Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

The Refs

by digby

The Opinionator in the NY Times is well worth reading today, because it’s all about Obama’s executive orders on Guantanamo and the political establishment’s response to them. It’s an interesting overview with a lot of good links to various points of view. (Never mind that the writer calls me a “current darling” in spite of the fact that I’m so stale and out of fashion at this point that I might as well be Elaine Benes. It’s informative anyway.)

It seems clear that everyone is happy, whether it’s the left, which wanted Obama to repudiate the torture regime or the right (and the media) who are totally convinced that he is continuing those same policies. That seems like good politics. He certainly appears to have effectively sidestepped, at least for the moment, the danger that closing Gitmo and the rest would result in a “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” style hissy fit. (I think in this case it helped that there was a strong public argument formulated outside the presidential campaign on the issue.)

But as we have learned in the past half decade, reality bites eventually and it will be clear exactly what the result of these orders are at some point. And, as I’ve written before, the stakes are not just US adherence to the Rule of Law, but US moral authority and Obama’s ability to conduct a credible foreign policy. Winking and nodding may work in the beltway, but foreign governments aren’t quite so willing to believe what they want to believe.

The fact is that if Obama does what is right for American foreign policy, there are many on the right who are going to be very angry, there’s just no way around that. Perhaps it’s a good thing to put off that moment of reckoning, considering all the things he has to deal with in the near term. But it will happen. And if he decides to eventually allow a little bit of torture-lite or finds some “common ground” on indefinite detention, he will also be sandbagged by the right who will accuse him not only of hypocrisy, but of not going far enough. There is only one way to politically and substantively deal with this, and that’s to make a clean, clear break with the Bush administration.

One of the most thought provoking excerpts I came across in the Opinionator’s long post was from Brian Beutler, in which he points out that the media simply has a need for conflict and so creates it where there is none. I think that’s true as well, but in this case, the media is papering over the conflict and you have to ask yourself why that is. Aside from the fact that they are covering their own feelings on torture, I think it’s just that the right is back to seriously working the refs, and that is a far more complicated issue for us to deal with.

The problem has never been that members of the media are conservative, although plenty of them are. The problem is that they are subject to sophisticated manipulation by the permanent political establishment (which is conservative by definition) and live and work in a world in which conventional wisdom cannot be freely challenged. And after many years of being called the “liberal media” they are still sensitive to the charge that they are in the tank and feel the need to prove their credibility. (The left’s media critique has no similar slogan — or clout — unfortunately.) This ads up to a media which is now feeling the need to prove their “independence” — and that never works out well for the liberal program.

The political establishment and the right wing noise machine are very, very good at this. They’ve been doing it for decades and their methods are far more nuanced and subtle than Rush Limbaugh screaming that he wants Obama to fail (although Limbaugh plays a part in this by legitimizing those who are playing a smoother game but are no less hostile.) They have the ability to manipulate the press to sabotage the progressive agenda through the building of false expectations, propaganda, social pressure, tabloid scandal and a long term commitment to the indoctrination among the people of ideological dogma. It’s a very well-developed strategy and it doesn’t suffer from Republican political failure because it exists outside of, and in spite of, electoral politics.

The problem with the press is far more complicated than a simple matter of fairness or even stultifying conventional wisdom, which as Jay Rosen explains in this widely read and important post, is hugely influential. It’s also a matter of their own lack of self-awareness and inability to either see or fight the pressures to conform that are brought to bear by powerful interests and institutions.

Many members of the press clearly like Obama. But it won’t help him pass his program or convey the message he wants to convey because the majority of those who are charged with disseminating his message aren’t agents of change, they are agents for the status quo whether they know it or not. And they have the power to tilt the playing field.

There are exceptions, of course. There are examples of courageous journalists willing to challenge the CW and who are attuned to right wing tactics. But many times they are marginalized or forced to soften the edges of their reporting if they stray too far from the establishment line. The conservatives know how to use that weakness to their own advantage and in a brilliant bit of jiu jitsu have even managed to convince most of the country, and the media themselves, that they are actually the handmaidens of liberalism. It’s one of their finest achievements.

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Conservatism Can Never Fail

by digby

…it can only be failed. And St. Ronnie can never be wrong, he can only be betrayed.

Here’s the latest:

The Republican Party that is in such disrepute today is not the party of Reagan. It is the party of Rush Limbaugh, of Ann Coulter, of Newt Gingrich, of George W. Bush, of Karl Rove. It is not a conservative party, it is a party built on the blind and narrow pursuit of power.

Not too long ago, conservatives were thought of as the locus of creative thought. Conservative think tanks (full disclosure: I was one of the three founding trustees of the Heritage Foundation) were thought of as cutting-edge, offering conservative solutions to national problems. By the 2008 elections, the very idea of ideas had been rejected. One who listened to Barry Goldwater’s speeches in the mid-’60s, or to Reagan’s in the ’80s, might have been struck by their philosophical tone, their proposed (even if hotly contested) reformulation of the proper relationship between state and citizen. Last year’s presidential campaign, on the other hand, saw the emergence of a Republican Party that was anti-intellectual, nativist, populist (in populism’s worst sense) and prepared to send Joe the Plumber to Washington to manage the nation’s public affairs.

American conservatism has always had the problem of being misnamed. It is, at root, the political twin to classical European liberalism, a freedoms-based belief in limiting the power of government to intrude on the liberties of the people. It is the opposite of European conservatism (which Winston Churchill referred to as reverence for king and church); it is rather the heir to John Locke and James Madison, and a belief that the people should be the masters of their government, not the reverse (a concept largely turned on its head by the George W. Bush presidency).

Over the last several years, conservatives have turned themselves inside out: They have come to worship small government and have turned their backs on limited government. They have turned to a politics of exclusion, division and nastiness. Today, they wonder what went wrong, why Americans have turned on them, why they lose, or barely win, even in places such as Indiana, Virginia and North Carolina.

And, watching, I suspect Ronald Reagan is smacking himself on the forehead, rolling his eyes and wondering who in the world these clowns are who want so desperately to wrap themselves in his cloak.

The modern Republican Party is the party of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan both of whom built the party’s power through bigotry, martial know-nothingism and greed. There has been no betrayal. Both Nixon and Reagan ran on exclusion, division and nastiness. The Roves and the Gingrich’s learned their dark arts swerving those two masters.

American conservatism has always had a nativist and populist cast to it, but the Big Money Boyz and the aristocrats figured out about 35 years ago how to turn a profit at it. They finally got so greedy they nearly killed their own golden goose, but let’s not pretend that all of the enablers of the period were somehow betrayed. This stuff has been going on for a very long time.

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Harmless

by digby

The number of in-custody sudden deaths rose dramatically during the first year California law enforcement agencies began using stun guns, raising questions about the safety of the devices, according to a new study at UCSF.

The electronic weapons are intended to be a nonlethal alternative to the gun.

“Tasers are not as safe as thought,” said Dr. Byron Lee, one of the cardiologists involved in studying the death rate related to Tasers, the most widely used stun gun. “And if they are used, they should be used with caution.”

The researchers analyzed sudden death data from 50 law enforcement agencies in the state that use Tasers. They compared the death rate pre- and post-Taser deployment – analyzing data for five years before each agency began using Tasers and five years afterward.

They found a sixfold increase in sudden deaths during the first year of Taser use – amounting to nearly 6 deaths per 100,000 arrests.

“I didn’t expect what we found,” said Lee. “I thought we would find no difference in the rate of sudden death. But there was a rather dramatic rise.”

After the first year, the rate of sudden deaths dropped down to nearly pre-Taser levels, suggesting that police and others in law enforcement altered the way they were using the devices to make them less lethal.

[…]

Tasers, known as “conducted energy” devices, send out high-frequency pulses which can cause a very rapid, dangerous heart rhythm, said senior author Dr. Zian H. Tseng, an assistant clinical professor in cardiology.

He says that the lethality may be the result of holding the charge for a long time rather than using a short pulse. But that’s a very difficult

One would hope that law enforcement will see that the willy nilly, all purpose use of tasers must be stopped in light of these findings. This use of tasers to shut up someone who is already in custody (as in the “don’t tase me, bro” case) or when a traffic violator doesn’t respond quite quickly enough for the officer’s taste is much too risky. They are clearly lethal weapons and they have no way of knowing if the person they are tasing has heart condition or some other health problem that would turn even proper taser use into a deadly choice. If their use is continued, which I think is a mistake, the least they can do is ensure that they are only used as a form of self defense.

But I doubt they will curb their use based on common sense and now scientific evidence. It will probably take many liability claims before they learn their lesson on this. Sadly, that’s how we do things in America.

Oh, and by the way:

A man tased by a Soddy Daisy police officer earlier this month has died after weeks in a coma.

According to his obituary, he died on Thursday at a local hospital.

An outside investigation is ongoing to determine what happened the morning he was injured. A police report shows Redden was tased because he appeared to be on some type of narcotic. It also states he wouldn’t obey verbal commands and was kicking and swinging at first responders.

The police report states he was tased three times, but family and friends believe it was more.

According to witnesses, the man was tased while he was restrained on a stretcher.

Update: Meanwhile, New Orleans goes all in.

h/t to many readers

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Factcheckers

by dday

In this economy, I guess the media isn’t hiring them:

Reports of a recent study by the Congressional Budget Office, showing that the vast majority of the money in the stimulus package won’t be spent until after 2010, have Democrats on the defensive and the GOP calling for a pullback in wasteful spending.

Funny thing is, there is no such report.

“We did not issue any report, any analysis or any study,” a CBO aide told the Huffington Post.

Rather, the nonpartisan CBO ran a small portion of an earlier version of the stimulus plan through a computer program that uses a standard formula to determine a score — how quickly money will be spent. The score only dealt with the part of the stimulus headed for the Appropriations Committee and left out the parts bound for the Ways and Means or Energy and Commerce Committee.

Because it dealt with just a part of the stimulus, it estimated the spending rate for only about $300 billion of the $825 billion plan. Significant changes have been made to the part of the bill the CBO looked at.

This was not only a major part of the GOP pushback on the recovery package the past couple days, it was trumpeted by all the usual suspects on cable news. At first I thought it odd that Republicans gave a damn whether stimulus spending happens quickly, considering they’ve spent the last several months blocking any stimulus at all. Of course it was just a way to undermine the plan, and the media played happily along. Thing is, the new head of the Office of Management and Budget promptly refuted this study, with numbers and everything, but he wasn’t really part of the news reports. He said/she said balance would have been an IMPROVEMENT upon this fiasco. But conservatives rule their world.

It’s pretty clear that the media has no ability to or interest in understanding this stuff, because then they wouldn’t have their precious “conflict”. So they regurgitate whatever some GOP staffer feeds them, just to spice things up. Cable news’ ratings soared this past year in the midst of an election based on change, but they haven’t changed one bit.

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Who’s Rooting For Failure Now?

by digby

Speaking of WATBs, Limbaugh is making a particular ass of himself this week:

We’re witnessing racism all this week that led up to the inauguration. We’re being told that we have to hope he succeeds. That we have to bend over, grab the ankles, bend forward, backward, whichever. Because his father was black, because this is the first black president.

He also said earlier:

So I’m thinking of replying to the guy, “Okay, I’ll send you a response, but I don’t need 400 words, I need four: I hope he fails.” (interruption) What are you laughing at? See, here’s the point. Everybody thinks it’s outrageous to say. Look, even my staff, “Oh, you can’t do that.” Why not? Why is it any different, what’s new, what is unfair about my saying I hope liberalism fails? Liberalism is our problem. Liberalism is what’s gotten us dangerously close to the precipice here. Why do I want more of it? I don’t care what the Drive-By story is. I would be honored if the Drive-By Media headlined me all day long: “Limbaugh: I Hope Obama Fails.” Somebody’s gotta say it.

As Think Progress noted earlier, Limbaugh himself repeatedly took liberals to task over the years for allegedly rooting for Bush’s failure, but mentioning hypocrisy in terms of conservatives is a useless exercise. They have no sense of shame apparently, so they just ignore such inconsistencies.

Still, Limbaugh’s comments are so outrageous that they can’t just be ignored. After all, it was only a few years ago that we were treated to non-stop hectoring like this, from the late Tony Snow:

If you root for failure, you’re rooting for American and Iraqi deaths. It’s a bit like the president’s 2002 State of the Union observation — either you’re with us or against us.

I never “rooted for failure” and I can’t find a record of anyone who did, certainly not in anything close to the blatant terms that Limbaugh uses. Yet, the right used this false claim as a weapon for years to subdue criticism of Bush and the Iraq war and it worked. The fact that Rush is openly rooting for Obama’s failure proves that bipartisanship, at least among the GOP faithful, is a one way street. He is still a hugely influential member of the conservative movement and I think it is unwise not to take him at his word.

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Oh, Boo Hoo

by digby

These people can dish it out, but when it comes to taking it they whine and cry like little bitty babies:

On the plane, no longer Air Force One but now Special Air Mission 28000, they talked about the speech. George W. Bush, the former president, was heading home to Texas with his inner circle, having just left the Capitol, where his successor first thanked him for his service and then proceeded to discredit it.

The Bush team had worked assiduously to make the transition smooth for the incoming President Obama and stayed out of the way as he used the postelection period to take leadership of the economy even before being sworn in. And now, as far as some of them were concerned, the new president had used his inaugural lectern to give the back of the hand to a predecessor who had been nothing but gracious to him.

“There were a few sharp elbows that really rankled and I felt were not as magnanimous as the occasion called for,” Karen Hughes, a longtime Bush confidante, said in an interview. “He really missed an opportunity to be as big as the occasion was and, frankly, as gracious as President Bush was as he left office.”

Dan Bartlett, another top adviser, used similar language. “It was a missed opportunity to bring some of the president’s loyal supporters into the fold,” he said. Marc A. Thiessen, the chief White House speechwriter until this week, added: “It was an ungracious inaugural. It was pretty clear he was taking shots.”

It doesn’t matter how much you “reach out” or try to find “common ground” with conservatives, they are so thin-skinned that any criticism is seen as a threat to their honor. Their worldview is formed around the idea that they are a misunderstood and besieged minority who are victimized by traitorous, hedonistic liberals and their lives are organized around their belief in their oppression.

That they are actually saying Obama is ungracious is pretty unbelievable, but there it is.

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Influencers

by digby

Forbes magazine has named the 25 most influential liberals in the media and astonishingly, seven of them are bloggers: Kevin Drum, Glenn Greenwald, Ezra Klein, Matt Yglesias, Andrew Sullivan, Kos and Josh Marshall.

Considering where the blogosphere was just five years ago, that’s pretty astonishing.

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Amazingly, Negotiating With Ourselves Didn’t Work

by dday

I know this is going to floor you, but the GOP is not satisfied with $300 billion in tax cuts in the economic recovery package, and Obama’s extended hand of friendship was bitten off.

Just days after taking office vowing to end the political era of “petty grievances,” President Obama ran into mounting GOP opposition yesterday to an economic stimulus plan that he had hoped would receive broad bipartisan support.

Republicans accused Democrats of abandoning the new president’s pledge, ignoring his call for bipartisan comity and shutting them out of the process by writing the $850 billion legislation. The first drafts of the plan would result in more spending on favored Democratic agenda items, such as federal funding of the arts, they said, but would do little to stimulate the ailing economy.

Yep, the entire bill gives $800 billion to Robert Mapplethorpe, according to the GOP, and also the Dems are trying to beat up on those poor noble bankers (Republicans en masse voted against releasing TARP money to those same bankers, so I don’t know how they’ll pull off this “protect the bankers from tax-hiking libruls” trick, though consistency isn’t their goal):

The House bill also would reverse a controversial change in tax regulations that the Treasury Department made last year at an estimated cost of $140 billion in lost revenue. The change, intended to encourage bank mergers, allows banks to shelter their own profits from taxes based on losses at companies they acquire. Treasury made the switch without public notice or congressional approval.

Here’s the very sensible Republican alternative, that would just end taxes for a while and make everyone happy.

As expected, the GOP alternative focuses primarily on tax cuts over increased federal spending. After their meeting with the president, Republicans continued to express concern over the spending in the $825 billion package, even though Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said Congress would likely meet Obama’s mid-February deadline.

Instead of a tax credit for individuals making $75,000 or less or families making less than $150,000, Republicans would like to reduce the tax rate by 5 percent on those Americans in the lowest tax brackets, from 15 percent to 10 percent and 10 percent to 5 percent […]

If they had more of a say in the bill, Republicans would also like to allow small businesses to take a tax deduction equal to 20 percent of their earnings to “free up funds for small businesses to retain and hire new employees,” according to talking points released after the meeting.

Republicans in the House would also like assurances in the bill that Congress will not raise taxes to pay down the $550 billion in federal spending laid out in the Democrats’ bill.

In order to stabilize the housing market, Republicans would also like to grant a $7,500 tax credit to homebuyers who put down 5 percent on the purchase price of their home […]

Boehner, in remarks on the White House driveway, warned that “government can’t solve this problem.”

I don’t want to say that every tax break should be stricken from this package. Expanding eligibility for the child tax credit seems like a good idea, as does the higher education tax credit for tuition and textbooks. Getting money to those who will spend it is the point of a stimulus, and targeting funds at the low end of the income ladder makes some sense.

But when you start out saying that any bill must have 80 votes, OF COURSE the other side isn’t going to leap at the first proposal. Going halfway at the beginning of the negotiation is a terrible strategy, not to mention the fact that the Republican caucus is far more conservative and unwilling to do anything but feed more tax cuts to their buddies when that’s the worst stimulus multiplier there is.

Obama is still saying the bill will pass by President’s Day, so it’s possible he’s seen the failure of extending the hand of friendship and will now just plow ahead. But we’re still stuck with legislation that may be insufficient to get the economy going. Learning this negotiation lesson would be a plus, but it’s an awful big price to pay.

…my advice would be to offer the best possible plan that would get the votes needed necessary to pass instead of some fantasy of an 80-vote threshold, banking off the public goodwill with both the President and the concept of funding infrastructure, which even Frank Luntz recognizes the public is demanding and would pay higher taxes for.

…OK, I like this.

The top congressional leaders from both parties gathered at the White House for a working discussion over the shape and size of President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus plan. The meeting was designed to promote bipartisanship.

But Obama showed that in an ideological debate, he’s not averse to using a jab.

Challenged by one Republican senator over the contents of the package, the new president, according to participants, replied: “I won.”

I think they call that an “accountability moment.”

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New BFF

by digby

David Rivkin, neocon torture apologist of the highest order, was on CNN this morning saying that he is very, very happy with Obama’s executive orders and finds it reassuring that Obama is using the vernacular of war to talk about the al Qaeda threat.

Perhaps he’s had a change of heart and no longer thinks the war on terror requires extraordinary methods. Or perhaps the right, with the help of the media, has decided that the best way to hem Obama in on the GWOT is to simply pretend that he hasn’t actually changed any of Bush’s policies. They seem determined to see these executive orders as window dressing.

Update: See also Glenn Greenwald’s post today about the terrorist fear mongering. These seem to add up to a pincer tactic to squeeze the new president. It’s very interesting.

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Heads On A Stick

by digby

People think that California is run by initiative and it is. But it is also run by a couple of talk show hosts out of LA. (The government is completely dysfunctional.)

The talk show hosts, who were instrumental in the recall of Gray Davis, are still calling the shots:

“Immediately head to your battle stations,” blared John and Ken on their hugely popular Southern California conservative radio show on Thursday.

The conservative duo — blasting on the powerful KFI station — had put the Republican lawmakers quoted in The Bee’s story about potentially raising taxes in their crosshairs.

Their targets were GOP Assemblymen Anthony Adams, Mike Duvall and Roger Niello. (And, later in the show, Sen. Abel Maldonado, who was quoted in a MediaNews story saying he could potentially vote for tax hikes to balance the budget.)

Pictures and phone numbers for all four lawmakers were posted on their Web site at various points.

“Then start calling these bastards. This is war. War!” John and Ken shouted.

The radio shock jocks promised a “huge tax revolt steamroller coming at them.”

If you have any doubt about the conservative pull on GOP lawmakers to never support taxes, Thursday’s program will set you straight.

“We’re going to get these heads on a stick!” John and Ken pledged at one point. “Heads on a stick!”

Two of the GOP foursome braved the program.

Duvall, R-Yorba Linda, said he would never support taxes, which he called “absolutely insane,” but was simply characterizing the state of negotiations in Sacramento.

“I’m not endorsing the situation whatsoever,” he said.

Adams, R-Hesperia, went on to defend the possibility of tax hikes. “I think taxes stink,” he said. “They suck.”

But Adams said raising taxes may be necessary given the political and economic climate.

“I dare with the full knowledge that this will probably be the end of a political career for me. But the fact of the matter is California is in a place where they need people who are willing to sacrifice their own personal agenda for what’s right,” Adams said.

He was raked over by the radio hosts for his stance.

Said one host: “You guys always talked a tough game, but you always rolled over for the Democrats when it came down to the final vote, so I don’t have any sympathy for you. You guys talked, but you didn’t act. You always voted with the Democrats, at least enough of you did every single freaking year. And now you’re going to come to us for money?”

“Yes,” Adam replied.

“No,” said the host, as the other laughed. “How about no.”

He added, “You may be right about your career.”

Torlakson and O’Connell will host twin press conferences together, one in San Leandro in the morning and one in Los Angeles in the afternoon.

These are two of the anti-tax, immigrant bashing Lou Dobbs populist right and I would expect their ilk are going to be heard from frequently as the debate over the economy rages on. They were instrumental in the destruction of California with this anti-tax nonsense and they have a way of appealing to people who are not normally right wingers with their irreverent style and their message has resonance with people who aren’t well versed in economic issues because it has a certain faux common sense logic. They are worth keeping an eye on.

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