Month: August 2010

Saturday night, when the event is done, the Lincoln Memorial will still be the place where King gave one of the most memorable speeches of the 20th century. People who came to the rally in search of answers will still be looking. And Glenn Beck will still be a legend in his own mind.

Eugene Robinson

I happen to think that liberals should be open to Social Security cuts as part of a balanced package of deficit reduction.

Jonathan Chait, spewing the purest form of horseshit possible.
Social Security is not in crisis. All our problems should be like Social Security. Social Security is a rounding error in comparison to the demands of Medicare and Medicaid going forward.
Rest assured, though, The Democrat will engage this issue on the inevitable “savagely cut programs, don’t touch the tax tables or military spending” terms that the GOP demands (and will get) and will thereby set the Overton Window such that the leftmost possible position is that of merely not eliminating the social safety net completely. And wonder why all of us on drugs out here abandon them come 2012.

Douthat: asked and answered

ross douthat:

Would Friedersdorf and others really like to live in a world where the two-thirds of Americans who oppose the [Park 51] project just had their sentiments ignored, because of the bigotry woven into the anti-mosque cause?

tom socca:

Is this a rhetorical question? Here’s one in return: how do you get onto the New York Times op-ed page without a sixth-grade civics education? Would I like to live somewhere where people are allowed to practice their religion, even when two-thirds of the general public would deny them that right if they could? Hell, yes, I would, Ross Douthat. That place is called America. Love it or leave it.

Asked and answered auto-reblog.

(via abbyjean)

Spread

Well, it’s only online (MSM read: world wide interweb-log, or “blog”) commentary for the moment, but for the MSM this appearing (and staying) on the NYT site amounts to a clarion call:

In the much-discussed Pew poll reporting the spike in ignorance, those who believe Obama to be Muslim say they got their information from the media. But no reputable news agency — that is, fact-based, one that corrects its errors quickly — has spread such inaccuracies.

So where is this “media?” Two sources, and they are — no surprise here — the usual suspects. The first, of course, is Rush Limbaugh, who claims the largest radio audience in the land among the microphone demagogues, and his word is Biblical among Republicans.

[…]

Once Limbaugh has planted a lie, a prominent politician can pick it up, with little nuance. So, over the weekend, Kim Lehman, one of Iowa’s two Republican National Committee members, went public with doubts on Obama’s Christianity. Of course, she was not condemned by party leaders.

[…]

[Then] there is Fox News, whose parent company has given $1 million to Republican causes this year but still masquerades as a legitimate source of news. Their chat and opinion programs spread innuendo daily. The founder of Politifact, another nonpartisan referee to the daily rumble, said two of the site’s five most popular items on its Truth-o-meter are corrections of Glenn Beck.

Beck tosses off enough half-truths in a month to keep Politifact working overtime. Of late, he has gone after Michelle Obama, whose vacation in Spain was “just for her and approximately 40 of her friends.” Limbaugh had a similar line, saying the First Lady “is taking 40 of her best friends and leasing 60 rooms at a five-star hotel — paid for by you.”

The White House said Michelle Obama and her daughter Sasha were accompanied by just a few friends — and they paid their own costs. But, wink, wink, the damage is done. He’s Muslim and foreign. She’s living the luxe life on your dime. They don’t even have to mention race. The code words do it for them.

I can think of no other instance in which a prominent, national news source has even intimated (much less directly called out) the modern news cycle. Let me be the first to say: Welcome to Earth. We breathe a mix of nitrogen and oxygen here.

I understand the impulse to find another location for the mosque and community center. I understand the pain of those who are motivated by loss too terrible to contemplate. And there are people of every faith – including, perhaps, some in this room – who are hoping that a compromise will end the debate.
But it won’t. The question will then become, how big should the ‘no-mosque zone’ around the World Trade Center be? There is already a mosque four blocks away. Should it too, be moved?
This is a test of our commitment to American values. We must have the courage of our convictions. We must do what is right, not what is easy. And we must put our faith in the freedoms that have sustained our great country for more than 200 years.

Michael Bloomberg, far and away the best voice on this non-mosque not located at Ground Zero.
Why should a former Republican who is a mayor (albeit of a very large city and the city in question) be absolutely crushing what should be the utterly obvious Democratic position here? And why is it that the Democrats are not absolutely trampling themselves to get out in front of (or at the very least alongside of) Bloomberg, a recently Republican mayor? This is why they fail.

Five Easy Tweets(es)

Looking at how Ruth Marcus addresses Boehner’s nonsensical output in her column this morning, dare I say that I see signs of actual progress. Perhaps even the Villagers are growing tired (and maybe even a little afraid) of the GOP’s shtick?

There are times when I flirt with the notion that the country would be better off with divided government.

She starts, ominously and predictably enough, with some Serious Person boilerplate: the compromise position on anything is always superior, even when one side’s position is empirically better relative to some definable long-term metric. But, for once, she quickly rights the ship, and this opener proves to be simply Reese’s Pieces for the many Broderians reading her piece on their homeworld:

The man who would be speaker outlined his agenda Tuesday in a speech to the City Club of Cleveland – economic policy reduced to, literally, five easy tweets. The Ohio Republican offered up a depressing blend of tired ideas, tired-er one-liners (“We’ve tried 19 months of government-as-community-organizer”) and cheap attacks. The cheapest: calling for the firing of Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and economic adviser Larry Summers.

[…]

[Boehner says “job-killing” twelve] times, actually. As in “job-killing tax hikes,” “job-killing bills,” “job-killing agenda,” “job-killing federal regulations.” This is bumper-sticker politics, not a real economic plan. I’ve been skeptical that Democrats would get much political traction with their argument that the Republican agenda is just George W. Bush recycled, but speeches like Boehner’s make me rethink.

Even those two paragraphs appearing on the WaPo Op/Ed page would be cause enough for a minor celebration. But, being a professional, she saves her best for last:

The argument for immediate spending cuts is hard to square with the argument against tax increases. If the latter is harmful – a disaster, in Boehner’s words – then surely the former is as well. “When Congress returns, we should force Washington to cut non-defense discretionary spending to 2008 levels – before the ‘stimulus’ was put into place,” Boehner says. This would be more convincing if he were willing to identify specific cuts. It is, even more, an enormous dodge. Stimulus spending is a sliver of the long-term fiscal problem.

Democrats – and the country – would benefit from a responsible opposition party. I’m still looking for evidence of one.

So am I. But there are two important points in here, both of which being concepts that almost never see the light of day in the MSM:

  1. That you can’t say that massive non-military spending cuts are critical, but that any and all tax increases are unthinkable.
  2. That tax-hikes would be a disaster, but that we need not ever worry about the fiscal impact of said non-tax-hikes at all, and that we may furthermore consider them “free” is nonsensical on its face.

Getting those two simple concepts into wide and repeated circulation: a big deal. Now, of course, when Obama returns from vacation to fire his cabinet, well, that’s something else.

Pundits blame the victims on Obama Muslim myth

southpol:

[…] Dave Weigel came the closest, writing that “At some point it became acceptable to question Obama’s American-ness, which naturally begged the question of whether he was a secret Muslim… and the WorldNetDailys, tabloids, and Drudge Reports of the world were ready to keep begging that question.”

This is the Overton Window in action. Republicans have a host of beyond-far-right outlets to scream and holler relentlessly about whatever their preferred issue of the day is and Democrats never, ever employ a similar tactic with the left. A year-long, sustained chorus about single payer, for instance, simply didn’t materialize. The left wing is either too pragmatic or too cynical with regard to their chances on these issues. That and the Democratic leadership repeatedly lets the GOP determine the talking points; e.g. Boehner is reportedly going to call for the firing of all Obama economic advisers. When The Democrat engages him on that ground, his ground, and they will, the ultimate outcome will then be that some of the advisers have to go or, at best, take a severe public dressing down. All good outcomes for the GOP in an election year.
Whether or not they should go is quite beside the point. You are allowing your opponent to set the agenda and define the margins that contain what will be viewed by the David Broders of the world as the “sensible and serious” solution. Again and again.
This is precisely why Rep. Alan Grayson is such a valuable and yet underutilized asset. With a dozen people like him talking about Cheney’s blood-drenched teeth (or what have you) and a few media outlets doing likewise, suddenly the true moderate position, or even one (gasp!) marginally to the left of center, looks awfully sensible. Instead of using Grayson in this way, the modern Democrat runs and hides from him and others, going so far as to extract the occasional tearful apology when some genuinely affecting truth leaks out. This is the primary failure of leadership in the Democratic party, and nothing will change until this does.
The facts do not matter; presentation and framing is everything. You, the Democrat, are fighting an organized party, its dedicated propaganda outlet that happens to be a wildly popular source of “news,” and a distributed right-wing noise machine on web and talk radio that reliably sets the discourse for the rest of the MSM. You’d better bring your A-game and act like you’re in a 24/7 campaign for your political life. And they never do.

Pundits blame the victims on Obama Muslim myth

Never confuse “plan” and “scenario”

Alyssa Battistoni notes the creeping cost of “privatization” (read: funding cuts) that is resulting in kids being sent to school with their own toilet paper because the school will not be providing any:

The worst-case scenario, though, is that reduced public spending on essential goods and services will continue to hollow out our infrastructure and reduce our capacity to meet the needs of most Americans. And that rather than have a real conversation about which public goods we consider essential and what we’re willing to do to pay for them, we’ll gradually starve core programs until working- and middle-class Americans grow accustomed to a lower standard of living while better-off Americans pay out of pocket for benefits that everyone once enjoyed.

We’ll leave aside her usage of “backdoor privatization” in this context and just say that this is not some worst case scenario, but rather is a succinct encapsulation of the GOP “roadmap” for America’s “future.”
However: if you’re explaining, you’re losing; let’s instead get all Democrats saying this rather elegant formulation (from Natasha Chart):

Because nothing says ‘superpower’ like when your public schools can’t afford toilet paper.

Cheap and effective.

When you see frightened Americans turning on brown-skinned people they see as potential “Muslims,” that is terrorism working. When the kind of Imam who will say Judaism’s holiest prayer in solidarity with Jewish victims of Islamic extremist terrorism and who tells Muslim audiences that the way to have a government more in line with the Islamic ideal is to be more like the United States is treated as a terrorist sympathizer, terrorism is working.

Adam Serwer
Unfortunately, these instances of terrorism working are being aided and abetted by one of the major political parties in this country. It’s one thing to combat al Qaeda or the Taliban or whatever group out there and quite another to combat this outgrowth of invincible ignorance within our own country; then ladle on top the fact that you’re being fought at each and every step in that long and slogging education initiative by both a party and its extremely popular misinformation outlet which is uncritically treated by most Americans as actual news that must bear some relation to fact, because Walter Cronkite never knowingly lied to us, now did he?
And do not believe for one second that there is any coincidence to the policy positions that lead the GOP to blithely cut funding for teachers, Head Start, and manifold other early intervention programs either. With the GOP’s demographic outlook and warm relationships with most of the emerging majorities in this country, such a move is necessary for survival. It’s their Joe Camel.