Tag: 2012

We shouldn’t dread the debt limit. We should welcome it. It’s an action-forcing event in a town that has become infamous for inaction.

John Boehner, Speaker of the House of Representatives, tipping his hand. I’d say this is the first time you can see real fear of the status quo. More broadly, that doing nothing will fix most of the deficit over the near term by eliminating the Bush tax cuts and a few other money-sapping provisions. Were it deemed reasonably likely that Obama will win reelection in the fall, they’d quickly calculate that the only chance the GOP has for full extension of the Bush tax cuts is to force the issue before that happens. You do that by holding the full faith and credit of these United States hostage. Again. And the only way they get there is by reneging on their previous agreements and hope nobody remembers that they’re doing so. Nothing that has transpired in the past 20 years leads me to believe they are wrong on this count.
Sadly for them: they think this cunning scheme to yet again needlessly and recklessly and by choice yet again delivering the nation to the economic precipice has the benefit of being a big political winner for them. Sadly for the rest of us: you can only put this particular gun to the hostage’s head so many times before it gets fired. Maybe this time, maybe next. But soon.

[You] can constantly rationalize a deeply anti-democratic system on grounds of imagining scenarios where a brave minority of progressive senators are the only barrier to horrific right-wing policies. But you don’t have to imagine how a filibuster-wielding Republican minority can bring the country to a virtual standstill. We’re living in that world right now.

Ed Kilgore is right, but the real root of the problem is that only some of the country is living in that world. So far as I can tell, FOXnews watchers are convinced that it’s the Democrats who are bringing the country to a standstill by not offering to “reach across the aisle.” Look no further than this NewsHour discussion of Dick Lugar’s defeat and its broader meanings. Turns out he was run out of town because “he’s commended by many as one that does reach across the aisle, but, unfortunately, in our mind, that’s a one-way road. The other side, the Democrats, don’t seem to do that. And, in fact, they advocate that, but in their mind, that’s we surrender, we being the Republicans, would surrender to their ideals.”
When, exactly, did that demand for surrender happen? Because I remember nothing but repeated pleas on the part of The Democrat: please, take our Social Security, our Medicare, our Whatever, but just don’t blow up the country today Mr. GOP.“ And, in return, the numerous GOP counteroffers (aside from Ryan-plan mandated elimination of these programs) were? …
This belief in Democratic intransigence, though, is amazingly widespread and typically accepted as fact (cf. Ifill’s complete non-reaction to this preposterous statement. One can only conclude that it must be pretty close to 100% accurate). Then you get to the proportion of "serious person” type folks that think both parties are equally at fault for gridlock. Then and only then do you get to the sad lunatics who think the GOP has been sanding the gears and bears most of the blame for inaction these past few years that just happen to coincide with Obama’s presidency and just happens to coincide with a similar and explicitly stated purpose on the part of GOP leadership in both the House and Senate (to sand the gears and hurt Obama). But why bring pesky facts into this?
And so, because of all this and more, the only political party that’s going to eliminate the filibuster in my lifetime is the GOP. It’s been so for a very long time now.
And, as I’ve said many times, the filibuster will be eliminated exactly 30 seconds after a new Congress convenes in which the GOP holds the Presidency and fewer than 61 chairs in the Senate. And that’s 2012 in a nutshell. If you like the social safety net, you’d better goddamned well get out and vote. Early and often. The ACORN way.

GSA “Scandal”

Worth noting that the “scandal” eating up several days worth of Congressional hearings cost American taxpayers $823,000. That’s Thousand, with a “t.” Particular interest seems to focus on a single party that cost $1960 dollars. Two thousand dollars.

Bonuses paid post-bailout in AIG’s godforsaken Financial Products Division? $168 million.
Total USG investment in AIG alone: $180 billion. With a B.

That’s just for AIG and really just for one division of AIG. The whole shooting match there on Wall Street was measured in trillions of dollars.

These and other gross mismatches in outrage brought to you by Feckless, the official messaging arm of The Democrat. Well played, boys. Should government money be wasted? Of course not. But let’s keep a sense of scale and focus the outrage on the truly outrageous.

Get Thee Behind Me

What’s the superlative form of yep? Ed Kilgore earns it here:

By […] simply mocking Santorum as someone too unsophisticated to understand the supernatural as a fairy tale for rubes, his MSM tormenters are not only letting him off the hook for his sinister interpretation of politics as holy war, but are doing him the signal service of reinforcing his manichean vision of America torn between humble believers and derisive, self-satisfied elites.

I couldn’t put it any more clearly than that. So I excerpted it; you really should read the whole thing.
Anywho: the issue here is not that Santorum believes in Satan or the Tooth Fairy, it’s that the broader outcome of those views is such that he declares all of Protestantism as a “phony theology.” That’s where and what to attack and attack legitimately, MSM, not his belief in all or part of the Roman Catholic catechism.

Get Thee Behind Me

A lot of people when they criticize Ron Paul have to preface their criticism by saying, ‘you know, he’s good guy, he brings a lot to the debate.’ I actually don’t buy that. I do not think he’s a particular good guy … I think it would be better for the Republican party, if he left the Republican party.

Bill Kristol extols the immense value he feels that Ron Paul brings to the debates.
Source: c-spanvideo.org

The Invisible Hand

Charles Pierce has some suggestions for a simple, straightforward set of debate questions:

Mr. Romney, please explain in detail how $56 million diverted [by PG&E] from safety measures to incentive bonuses [and directly resulted in an explosion that killed eight and destroyed 38 homes] really is a victory for all Americans in pursuing their American dream in this, the greatest country on earth and the shining city on the hill.

Mr. Gingrich, please explain in detail why a culture of dependency and moral laxity is inculcated among the poor by $200 a month in food stamps, but why it is not inculcated by millions of dollars of “diverted” funds among the executives of the Pacific Gas and Electric Company.

Mr. Santorum, please explain in detail why two happy gay people who get married is an existential threat to the moral foundation of this country, but sucking up money you gouged out of the ratepayers, allegedly to protect them, is not.

Dr. Paul, please explain in detail why markets work better for all of us when they’re unregulated, and why the real solution to an exploding pipeline that kills eight people and wrecks 38 homes is the fact that, because its pipeline killed eight people and wrecked 38 homes, PG&E will suffer a public-relations problem in the marketplace.

Shrill, but Lincoln-Douglas shrill.

The Invisible Hand

Why They Fail

Mitt Romney:

“What’s the effective rate I’ve been paying? It’s probably closer to the 15 percent rate than anything,” Romney, a GOP presidential candidate, said. “My last 10 years, I’ve — my income comes overwhelmingly from investments made in the past rather than ordinary income or rather than earned annual income. I got a little bit of income from my book, but I gave that all away. And then I get speaker’s fees from time to time, but not very much.”

According to his most recent financial disclosure statement, he earned nearly $375,000 for nine speaking engagements in 2010 and early 2011.

Well, now, this would seem to be a rather rich potential political line of attack. In one simple, straightforward stroke you have a narrative that both weakens Romney and advances important information in the broader sense relative to what’s really been going wrong in America these past ~40 years. Not only does Mitt (unsurprisingly) pay the preposterously low 15% rate on his largely-investment-based income, a rate dramatically lower than most Americans pay on far less income and but also Mitt reveals that this is aside from the entirely trivial, “not very much” money he made doing speaking engagements, itself a value fully 10 times the median income in these United States.

Naturally, The Democrat thinks it’s high time to leave Mitt alone on such issues:

At least one top Obama surrogate is pushing for the party to shift the balance of its attacks on Mitt Romney away from his days in private equity and on to his time in the public sector. […] “Bain is a little complicated for people to follow.”

Of course, of course. Who among us can possibly understand that Mitt pays a fraction of the taxes you do on wealth so fucking inexhaustibly vast that he considers income in excess of 10 times what you probably make in a year to be “not very much.” There’s just no way to play that information such that people can follow it.

Newt Gingrich knows exactly what he is doing when he calls Obama the “food stamp” president, just as Ronald Reagan knew exactly what he was doing when talking about “welfare Cadillacs.” There are lots of other ways to make the point about economic hard times – entirely apart from which person and which policies are to blame for today’s mammoth joblessness. You could call him the “pink slip president,” the “foreclosure president,” the “Walmart president,” the “bailout president,” or any of a dozen other images that convey distress. You decide to go with “the food stamp president,” and you’re doing it on purpose.

If Joe Lieberman had been elected, I would be wary of attacks on his economic policy that called him “the cunning, tight-fisted president.” If Henry Cisneros had or Ken Salazar does, I would notice arguments about ineffectiveness phrased as “the manana administration.” If Gary Locke were in office, then “the Manchurian candidate” jokes that had been used on John Huntsman would have a different edge. And so on. [A specific commenter on my site] may not recognize it as a dog whistle, but I have no doubt that Newt Gingrich knows what it is. I don’t think that Gingrich has had a racist-style political career; on the contrary. But he knows what this language does.

James Fallows on Disgraced Former Speaker Gingrich.

I think this is exactly right. Using this language is a cynical decision; a means to an end, not an overt display of deeply held beliefs on the part of (in this case) DFS Gingrich. He’s a political operator grasping at straws, and selecting the straws he feels are most likely to play well for the task at hand (a southern US primary swing). Ultimately he could care less if this hurts the broader GOP or Romney; if the tactic helps him, it helps him. Period.

The progressive blogosphere would do well to discuss the language, as there’s plenty of meat there. Leaping to the more reflexive, inherently more tribal cries of “Gingrich reveals racist streak” in response will alienate as many or more than it will draw. Making the deeper points about precisely why this language is not only wrong but is disgracefully, knowingly wrong will be far more beneficial long term, as such an approach ends the meme, instead of merely tarring the meme user.

tl/dr: DFS Gingrich needs no help ending his career. We will need lots of help ending these tactics.

Source: The Atlantic

Half Measures

ilyagerner:

“So I think this is going to a very, very difficult year and I think, honestly, that HALF-MEASURES LIKE ASSASSINATIONS or sanctions are only going to produce the crisis more quickly. The better way to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons is to attack its nuclear weapons program directly, break their control over the nuclear fuel cycle.”

— John Bolton, who has endorsed Mitt Romney.

Half-measures like assassinations!

And but also, I’d like to know exactly how an attack is anything less than a half-measure? Even if said attack works perfectly, and utterly eliminates all nuclear facilities “known” and “unknown,” precisely how does this “break their control” over the nuclear cycle? Within six or nine months they are presumably already right back at it, with a deeper, or more secretive laboratory. Or they never stop because, you know, they already had a deeper or more secretive laboratory. And now you’ve done nothing more than provide indisputable proof that they need nuclear weapons. Only way to fend off these Americans and their constant nosing into our bidness.

Bolton’s “plan” only works, in fact, if you a) go nuclear and functionally exterminate all living matter in Iran, –or– b) conventionally or otherwise invade and govern Iran. There is no other way that has any reasonable chance of success. Period.

I suspect the American people would poll dramatically against either of those “kill ‘em all” style outcomes. Therefore it might behoove reporters to ask about them directly such that we are all clear exactly what this lunatic and lunatics like him are talking about. But they never do. Shrill. We have learned nothing from the W. Bush administration and, apparently, never will. So the Republic crumbles.