Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Faith Healingby digby
David Frum is worried:

What would it mean to “win” the healthcare fight? For some, the answer is obvious: beat back the president’s proposals, defeat the House bill, stand back and wait for 1994 to repeat itself. The problem is that if we do that… we’ll still have the present healthcare system. Meaning that we’ll have (1) flat-lining wages, (2) exploding Medicaid and Medicare costs and thus immense pressure for future tax increases, (3) small businesses and self-employed individuals priced out of the insurance market, and (4) a lot of uninsured or underinsured people imposing costs on hospitals and local governments. We’ll have entrenched and perpetuated some of the most irrational features of a hugely costly and under-performing system, at the expense of entrepreneurs and risk-takers, exactly the people the Republican party exists to champion.

Frum seems to be operating under the illusion that the Republicans will be blamed for this, which I think is unlikely. Obama will be held responsible for the failure, just as Clinton was. it will be seen as a failure of legislative tactics —- that’s how liberal politics is discussed. (I do it too, of course, just like every other political blowhard.) This is especialy true of health care, which has been exclusively seen and mapped out as a tactical challenge since Harry Truman failed to pass comprehensive reform in the 1940s. It’s why we got health care for the elderly when Johnson had the liberal mandate rather than universal coverage. And the predictable result of failure this time will be that when health care comes to the table again some years down the road (when the crisis is even more acute) the lessons learned will be all about legislative tactics as well. They wil fight the last war — again.
Frum is fretting over the actual repercussions of failing to reform the health care system, which is completely beside the point for his fellow Republicans. Health care has officially joined the “faith based” constellation of issues, which includes global warming and evolution. They are now simply denying there is a crisis at all. And if there is one, there is simply no solution other than prayer and dogmatic belief in American exceptionalism and free markets.
The next couple of weeks will tell us whether the Republican obstructionism will result in backlash and give the progressives some room to maneuver. It’s always possible the wingnuts have succumbed to hubris again — having Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck as the spokesmen for their obstructionism might end up being a mistake similar to having Newtie push the government shut-down back in 1995. They often overreach and the hysterical, far right rhetoric people are seeing at these Town Halls may not resonate in the rest of the country quite the way the villagers think it will. We’ll see.
But regardless of what actually happens, if health reform fails, I believe that when the history is written it will be seen as a Democratic failure. If you put an issue on the table and are given a mandate to enact it, you are blamed for its failure, particularly when the whole promise of your campaign was based upon the magical notion that you would change the very nature of the political system. Sadly, if that happens, the likely result will not be a newly invigorated, liberal president with lessons learned and a fresh approach. It will be a chastened and weakened president newly committed to the status quo, just as the Village ordered from the beginning. And that, in the end, may be what was being promised all along: symbolism over substance. It wouldn’t be the first time.

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“An Intelligent Version Of Libertarianism”

by tristero

Tyler Cowen, after cynically misrepresenting (albeit cleverly) progressivism poses a challenge:

It would be interesting to see a progressive try to sum up an intelligent version of libertarianism.

As a general rule, I think it is wise to ignore conservatives when they double dare you. This one is easy, however.

The dare is one more example of rightwing bullshit. There is no such thing as an intelligent version of libertarianism. It simply doesn’t exist, any more than compassionate conservativm or the tooth fairy. More precisely, there is nothing intelligent that libertarianism brings to the table that isn’t already part and parcel of liberalism.

But don’t take my word for it. In a review of Daniel Wessel’s In Fed We Trust: Ben Bernanke’s War on the Great Panic, Paul Barrett writes:

If there’s a villain looming over the Wessel version of why the government was so overwhelmed [in the face of the growing financial crisis], it is [Alan] Greenspan, who led the Federal Reserve from 1987 until 2006. As Wessel explains, Greenspan’s strong libertarian leanings led him to scorn the ability of government employees to keep track of bonus-crazed bankers and traders. Greenspan preached a free-market theory that the self-interest of large financial players would cause them to drive hard bargains with one another and prevent the sort of mischief that could bring markets crashing down. He encouraged the “financial engineering” that created securities no one fully understood, and he helped shield the mad scientists of Wall Street from government restraints.

But don’t take Barrett’s or Wessel’s word for libertarianism’s stupidity, either:

Then, in October 2008, Greenspan admitted to a House committee he had been, well, totally wrong: “I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interest of organizations, specifically banks and others, were such that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders.”

Cue the libertarians amongst us, not the brightest of bulbs, to retort, “So, you’re saying government is always right, people can’t be trusted to make the best decisions for themselves, and more regulation is always a good thing?”

The fact is that any intelligent form of progressivism recognizes that there is a complex interplay between government and the so-called private sector; that good government is as absolute necessary to a good society as responsible individual freedom is; and that there are many inherent conflicts between the two that are resolved on a contingent basis as the definitions of all the terms in play – “good,” “government,” “responsible,” “individual,” “freedom,” etc – change over time. The notion that “less regulation is a moral good” is, for lack of a better phrase, simply stupid. It sets up a patently false dichotomy because obviously, it’s not more or less regulation that is a problem, but the quality and kind of regulation. Sometimes, we need more, and efficient, regulation – eg, over derivatives. Sometimes, we need less – for example, over who can marry.

Duh. Or, to put it another way, the social conflict between freedom and restriction is an argument that liberals and progressives have been struggling with since the days of Spinoza, if not earlier. Libertarianism brings nothing new that is of value to the table. Just ask Alan Greenspan, one of the most influential libertarians of all times.

Special note to real philosophers and scholars: Of course, “libertarianism” is as impossible to discuss in general as “Christianity,” “Islam,” or any other creed; there are social libertarians, economic libertarians, left libertarians, and so on. Just as when we speak of communists, most commentators don’t typically use the Shakers as an example but instead discuss the Soviet Union or modern China, I am talking about libertarians as they are more typically understood, the Ayn Rands (of whom Greenspan was a drooling acolyte), the Ron Pauls, and so on. No doubt, if you care about libertarianism (I don’t), that is the tip of the iceberg.

Nevertheless, to the extent that libertarians hold up the individual as primary and fail to recognize that individuals simply cannot physically exist without a social/cultural/environmental context, libertarianism is worthless. To the extent that libertarianism does recognize the complex dialectic between the individual and her/his social and physical environment, libertarianism is indistinguishable from liberalism.

As a moral philosophy, by failing to recognize an indisputable physical and ethical reality – namely, that the conflict between the one and the many is primary – libertarianism is all but useless. As a political philosophy, especially when it comes to issues affecting the “rights of businesses”, libertarianism is often deeply immoral, providing flimsy rationales for destructive acquisition, thievery, fraud, and greed – typically, and ironically, in the service of the largest corporations, not individuals. When political libertarianism does pursue goals worthwhile to the individual and to society – eg, in calling for the end of sodomy laws – they add no arguments to the debate that liberals and progressives haven’t already expressed.

(I discussed other aspects of Cowen’s post here)

Saturday Night At The Movies

Generals and majors, ah ah

By Dennis Hartley

In the Loop: Kennedy and Gandolfini discuss policy

Here’s a revelation, smack dab in the midst of summer movie torpor: The political satire is not dead; it’s just been, er, resting …at least since Wag the Dog sped in and out of theatres in 1997, barely noticed by all but the film critics (who pays attention to those wankers, anyway…heh). Writer-director Armando Iannucci and co-writers Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell, Ian Martin and Tony Roche (much of the same team responsible for the popular BBC series The Thick Of It) have mined the headlines and produced a nugget of pure satirical gold with In the Loop (in limited release and on PPV). I daresay that it recalls the halcyon days of Terry Southern and Paddy Chayefsky, whose sharp, barb-tongued screenplays once ripped the body politic with savage aplomb.

When the British Minister for International Development (Tom Hollander) gets tongue-tied during a BBC news interview and blurts out that “War is unforeseeable” in response to a question about his stance on a possible U.S. military intervention in the Middle East, it stirs up a trans-Atlantic political shit storm, as hawks and doves on both sides of the pond scramble to spin his nebulous statement into an endorsement for their respective agendas. When he later attempts to backpedal by adlibbing “Sometimes, to walk the road of peace, we have to…climb the mountains of conflict” it raises murderous ire from the Prime Minister’s Director of Communications (Peter Capaldi, in an award-worthy turn as a classic Type-A prick) who tells the minister (amongst other colorful admonishments) that his awkward metaphor made him come off like some kind of “Nazi Julie Andrews”.

The gaffe-prone minister is given a chance to redeem his now rather precarious career status with a “fact finding” visit to D.C., under the watchful eye of Capaldi (“So have you come here to insult me in a different time zone?” the exasperated minister dryly asks him at one point). Also along for the trip is the minister’s ambitious new advisor and chief handler (Chris Addison). They are feted by the dovish Assistant Secretary of Diplomacy (a brilliantly funny Mimi Kennedy) who is desperately trying to keep him from the clutches of the extremely hawkish Assistant Secretary of State (a wry David Rasche) who is like an amalgam of Rumsfeld and Cheney, and of whom Kennedy observes “…the voices in his head are now singing barbershop together.” Things really get interesting when a vacillating, war-weary general turned desk-bound Pentagon brass (James Gandolfini, refreshing to see in a genuinely comic performance) gets tossed into the mix.

The filmmakers take aim at many targets here, and hit the bull’s eye nearly every time (Hullabaloo readers who follow the “Oh no they didn’t!” shenanigans annotated here daily by our intrepid political observers already know that taking the piss out of the Beltway is tantamount to shooting fish in a barrel). One thing I will tell you is that I guarantee you haven’t heard such creatively honed insults and deliciously profane pentameter singsonging from the mouths of thespians since HBO’s Deadwoodwent dark (or at least since David Mamet last churned out a screenplay). Capaldi’s character in particular gets to spout some of the most uproariously clever lines I’ve heard in any film in years. As for my personal favorite, I’d say that it’s a tossup between (a) “I’m putting you on a probationary period…from today until the end of recorded time” or (b) “I will marshal all the media forces of darkness to hound you to an assisted suicide.” Hey, I know what you’re thinking…I’m a People Person. Maybe I should go into politics (not!).

…and one more thing

Where were you in ‘69?

There’s another politically-themed film of note in theatres his summer that I wanted to bring to your attention. A spiffy new 35mm 40th anniversary revival print of the classic thriller, Z is making the rounds in selected cities right now (it just ended a one-week engagement here in Seattle; you might want to scour your local art house theatre listings).

The film (based on a true story) was a landmark for director Costa-Gavras, and a high-watermark for the cycle of “radical chic” cinema that flourished during that politically tumultuous time. While many of its contemporaries have not aged well, Z retains a palpable sense of immediacy. This is due in part to the director’s decision to place the events in a non-specified country (it was filmed in Algeria, the dialog is in French, but Mikis Theodorakis’ score and the director’s heritage suggest a Baltic nation). Yves Montand plays a leftist politician who is assassinated after giving a speech at a pro-Peace rally. What at first appears to be an open and shut case of a violent action by an isolated group of right wing extremists reveals to be a much more byzantine and far-reaching conspiracy. The story of what really happened (and why) unfolds with great suspense, through the eyes of two characters-a photojournalist (a very young Jacques Perrin, future director of the award-winning 2001 doc Winged Migration) and an investigating magistrate (Jean-Louis Trintignant). The great Irene Papas is on hand as Montand’s wife.

Although the film is more of a static affair than its exalted reputation as a “fast-moving” political thriller may lead you to believe (trust me, there’s much more talk than action), it is still essential viewing. It’s a little bit Kafka, a little bit Rashomon , but ultimately a cautionary tale about what happens when corrupt officialdom, unchecked police oppression and partisan-sanctioned extremism get into bed together. With the increasingly alarming (and thuggish) nature of the assorted backlash movements floating around lately (the teabaggers, birthers, anti-universal healthcare agitators and the more violent pro-life extremists), perhaps it is more important than ever to heed its warning.

P.S. If the revival run isn’t hitting your town, don’t despair. Although currently out of print on DVD, the film is due for the deluxe Criterion Collection treatment this fall.

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Matt Taibbi Is Shrillby digby … or so I’ve heard. But not everyone sees it that way. Ezra Klein writes:

The Columbia Journalism Review’s Dean Starkman writes an able defense of Matt Taibbi against those who would drum him from journalism for using too many curse words or daring to express outrage beneath his byline. But toward the end, Starkman engages in some tut-tutting of his own, writing that “the weakness of the piece is where others might find strength, its polemical nature and its hyperbole.” In particular, he says that “when you call Goldman a ‘great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money,’ you’re in a sense offering a big fat disclaimer—this piece is not to be taken literally and perhaps not even seriously.” But you’re also doing something else: You’re saying this piece is to be read. You’re signaling to the readers that you are writing for them. That you have decided that the difficulty of these issues increases the responsibility of the writer, not the reader. Putting that liner in the opening of the piece is a clear message that the reader can relax. This will be interesting. This will not be homework.

I have often wondered why so little of journalistic navel gazing contemplates this question. Actually, I don’t wonder at all: the last thing any writer wants to admit or even consider, is that his or her writing is boring. As a kind of-sort of writer myself, I can sympathize. But as a news consumer and as a blogger, I think Ezra is absolutely right, particularly when it comes to tough subjects like the failure of the banking system and wall street perfidy.
I was on a panel with David Sirota and Taibbi a couple of months ago about the forces that are standing in the way of the progressive agenda. Taibbi talked about the reasons for the banking failure and recapitulated the main points of his Rolling Stone article. And the audience was totally captivated. They crowded around him after the panel not to ask for his autograph, but instead peppering him with questions about the bailouts and wall street, many of them commenting that this was the first time they really understood what had happened.
As I listened to him speak, I realized it wasn’t just that he had attitude (which he has) or that he takes a point of view (which he does.) A good part of his talk was spent explaining the arcane mechanisms that fueled the crisis, much of which I think is terribly confusing to lay people and makes it hard to grasp exactly what happened and why we should care. And I realized that in all of his discussion, Taibbi didn’t use any of the usual journalistic conventions and he never uses jargon, ever, in his speech or in his writing. Yes, he’s funny and profane, but he’s also very, very clear.As those of you who have read this blog for a while already know, one of my pet peeves about modern reporting is that the conventions have become so arcane that you can’t decipher what’s really going on. In their quest to protect sources, be “professional,” “balanced” and maintain “objectivity” they’ve created a style that’s often indecipherable to the reader. Without insider knowledge you have to read between the lines or put together several different articles to get a sense of what’s happening. When it involves complex, technical issues it’s even worse.The reason so many people read Taibbi’s work on the banking crisis is not simply because he calls a spade a spade, but because he does it by writing (and speaking) in such a way that makes the issue itself comprehensible. His conclusions about motives and guilt are obviously open for criticism. Anyone’s are. But his explanations of what happened, how these financial instruments worked, what precipitated the crisis and how the industry is constructed are clear, informative and comprehensive. Unlike so many others who write on this topic, he has fulfilled his duty as a journalist without making it “homework,” as Ezra says, or effectively helping to obfuscate the issue on behalf of those who seek to keep people in the dark.Naturally, the powers that be don’t like critics and call them “shrill.” Same as it ever was. The last thing they want is for people to actually understand what’s happening. But journalists, (many of whom loathe Taibbi for “lowering the discourse”) by perpetuating this ever more ritualistic form of writing, are helping them. And I believe they are losing a fair portion of their audience because of it.
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He said/She said/Shut Up

by digby

Joan Walsh has a great post up today about the town hall nonsense and taking the press to task for its coverage of the health care debate in general (while giving Stephen Pearlstein a well deserved shout-out for this excellent article in the Washington Post.) She rightfully singles out the New York Times for its tepid, he said/she said (and tardy) coverage today of the town hall mobs and rightfully so. It just doesn’t get any worse than this:

The tenor of some of the debates has become extreme. Ms. Pelosi has accused people at recent protests of carrying signs associating the Democratic plan with Nazi swastikas and SS symbols, and some photographs showing such signs have been posted on the Web.

Far be it for the NY Times to actually assess whether such things are true. Maybe Pelosi’s lying when she “accuses” people of such things. After all, the pictures that have been posted on the web don’t prove anything , right? Or the videos. Or the non-stop Nazi analogies coming from talk radio gasbags and Fox News nutballs. It just too much to expect that the NY Times would actually investigate such a charge and report on their findings.

But then I’m finding that media is behaving even more irresponsibly than usual, particularly in the cable gasbag world. For instance, take the GE/Newscorp scandal, which Glenn Greenwald has analyzed extensively. Here’s the latest from today’s NY Times:

Executives at two of the country’s largest media companies are still trying to salvage what was essentially a cease-fire between MSNBC and the Fox News Channel.

The two cable news channels temporarily resumed their long-running feud this week after The New York Times reported that their parent companies, General Electric and the News Corporation, had struck a deal to stop each other’s televised personal attacks. Fox News executives felt that MSNBC had broken the deal when Keith Olbermann, in an apparent show of independence, insulted his 8 p.m. rival, Bill O’Reilly, and the News Corporation’s chairman, Rupert Murdoch, on Monday. On his show, “Countdown,” Mr. Olbermann called Mr. O’Reilly a “racist clown.” Mr. O’Reilly responded with his own attack two days later on his program, “The O’Reilly Factor,” where he claimed that G.E., through MSNBC, was “promoting the election of Barack Obama and then seeking to profit from his policies.” The chief executives at General Electric, whose NBC News division operates MSNBC, and News Corporation, which owns Fox News, reached an unusual agreement last spring to halt the regular personal assaults on each other’s channels. Eric Burns, the former host of Fox’s media criticism show “Fox News Watch” and the author of “All the News Unfit to Print,” said, “Even in an age where there seemed to be no boundaries, people at the very top of two networks thought, ‘Well, I guess there are boundaries, because they’ve been crossed.’ ”

Let’s just stop right there. It’s ok for the likes of Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly to compare liberals to Nazis and incite poeple to murder doctors, but things have really gone too far when they start criticizng corporations and insulting talk show hosts? Can everyone see just how absurd this is? As I wrote before, the fact that NBC was willing to shut down criticism of O’Reilly in order to protect their corporate brand and keep Fox from sending angry mobs to their CEOs house and shareholder meetings is another sign of the corruption of journalism by its corporate owners. On the heels of the Washington Post Pay2Play scandal, it’s a stunner.
But as bad as that is, I still just can’t get past the fact that Roger Ailes went nuclear on NBC merely to protect Fox’s insane gasbags from insults.

The deal extends beyond the prime-time hour that Mr. Olbermann and Mr. O’Reilly occupy. Employees of daytime programs on MSNBC were specifically told by executives not to mention Fox hosts in segments critical of conservative media figures, according to two staff members. The employees requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss internal matters.[…]
Frustrated by the refusal by NBC’s chief executive, Jeffrey Zucker, to halt the attacks on Mr. O’Reilly, Roger Ailes, the chairman of Fox News, personally instructed Mr. O’Reilly’s program to aim at Mr. Immelt, people familiar with the situation said. Peace talks, such as they were, resumed in the spring between G.E. and News Corporation executives. At a lunch in April, Mr. Ailes and Mr. Immelt agreed to tone down the attacks. It was not visible to viewers until after Mr. Immelt and Mr. Murdoch shook hands at an off-the-record conference sponsored by Microsoft in May and word of a cease-fire trickled down to both news divisions.[…]
In the months after, when MSNBC would say something that strained the agreement, Fox News would respond accordingly, and vice versa. In July, after Mr. Olbermann condemned Fox’s Glenn Beck for letting a guest assert that a terrorist attack in the United States might be a good thing, Mr. Beck booked a segment about G.E. and declared that a “merger between G.E. and the Obama administration” was “nearly complete.” After the detente was reported by The Times on Monday, the fighting resumed and Mr. Olbermann claimed there was no deal among the parent companies. That was met by heated skepticism among bloggers. Two days later, Mr. O’Reilly had his turn. His news hook: The Securities and Exchange Commission had fined G.E. $50 million on charges of misleading investors. And on Thursday, Mr. O’Reilly showed Mr. Immelt’s and Mr. Zucker’s faces and wondered how long they could allow “this barbaric display” — that is an Olbermann reference — “under the NBC News banner.”[…]
“At this point,” a Fox spokeswoman said Friday, “the entire situation is more about major issues at NBC and G.E. than it is about Bill O’Reilly and Keith Olbermann.”

Nice little corporation you’ve got there. Be a shame if anything happened to it.
Again, I am not defending GE. Their behavior is worse than cowardly and it should bar them from media ownership. But the thuggish behavior of Fox for the trivial purpose of protecting Glen Beck and Bill O’Reilly strikes me as bordering on psychotic. These demagogues are out there every night fomenting revolution, inciting violence and assassinating the characters of everyone they consider an “enemy.” And their bosses are blackmailing those who criticize them for this with thinly veiled threats to unleash the wingnut mobs on the corporation and its executives.
And the corporation is capitulating. After all, GE is not without its resources. It could, presumably, unleash hell on News Corps the same way if it chose to play Ailes’ game. It’s not like Rupert Murdoch is beyond criticism. But they won’t because they know that Fox can mobilize its viewers in ways that NBC can’t — and the executives just don’t think freedom of the press is worth fighting for: it’s not a profit center.
This is a serious problem. If Ailes can shut down criticism of its network by blackmailing the corporations that own the others, then they are exerting a form of corporate power that far outstrips any other, at least in the political realm. Fox News, by successfully blackmailing GE, has sent a message. And the rest of the corporate owned media have undoubtedly received it. Don’t cross them — or their agenda — because there will be hell to pay. With the media in financial turmoil, that’s a powerful message indeed.One can’t help but notice that while the NY Times mentioned in passing that Limbaugh had commented on a supposed similarity between Obama’s health care logo and Nazi symbols (which was the most benign of such things he said all week) they didn’t mention the numerous examples of the Hitler imagery coming from Fox News or that Glen Beck’s web site is credited with getting the mobs out in force.

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Article Of Faith

by digby

Harold Pollack has written a thoughtful response (much more thoughtful that she deserves) to Sarah Palin’s claim that health care reform would result in the euthanizing of baby Trig. But Pollack attributes the talking points for this trope to Betsy McCaughey’s op-ed piece, which may be true for policy and political elites, most certainly isn’t for social conservatives likie Palin. As I wrote earlier, health reform resulting in euthanasia is is a strong article of faith among the right to life movement and has been for many years.

This isn’t the most important thing in the world, and Pollack’s article focuses on the role of Ezekial Emmanuel, which is directly related to McCaughey’s piece (and whose work is being misconstrued and used to spam blogs.) But I continue to find it a bit surprising that people didn’t see this particular line of attack coming since it’s been out there for so long — and we just endured the Schiavo circus a few short years ago.

This stuff is so fully absorbed into the psyche’s of the social conservatives that all you have to do is whisper the word “euthanasia” Manchurain Candidate-style to activate the freakshow. Op-eds in the Washington Post are for the villagers, not the folks.

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Scary Times

by tristero

Sara Robinson, on Dave Neiwert’s blog, has an important post (the first of a series) about whether the term “fascist” applies to the escalation in disruptive, even violent behavior from the right now that we see open encouragement of that behavior even by the more “moderate” national leaders of the GOP and corporate interests.

The pessimistic conclusion of Robinson’s analysis strikes me as overly dependent upon a “clockwork” notion of history. I don’t think human events and politics works like that; yes, there are rough patterns, but there is also a lot more contingency than most schematics I’ve encountered appear to take into account. That said, what Sara writes is deeply troubling and I don’t think she’s wrong: far from it.

Here is the main point, but you really must read the whole thing.:

Now, the guessing game is over. We know beyond doubt that the Teabag movement was created out of whole cloth by astroturf groups like Dick Armey’s FreedomWorks and Tim Phillips’ Americans for Prosperity, with massive media help from FOX News. We see the Birther fracas — the kind of urban myth-making that should have never made it out of the pages of the National Enquirer — being openly ratified by Congressional Republicans. We’ve seen Armey’s own professionally-produced field manual that carefully instructs conservative goon squads in the fine art of disrupting the democratic governing process — and the film of public officials being terrorized and threatened to the point where some of them required armed escorts to leave the building. We’ve seen Republican House Minority Leader John Boehner applauding and promoting a video of the disruptions and looking forward to “a long, hot August for Democrats in Congress.”

This is the sign we [scholarly experts who track the growth of fascism] were waiting for — the one that tells us that yes, kids: we are there now. America’s conservative elites have openly thrown in with the country’s legions of discontented far right thugs. They have explicitly deputized them and empowered them to act as their enforcement arm on America’s streets, sanctioning the physical harassment and intimidation of workers, liberals, and public officials who won’t do their political or economic bidding.

This is the catalyzing moment at which honest-to-Hitler fascism begins. It’s also our very last chance to stop it.

She promises that in a future post, she will describe how we can pull back from this awful brink. Can’t wait.

I Know You Are But What Am I: Part 2,778

by digby

Lou Dobbs today:

“President Obama will take full responsibility for what happens here. You heard his voice in Virginia. This is a — I mean, he’s fanning the flames of a mob. He’s not a president trying to bring some sort of sensibility and order to a public debate.”

I know. This kind of full-on psychotic projection is disorienting and weird. I’ve never been very good a dealing with this particular wingnut tactic and I don’t think anyone is.

But Lou’s just one of many. These people now fully believe that they are being victimized by violence.Here’s how it works:

According to a Fox News report, White House officials yesterday promised skittish Democratic Senators preparing to go back home to face their angry constituents that the Democratic Party and its “allies” (read labor unions, AARP and big business interests in the insurance and pharmaceutical industries) would “respond with twice the force if any individual lawmaker is criticized in television advertising.”

Hysterical comments from other top Democratic Leaders yesterday gave the distinct impression of politicians becoming unhinged in the face of serious criticism and resistance from the American people over Washington’s plans for health legislation. White House talking points being regurgitated by Democrats across the country accuse ObamaCare critics of engaging in and sanctioning “mob tactics.” ObamaCare supporters have even pulled out of mothballs the favorite epitaph used by Soviet officials to demonize critics of the Soviet regime—“hooligans.”

Contrary to all logic and empirical evidence—the clear indication of a propaganda machine in full spin mode—the White House accuses grass roots organizations such as Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks of being corporate stooges when in fact it is the White House and congressional Democrats that are cozying up to big corporate interests, including the pharmaceutical industry, insurance companies and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. All of the big corporate money is being spent to convince the American people to support some version of national healthcare, not defeat it. For example, Harry and Louise are back on the air, still being paid for by the insurance industry but now supporting legislation that would put healthcare under the control of the federal government and its agents.

But logic and reason don’t count for much when politicians have the fear of God thrown into them by angry constituents. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada went so far as to accuse protesters at town hall meetings of trying to “sabotage the democratic process.” “Democracy” in Senator Reid’s book, it appears, consists of voting every two years and keeping your mouth shut in between.

If citizens protest what their Representatives and Senators are up to, they get stigmatized as “hooligans.” The White House has even asked its supporters to be on the lookout for “fishy” statements about ObamaCare and to submit them to a White House watch list at Flag@WhiteHouse.gov.

Late last night reports also began to leak out that Democratic dirty-tricks operatives in districts where emotions are running the highest are actively using black-op tactics to provoke incidents in which protestors clash with police and other officials, which would provide ObamaCare supporters under the most pressure a pretext for cancelling all town hall meetings in the name of pubic safety and security.

So, the White House counterattack has begun. Critics of ObamaCare are about to experience first hand what happens when the Neighborhood-Organizer-in-Chief has at his disposal the full propaganda apparatus and police machinery of big government.

From the email traffic circulating among the many grass-roots activists it is apparent that Saul Alinsky’s classic manual Rules for Radicals is enjoying a revival. Anti-big-government activists also would be well advised to re-read their Mahatma Gandhi. This battle is just beginning, and the power elite will pull out all the stops to win it. It will require cool heads, stout hearts, courage and perspicacity to stand down the continuing big-government takeover of America.

Very soon another generation is going to learn the lessons that previous generations learned when they did what needed to be done to win freedom from overbearing government acting immorally and illegally with the threat of violence under the color of law:

“Get your hand on the freedom plow . . .

Don’t take nothing for your journey now

Keep your eyes on the prize . . . hold on!”

I don’t even know where to start. I’m stuck on the idea that the insurance companies and the Chamber of Commerce want a government takeover of health care and that the Democrats are creating a mob scene so they will have to cancel all their events.

It’s like listening to Sarah Palin, which I find akin to listening to a pre-verbal toddler just before they get the hang of the real thing. They’ve got all the expression down, the lilt, the emphasis and the cadence and if you didn’t know better you might think they were speaking a foreign tongue. There are even a few phrases and ideas in there that are true enough to have you trying to piece together some logic in it all. There is none, of course — it’s infantile gibberish, but they say it with such confidence that you are almost convinced that they know what they’re saying.

For people who are awash in wingnut speak, that screed above sounds perfectly reasonable, even though it makes no sense whatsoever. But it gives the rest of us a searing headache just trying to wrap our minds around how to rebut it. It’s just too … well … you know. Sigh. I’m tired.

Speaking of Palin: She’s a hard core, right to life zealot. She’s now claiming that Obama’s plan (whatever that is) will require that Baby Trig be euthanized.

*The person who wrote that post is the chief of the “Social Security Institute” some new “grassroots” organization allegedly devoted to helping senior citizens keep their social security and medicare. Here’s his history:

Dr. Lawrence A. Hunter is a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Policy Innovation and Chief Economist for the Free Enterprise Fund. [1] He was previously Chief Economist at Empower America and FreedomWorks. [2]

Hunter “works closely with the Congressional leadership, testifies before Congress, speaks frequently before business and citizens groups, is quoted often in major newspapers and makes frequent television and radio appearances.” [3]

Hunter “served as a member of Presidential candidate Bob Dole’s Task Force on Tax Reduction and Tax Reform. During the 103rd and 104th Congresses, Dr. Hunter served on the staff of the Joint Economic Committee, first as Republican Staff Director and later as the Chief Economic Advisor to the Vice Chairman where he was the lead staff person in charge of putting together the economic growth and tax cut component of the Contract With America.” [4]

Hunter was with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce “for five years where he served first as Deputy Chief Economist and later as Chief Economist and Vice President” prior to joining the Joint Economic Committee staff in 1993. [5]

Far be it for me to suspect that someone with this history might not be on the up and up when it comes to “saving social security and medicare” or that his populist anti big business rhetoric might be a tad disingenuous. Elsewhere he takes his arguments to their logical conclusion:

Obama’s chief of staff said that one of several ways to meet President Barack Obama’s goals is to adopt a mechanism under which a public plan is put into effect only if the marketplace fails to provide sufficient competition on its own.

This is precisely the trigger mechanism Republicans used when they created a prescription-drug benefit for Medicare in 2003. Any part of such a deal between the federal government and big insurance companies, of course, would have to entail a guarantee that the insurance companies be sheltered from paying the costs of the plan by shifting them onto healthcare consumers.

And guess who will pay? SENIORS FIRST. That is why it was no coincidence that the $155 billion “cost-saving” deal Obama struck with hospitals entails a decade’s worth of reductions to Medicare and charity-care payments for hospitals.

So there you have it: A stealth government takeover of big insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, hospitals and even private employers along with more cuts to Medicare. When the government and private industry go into partnership, it is invariably the people who get kneecapped. The fascist healthcare system being teed up in Washington will be no exception.

Hunter is associated with Freedomworks, which you should all know by now is a leader in rightwing astroturf operations.

This guy is writing very clever stuff designed to redirect the populist anger at bailouts and business and he’s started an “institute” that is completely disingenuous considering what he writes on its blog. If you have an elderly relative keep your eyes out for any direct mail coming from the Social Security Institute.

h/t to RP

A Fallacy That Should Have Been Caught

by tristero

[UPDATE: Through a bizarre comedy of errors, I inadvertently posted a rough draft before this post was done. That said, I stand by the post, even if I expressed myself less effectively than I hoped. At the end of the post, there’s another update which hopefully, will clarify things.]

If my much-loved philosophy professor Sid Morgenbesser had read this awful post by Matt Yglesias, he would have flunked him – and Professor Morgenbesser gave everyone A’s on principle::

Tyler Cowen’s attempted characterization of American progressive politics involves at several points basically the claim that American progressives want to make the United States more “like Europe.” There’s clearly an extent to which that’s true…

There’s a technical phrase in the philosophy business for the kind of logical fallacy at play here: total fucking nonsense. I’ll illustrate by analogy:

If an American composer, say his name is, oh I don’t know, Steve Reich, learns that the Balinese have a fascinating music called “gamelan” and the concepts of gamelan are helpful in working out problems in his own music, that doesn’t mean there’s clearly an extent to which it is true Reich wants to write gamelan. And indeed, he never has. His music entirely transforms some very simple concepts and his music sounds absolutely nothing like gamelan. That’s because he’s one smart fellow (and by the way, he was a philosophy major).

Progressive politics is the politics of liberals, who through long tradition are active seekers of knowledge and information, both old and new. In addition to generating new ideas, progressive politics seeks out good ideas from anywhere and everywhere to transform and adapt to 21st Century American problems. Of course, liberals find much to admire about European cultures and societies: there is much greatness there. That in no way means we want America to be “like Europe.” Of course, liberals find much to admire in Athenian democracy. That in no way means we want America to be “like ancient Greece.”

I don’t know Tyler Cowen’s thought beyond this post and based on it, I don’t feel impelled to learn more. He sounds like a typical right wing operative of the pseudo-intellectual sort. He isn’t interested in serious argument but in setting up utterly ludicrous strawmen so he can pretend to trash liberalism and progressive politics without truly engaging them. If he was serious, he would never engage in utterly dildo assertions about progressivism such as:

There exists a better way and that is shown by the very successful polities of northwestern Europe and near-Europe. We know that way can work, even if it is sometimes hard to implement.

You can’t argue with this. You can only laugh at it. In fact, arguing with it is dangerous, because you elevate this nonsense to the status of serious discourse. These are precisely the mistakes made by some liberals, including Matt, during the runup to Bush/Iraq – taking truly stupid ideas seriously and accepting fallacious arguments – much to Matt’s later regret.

It really is time to ignore ideas like Tyler Cowen’s. And Matt, I truly wish you were in Sid’s class. I’m no philosopher, but he taught me how to recognize unadulterated bullshit when I read it.

[Briefly, I wanted to make two basic points in this post:

1. Cowen’s notion that liberals want America to be more “like Europe,” which Matt simply accepts, is illogical nonsense. We don’t want America to be “like Europe.” We simply want America to be a better country. As Henk says in comments, we’ll take good ideas wherever we find them, and transform them into proposals that are specifically American.

2. Cowen’s characterization of progressive politics is not fair and balanced, as he claims, but blatantly dishonest. It’s a rhetorical setup. For example, if you accept, as Matt does, that progressives basically want America to be more like Europe, then you are almost begging to be refuted by a long list of the many specific failures European states have with their domestic and foreign policies. Furthermore, if you accept Cowen’s premise and still declare yourself a progressive, then you are also obligated to make embarassingly lame defenses of America in order to demonstrate that you don’t reflexively hate the American Way. In fact, that is exactly what Matt did in his post; he’s already playing defense and Cowen hasn’t even started to attack!

There are other points i wanted to make, the most important being that liberals and progressives who are interested in serious, thoughtful discussions of different political philosophies, should not, as a rule, accept characterizations of liberal positions by those who are, by their own admission, hostile to the very notion of liberalism. These are not honest intellectual opponents, interested in the serious give and take of ideas, but political operatives. Of course, there are very important critiques of liberalism and progressivism that can be made. However, the ridiculous notion that we want America to be more like Europe is not one of them. Something like that should be a tipoff that the discussion is being rigged. ]