states’ rights. But Republicans not only have no incentive to update the VRA, they have a disincentive, he explains.
I’ll offer two personal experiences set in sharp relief the differences between the parties regarding voting.
In 2006, I was the state party’s Get-Out-The-Vote coordinator for North Carolina’s 11th Congressional District, then 14-1/2 counties. It may sound hokey, but at the grocery store one day I had a kind of transcendental experience. I suddenly had a sense of everyone around me in the store. People standing in line at the checkouts. The woman coming towards me with the cart full of groceries. Another behind me. The people down the pet food aisle. It struck me that all these were “my voters.” Ensuring they got out to vote was both a duty and a privilege. And it didn’t matter what their party affiliation was. (Well, not at that moment anyway.) A quote from former Colorado Senate Majority Leader Ken Gordon (D-Denver) expresses it better:
“We think that voting actually is not just a private vote for the person who gets the vote, but a public good, and that the more people who vote, the more legitimate the elected officials are, and that they represent the actual values of the electorate.”
Contrast that with the T-party’s voter integrity “boot camp” I wrote about. Not once in seven hours did anyone suggest expanding the franchise or registering new voters and encouraging them to exercise their right to vote. Forget about public good. It was a personal, white-knuckled, bars-on-the-windows exercise in keeping the unwashed Irresponsibles from stealing their votes. On Election Day, you may get up, drink your morning coffee, and then head down to your polling place to do your civic duty in the American democratic process. The T-party frets that invisible hordes of Others get up on Election Day intent on committing felonies punishable by five years in prison and a $10,000 fine — just to add a single, extra vote to their team’s total. And they must be stopped.
Clift concludes:
In a rapidly changing America, the signals the GOP sends are as important as any legislation. Sensenbrenner told the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2013 that he didn’t expect his career to include a third reauthorization of the VRA, “but I believe it is a necessary challenge. Voter discrimination still exists, and our progress toward equality should not be mistaken for a final victory.”
Good on Sensenbrenner for trying, but he’d better not hold his breath.
Wingnut vs Wingnut
by digby
This is actually a revival of an old right wing fight but it’s fun anyway. When the hawks ascend this is the sort of thing that becomes a big deal:
Conservative commentator Glenn Beck said Friday that the National Rifle Association is opening an ethics investigation into whether prominent conservative activist and NRA board member Grover Norquist holds sympathies for the Muslim Brotherhood.
Beck said he’s told NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre that he will drop out of the group if Norquist is reelected to the NRA board, and he said LaPierre indicated during the conversation there will be an investigation.
The NRA has not made a comment on a possible probe, however, and did not immediately respond to questions from The Hill.
John Kartch, Norquist’s spokesman at Americans for Tax Reform, repudiated Beck’s accusations and said the if the NRA did do an investigation, it would find Norquist has no sympathies with the Muslim Brotherhood.
He linked the accusations against Norquist to an effort by Frank Gaffney, the founder of the conservative national security think tank named the Center for Security Policy, to tar Norquist.
The sound of no hands clapping #TedCruz
by digby
Dave Weigel:
If, like many Americans, your job involves watching a lot of speeches by Ted Cruz, you have grown familiar with the Texas senator’s applause lines. Since October 2014, he has honed a list of “conservative agenda” items that can be punctuated with hoots, hollers, and huzzahs at any gathering on the right. Last month, at CPAC, he rattled them off in a friendly Q&A with Sean Hannity.
“Repeal every blasted word of Obamacare.”
“Abolish the IRS.”
“Take all 125,000 IRS agents and put ’em on our southern border.”
Each declaration sparked a roar of applause, acknowledged with a small smile from Cruz.
They love him.
More normal people, not so much:
Yesterday morning, Cruz entered the less friendly climate of the International Association of Firefighters, for its bipartisan presidential summit. Firefighters’ unions are not as solidly Democratic as most labor unions. In 2010, for example, Scott Walker won his first term as Wisconsin’s governor with the backing of the Milwaukee Professional Firefighters Association. (Walker was invited to the IAFF summit but skipped it.)
Still, the firefighters assembled to hear from possible presidents gave Cruz one of the coldest receptions he’s ever given before a camera.
Check out this compilation of some of his punch line duds:
You have to give him credit for going before a bunch of people who don’t spend every waking minute watching Fox news propaganda and using the same lines he used at CPAC. He’s consistent at least. But the confounded look on his face in that video suggests that old Ted may not be aware that he’s spouting far right talking points that don’t necessarily play with anyone but his own little clique. His bubble may be impenetrable.
Only a third?
by digby
This is from a Politico survey of GOP activists and insiders in Iowa and New Hampshire:
One-third of Republican insiders believe that Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton and his GOP colleagues — including several potential presidential candidates — crossed the line when they published an open letter to Iranian leaders warning about a possible nuclear deal.
A third sounds about right. And that means that two thirds of the Republican insiders in those two states think Tom Cotton and his blind followers did the smart thing.
Think about that.
Four in five insiders believe that the recent dominance of foreign policy hurts the presidential hopes of Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.).
Paul was one of 47 members to sign the letter — along with Ted Cruz (Texas), Marco Rubio (Fla.), and Lindsey Graham (S.C.). Several likely presidential candidates outside the Senate have enthusiastically backed the letter as well, including Bobby Jindal, Rick Perry and Rick Santorum. Jeb Bush neither endorsed nor condemned the letter — saying only that the senators are “reacting to reports of a bad deal,” and the administration should have done more to communicate along the way.
But Paul has cultivated a reputation as a non-interventionist, and his father is widely considered even more of an isolationist. Doubts persist, despite his efforts to reassure Jewish donors, that he would not try to cut off foreign aid to Israel, as he suggested in the past.
“While he has moderated his position on several foreign policy issues, if this election becomes about foreign policy and national security — and I believe it will — Rand Paul loses,” said a New Hampshire Republican.“It shows how flawed Rand Paul’s theory of the case was coming into 2016,” added another. “Hawks are back in vogue, and he is the odd man out, regardless of signing the letter.”
Not that he won’t destroy what little remains of his integrity as he tries to prove otherwise.
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QOTW: A Republican
by digby
“We really don’t have 218 votes to determine a bathroom break over here on our side. So how are we going to get 218 votes on transportation, or trade, or whatever the issue?”
This is your GOP majority for you.
Sadly the public probably just says “Washington is a mess” and doesn’t try to sort out what’s actually going on. I don’t blame them. It’s depressing. But if it did, don’t you think they’d probably think this admission undercuts the GOP’s whining about the tyrant in the White House? After all, they admit they are so dysfunctional they can’t even muster their own party to do the basic job of congressional governance. Shouldn’t we be sort of relieved that somebody’s doing something?
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