Month: October 2015

The GOP increasingly believes they have the election in the bag

by digby

I forced myself to watch some wingnut TV last night — Fox, OAN and Newsmax  — and it’s clear that they all believe the election is in the bag no matter which Republican gets the nomination. Or, at least that’s what they are saying.

Why? Well, because that dreamy Republican FBI Chief James Comey is going to put Hillary Clinton in jail:

Comey appears fearless. As a kid, he was held hostage by a gunman during a home invasion; with his younger brother, he escaped twice, only to be caught again. This is the kind of straight arrow that Mrs. Clinton does not want on her case, and that Attorney General Loretta Lynch may not be able to corral. Asked by Scott Pelley during the 60 Minutes piece whether he didn’t have a duty to support President Bush on the eavesdropping matter, Comey answered, “No, my responsibility, I took an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

What could bring Hillary down? According to some who have followed the case closely, Mrs. Clinton could be charged with breaking several laws, including willfully transmitting or retaining Top Secret material using a private server, unauthorized removal of classified information from government control or storing such information in an unauthorized location, lying to Congress, destruction of government property (wiping the server), lying under oath to a judge about having given the government all her emails or obstruction of justice.

There is no evidence that the FBI is even investigating Clinton much less suspecting any of that but it’s an article of faith that she will be indicted before the election is even held and then the whole country will vote in whatever Republican is on the ballot pretty much by acclamation. Then Democrats will all admit they’ve always been wrong, wrong, wrong and let the Republicans run everything as God intended. Just so you know.

I did enjoy this though:

That dogged quest for justice and independence streak may come to haunt Hillary Clinton. Comey’s credibility expands when he warns Americans to be “deeply skeptical of government power,” as he did in a 60 Minutes interview. He cautioned, “You cannot trust people in power,” noting that the “founders knew that. That’s why they divided power among three branches, to set interest against interest.” Pressed to reassure the nation about the FBI’s surveillance activities, Comey confirmed “The promise I’ve tried to honor my entire career, that the rule of law and the design of the founders, right, the oversight of the courts and the oversight of Congress will be at the heart of what the FBI does.”

There’s certainly no reason to question whether a police agency injecting itself into the middle of an election might be suspect at all, though. No “government power” run amok there. That’s just upstanding law enforcement. But then Republicans pretty much insist on doing that sort of thing whenever they can get away with it so maybe they’ll do it this time too.

Recall the US Attorney scandal?

One of the fired prosecutors, David Iglesias of New Mexico, testified that he felt “leaned on” by Sen. Pete Domenici over a case he was pursuing. Iglesias said the New Mexico Republican and former mentor hung up on him after learning Iglesias would not seek indictments in a criminal investigation of Democrats before the 2006 election. “He said, ‘Are these going to be filed before November?'” Iglesias recalled. “I said I didn’t think so… to which he replied, ‘I’m very sorry to hear that.’ And then the line went dead. “I had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach,” Iglesias testified. “Six weeks later I got the call that I had to move on.” The ousted prosecutor also said that Heather Wilson, a Republican House member from New Mexico, had called him about the same issue.

Using whatever means necessary whether it’s calling bogus voter fraud, closing polling stations or indicting opposition politicians on flimsy charges is a legitimate democratic process in their eyes. If Comey and the FBI are good partisan Republicans they’ll help out any way they can. And that means they may not be able to press charges but you can bet they’ll leak misleading information to feed the hungry little birdies in the press and the wingnut mob.

Anyway, this is what the wingnuts see as their “trump” card and they are very, very confident they’ve got the win.

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Paul Ryan is now free to let the House freak flag fly

by digby

Here’s Social Security Works on the budget deal:

Statement on Budget Act of 2015

“Last night, the Republican leadership agreed to release their hostages: the need to raise the debt limit, the need to keep the government operating, and the need to ensure that all Social Security benefits can continue to be paid in full and on time beyond 2016. When hostage takers release their hostages, we are, of course, relieved that the hostages are no longer in harm’s way, but this is nothing to celebrate. That the ransom isn’t steeper is also not something to celebrate.

Among the ransom is a diversion of Social Security resources towards virtually nonexistent fraud. Those provisions will likely require workers with disabilities to wait longer to receive their earned benefits and may prevent some from receiving their earned benefits completely. That is wrong. The legislation has some good provisions, along with the ransom. It does ensure that Medicare beneficiaries will not experience drastically large premium increases. It also closes a loophole that was introduced in the law relatively recently that allows wealthier Americans to game the system by claiming extra benefits inconsistent with the goals of the program. Though some provisions are positive, Social Security legislation, as a matter of principle, should go through regular order, in the light of day.

If that were done, Social Security would be expanded. As the overwhelming majority of Americans recognize, Social Security’s one shortcoming is that its benefits are too low. Congress should follow the will of the people by expanding those modest but vital benefits and restore the program to long range actuarial balance by requiring the wealthiest among us to pay their fair share.”

The best and simplest budget agreement would be to formally lift sequestration altogether and go from there. These ongoing “trade-offs” will continue to have a stranglehold on government until they are.But what they’ve come up with could be worse. The above statement from SSW is signed by Nancy Altman who told Greg Sargent this morning:

On Medicare and Social Security: Nancy Altman, the president of Social Security Works, a group that strenuously opposes benefits cuts and argues for their expansion, tells me that the deal “doesn’t actually cut benefits or really hurt beneficiaries who aren’t gaming the system.”

Altman says the Medicare cuts are all on the provider side, which could harm beneficiaries at some point, but it’s not a major concern. “On the Medicare side, they limited their cuts to far in the future, and to providers,” Altman says. “There’s time to correct that.”

On the change to Social Security, Altman says: “They stiffened the penalties for fraud, they extended nationwide efforts to make sure that payments are accurate and they closed a loophole in which people were gaming the system. They didn’t change eligibility requirements or reduce the level of benefits.”

Altman notes that Republicans had been threatening to demand serious Social Security and Medicare cuts in exchange for raising the debt limit, but adds this threat has been defused. “The hostage has been released,” Altman says.

That is about as positive an endorsement you are going to get from an expert who has been working in the “entitlement” trenches protecting the programs for years.

We can now see why Ryan was willing to take the job. If Boehner can successfully take the basic requirements to keep the government running off the table Ryan can indulge his Freedom Caucus with endless witch hunts and crazy maneuvers for two whole years before any chickens come home to roost. If they ever do. Get ready for a very theatrical political freak show to try to appease the rubes. It’s what they really want.  Planned Parenthood is up next.

Update: Brian Beutler at TNR

Democrats didn’t force Republicans to abandon the strict limits they won on annual appropriations. They acceded to Republicans that sequestration will act as a control on government spending at a more universal level. Democrats can secure relief from sequestration for a year or two at a time, but only by drawing on other government resources to pay for it, and only by extending the caps into the future, preserving downward pressure on the budget indefinitely into the future.

Sequestration was intended to prod Republicans and Democrats into agreement on a plan to increase taxes and hold down social spending, so that the federal budget, and all of the legislative landmines it contains, would be deweaponized for a decade. Indiscriminate cuts to non-defense spending were meant to motivate Democrats to accept more tailored cuts to programs like Social Security; indiscriminate cuts to defense spending were meant to motivate Republicans to accept higher taxes on affluent Americans. But it was badly calibrated. Democrats (and even some Republicans) failed to grasp that conservative opposition to taxes runs much deeper than support for military spending. After months of wrangling, Republicans decided to pocket sequestration cuts as a victory in and of itself. Democrats must now concede entitlement cuts or other mandatory spending cuts to Republicans in exchange for temporary sequestration relief. Tax expenditures for wealthy Americans remain as exorbitant as ever.

There’s no easy way out of this trap for Democrats. A big electoral victory in 2017 might cow Republicans into renegotiating the budget in a more thoroughgoing way. But it’s more likely that Republicans will continue to control the House and hold on to sequestration as a perennial source of leverage until single-party control is restored.

Who’s putting those crazy thoughts in Ben Carson’s head?

by digby

I wrote about Ben Carson’s muse today for Salon:

The Black Brigade or Black Regiment were the preachers, because they wore black robes. Black preachers, white preachers — they all wore black robes. And the British specifically blamed the preachers for the American Revolution. That’s where the title “Black Regiment” came from. One of the British officials talked about that.

It’s interesting that the British so hated what the preachers — they claim if it hadn’t been for the preachers, America would still be a happy British colony. So they blamed it on the preachers.

When they come to America, they start to decimating churches. They went to New York City. Nineteen churches — they burned 10 to the ground. They went across Virginia burning churches. They went across New Jersey burning churches. Because they blamed these preachers.

“Did you know the Founding Fathers had extensive writings on the problems with evolution and why creationism was right?” Barton asked. “You think evolution came in with Darwin? No, no, no. Everything Darwin argued had been established 500 years B.C. All Darwin did was take all the evolutionary thought that was out there and put it in one book to make it really easy to read. That wasn’t original thinking by Darwin. It was there by 500 B.C. That’s why the Founding Fathers had huge writings on evolution and creation”

More at the link…

Democratic Pros and Cons-ervatives
by Tom Sullivan

Bernie Sanders got his close-up last night with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow. There was nothing new policy-wise.

However, Sanders and Maddow discussed at length his 1996 vote on the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which then-President Clinton signed. Sanders challenged Hillary Clinton’s claim last week that President Clinton signed DOMA because he believed there was “enough political momentum” to amend the constitution [with regard to marriage], and that signing DOMA (as well as “Don’t ask, don’t tell” and the crime bill headed off worse outcomes. “You can’t say that DOMA was passed in order to prevent something worse,” Sanders said. In an indirect swipe at Hillary Clinton (who was not an elected official at the time), Sanders asserted that he made the tough choices when they were tough choices.

Maddow asked what Sanders would do as the Democratic Party’s nominee to help Democrats win more down-ticket races and take back state legislatures and governorships. Democrats got hammered in 2010 and 2014 off-year elections. Sanders cited the contributors and volunteers who have turned out in large numbers to help his campaign. “The reason that I think I can help the entire Democratic Party at the head of the ticket is we have got to increase voter turnout. We’ve got to get low-income workers. We’ve got to get young people to stand up and fight back and get involved in the political process. And I think I can do that.” Campaign 101.

Sanders did provide some insight into how his campaign is developing. It has grown so fast at this “crazy level” that he has not been able to “staff up appropriately,” he said. Maddow noted that while polling ahead or close to Secretary Clinton in New Hampshire and Iowa, Bloomberg has Sanders is polling 43 points behind Clinton in South Carolina. Sanders admitted he has “a lot of work to do, specifically, in the African-American community and the Latino community … we still have a long way to go.”

My concern with both Clinton and Sanders if either is elected is that the Obama administration’s obstructionist Republican congress quickly will become a saboteur congress. It is a clown car now. But with a woman or a “democratic socialist”? Being able to cope with that reaction and get anything accomplished will take political skills, moxie, and significant gains in both the House and Senate. The question is which candidate is best positioned both to win and to do that?

The upside to the Sanders campaign, as he mentioned, is the tens of thousands of volunteers and donors who have mobilized behind his campaign, including young people. Increasing voter turnout as Sanders hopes put Barack Obama in the White House in 2008 and 2012. But those supporters were not much help when they stayed home in 2010 and 2014 and handed Congress to the T-party. Getting Democratic voters to turn out for a charismatic candidate in a presidential year is one thing. Getting them to turn out again in off-year elections and vote down-ticket races every two years is quite another. The potential downsides to the Sanders campaign is whether or not he can pull together the campaign talent and infrastructure to win nationally and also navigate the arcane party mechanisms needed to secure the nomination in the first place.

The upside to the Clinton campaign is Clinton’s staff will have both down cold. She has been promising DNC members that she wants to revive the party infrastructure that withered under President Barack Obama. Organizing for America point-whatever has been a bust. Super-delegates welcome the return of something resembling Dean’s 50 state plan in hopes that party infrastructure will accomplish more than presidential candidates’ personalities. By mid-September, Clinton had signed joint fundraising agreements with two-thirds of the states. Pledging to rebuild the party “from the ground up” sounds pretty good to Democrats in states controlled by T-party legislatures. The downside to the Clinton campaign is she has yet to ignite the kind of public excitement and enthusiasm Sanders has. And that counts for a lot.

Jebbers

by digby

He’s sticking up for his big brother way beyond anything anyone should expect:

“How he responded to 9/11 was just awe-inspiring”

Isn’t that shock and awe-inspiring? That was the big “response”, after all. But he had more:

The case study of leadership is how George responded to 9/11, period, over and out.”

“And the idea that a candidate could think that they could make political hay to create a new … narrative on the reality on how he led is a joke. People were united. And people really got it that he had a heart for them. At that time, as you know, kids were crying. All around people, children and grandchildren didn’t know what was going on.

“The whole world was turned upside down, and you had a president who was staid and sure and strong.”

New narrative? This was his day, spent reading to kids and flying aimlessly around the country:

Meanwhile:

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Oh look, another witch hunt

by digby

They’re just getting warmed up apparently. This is from David Roberts at Vox:

The thing is: The Benghazi committee is not even the worst committee in the House. I’d argue that the House science committee, under the chairmanship of Lamar Smith (R-TX), deserves that superlative for its open-ended, Orwellian attempts to intimidate some of the nation’s leading scientists and scientific institutions.

The science committee’s modus operandi is similar to the Benghazi committee’s — sweeping, catchall investigations, with no specific allegations of wrongdoing or clear rationale, searching through private documents for out-of-context bits and pieces to leak to the press, hoping to gain short-term political advantage — but it stands to do more lasting long-term damage.

In both cases, the investigations have continued long after all questions have been answered. (There were half a dozen probes into Benghazi before this one.) In both cases, the chair has drifted from inquiry to inquisition. But with Benghazi, the only threat is to the reputation of Hillary Clinton, who has the resources to defend herself. With the science committee, it is working scientists being intimidated, who often do not have the resources to defend themselves, and the threat is to the integrity of the scientific process in the US. It won’t take much for scientists to get the message that research into politically contested topics is more hassle than it’s worth.

This year, Smith was one of the committee chairs granted sweeping new subpoena powers by his fellow House Republicans, what one staffer called “exporting the Issa model.” No longer is the chair required to consult with the ranking member before launching investigations or issuing subpoenas. A spokesperson for Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said, “This change will inevitably [lead] to widespread abuses of power as Republicans infect the other committees with the poisonous process that Issa has so abused during his chairmanship.”

That turned out to be pretty prescient, at least in the case of the science committee. No chair has taken to his new role with as much enthusiasm as Smith.

Read on for the gory details. Awesome rules change, don’t you think? Giving these folks unilateral subpoena power? Excellent.

They aren’t imprisoning them for heresy or tying them up and throwing them in a pond to see if they float. That would be barbaric. They’re just going to ruin them financially and destroy their reputations so they cannot make a living unless they bend to their beliefs.

Progress.

About those birth pangs of freedom

by digby

On CNN this morning Wolf Blitzer featured Fareed Zakaria replying to Donald Trump claiming that things are worse in Iraq and Libya now than they were under Saddam and Ghaddafi:

Zakaria: There’s a powerful argument there to be made. I think this is a kind of position worth hearing out. There’s a kind of old fashioned real politik school in the US that would have alway advocated this.

The trouble is that, as Tony Blair talked about in the documentary, he says ‘look, in Iraq we went in and took out the regime and what followed was chaos and Islamic terrorism. In Libya we went in and didn’t get involved in nation building — chaos and terrorism. In Syria we didn’t do anything, didn’t take out the regime. What has resulted? Chaos and Islamic terrorism.’

The region is in turmoil. So play it out Wolf. If Saddam Hussein was in power and the Arab Spring had broken out and then went to Damascus — you remember that’s what happened it started as a uprising following the Arab spring — it would probably have happened in Iraq as well. The Kurds might have risen, the Shia might have risen. 80% of the country didn’t like Saddam, so it’s quite possible that something very much like Syria would be taking place in Iraq now had Saddam been there. The big difference is the United States would not have owned the problem because it would not have precipitated it.

But wasn’t the idea of the Arab Spring part of the plan? I seem to recall a lot of “let a thousand flowers of democracy grow” and “birth pangs of freedom” stuff being bandied about. That was the idea — we would go into Iraq and show ’em how it’s done and then they would all rise up and become all American-like.

I particularly recall Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice’s characterization of the nature of unrest in the Middle East in the wake of the Iraq invasion:

For weeks, while Israel responded to Hezbollah’s abduction of two soldiers on July 12 by heavy bombing of Lebanon’s infrastructure and Hezbollah rained rockets on Israel, the United States blocked efforts to arrange a cease-fire. On July 21, asked why she had delayed going to the Middle East, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice explained that the devastation represented “the birth pangs of a new Middle East — and whatever we do we have to be certain that we’re pushing forward to the new Middle East, not going back to the old one.”

Here is how the New York Times described the Arab Spring in 2005:

Young protesters have been spurred by the rise of new technology, especially uncensored satellite television, which prevents Arab governments from hiding what is happening on their own streets. The Internet and cellphones have also been deployed to erode censorship and help activists mobilize in ways previous generations never could.

Another factor, pressure from the Bush administration, has emboldened demonstrators, who believe that their governments will be more hesitant to act against them with Washington linking its security to greater freedom after the Sept. 11 attacks. The United States says it will no longer support repressive governments, and young Arabs, while hardly enamored of American policy in the region, want to test that promise.

“Everything happening is taking place in one context, the bankruptcy of the authoritarian regimes and their rejection by the Arab people,” said Michel Kilo, a rare political activist in Damascus. “Democracy is being born and the current authoritarianism is dying.”

Maybe this really is a chicken or the egg question. Zakaria makes an interesting point — it’s chaos in the middle east where we intervened and where we didn’t, where we attempted nation building and where we just deposed the leader and then left it alone. Maybe our intervention caused all this or maybe it would have happened anyway. But I think one thing is clear: our intervention in Iraq certainly didn’t do what they insisted for years that it was intended to do which was to create a more stable middle east and bring democracy to the people. And it was going to be a cakewalk.  That did not happen and right now that goal looks even more remote than before.

Our alleged good intentions notwithstanding, the lesson is that if the goal is to bring peace and democracy to a country not your own, war is unlikely to accomplish it, or at least unlikely to accomplish it without a willingness to stay there fight that war for decades … centuries … at whatever cost to your own country. And even then …

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Oh MoDo

by digby

Oh heck. Joe Biden just threw Maureen Dowd to the wolves:

In an interview with “60 Minutes” that aired on Sunday night, Vice President Joe Biden attacked one of the flashpoints of media coverage surrounding his mulling of a 2016 presidential bid. “[P]eople have written that, you know, Beau on his death bed said, ‘Dad, you’ve got to run,’ and, there was this sort of Hollywood moment that, you know, nothing like that ever, ever happened,” said Biden in an interview alongside his wife, Jill Biden, conducted by CBS News’s Norah O’Donnell.

Though the vice president didn’t single out any reporter by name, it’s a common omission among politicians who bash the media.

On Aug. 1, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd commandeered Beltway conversation with a piece titled, “Joe Biden in 2016: What Would Beau Do?” It told the story of Beau Biden, dying of brain cancer, delivering a message to his father. ” ‘Dad, I know you don’t give a damn about money,’ Beau told him, dismissing the idea that his father would take some sort of cushy job after the vice presidency to cash in. Beau was losing his nouns and the right side of his face was partially paralyzed. But he had a mission: He tried to make his father promise to run, arguing that the White House should not revert to the Clintons and that the country would be better off with Biden values.”

Does that sound like a Hollywood moment? Biden explained to O’Donnell that Beau Biden, who died at age 46, had been a steadfast adviser since he was in his late 20s. “Beau all along thought that I should run and I could win. But there was not what was sort of made out as kind of this Hollywood-esque thing that at the last minute Beau grabbed my hand and said, ‘Dad, you’ve got to run, like, win one for the Gipper.’ It wasn’t anything like that.”

The record left behind by Dowd is almost nonexistent. Like a celebrated, longtime, above-the-fray literary columnist, she didn’t deign to leave sourcing details in her piece, instead preferring her vast sense of authority. “Joe Biden is also talking to friends, family and donors about jumping in. The 72-year-old vice president has been having meetings at his Washington residence to explore the idea of taking on Hillary in Iowa and New Hampshire,” wrote Dowd in a passage that dropped directly from the heavens into the content management system of the New York Times.

That was good enough for the news side of the New York Times, which cited the Dowd piece in a story on a possible Biden run that ran the same day. The lack of transparency in Dowd’s reporting opened itself up to further reporting, as Politico alleged early this month that Biden himself divulged his son’s wish to Dowd. That story, in turn, was based on “multiple sources.”

If it sounds like it’s too good to be true it probably is.

I asked yesterday on twitter when Maureen Dowd is going to be seen as a liability for the New York Times. Her old fashioned sexism is already an embarrassment. Now she’s being called a liar about the facts upon which the news reporters relied. Do they plan to do anything about this?

We don’t know that she lied, of course. Maybe Biden is lying. But I fail to see why he would walk back the story now that he’s out of the race if it were true. Logic says it was Dowd who embellished (at best.) And everyone in DC believed her. Maybe they should stop doing that.

The Big Money Boyz weren’t paying attention

by digby

This is a dispatch from the big Jeb! summit last week-end:

Many of these dedicated Bush supporters are no longer denying that the guest of honor is unable to connect with a GOP electorate that has become increasingly fractured and stridently ideological since — and in reaction to — his brother’s presidency. And increasingly, donors say, they are no longer certain the Bush family can pull Jeb’s campaign out of its downward spiral.

The advent of the tea party and the GOP’s hard lurch to the right, the rejection of the politics of compromise, and the diminishing clout of the Republican National Committee and the party as a whole all are all developments of the post-George W. Bush era. And all are phenomena impeding Jeb Bush’s path to the Republican nomination.

“I look at this party now, and I hardly recognize it,” one Florida-based donor said. “I never would have thought there would be so much mistrust of the establishment that we would prefer candidates who are angry over those who can actually lead.”

Imagine that. After all these years railing at Washington and the political system, all these years of turning politics into a blood sport, all these years of making promises they had no intention of keeping, they just can’t believe the rubes have turned their attention to them.

I just heard John Sununu railing on MSNBC about the voters who need to wake up and care about issues. Like Eminent Domain.

Yep. That’s the ticket …

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QOTD: Ben Carson

by digby

No he didn’t evoke Hitler or slavery. More like Stalin:

CARSON: The way that works is you invite students at the universities to send in their complaints, and then you investigate. For instance, there was a university – I’m sure you’ve heard of the situation – where, you know, the professor told everybody, “Take out a piece of paper and write the name ‘Jesus’ on it. Put in on the floor and stomp on it.” And one student refused to do that and was disciplined severely. You know, he subsequently was able to be reinstated–

TODD: We’re not violating the First Amendment? How is what you’re advocating not a violation of the First Amendment?

CARSON: It’s not a violation of the First Amendment, because all I’m saying is taxpayer funding should not be used for propaganda. It shouldn’t be.

Reminded that Carson’s definition of “propaganda” might look like “free speech” to others, the Republican replied, in a bit of a non-sequitur, “Well, that’s why I said we’re going to have the students send in. And we will investigate.”

This is what happens when the only “news” you pay attention to is talk radio and Brietbart.

Here’s the real “stomping on Jesus” story:

In February 2013, an adjunct instructor at Florida Atlantic University did in fact ask students in his intercultural communications to write the name “Jesus” on a piece of paper and to stomp on it. When a student complained, politicians (including a future Republican presidential candidate, U.S. Senator Marco Rubio) immediately demanded to know what was going on, and many insisted that that adjunct be fired.

But as the university investigated the incident, it revealed that the exercise is from a widely used textbook, and that the point is that students hesitate to actually stand on the piece of paper, and this leads to a discussion of the power of certain words and the way that power is based on cultural values. The university also stated repeatedly that the student who complained was reprimanded for how he treated the instructor, not for objecting to the lesson.

I think what makes carson so appealing, aside from his calm reassuring doctor voice, is that he is so matter of fact about all this stuff. It’s just objective truth as far as he’s concerned, nothing controversial about it. The people who follow him think that way too and cannot understand why anyone thinks there should be an objection. of course you should use the government to investigate schools that have their students stomp on Jesus. What else is government for if not to prevent people from committing sacrilege?