Month: June 2015

Catholic deja vu vu

by digby

Grab a cup of cocoa and sit down with this fantastically interesting piece from Jeet Heer at The New Republic about the American conservative Catholic rebellion against Pope Francis and a little history they probably don’t want to remember:

Catholic politicians who loudly proclaim their religious devotion but try to waive away Encyclicals, combined with lay Catholics fantasizing about dropping out of American society—are evidence that rightwing American Catholicism is undergoing a profound crisis. Yet this crisis is not completely novel. To a remarkable degree, it was anticipated by the tumult of the 1960s, when Catholic conservatives associated with National Review struggled to battle both Vatican teaching and the rise of social liberalism.

The story of the shake-up of the 1960s church will offer little comfort to contemporary right-wing Catholics, since it is a tale of alienation, abandoned ideals, and powerful minds that severed their moorings from reality. Yet this story so strongly parallels contemporary concerns that it might offer clues as to how the Catholic right will deal with its current dilemmas.

Heer takes us back to the 1950s and 60s when William F. Buckley and Garry Wills rebelled against an earlier encyclical’s alleged lack of anti-communist fervor and then watched as liberal Catholics rebelled against all those prohibitions against sex and all hell broke loose, so to speak.

And then there were the drop-outs:

While Buckley and Wills worked out arguments to diminish the impact of encyclicals, Buckley’s brother-in-law L. Brent Bozell went off in a different direction, seceding from mainstream American society. Like Buckley, Bozell had little use for encyclicals like Mater et Magistra or the general drift of Catholic liberals, whom he accused of denying “the mysterious ravages of original sin, the relevance of divine redemption, the subordination of matter to spirit.”

But for Bozell, the alternative to this weak-tea Catholicism had to be found by leaving America and going to a genuinely Christian country, Spain, then ruled by the fascist dictator Generalissimo Francisco Franco. Bozell moved to Spain in 1961 with his wife Trish and their kids. As Trish would recall, “It was in Spain that [Brent’s] hunger for a Christian society took seed. In Spain he was swept away … by the concept of Christendom. Where before he was a dedicated Catholic, he [now] became a Catholic who believed that all thinking, all action, no matter where and when, should be rooted in Catholicism.”

Although the Bozells would return to the United States, their experience in an immersively Catholic society left an indelible impression, one that deepened after he started the Christian Commonwealth Institute in 1970, a summer school that in its early years met annually in Spain. The powerful hold that Spain had on Bozell’s imagination disconnected from the American reality. He started a magazine called Triumph which became a hotbed of harsh critiques of society. In the manner of the New Left, Triumph would sometimes spell America with a “k,” suggesting that the country was inherently fascist. In a 1968 essay called “The Death of the Constitution” Bozell argued the founding document of the republic was inherently flawed because it didn’t mention God.

“The constitution has not only failed,” Bozell contended, “it was bound to fail. The architects of our constitutional order built a house in which secular liberalism could live, and given the dominant urges of the age, would live. The time has come to leave that house and head for home.”

If only …

Read on. The whole thing is just riveting. Maybe you all knew this but it’s a chapter in conservative history of which I was only vaguely aware and I’m thrilled to have read this piece and learned about it.

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They love him they really, really love him

by digby

From today’s New York Times:

Unencumbered by the artifice and awkwardness entailed in not quite campaigning for the last six months, Mr. Bush on Tuesday seemed a different kind of presidential candidate: disarmingly playful and noticeably relaxed, quick to joke and eager to connect.

Who Is Running for President (and Who’s Not)?As she neared the door, Mr. Bush mischievously singled her out. “You’ve left!” he said.

“Sorry,” she replied, “got to work.”

Mr. Bush’s wry response: “Well, I’m glad you got a job.”

The audience erupted into laughter and applause.

They erupted! He is so darned playful.

Meanwhile from Chris Cillizza in the Washington Post:

Time and time again I have heard stories from people working or going to work for Clinton that she is “totally different” in private than in public. She’s funny! She’s sarcastic! She’s relaxed! She’s unscripted! You would love her!

And yet, Clinton’s public persona never seems to match those effusive descriptions. She is remarkably guarded, overly serious and, most dangerous of all, deeply cautious about what she says and does. That’s all the more remarkable given both her deep and impressive resume as well as her status as an overwhelming favorite to be the Democratic nominee in 2016.

Again, Lehigh:

With a little candor, some spontaneity, a dash of Joe Biden’s tell-it-like-it-is impulse, she could be a captivating candidate. Instead, she’s conducting a classic frontrunner’s campaign, rhetorically focused on the general election, even while intent on finessing any issues that might give her Democratic rivals an opening.

It’s possible that she has been “Hillary Clinton” for so long, that it’s literally impossible for her to be just plain Hillary Clinton in public anymore. Whether you like Hillary Clinton or not, it’s hard to argue that she’s been picked over by other politicians, the media and the public in a way few other public figures have. Her allies, citing that fact, argue that her cautious and guarded approach to how she presents herself publicly is not a choice but a necessity born of the way she’s been treated over the years. Once you’ve been raked over the coals 10 times, you stop walking anywhere near the coals. 

Those experiences may make Clinton into what I was as a high school basketball player: Great (ok, good) in practice, terrible in games. As in, when she is in her comfort zone, surrounded by friends and people who work for her, Clinton can be herself. And, she can even accept the guidance from that group that she should be a little less scripted and cautious when in public. But, when she gets around strangers and the media, she reverts back to what she knows — a caution bordering on paranoia.

But that public persona is deeply problematic for Clinton as she tries to convince voters that she represents the future not the past. In order to sell that argument, Clinton has to find ways — ways that go beyond just words — to show that the things people didn’t like about the Clintons in the 1990s are in the rear view mirror and that she is a new and improved version of herself.

Basically, unlike the relaxed and congenial Jeb!, Clinton’s an frigid old bag who needs to prove that she’s human because nobody believes it. Surprise. Women in authority are usually one of two things: frigid bitch or crazy hysteric. Either way, you don’t win.

This harping on how she has to “prove” she isn’t the candidate of the past and giving this fatuous “advice” about how to be more likeable has some very unpleasant echoes of the last campaign when the press behaved like a bunch of halfwit  Dr. Phils:

MATTHEWS: Hillary Clinton, this question of tearing up, is this now become part of the story line of this campaign?

JILL ZUCKMAN (Chicago Tribune reporter): You’re not suggesting that she teared up on purpose in order to win tomorrow, are you? I —

MATTHEWS: Well, you have that interesting grin on your face as you ask that question.

ZUCKMAN: I’ve got to say, I think that when people tear up, they tear up. I don’t think you can really turn it on and off very easily. I mean, she doesn’t —

MATTHEWS: She’s not a method actress.

ZUCKMAN: I don’t think she’s really someone who cries very easily, and we certainly haven’t seen much of it in the past.

MATTHEWS: I’m going to suspend my judgment until Gene has spoken.

ROBINSON: No, with some people it’s sad movies; with some people, they see a puppy, they want to — with Hillary Clinton, it’s a —

[crosstalk]

MATTHEWS: It’s me, I cry in movies. It works for me.

ROBINSON: — it’s an impending primary. It just breaks her down.

MATTHEWS: I usually cry at heroic scenes when somebody does something really great in the movies that you don’t expect them to.

Margaret, what is your judgment on the veracity, the verisimilitude, the genuine nature of that scene we just saw of Senator Clinton where she was obvious — well, she was taken to some extent with a very warm greeting from an old classmate?

CARLSON: I think the tears are genuine. I think the cause is maybe different than just going back to a place she once worked where she has good memories and they welcomed her. But that she’s extremely fatigued — as they all are — under tremendous pressure. Because the pressure isn’t just from without, the pressure is from within. “What are you doing wrong? Why can’t you fix it? Maybe you should cry more often.” All those kinds of things inside a campaign. And then the very thing she thought was hers. Remember, she was inevitable. Everyone around her told her that. And now she sees it not as inevitable and receding possibly from her grasp, and it’s very distressing. I would cry, too.

MATTHEWS: You know, I wonder what we’re focusing more on this than we would if it were a male candidate…

I still laugh when I see that. (But don’t worry, I’m not laughing hysterically. Just being “playful.” )

Look, being an old bag may very well end up being a problem for Clinton. But no matter what, being the first woman presidential nominee of one of the two major American political parties is more than a little bit of a “break with the past”: it’s fucking unprecedented.

I know the Village thinks that’s irrelevant. To them it’s all about whether Clinton is warm and fuzzy enough or tough and resilient enough or too cold or too soft or some other permutation of her personality, which they always find lacking in some regard. Cillizza seems to think that her age and the fact that she’s been in politics just as long as say … oh, George Bush or John McCain or John Kerry or Mitt Romney were when they ran — or Jeb Bush or John Kasich or Lindsay Graham — all of whom were major political figures at either the Governor or congressional level in the 1990s. Graham was a House Impeachment manager! Kasich was in the House leadership at the time. Bush as Governor of Florida famously greased the skids for his brother’s dubious election victory. There are quite a few people who remember those times and place blame for all that ugliness at their feet not Hillary Clintons. There’s nothing unprecedented about a bunch of (male) Republicans turning our democracy into a sewer. In fact, they didn’t stop in 1999. They’re going stronger than ever. 

I don’t recall this obsessiveness about any of those Republicans “representing the politics of the past” and how they have to demonstrate that they are with it and now and happening. In fact, as I pointed out in this Salon piece yesterday, they are often feted as men of stature and maturity. Jeb certainly is. They love him for his “playfulness” and they love him for his sober maturity and long experience. It’s all good for him. McCain took some heat for his age, but he wasn’t trolled every day in the press about having to answer for everything we hated about the politics of the 1980s and 90s. He was there, right in the middle of all of it, as national figure too.

Putting Hillary Clinton on the couch has long been one of the beltway media’s favorite pastimes. She fascinates them and I would guess it’s largely because she somehow manages to survive despite their absolute assurance that she cannot possibly do it. If they were half as fascinated by our dysfunctional system and how and why it got that way we might have a chance of doing something about it. Unfortunately, that would require them to take some responsibility for it. They’ve been right in the middle of this mess for a very long time and they have never learned a thing.

Cillizza is a good reporter and I often enjoy what he writes. But this tiresome hobby horse about Clinton needing to show her “true self” and disprove that she’s a relic of the past is certainly not one of his better insights:

h/t to @PCalith

Golly, maybe somebody ought to talk to Jeb about proving that he isn’t a relic of the past.

Finally, a voice of reason

by digby

“Key to conservative’s victory is to do our own vetting of each candidate. That means we ignore the media’s participation in the liberals’ Pantsuit Politics of Personal Destruction. THEN, on an even playing field, in 2016 we charge forward after the radical left hears America shout, ‘You’re fired!’” — Sarah Palin

I’m guessing “Pantsuit Politics of Personal Destruction” has something to do with Clinton but I can’t quite grok it exactly.

She was welcoming Trump into the race, by the way.

I’m sure they’ll “get them” this time

by digby

Some of us have always known Benghazi! was a patented “Clinton Scandal.” Now they’re not even trying to hide it.  Michael Tomasky recaps the recent shenanigans and then writes:

[T]his committee’s real job is to get Clinton.

Let’s mention high up what is the main point here. This “investigation” now constitutes openly and defiantly urinating on the grave of Amb. Stevens. Many diplomats and friends of Stevens’s are aghast at this. “It’s a desecration of Chris’s memory,” says his old friend Daniel Seidemann, the American-born and Jerusalem-based peace activist who got to know Stevens during the latter’s time in Israel. “That this should be the ‘reward’ for the finest American public servant I ever met is a sad commentary on the decay of political culture in the United States. Shameless.”

Robert Ford, the courageous former ambassador to Syria, told me: “Chris Stevens cared deeply about the people of the Middle East and North Africa, and about helping them build better futures for themselves and their families and about building better relations between them and the United States. Those goals weren’t Republican or Democratic. Using his tragic death, and the deaths of his dedicated colleagues, for partisan, tear-down political gain minimizes the importance of their deaths and the issues with which they were grappling. It’s really an insult to demean them this way.”

“It seems obvious that my appearance before this committee was for one reason and one reason only,” Blumenthal told me Tuesday night. “And that was politics.”
Daniel Serwer, who was a special envoy to Bosnia in the 1990s, didn’t even know Stevens but feels similarly. “There really isn’t anything to be investigated about the incident itself until they get someone who was personally responsible for the attack on the U.S. facilities,” Serwer says. “In the meanwhile, they are going after Hillary Clinton. Does anyone think they would be doing that if she were not a candidate for president?”

The committee’s motivation has always been obvious, but it became undeniably so on Monday, when Politico ran a piece headlined “Beyond Benghazi.” The gist of it was that committee chairman Trey Gowdy has now expanded the scope of the probe to include “the administration’s entire policy toward Libya, not just the brief period before and after the Benghazi attacks of September 11, 2012.” Why would Gowdy be doing this? Gowdy told Politico, referring to the White House and State Department: “They believe we’re supposed to be Benghazi-centered, looking at a couple of days on either side of the Benghazi attacks. But the language of the [House] resolution is pretty clear: We’re to examine all policies and decisions that led to the attacks.” “All policies” can include virtually anything—the decision under NATO’s banner to intervene in Libya in the first place, and everything that happened thereafter.

In other words—Gowdy’s investigators have come up empty on the consular attack itself, but their assignment, undoubtedly never spoken but equally undoubtedly always understood, is to find something that will keep Clinton out of the White House. And so the net will now be cast far more widely.

He recaps the evolution in Gowdy’s rhetoric over this matter and then concludes:

The point of all this was obvious: It was to see if they could lure Blumenthal into saying one thing that might in some way contradict anything Clinton has said publicly or will say to the committee. The committee’s staff knows very well that the media will pounce on any inconsistency, happily keeping the grassy-knoll narrative about Blumenthal as the Clinton whisperer bouncing along, without pausing for a moment to examine Gowdy and the committee’s actions and motivations, or God forbid to demand that these people stop spending taxpayer money—$3.5 million so far, with an estimate that it could run up to $6 million—on this obviously political hunt for scalps, or one particular scalp.

There’s a scandal going on here all right. It’s just not the one the press thinks.

It’s just not the one the press wants. There, I fixed that for him.

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QOTD: Bush’s Brain

by digby

Aka “Turdblossom”

We have a second tier which includes people like Ted Cruz and Governor [Rick] Perry and Ben Carson and maybe a couple of others. And one or two, you know, one or, Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum. Maybe one of those gets into the top tier. But right now they’re on the second tier.

And then we’ve got sort of the third tier which are people who really are unlikely to break through. They’re good people, some of them, but they’re unlikely to break through. Or, in the case of Donald Trump, they’re complete idiots.

I won’t even bring up the fact that their “2nd tier” includes Carson, Cruz, Huckabee and Santorum. That speaks for itself.

But the idea that Karl Rove is calling a presidential candidate a “complete idiot” is really rich.

“We’ll let our friends be the peacekeepers and the great country called America will be the pacemakers.”—Houston, Sept. 6, 2000

“I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family.”—Greater Nashua, N.H., Chamber of Commerce, Jan. 27, 2000

“Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?”—Florence, S.C., Jan. 11, 2000

“One of the great things about books is sometimes there are some fantastic pictures.”—U.S. News & World Report, Jan. 3, 2000

“It’s important for us to explain to our nation that life is important. It’s not only life of babies, but it’s life of children living in, you know, the dark dungeons of the Internet.”—Arlington Heights, Ill., Oct. 24, 2000

“Well, I think if you say you’re going to do something and don’t do it, that’s trustworthiness.”—CNN online chat, Aug. 30, 2000

“Families is where our nation finds hope, where wings take dream.”—LaCrosse, Wis., Oct. 18, 2000

“There’s a huge trust. I see it all the time when people come up to me and say, ‘I don’t want you to let me down again.’ “—Boston, Oct. 3, 2000

You’ll note that he said these things before the 2000 election. And he didn’t get any smarter.

Not that I’m defending Trump, but some people should never call anyone a complete idiot in public. It just reminds everyone of what they did to the country.

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Your modern “moderate” in action

by digby

Otherwise known as a bucket of warm spit:

Asked if she hoped the court would rule for the plaintiffs, Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, paused a moment, then said: “Yes, I guess I do. It would provide an opportunity to transition to a new law, or an improved version of the Affordable Care Act.” But she added, “I don’t think it would be fair to cut off people who have been using Obamacare subsidies.”

She hopes the Court rules against the subsidies but doesn’t think it would be fair to cut off people who have been using the subsidies. That’s just daft.Especially the part about how it will provide and opportunity to transition to an improved version of Obamacare. Because that’s what all those votes to repeal it were all about.Right.

Nobody really knows what the Republicans are going to do about all this if the Supremes nix the subsidies. There is a ton of speculation out there and the GOP is anything but resolved about how to proceed.

But Greg Sargent has been following this very closely and has found at least one talking point around which they seem to be rallying. It’s as fatuous as you might expect: they are saying that whatever they do it will be to “protect” the Obamacare recipients. Which sounds good until you hear the next part: from the terrible Obamacare law.

Here are a few examples:

Senator John Barasso: “Every Republican has great concerns about the law. I want to do nothing to protect this law. I do want to protect the people who have found that they thought they were following the law and now find out the president is acting illegally.”

Senator Mitch McConnell: “Depending on what the Supreme Court decides, we’ll have a proposal that protects the American people from a very bad law. […] What we will do is offer a proposal to protect the American people.”

.@Senate_GOPs are working hard to help those hurt by Obamacare, which is a fundamentally flawed system. #BrokenPromises— Senator John Thune (@SenJohnThune) June 8, 2015

As Sargent wrote:

Republicans will argue that the post-King chaos is the fault of the law itself, and not the fault of the Court decision (which Republicans urged on) that is knocking out a key pillar of it. In this telling, the cause of all the damage will be that Obamacare held out the false promise of economic security for millions, in the form of expanded coverage, but that security was then snatched out from under all those people (thanks to Obummer’s incompetence) when the Court clarified what the law actually says. All this is only the latest way in which Obamacare is hurting countless Americans.

It sounds pretty lame to me but I’ve often observed that the Republicans, being completely without shame and totally comfortable with hypocrisy, take special delight in such word games. They know it’s absurd but that’s what makes it so great: they tire the Democrats up in knots trying to untangle the absurdity.

Here’s the most perfect example of this I’ve seen in years:

No shame: Democrats “appear eager” to play “shutdown politics,” block a military pay raise. http://t.co/UpAqJLtvUE— Speaker John Boehner (@SpeakerBoehner) June 16, 2015

You just have to laugh. And then cry because these guys have real power and they are using it.

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“Nothing matters if we aren’t safe”

by digby

Marco Rubio was too busy campaigning yesterday to vote on it, but just in case anyone worried that he might not be depraved enough to be a Republican president he issued a statement strongly supporting the use of torture :

As for the amendment, Rubio said in a statement: “I would have voted no on this amendment. I do not support telegraphing to the enemy what interrogation techniques we will or won’t use.” He added that he doesn’t want to deny “future commanders in chief and intelligence officials important tools for protecting the American people and the U.S. homeland.”

If that doesn’t spell out the fact that any future president who feels like it will use torture secure in the knowledge that nothing will happen if they do it. There were laws against torture in place before they did it and there are more laws in place now. it means nothing if there is no enforcement mechanism. And there isn’t.

Simon Maloy spells out what you can expect if a Republican returns to the White House:

This pro-torture stance is part of Rubio’s broader campaign to be the new president of the new century that revives literally every bad foreign policy and national security decision from the Bush administration. It’s also in keeping with Rubio’s very Bush-like focus on “security” as being the first and only determining factor in what American policy should be – “Nothing Matters If We Aren’t Safe,” as the Rubio campaign slogan puts it.

“Nothing matter is we aren’t safe…” There you go. That excuses any breach of human decency, law and norm. Because I hate to break the news to people, you will never be perfectly safe. We used to be a mature enough society to understand that. But now that we have the Daddy Party infantilizing us, a whole lot of Americans are so easily frightened they just want to suck their thumbs and hear a nice bedtime story about what good girls and boys they are.

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The business of business
by Tom Sullivan

President Calvin Coolidge once said, “The chief business of the American people is business.” But in examining the debate over the Trans-Pacific Partnership, Trade Promotion Authority, etc., one can see the business of business is not America.

It was clear last week that the TPP and TPA (fast track) were not dead, but unlike Monty Python’s parrot, really just resting. Politico reports on maneuvers by House Speaker John Boehner and Republican leaders to revive fast track:

Under the emerging plan, the House would vote on a bill that would give Obama fast-track authority to negotiate a sweeping trade deal with Pacific Rim countries, sending it to the Senate for final approval. To alleviate Democratic concerns, the Senate then would amend a separate bill on trade preferences to include Trade Adjustment Assistance, a worker aid program that Republicans oppose but that House Democrats have blocked to gain leverage in the negotiations over fast-track.

Decoupling TAA and TPA might be a non-starter with many Democrats. But the political mechanics are not as interesting as the broader trajectory of dealings between government and business.

In any of these deals, no matter what the promised benefits, the general public always seems to come out holding the short end of the stick. You can smell it. Somebody is going to make a lot of money. It’s just never us. We get to do the paying.

The Guardian reported Monday that an International Monetary Fund study concluded that “trickle down” doesn’t. What a surprise:

A report by five IMF economists dismissed “trickle-down” economics, and said that if governments wanted to increase the pace of growth they should concentrate on helping the poorest 20% of citizens.

The study – covering advanced, emerging and developing countries – said technological progress, weaker trade unions, globalisation and tax policies that favoured the wealthy had all played their part in making widening inequality “the defining challenge of our time”.

The IMF report said the way income is distributed matters for growth. “If the income share of the top 20% increases, then GDP growth actually declines over the medium term, suggesting that the benefits do not trickle down. In contrast, an increase in the income share of the bottom 20% is associated with higher GDP growth,” said the report.

But the bottom 20% by definition do not have lobbyists or the deep pockets to pay them. Business leaders who do ask our permission (nominally, via elected government) to line their pockets, promising that those on the bottom will be better off in the long run. They just never say when that is. Yet they never seem to have trouble convincing a lot of politicians that helping them is helping their constituents. Business always seems to have hired the best negotiators. Government officials at best think themselves too smart to be snookered yet are, and routinely enough to think it is planned.

Here is a little object lesson in how international business does deals. I have written before about how Public-Private Partnerships (P3s) tend to be head-I-win, tails-you-lose affairs when states enter into them.

This video just popped up of a public forum in North Carolina. Robert Brawley is a former Republican state representative who opposed (now U.S.senator) Thom Tillis’ P3 deal with Spain-based Cintra to install and operate toll lanes on I-77 north of Charlotte. The deal will extract millions of dollars, if not billions, from the state and local economy and send them out of the country for decades. That is, if the project doesn’t go bankrupt first (as many have), leaving taxpayers on the hook for the default. (You can read my op-ed on that here.) For his opposition, Brawley got defeated in a 2014 primary.

Brawley asserts that P3s were developed in third-world countries “as a way for the rulers to funnel public funds to their friends.” He discusses the ins and outs of the I-77 project, the lack of local support, and the corruption surrounding deals of this type worldwide. (His experience in Turkey is illuminating. Timestamp 1:35)

This is where the policy rubber meets the road (no pun intended). Listen as members of the general public, average Americans, try to wrap their brains around why this sort of deal makes any kind of sense for their community and why elected leaders could believe it a responsible policy that would benefit their constituents.

For the grifter class, Matt Taibbi wrote, government is “a tool for making money,” while “in everybody-else land, the government is something to be avoided.” Is it any wonder why people are skeptical of the Trans-Pacific Partnership and trade deals following in its wake? They are not written to benefit us. We just get to be fleeced.

The wingnut argument against the ACA in a nutshell

by digby

For supposedly religious people it’s quite odd they have never heard the old saying “there but for the grace of God go I.”

They actually believe that the people who could not afford health insurance were lazy. I wonder about the one’s who couldn’t get it because they were sick? Should they work two jobs too?

That was in response to this from Greg Sargent, btw.

Your good news of the day

by digby

Only 21 Senators (all Republicans) voted not to ban torture that isn’t in the Army Field Manual today. (Yes, the AFM allows torture like solitary confinement…)

Lest you think this is a huge deal, torture was already illegal when the Bush administration did it so there’s little reason to believe that anything would stop a future administration from ordering it too or that anyone would object to doing it if they were so ordered. It’s not as if anyone is ever punished for ordering it or perpetrating it. It’s more of a guideline than a law.

Still, it’s somewhat comforting to know that 80% of our Senators wanted to make a symbolic gesture saying they don’t think torture is something we should do (unless we really, really think we need to.) So that’s good.

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