Mark Halperin just declared that on the basis of the excerpts of the upcoming speech, Obama sounds like Michael Dukakis and that nobody is going to be persuaded. Halperin says he’s simply got to do tax cuts or tort reform. Matthews characterized Halperin’s opinion as saying that the speech was “a clinker.”
I would just note that the gasbags almost always think these speeches are clinkers, but the public usually thinks otherwise. But I have to say that I haven’t seen the villagers so dismissive in advance since Clinton faced the congress in the immediate aftermath of the Lewinsky revelations.
I think I’ll reserve judgment until the speech is actually given. It’s odd, I know, but I’m old fashioned about these things.
Update: Spocko writes in to tell me that the drinking game tonight is one shot if he says “reach across the aisle” and two shots for “some on the left.”
I’m guzzling on “big government” and injecting 151 on “make the tax cuts permanent.”
Update II: It actually didn’t occur to me to put “capital gains tax cut” on the list. Should I drown myself in rubbing alcohol?
Update III: Gotta love the GOP failing to stand up for taxing the bankers. I hope the media at least mentions it tomorrow.
Pat Buchanan said on Hardball today that Barack Obama is Ashley Wilkes. Cynthia Tucker was sitting next to him. I would say that was the most hamhanded statement of the day if it weren’t for the fact that the Republican response to the state of the union address is being held in the hall where Jefferson Davis was inaugurated.
I know. It’s hard to believe, but it’s true.
Just for fun, here are some excerpts of Davis’ speech. See if you can hear the echoes in McDonnell’s speech tonight:
When a long course of class legislation, directed not to the general welfare, but to the aggrandizement of the Northern section of the Union, culminated in a warfare on the domestic institutions of the Southern States – when the dogmas of a sectional party, substituted for the provisions of the constitutional compact, threatened to destroy the sovereign rights of the States, six of those States, withdrawing from the Union, confederated together to exercise the right and perform the duty of instituting a Government which would better secure the liberties for the preservation of which that Union was established…
The people of the States now confederated became convinced that the Government of the United States had fallen into the hands of a sectional majority, who would pervert that most sacred of all trusts to the destruction of the rights which it was pledged to protect. They believed that to remain longer in the Union would subject them to a continuance of a disparaging discrimination, submission to which would be inconsistent with their welfare, and intolerable to a proud people. They therefore determined to sever its bonds and establish a new Confederacy for themselves.
The experiment instituted by our revolutionary fathers, of a voluntary Union of sovereign States for the purposes specified in a solemn compact, and been perverted by those who, feeling power and forgetting right, were determined to respect no law but their own will. The Government had ceased to answer the ends for which it was ordained and established. To save ourselves from a revolution which, in its silent but rapid progress, was about to place us under the despotism of numbers, and to preserve in spirit, as well as in form, a system of government we believed to be peculiarly fitted to our condition, and full of promise for mankind, we determined to make a new association, composed of States homogenous in interest, in policy, and in feeling.
True to our traditions of peace and our love of justice, we sent commissioners to the United States to propose a fair and amicable settlement of all questions of public debt or property which might be in dispute. But the Government at Washington, denying our right to self-government, refused even to listen to any proposals for a peaceful separation. Nothing was then left to do but to prepare for war…
Fellow-citizens, after the struggle of ages had consecrated the right of the Englishman to constitutional representative government, our colonial ancestors were forced to vindicate that birthright by an appeal to arms. Success crowned their efforts, and they provided for their posterity a peaceful remedy against future aggression.
The tyranny of an unbridled majority, the most odious and least responsible form of despotism, has denied us both the right and the remedy. Therefore we are in arms to renew such sacrifices as our fathers made to the holy cause of constitutional liberty. At the darkest hour of our struggle the Provisional gives place to the Permanent Government. After a series of successes and victories, which covered our arms with glory, we have recently met with serious disasters. But in the heart of a people resolved to be free these disasters tend but to stimulate to increased resistance.
To show ourselves worthy of the inheritance bequeathed to us by the patriots of the Revolution, we must emulate that heroic devotion which made reverse to them but the crucible in which their patriotism was refined.
With confidence in the wisdom and virtue of those who will share with me the responsibility and aid me in the conduct of public affairs; securely relying on the patriotism and courage of the people, of which the present war has furnished so many examples, I deeply feel the weight of the responsibilities I now, with unaffected diffidence, am about to assume; and, fully realizing the inequality of human power to guide and to sustain, my hope is reverently fixed on Him whose favor is ever vouchsafed to the cause which is just. With humble gratitude and adoration, acknowledging the Providence which has so visibly protected the Confederacy during its brief but eventful career, to thee, O God, I trustingly commit myself, and prayerfully invoke thy blessing on my country and its cause.
That particular American tribe has always had a huge chip on its shoulder: they are bullies who believe they are victims. Same as it ever was.
I see Ron Paul on TV virtually every day now, sometimes making interesting points about things like the Fed. Far more often he’s speaking idiotic nonsense. But the conservative Mandarins are starting to pay close attention, since he’s a hero among the teabag faction. Here’s Tony Blankly taking up a Ron Paul brainstorm:
As an early 1960s vintage member of the then-new conservative movement, I remember us focusing on the 10th amendment during the 1964 Goldwater campaign. It has been a staple of conservative thought, and the continued dormancy of 10th amendment enforcement has been one of the failures of our now half-century-old movement.
But just as the Tea Party movement in so many ways seems to represent the 2.0 version of our movement, so I again thought about the 10th amendment anew. After about 10 seconds’ thought, it struck me that the best way to revive the 10th Amendment is to repeal the 17th Amendment — which changes the first paragraph of Article I, Section 3 of the Constitution to provide that each state’s senators are to be “elected by the people thereof” rather than being “chosen by the Legislature thereof.” (As I Googled the topic, I found out that Ron Paul and others have been talking about this for years. It may be the only subject that could be proposed and ratified at a constitutional convention with three-fourths of the state legislatures.)
That’s a fabulous idea. Let’s let the much cheaper local whores do the bidding of the corporations. These poor companies are going to have to spend a lot more money if they expect to buy 435 House seats and endless local and state offices, so any break they can get would be good for the economy.
But as long as we’re going for constitutional amendments, why not get rid of the House of Lords altogether?
It’s hard to know whether Ben Nelson is just doing a full CYA, but this seems to indicate that he was planning to filibuster whatever came out of the health care reform bill conference:
Yesterday, in an interview with LifeSiteNews.com Nelson said that he agreed to the compromise to “get” the final bill into conference and planned to use his leverage as the 60th vote, to insert his original amendment into in the final conference report:
LSN: OK, so you were planning on coming back…
NELSON: Absolutely. That is what I was just trying to tell the gentleman who was arguing about the 60th vote.
LSN: What made you think that it had a shot, after conference?
NELSON: Because they needed 60 votes again.
LSN: Right, but before, you voted for it even without it –
NELSON: To get it there….But, once it went to conference, as part of the conference, there was still another 60 vote threshold, and that is when I would have insisted and that is what Christy was talking about when I mentioned this on the phone – how we would approach this in conference to say, for my last 60th vote, it has to have Nelson/Hatch/Casey.
LSN: Why didn’t you stop it right then and there and say, “No Nelson/Hatch – nothing.”
NELSON: Because, at that point and time, the leverage wasn’t as strong – you have to play it […]
LSN: So, if we got to conference and it was just the Nelson not the Nelson/Hatch/Casey – you would say ‘yes’ because you think it wasgood enough.
NELSON: I could have but I was going to say – and this was all the plan – that I would insist that it be Nelson/Hatch/Casey.
Nelson/Hatch/Casey, you’ll recall, was the senate version of the Stupak amendment.
Now, Nelson is very likely trying to mend fences with his forced childbirth supporters, so you have to take what he’s saying with a grain of salt. However, it does lead you to wonder what effect his words will have on Stupak and the boys in the House, who are still in a position to block passage of the Senate bill, even if the leadership gets a “sidecar” deal to pass the liberal imperatives in reconciliation and all the progressives vote for the Senate bill.
It’s hard to see how they could pass Stupak (or Nelson/Hatch/Casey) through reconciliation because nobody wants to make the budgetary argument on abortion. So that means they would have to try to pass it as a stand alone bill with 60. I don’t see how they get there unless they get a substantial number of those who voted against Nelson originally to switch their votes to one that’s even worse.
Presumably, they could get Brown, even though he’s nominally pro-choice. Here’s the list of the others who voted against Nelson/Hatch/Casey:
So, if it comes down to Stupak and his boys being the last roadblock and demanding passage of the senate version of the Stupak amendment, which of the above could the leadership possibly get to switch? And could Stupak pass a second time in the house? Would Obama sign it? All big questions. But if you ask me if the congress and the president would sell out women to get a bill, I’d have to lean yes. Passage of this bill means that some liberals somewhere must lose something and women’s reproductive freedom seems to have been one of the designated prices to be paid for extending health care to everyone.
Maybe it won’t come to that. It’s possible that Stupak will agree to something that doesn’t require the 60 or enough of his anti-choice posse will see that health care reform is more important than their parochial obsession with other people’s reproductive organs and they will vote for the senate bill which only has the nearly equally bad Nelson compromise. But if you check out the “pro-life” groups online, they are putting tremendous pressure on their people to vote against anything less than the Stupak language.They understand how valuable that is both politically and morally to their cause. To force pro-choice liberals to vote against their deeply held principles and make the pro-choice president sign it would be a sweet victory and a strong show of strength. It would be quite a win for them.
Update: Ron Brownstein has more on pelosi’s statement today that she thinks she can pass a bill in the House if the Senate agrees to reconciliation:
Pelosi identified several key changes that she said must be made in the Senate bill through the reconciliation process to win support for the overall package in the House. These included eliminating the favored treatment in the expansion of Medicaid that Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., won for his home state during the final stages of the Senate negotiation; providing greater affordability for people who would be required to purchase insurance under the bills’ individual mandate; and structuring the new insurance exchanges, or marketplaces, that would be created under the bill. (The House created a national insurance exchange, while the Senate left the exchanges to the states.)
Pelosi seemed most insistent on adjusting the so-called “Cadillac tax” on high-value insurance plans included in the Senate bill. That measure has been a priority of the White House, which views it as a cornerstone of its efforts to control the long-term growth in health care spending. Just before Brown’s victory in Massachusetts, the White House reached an agreement with organized labor to narrow the tax’s application, which labor leaders argue would hit too many of their members. Pelosi described that agreement as “a good start” in revisiting the tax, but added “there are those who would like to go further than that.” Indeed, at another point in the interview, she declared, “The easiest thing is to just get rid of the whole excise tax.”
Asked about the role of abortion in a final resolution of the two chambers’ differences, Pelosi said, “Let’s just say that’s not the subject of our conversations at his time. Right now, we’re talking about affordability for the middle class, fairness for the states and how they help people have access to health care, those kinds of issues, how this is paid for. If we hear back from the Senate that they can’t get 51 votes, there’s no use having all these discussions. The sequencing is, ‘what can they do, and is that something that works for us?’ They know what we need.”
Without offering specifics, Pelosi said that even after the reconciliation process, House members might attempt to pass further legislation to revise the Senate bill. “On a separate track, we’d want to do some of the things that you can’t do under reconciliation but that you can do free-standing,” she said. But, with Brown’s victory, any free-standing health legislation could be blocked by a Senate Republican filibuster.
Would Senate Republicans filibuster a free standing Stupak Amendment? Would Democrats?
Making friends is crucial. I’m only being partly facetious when I suggest that there should be some sort of in-house list where members of the administration (any administration!) are designated to go out a certain amount, in exactly the same way they make the rounds on Sunday talk shows.
This includes the president! Even senior adviser Valerie Jarrett said this week that Obama “likes the rigor of having a conversation with someone who’s going to push him.” She told The Post, “There’s really no point in him wasting time with people who simply agree with him all the time because it’s not going to refine his position, it’s not going to enlighten his position.” In other words, he’ll certainly accomplish some of that once he gets around town.
Indulge me for a moment on the topic of our cultural bellwether, “Avatar.” In the film, the Pandora natives worship the goddess Eywa, who is the spirit that connects them to their planet. If there is such a goddess in Washington, I believe, it is the spirit of community. Those who live here want to welcome new friends. Washingtonians are open and willing to invite newcomers and make them part of their lives. If they can’t do that, there is automatically a distance that is created so that if — no, make that when — the administration gets into trouble, there is too little sympathy or support.
When an administration begins to express hostility to those in the community, the Na’vi pull out their arrows with the poison tips and begin taking aim. The rougher things get, the more members of the administration need to reach out, not withdraw. Nobody has ever been able to master this yet. Consequently everyone suffers — needlessly.
It would be inspiring to see a new administration understand the simple secret of how to belong to the community. Then, they would never have to hear, as the heroine of Avatar, Neytiri, says to the would-be hero, Jake Sully: “You will never be one of the people.”
If you want an example of how the media plays into their simple narratives, you will note the difference between the way they’ve played the special elections.
For instance, in this year of alleged Republican insurgency, the Democrats have actually won three congressional seats. Did you know that? I doubt that most people do. And while I completely understand the focus on the Scott Brown race for the symbolism of the “Kennedy seat”, the reading of the electorate in Massachusetts as requiring a sharp turn to the right is not born out by polls there or, even more interestingly, by the election last night in Oregon, which also has an electorate of similar bent to Massachusetts.
They voted yesterday to raise taxes on the wealthy. And Oregon hasn’t voted to raise taxes since 1930. If that’s a turn to the right, then we are all teabaggers now.
The opposition ran a well-funded campaign, led by Nike, Columbia Sportswear, and other big businesses. They were joined by Ari Fleischer’s FreedomWorks and the libertarian publisher of the Oregonian, who used to be at the Orange County Register before it went belly-up. Together they ran a campaign arguing that the tax increases would worsen unemployment. But 55% of voters have rejected that, and instead showed that when a truly progressive campaign is waged, the right-wingers can be beaten. Even on taxes.
What it also shows is that progressive policies, supported by smart progressive organizing led by folks such as former US Senate candidate Steve Novick and the Oregon Bus Project, which reached out to younger voters and had a strong ground game, can beat well-funded, well-organized corporate/teabagger alliances.
Their message was deeply progressive:
These reforms protect nearly $1 billion in vital services like education, health care and public safety. These funds preserve class sizes, save jobs for teachers, provide seniors with in-home care, and provide health care for thousands of Oregonians through the Oregon Health Plan. In this time of economic crisis, we must protect those who have been hit the hardest – seniors, children and the unemployed – without putting more of a burden on the middle class.
This doesn’t fit with the mainstream media’s preferred storyline which has voter anger at Washington defined as a repudiation of liberalism. Indeed, today the gasbags are saying that in tonight’s State of the Union address, “Obama must” emulate Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton and … repudiate liberalism. And yet, out in Oregon yesterday, a state that hasn’t voted to raise taxes since 1930, the people voted for an extremely progressive initiative.
One wonders what might happen if the president showed some courage and repudiated the village instead.
Fox is the most trusted television news network in the country, according to a new poll out Tuesday.
A Public Policy Polling nationwide survey of 1,151 registered voters Jan. 18-19 found that 49 percent of Americans trusted Fox News, 10 percentage points more than any other network.
Thirty-seven percent said they didn’t trust Fox, also the lowest level of distrust that any of the networks recorded.
I would guess that most people reading this blog don’t watch Fox news very often, if ever. You should force yourself to do it some time, as an act of citizenship. Then you will understand why those figures send chills down my spine.
Keep in mind that journalism in general is in serious financial difficulties, while Fox is doing well and that the people who make editorial decisions are desperate. Plus, there’s the fact that members of the political press are herd creatures by nature. Not good for the Republic.
In case you were wondering what Wall Street wants Obama to say in the SOTU, they’ve helpfully shared:
“It [his recent tone] suggested [that] the president is confrontational with business,” says Jeffrey Kleintop, chief market strategist at LPL Financial in Boston. “A tone that says he is open to working together, to bring the best minds together, would be welcome.”
Obama’s attacks on the banking establishment rub many in the pinstripe set the wrong way. One is David Kotok, chairman of Cumberland Advisors, a Vineland, N,J., investment manager.
“I would like him to say he will stop vilifying bankers and Wall Streeters, and that he understands that many, many Americans are invested in US stocks and bonds in their 401(k)s. When he throws out mean-spirited commentary about the bankers, he is doing it to all those who are invested in them.”
Many on Wall Street expect Obama to seek another job stimulus package. But they don’t want to see another massive package similar to the $787 billion economic recovery package that Congress approved last February.
“Anything over $200 billion will be way too big, a waste of money,” says Mr. Kleintop, who suggests that the bond market would be happy with anything under $150 billion.
Cool to a spending freeze
Even before the speech, the administration has floated the idea of a freeze on federal discretionary spending, representing about 17 percent of the budget. But “Wall Street,” Kleintop says, “sees right through a freeze.”
Indeed, Scott Brown, chief economist at stock broker Raymond James & Co. in St. Petersburg, Fla., says the bigger problem is entitlement programs, such as Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.
“A three-year freeze on discretionary spending – as Obama is proposing – does not leave you with a lot,” says Mr. Brown.
Fred Dickson, chief market strategist at D.A. Davidson & Co. in Lake Oswego, Ore., travels a lot in the Pacific Northwest. He says he would like Obama to soothe the fears of businesses that they are facing “massive tax increases for health and energy.”
“Everywhere I go, I hear people say they could start to throttle up hiring and increase work hours but they are afraid they will get hit with a massive tax increase.”
No new taxes
At the same time, many Wall Street economists would like to see the president suggest rolling back the tax increases that kick in with the expiration of the Bush tax cuts for relatively well-to-do wage earners, whose highest marginal tax rate will rise from 35 percent to 39 percent.
“Raising taxes is the last thing you want to do in an economic environment like this” says Robert McIntosh, chief economist at Eaton Vance, a mutual fund group in Boston. “Along with this, I don’t think it makes sense to raise the dividend and capital gains tax rates.”
Mr. McIntosh, like others on Wall Street, would also like to see Obama reduce the budget deficit. On Tuesday, the Congressional Budget Office said the budget deficit for 2010 would fall slightly, to $1.395 trillion.
“We must get it well under a $1 trillion,” says McIntosh.
First of all, the populist talk is not aimed at your friendly neighborhood financial advisor or personal broker unless they are taking million dollar bonuses from taxpayer money. These Banksters and Masters of the Universe have been utter pigs and there’s no getting around the fact that this whining and moaning about how they are being unfairly treated just makes everyone see red. They really need to grow some cojones and STFU. The people down the food chain in the financial services sector are (mostly) as disgusted with this swinish behavior as anyone. It only hurts the ball team.
And the average American who has their 401k invested in the markets does not confuse themselves with Lloyd Blankfein, I guarantee it. (Unless they are a right wing dittohead who thinks that giving Rush Limbaugh tax cuts will benefit them.)
As for their policy prescriptions, I thought they were fairly restrained. Normally they would have called for total repeal of the capital gains tax, privatization of social security and tort reform so they’re actually being very pragmatic in only wanting to cut social security and medicare and make the Bush tax cuts permanent. But then, they know how to negotiate. It’s what they do.
Wall Street is marketing derivatives last seen before credit markets froze in 2007, as the record bond rally prompts investors to take more risks to boost returns.
Bank of America Corp. and Morgan Stanley are encouraging clients to buy swaps that pay higher yields for speculating on the extent of losses in corporate defaults. Trading in credit- default swap indexes rose in the fourth quarter for the first time since 2008, according to Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. data. Federal Reserve data show leverage, or borrowed money, is rising in capital markets.
Investors who retreated to the safety of government debt during the financial crisis are returning to the simplest forms of so-called synthetic collateralized debt obligations after last year’s record 57.5 percent rally in junk bonds left money managers with fewer options. While President Barack Obama’s adviser Paul Volcker has blamed credit swaps and CDOs for taking the financial system “to the brink of disaster,” bankers say the instruments help companies raise capital.
DWT is featuring a very important post by Danny Goldberg about the demise of Air America — a post that directly contradicts the conventional wisdom about the reasons for it:
I think that the New York Times got it exactly wrong this morning in declaring that “the enduring legacy of Air America’s failure is that political media from either side of the aisle is more successful when run as a business instead of a crusade.”
[…]
In the early nineteen seventies the Washington Post and New York Times were instrumental in helping expose the Watergate scandal and publishing the Pentagon papers. Conservatives felt that liberals had an advantage in setting the agenda because of the influence of New York and D.C. newspapers on the national media. In 1976 Rupert Murdoch bought the New York Post and it has lost money every year since, the total loss estimated to be more than half a billion dollars. In 1983, the Rev. Sun Myung Moon created the Washington Times, which has also lost money every year. Widely published reports place Moon’s losses at over $1 billion on the Times and other political media including a purchase the venerable wire service UPI. These money losing properties have put dozens of conservatively slanted stories onto the national radar screen, altered the framing of every important political issues, and nurtured virtually every right wing pundit who now thrive as TV talking heads.
More recently, Phillip Anschutz bought the money losing Weekly Standard from Murdoch and announced plans to invest in more conservative media and his fellow billionaire and former Republican Treasury Secretary Pete Petersen started a digital news service called The Fiscal Times.
The fatal flaw in Air America’s genetic code was the pretense that liberal talk radio was a great business opportunity, that progressives could have their cake and eat it too, do well by doing good, make big salaries and get a great return on investment while also pursuing an ideological agenda. Sure, every once in awhile political media like Michael Moore’s movies or Rush Limbaugh’s radio show will make money, but for those interested in influencing public opinion, media in all venues is vital whether they make money or not.
I urge you to read the whole thing. Goldberg was, for a short time, the head of Air America and knows whereof he speaks.
If progressives ever seriously want to challenge conservatism, they would do well to heed his advice: fund progressive media. That assumes there are wealthy progressives who actually want to do that, but if there are, this is how it’s done. With corporate America prepared to unleash unlimited cash, wealthy individuals are going to have to step up and figure where they can best put their money to counteract it and the right wingers that serve them. Progressive media is going to be vital.
So CBS is afraid of the wrath of Focus on the Family and has reversed its previous stance against controversial “issue” ads. It’s going to show a forced pregnancy advertisement starring born again football hero, Tim Tebow sponsored by James Dobson and the gang.
Women’s groups are up in arms and rightfully so. Tebow’s spot evidently discusses his mother’s choice not to have an abortion as proof that other women shouldn’t have the same choice. But if I were one of Tebow’s teammates I might be more concerned about his association with James Dobson who has some very funny ideas about how to keep your sons from “becoming” gay:
Meanwhile, the boy’s father has to do his part. He needs to mirror and affirm his son’s maleness. He can play rough-and-tumble games with his son, in ways that are decidedly different from the games he would play with a little girl. He can help his son learn to throw and catch a ball. He can teach him to pound a square wooden peg into a square hole in a pegboard. He can even take his son with him into the shower, where the boy cannot help but notice that Dad has a penis, just like his, only bigger.
Tebow’s dad is a conservative evangelical preacher and often talks about how little Timmy was a weakling who grew into a star athlete. I don’t know if he took him into the shower and showed him his big penis, but that seems to be the way these fellows make Real Men out of their boys. You have to wonder.
