Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Wish I’d Said That

The Sideshow is on a tear today. Avedon’s got a number of really good posts up, but this one is a barn burner:

What they love is their hatred of liberals and liberalism. And hating liberalism is hating America. Make no mistake about this: the foundation of America is liberalism. Our form of government, from the very beginning, is liberal democracy. And, while they talk about how they love America while liberals do not, and how it is conservatives who adhere strictly to the Constitution, it is also abundantly clear that when they are given an opportunity to prove such things, they do the reverse.

[…]

What makes it so easy to hate France, and any other nation that shows every sign of being a liberal democracy, is that they’ve got liberal democracy. In the parlance of conservatives, any government that shows a concern for the welfare of its people is practically a communist state. But, wait:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

And that, my friends, is the organizing principle of liberalism. The “general Welfare” and “the Blessings of Liberty” are meant to be the goal of the United States of America – it says so in the very first sentence of the Constitution. It is the obligation of the government to “secure” these things for us.

But France, Germany, and the United Kingdom have “socialized medicine”, so they are obviously indistinguishable from Stalinism, to hear conservatives tell it. That’s why it was so easy for conservatives to start accusing Bill and Hillary Clinton of being communists when they campaigned for “Hillarycare”. Although they sometimes claimed to despise this program because it was supposedly complicated or bureaucratic, the truth is that they opposed it precisely because it might actually work. The same reason they despise Social Security, which clearly does work. Because such programs promote the general welfare.

This is why conservatives must lie about what they are doing. They are trying to destroy Social Security while claiming they mean to save it. They have to lie, because no one with any sense, or any concern for our nation, would want them to succeed at destroying it. They make up reasons why any proposed national health insurance plan would fail, because they do not want one to succeed. They claim they want to stop abortion “to save lives” while instituting programs that are known to increase the likelihood of unwanted pregnancy and abortion. They empty our treasury and cut taxes to the rich while claiming to “improve” our economy. They construct a program of theocracy while claiming it’s in aid of “freedom of religion”. They claim to be “Constitutional constructionists” while stripping the Constitution of any meaning. They even restrict our travel and threaten to remove our citizenship for political reasons while claiming to “protect our freedoms”.

Oh, they hate America, there’s no question of that. The only question is why liberals hesitate to say so.

I think it’s because liberals believe in our system so dearly that it’s been very hard for us to wrap our minds around the idea that our government is seriously under threat from within. This is a very frightening proposition. You feel a little bit crazy for even thinking it. In this way, we are the victims of faith-based thinking, too. We just can’t seem to accept what we are seeing before our very eyes. We think that our system is so strong that it can withstand anything.

Impeachment, stolen election, terrorist attack, trumped up war, media dominance all in less than a decade. It’s happening.

Check Him Out Now

We doin’ big pimpin, we spendin’ cheese

We doin’ big pimpin’ up in DC

CNBC Sunday, 8 PM EST

Be there or be square. Wolcott’s on Tina Brown.

(Well, not literally. I don’t think, anyway. Better watch, just in case.)

Crusaders For Freedom

Via Talk Left I see that 44 percent of Americans think that we should limit the civil liberties of American Muslims. And, waddaya know:

The survey also examined the relation of religion to perceptions of Islam and Islamic countries and found the more religious a person described themselves, the more negative their views on Islam.

The amount of attention paid to TV news also had a bearing on how strongly a respondent favored restrictions.

“The more attention paid to television news, the more you fear terrorism, and you are more likely to favor restrictions on civil liberties,” said Erik Nisbet, a senior research associate with Cornell’s Survey Research Institute who helped design the survey.

While researchers said they weren’t necessarily surprised by the overall level of support for restrictions, they were startled by the correlation with religion and exposure to television news.

“We need to explore why these two very important channels of discourse may nurture fear rather than understanding,” Shanahan said.

Shanahan said researchers expected the correlation with party affiliation.

In each of the four instances, Republicans favored restrictions by an almost 2-to-1 margin over Democrats and Independents.

“We need to explore why these two very important channels of discourse may nurture fear rather than understanding,”

That’s a tough one. Cui bono?

What’s The Hurry, Junior?

One of my commenters makes the point that the belief that there is a social security crisis will not be easily dismissed and that’s probably true. Kevin Drum points out that Democrats, too, have found it useful over the years to say that there was a looming crisis. I suspect that they never imagined that the Republicans would be so audacious as to run up huge deficits and then turn around and lobby for privatization with no intention of paying for transition costs. As we know, this isn’t your father’s GOP.

So perhaps we need to look at who and how they plan to sell this baby and fashion some specific responses. As far as I can tell it’s Codpiece running with a version of their patented “he’s got WMD, the sky is falling hurry, hurry, hurry.” “The crisis is now!” the president veritably shrieked at his sycophantic little sideshow this week.

During the Clinton health care debacle, one of the most clever things the Republicans did was to connect the dots between the Clinton scandals and the health care plan. By saying that the Clintons had no credibility because of WhitewaterTravelOfficeZoeBaird or whatever, they were able to raise questions about his ability to manage a huge change in the economy. They used doubts about his character to make people nervous about his plan.

Donkey Rising shows some new numbers from the Ipsos-AP poll and the Quinnipiac University poll that show Bush remains in deep doo-doo on the Iraq question.

On Iraq, in the same poll, 48 percent approve and 50 percent disapprove of Bush’s handling of Iraq. But among independents, 66 percent disapprove. And in the latest Quinnipiac University poll, Bush’s approval rating on Iraq is very poor 41/55 but an even worse 37/58 among independents.

In the Ipsos-AP poll, 47 percent believe it is likely that a stable, democratic government will be established in Iraq, compared to 51 percent who don’t. But only 36 percent of independents believe a stable government in Iraq is likely.

Finally, the Q-poll finds the worst numbers ever on whether going to war with Iraq was the right thing for the US to do or the wrong thing. Just 42 percent now say we did the right thing, while 52 percent say it was the wrong thing. And independents have an even harsher judgement: they say war with Iraq was the wrong thing to do by 55-37.

We should take a page from the Republicans and start connecting the dots between Iraq and social security. Just as with Iraq, Bush is going to try to ram through this legislation quickly by playing Chicken Little. Democrats should make that observation and remind people that he does not have any credibility when it comes to defining a crisis, (also known as an “imminent threat.”)

There are plenty of doubts about Bush out there. We need to make use of them instead of starting over from scratch with every single issue. The public clearly does not support Bush’s Iraq policy and national security is his strong suit. He and the republicans have even less credibility on domestic issues.

The minority Republicans were able to convince people that Clinton’s “character” problems meant that he could not be trusted with a huge program change in the midst of what people geniunely believed was a crisis at the time. I submit that Democrats have ample ammunition to draw the parallel between Bush’s rush to war and Bush’s rush to privatize and they can make a case that his judgment is faulty when it comes to defining a future crisis and that he, therefore, cannot be trusted with a huge change in social security.

“But everybody says there’s a social security crisis!”

“Yeah, “everybody” said Saddam had WMD, too, and nobody said it louder or more often than President Bush. Let’s slow down here and be careful. A lot of people depend on social security and I don’t think we need to rush into privatizing that program like he rushed us into invading Iraq.”

Similarities

Via THE DAOU REPORT I see that some on the right are seeing some similarity between the American left and bin laden:

ARTHUR CHRENKOFF NOTES that Osama is sounding familiar. “bin Laden is moving one step further along the path of the great ideological – or at least rhetorical – convergence between the angry left and the angry Islamofascism . . . And thus Osama becomes yet another billionaire complaining about the growing gap between the rich and the poor, a sort of George Soros with a Closed Society Institute.”

Yes, the secular left is in cahoots with the Islamic fundamentalists. We have so much in common. (I hear Osama’s a big believer in civil liberties and women’s rights.)

This is not to say that bin Laden’s rhetoric doesn’t have a lot in common with some Americans, on a very fundamental level. I noticed this some time back and made note of it:

We do not claim to know all the ways of Providence yet we can trust in them, placing our confidence in the loving God behind all of life, and all of history. May he guide us now.”

In the end, I advise myself and you to fear God covertly and openly and to be patient in the jihad. Victory will be achieved with patience. I also advise myself and you to say more prayers.

“Our prayer tonight is that God will see us through and keep us worthy …Hope still lights our way, and the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness will not overcome it.”

God Almighty says: “Those who believe fight in the cause of Allah, and those who reject faith fight in the cause of evil.”

“There is power — wonder-working power — in the goodness and idealism and faith of the American people.”

Verily, Allah guideth not a people unjust.

“The American people have deep and diverse religious beliefs, truly one of the great strengths of our country. And the faith of our citizens is seeing us through some demanding times. We’re being challenged. We’re meeting those challenges because of our faith.”

God Almighty says: “Oh ye who believe! If ye will help the cause of Allah, He will help you and plant your feet firmly.”

“After we were attacked on September the 11th, we carried our grief to the Lord Almighty in prayer.”

Obey Him, be thankful to Him, and remember Him always, and die not except in a state of Islam with complete submission to Allah.

“The role of government is limited, because government cannot put hope in people’s hearts, or a sense of purpose in people’s lives. That happens when someone puts an arm around a neighbor and says, God loves you, I love you, and you can count on us both.”

The jurisdiction of the socialists and those rulers has fallen a long time ago. Socialists are infidels wherever they are, whether they are in Baghdad or Aden

“I ask you to challenge your listeners to encourage your congregations to work together for the good of this nation, to work hard to break down the barriers that have divided the children of God for too long. There is no question that we can rid this nation of hopelessness and despair, because the greatest of America is the character of the American people.”



Before concluding, we reiterate the importance of high morale and caution against false rumors, defeatism, uncertainty, and discouragement.

“What I’m saying is, the days of discriminating against religious groups just because they’re religious are coming to an end. I have issued an executive order banning discrimination against faith-based charities and social service grants by federal agencies.”



Allah is sufficient for us and He is the best disposer of affairs.

“And we are a courageous country, ready when necessary to defend the peace. And today, the peace is threatened. We face a continuing threat of terrorist networks that hate the very thought of people being able to live in freedom.”



We also stress to honest Muslims that they should move, incite, and mobilize the [Islamic] nation, amid such grave events and hot atmosphere so as to liberate themselves from those unjust and renegade ruling regimes, which are enslaved by the United States.

“They hate the thought of the fact that in this great country, we can worship the Almighty God the way we see fit. And what probably makes him even angrier is we’re not going to change.”



Muslims’ doctrine and banner should be clear in fighting for the sake of God. He who fights to raise the word of God will fight for God’s sake. So fight ye against the friends of Satan: feeble indeed is the cunning of Satan

“We face an outlaw regime in Iraq that hates our country.”



Needless to say, this crusade war is primarily targeted against the people of Islam.

“A regime that aids and harbors terrorists and is armed with weapons of mass murder. Chemical agents, lethal viruses, and shadowy terrorist networks are not easily contained. Secretly, without fingerprints, Saddam Hussein could provide one of his hidden weapons to terrorists, or help them develop their own. Saddam Hussein is a threat. He’s a threat to the United States of America. He’s a threat to some of our closest friends and allies. We don’t accept this threat.”



We are following up with great interest and extreme concern the crusaders’ preparations for war to occupy a former capital of Islam, loot Muslims’ wealth, and install an agent government, which would be a satellite for its masters in Washington and Tel Aviv, just like all the other treasonous and agent Arab governments.

This would be in preparation for establishing the Greater Israel.

“My attitude is that we owe it to future generations of Americans and citizens in freedom-loving countries to see to it that Mr. Saddam Hussein is disarmed.”

This is a prescribed duty. God says: “[And let them pray with thee] taking all precautions and bearing arms: the unbelievers wish if ye were negligent of your arms and your baggage, to assault you in a single rush.”

“It’s his choice to make as to how he will be disarmed. He can either do so — which it doesn’t look like he’s going to — for the sake of peace, we will lead a coalition of willing countries and disarm Saddam Hussein.”

Regardless of the removal or the survival of the socialist party or Saddam, Muslims in general and the Iraqis in particular must brace themselves for jihad against this unjust campaign and acquire ammunition and weapons.

“But should we need to use troops, for the sake of future generations of Americans, American troops will act in the honorable traditions of our military and in the highest moral traditions of our country.”

Amid this unjust war, the war of infidels and debauchees led by America along with its allies and agents, we would like to stress a number of important values

“In violation of the Geneva Conventions, Saddam Hussein is positioning his military forces within civilian populations in order to shield his military and blame coalition forces for civilian casualties that he has caused. Saddam Hussein regards the Iraqi people as human shields, entirely expendable when their suffering serves his purposes.”



“…we realized from our defense and fighting against the American enemy that, in combat, they mainly depend on psychological warfare. This is in light of the huge media machine they have. They also depend on massive air strikes so as to conceal their most prominent point of weakness, which is the fear, cowardliness, and the absence of combat spirit among US soldiers.

“We’re called to defend our nation and to lead the world to peace, and we will meet both challenges with courage and with confidence.”

If all the world forces of evil could not achieve their goals on a one square mile of area against a small number of mujahideen with very limited capabilities, how can these evil forces triumph over the Muslim world?

“There’s an old saying, ‘Let us not pray for tasks equal to our strength. Let us pray for strength equal to our tasks.’ And that is our prayer today, for the strength in every task we face.”



…we remind that victory comes only from God and all we have to do is prepare and motivate for jihad.

“I want to thank each of you for your prayers. I want to thank you for your faithfulness. I want to thank you for your good work. And I want to thank you for loving your country. May God bless you all, and may God bless America.”

O ye who believe. When ye meet a force, be firm, and call Allah in remembrance much (and often); That ye may prosper. Our Lord. Give us good in this world and good in the Hereafter and save us from the torment of the Fire. May God’s peace and blessings be upon Prophet Muhammad and his household.

US

Them

If it Ain’t Broke Don’t Fix It

Matt Yglesias makes an important point about the social security fight. He says that we must debate this within the frame that “there is no crisis” because:

Most of the young people I know — including myself until very recently — have been taken in by a decades-long effort on behalf of privatizers into believing that Social Security is in “crisis,” and that if we do nothing the system will “go bankrupt” before we retire, meaning that the system will somehow collapse and we won’t get any benefits.

If you approach the issue from inside that frame, then no amount of cavailing about benefit cuts or “risky” stock market transactions is going to get you anywhere. A smaller benefits package and a stock portfolio that may or may not pay off looks like a really good deal compared to a bankrupt pension plan that gives you nothing. Once you understand that even if we do nothing whatsoever to fix Social Security and the Trustees’ overly pessimistic predictions come true, the system will still have enough money to pay my generation more in real terms then current retirees get, everything looks different.

I think that even people my age think that social security is going to be pretty much worthless when we get to retirement (which is closer than we think — I’m 48.) Matt makes a very good point.

Therefore, it’s probably a mistake for the Democrats to even pretend to be willing to work with the other side, as Reid and Pelosi did yesterday. In fact, the more I think about it, I realize that “there is no crisis” probably should be the central argument. The only reason that people are willing to entertain the idea of privatization is because they have been told they won’t get much out of the system by the time they retire. Once you debunk that, you have opened the door to ask why they want to privatize in the first place. And that takes you right up to their ideology — “social security is a ‘socialist’ program that must be destroyed” — and their greed — “Well, as long as we’re destroying it, there’s no reason not to make a few bucks while we’re at it.”

There is no crisis.

If we do nothing at all it is likely that in forty years when the 20 somethings retire under the current system they will actually get more than current seniors. Republican privatization is a wall street scam that young people will regret buying into.

Sandwich Meat

If you are a “sandwich boomer” between the ages of 40 and 55 you are about to get screwed, big time. Are you currently helping your parents in their old age and putting your kids through college right now? Get ready. Even under the most optimistic scenario you don’t have time for private accounts to make up any difference, but you’ll be right in the bulls eye on the inevitable benefits cuts. If you aren’t a millionaire, it might be a good idea to develop a taste for catfood.

Crying wolf.

They are trying to scare people. Republicans have been crying wolf about social security forever because they want to destroy it. They always have. If you listened to Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan back in the 1960’s they said that the system would be broke by now and there wouldn’t be anything for young people. Those people are now comfortably retired. They have always wanted to destroy social security. Always.

Doing The Right Thing.

Hey seniors. Do you feel good about working your whole lives, feeling at least somewhat secure in your retirement and then voting for people who want the Enron folks to experiment with your kids’ and grandkids’ social security? Would you vote for it if it affected you?

Maybe Harry and Louise need to gather the whole family for Sunday dinner and have a little talk.

Thanks to Rickpauler at bartcop

Passionless Defense

In The Year of “The Passion” Frank Rich makes an important observation:

Even more important than inflated notions of the fundamentalists’ power may be their entertainment value. As Ms. Kissling points out, the 50 million Americans who belong to progressive religious organizations are rarely represented on television because ‘progressive religious leaders are so tolerant that they don’t make good TV.’ The Rev. Bob Chase of the United Church of Christ agrees: ‘We’re not exciting guests.’ His church’s recent ad trumpeting its inclusion of gay couples was rejected by the same networks that routinely give a forum to the far more dramatic anti-gay views of Mr. Falwell. Ms. Kissling laments that contemporary progressive Christians lack an intellectual star to rival Reinhold Niebuhr or William Sloane Coffin, but adds that today ‘Jesus Christ would have a tough time getting covered by TV if he didn’t get arrested.’

This paradigm is everywhere in our news culture. When Jon Stewart went on CNN’s ‘Crossfire’ to demand that its hosts stop ‘hurting America’ by turning news and political debate into a form of pro wrestling, it may have sounded a bit hyperbolic. ‘Crossfire’ is an aging show that few watch. But his broader point holds up: it’s all crossfire now. In the electronic news sphere where most Americans live much of the time, anyone who refuses to engage in combat is quickly sent packing as a bore.

Rich understands the media dynamic better than anyone else out there. This piece is about the media and religion (and I urge you to read the whole thing) but he hits here on something that is even more fundamental. What drives the news media, particularly TV, is action and spectacle and the right is just better at providing it. The southern style preachers, in particular, put on a helluva show. I have always believed that this was the key to Clinton’s survival as well. He was a media star as much as a politician. And after 9/11, George W. Bush became one too.

It is entirely possible that the economy is going to seriously go to hell in a handbasket, which always tends to make people get serious — it’s not very glamorous to go broke — but in the meantime we are going to have to face the reality that liberals are severely charisma challenged and haven’t figured out how to disarm the other side. One of the reasons, I believe, that we are so often underrepresented on these screamer shows is that we don’t have very many people who can play the role of angry advocate. I keep thinking that this barking heads and playing against type format (dozens of African American Republican mouthpieces, for instance) would grow stale. But, I don’t see any signs of it losing favor at the moment. In fact, our new lukewarm war makes verbal combat more fashionable than ever.

It’s possible that Hollywood will become gunshy after all this criticism of their political activity, but I would hope that the Democrats would at least prevail upon them for some help in the presentation department. Our people do great on the Lehrer News Hour and I and 140 other people in the country tune in religiously. But that’s not where the action is. They can say what they will about Michael Moore but he gets people’s attention, doesn’t he? In this noise fest we call a media, that’s half the battle.

Buy Your Own health Insurance Or Else

The concept of requiring all Californians to carry their own health insurance is gaining momentum in the Capitol, as some lawmakers and healthcare advocates see it as a politically viable way to deal with the state’s 5.3 million uninsured.

With the November defeat of Proposition 72 halting efforts to require employers to provide healthcare coverage, the concept looks likely to be part of next year’s legislative debate. But it faces huge hurdles over how to make it financially feasible for the poor and enforce it.

[…]

‘We have too many people that are uninsured in this state,’ Schwarzenegger said in October at the Panetta Institute in Monterey. ‘We have to really address this once and for all, and figure out a way of how we do it, like with car insurance, where we make it law that people carry insurance and that they are really insured, because it’s unfair to so many people when you have people using the hospitals for emergency, and then creating a huge cost.

Hookay. Here in California it is illegal to drive without car insurance. If you are stopped by a cop or get into an accident you can be fined or jailed for failing to have it. You cannot register your car without showing proof that you are insured.

Just how in the hell are they going to enforce a law mandating that every individual buy health insurance? Refuse you medical care? Arrest you? Kill you?

I don’t know how many of you have had to buy individual health insurance policies recently, but it has become absurdly expensive. And the older you get, the more expensive it gets. Here in California between 45 and 65 it is astronomical even for a healthy person. If you’re sick, you’d better be able to afford more than a thousand a month — and that’s if you already have the insurance.

I would dismiss this as an unattainable Republican wet dream, but at this point I take everything they do very seriously. Ahnuld is a cult in this state and it seems he’s actually convinced people that he is doing more than speaking like a cartoon character. This could be an attempt to end medicaid and employer based health insurance all in one fell swoop. The way things are going, they might just succeed.

Welcome to the ownership society. You will now be able to own your own health insurance premium in its entirety! Cool huh?