Tag: conservatives

We could have waited all day. We could have had a media circus. But we took decisive action and it’s a good example of how to respond in this atmosphere.

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina, reputedly speaking favorably about the White House’s reaction to the Sherrod situation.
You know, he’s right. Instead of a one day tempest in a teapot, with whose outcome you could hound and cow like-minded media Rethuglicans indefinitely, you created a weeks- or months-long, possibly even permanent eruption of fear, uncertainty, and doubt amongst your staunchest supporters, all of whom now think the absolute worst of you: that you have no spine, never did, and never will. This makes you useless to them, by the by.
Well done.

GFCM

And, of course, one more I forgot:

CNN calls Erickson “a perfect fit” who is “in touch with the very people” they want to reach.

That would be the very same Erick Erickson who unleashed this gem on David Souter:

The nation loses the only goat fucking child molester ever to serve on the Supreme Court.

Far from being fired for that remark, he was hired. As part of the “best political team on television.” But let’s all thank Lord Jesus that Helen Thomas is safely out of the way. The White House press room can now again serve as a refuge for the kind of deeply probing intellect exemplified in these recent gems (h/t Balloon Juice ):

Q: Can you talk about the criticism that the President isn’t making that emotional connection with people over the spill?

Q: Does the White House believe that it was a mistake for the President not to meet with fishermen or other local business people during his last visit?

Q: Did anyone in the White House yell [BP’s Tony Hayward] for making those comments?

IOKIYAR

Helen Thomas says something stupid (about Israel, no less) and what happens to her:

Thomas had been dropped by her speakers’ agency; upcoming appearances were being canceled; the White House was unlikely to call on her ever again; and perhaps most importantly, the board of the White House Correspondent Association (WHCA) was considering whether to revoke her front-row seat. The board was not likely to deliver a response Thomas would like – in a statement, the WHCA called her comments “indefensible.”

Glenn Beck, on the other hand, offers no apology this morning for his latest edition of fetid spew:

This morning on his radio program, Glenn Beck responded to the general outcry over his approving comments last week for the work of Elizabeth Dilling, a virulent anti-Semite who actively supported Hitler and the Nazis during World War II. Beck’s response contained neither an apology nor a disavowal nor any indication whatsoever that he was at all contrite over using his considerable media presence to promote a discredited and hateful woman’s writings.

Rush Limbaugh likewise offered no apologies on his recent work re: the Nazis:

Rush Limbaugh, last week unfurled shocking rhetoric in which he compared the Obama White House to a Nazi organization and even likened Obama to Hitler. (“Adolf Hitler, like Barack Obama, also ruled by dictate.”) The outlandish attacks seemed to be a case of Limbaugh playing catch-up to Fox News’ Glenn Beck (Limbaugh = Beck Lite?), who had been pounding the noxious Nazi angle for weeks.

There is literally nothing a right wing pundit can say that will get him or her removed from the “serious people” commentariat. Nothing. Concomitantly, almost any comment, no matter how banal, will, can, and probably has already been used to permanently silence someone with known left-wing tendencies. I don’t pretend to defend Helen Thomas, but her near-instant defenestration is absolutely without context relative to the treatment of far more horrifying offenses taking place daily from the mouths of commentators with far more reach and impact than Helen Thomas has ever had. Unforgivable. Your Liberal Media at work.

Precious Blame

unsolicitedanalysis:

Where was this clarity during the Bush administration? The failure of federal, state, and local regulators/agencies never absolved our previous President.

It was certainly absent if you’re looking for the MSM to provide it. But you’re missing the fact that Bush specifically was in favor of the failure of our federal, state, and local government and regulatory agencies. Need I quote Lord Reagan? I guess I do:

government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem

You can’t deny the government a legitimate role in any issue, no matter how large or small, and then expect government to be secretly housing a massive underwater engineering specialty, or to have regulated the offshore drilling industry into essential safety. This is the fundamental disconnect of the current argument, not that that stops the spread of utter nonsense.
Every prior GOP administration has systematically weakened regulations on offshore drilling. These chickens come home to roost and it’s suddenly all Obama’s fault? How? Why? In what universe does that make any rational sense?

And, of course, the anti-government right’s reaction to the crisis? Blame the government. Obama should (apparently) be down there, personally, running the mud shot or at the very least torturing somebody aboard the mud shot injection machine.

Now, of course, were he down there, you get to play the “government meddling is ruining BP’s brilliant plan” card. That’s what I call good policy.

I’m not trying to say that the spill is George Bush’s fault, just like the hurricane itself was not George Bush’s fault. But the mentality that government not only can’t successfully regulate business but has no place attempting to do so, that corporate insiders know better than experts, and that people can deal with disasters on their own is a conservative one.

The problem is that conservative failures spawn more conservatives: When conservatives cripple government, and then government fails, people believe government is incapable.

Ali Frick (who is subbing for Matt Yglesias). I’d add: Which is exactly what the conservatives actively wrecking the government want to happen.

Playing into their hands

The fecklessness of the Democrat never ceases to amaze. Ezra Klein notes that

Pages 8 through 18 [of the Democratic Proposal on Immigration Reform] are devoted to “ending illegal employment through biometric employment verification.”

Look, the merits of this sort of thing are totally beside the point. Please recall: the facts do not matter. You’ve got the right wing epistemic loop working overtime on every manner of perceived plot, up to and including forced implantation of identifying microchips. The fact that GOPers are themselves (and themselves alone) proposing the forced implantation of microchips…into immigrants? Beside the point. (The facts do not matter) Here we have the death panels, and they’re about to track each and every man woman and child in these United States.

This gift on the part of the Democrat only serves to confirm the wildest fears of the far-right conspiracy nuts, whilst also giving ample cover for your garden variety, non-far-right pol to speak in whistle-tongue about this sort of utter lunacy, thus sweeping up the merely right wing along with the birthers and the rest of the lunatic fringe into one neat package. Apparently it’s considered a shrill move to try to splinter that particular block.

Expect plenty of “definitive proof that Obama is the antichrist” rhetoric as soon as this hits the fan. Maybe even on the floor of the House and/or Senate. And don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Just as conservative legislative politics isn’t really about free markets conservative judicial politics isn’t really about restraint. The rhetoric is just rhetoric, and the reality is that conservative politics is about conservatism—about entrenching the power and influence of the dominant economic and sociocultural groups.

Matt Yglesias, noting something that most people seem to have a hard time keeping inside their skulls

Tax and Spend

  • GE 2009 pre-tax earnings: $10.3 billion. Tax paid: $0. Tax refund $1.1 billion.
  • ExxonMobil 2009 pre-tax earnings: $19.3 billion. Tax paid to the US: $0. Subsidies received: 122

    • Just two examples. Let’s count how many times we hear about this sort of thing in the 2010 election cycle. I’m boldly setting the over/under at 0.

    Tax Outrage Sydrome

    Tax expert Roberton Williams, interviewed by Derek Thompson at the Atlantic has some notes on the political landscape for reform (as currently proposed via Wyden Gregg, which itself only has life so long as the President disavows any and all knowledge of it):

    From a political perspective, you say, “We’ve got to do it because you can’t trust big government.” That’s it. That’s all you can say. That’s the only argument I can see [against radically simplifying the filing process for ~80% of Americans by having the IRS essentially pre-fill your form].

    Uh, no. The GOP will allow meaningful reforms over their dead bodies. You can pry said bill from their cold, dead hands. Why? Because they are utterly dependent on the government being perceived as a faceless automaton meant to screw you out of your money with no perceptible civic gain in return. Period.

    Making healthcare delivery work, making tax codes simpler, efficient government-run response to disaster, making the trains run on time, or whatever other example of government actually working you want to use: none of them comply with the current GOP vision for government. They are fundamentally opposed to all of it. And will fight any attempt to fix it. To. The. Death.

    Witness the various tax pickles that Obama’s nominees found themselves in. This wasn’t because they’re all crooks. It’s because our tax codes are vastly overcomplicated. Did the Democrat fight to make that point? Of course not. The nominees largely just withdrew. Instead of a teachable moment, the administration got a fundamental reduction in the available pool of nominees: those with very, very simple tax histories who also decide each and every interpretive question that may arise in favor of the IRS. I think you’ll find vanishingly few CPAs or tax-preparers out there who decide that way. In fact, this problem is sufficiently prevalent that it comes up in the interview (emphasis original):

    a study I think in Alabama where they went to a number of preparers with a fake tax case that legally couldn’t qualify for the earned income tax credit. But this particular tax preparer’s thing was to tell people, “We’ll get you the EITC.” And guess what? In only one case did the tax preparers say, “You don’t qualify for this credit.” You pay people a couple hundred bucks for a tax return, you want a real return. You want a credit. If you don’t get it, there goes the business model.

    Precisely. Combine this tendency with a complex, multi-national employment record and you’re simply not likely to survive the confirmation process. And, writ large, the GOP likes it this way. They want government to look as ineffectual, impotent, and its processes as internecine as possible. That is the foundational principle of Grover Norquist’s “Starve the Beast” and really all of Reaganism as practiced today. It’s why Medicare Part D (and many other Bush era spending programs) was passed without funding it: the GOP wants financial meltdown such that the government is forced to eliminate said spending programs.

    The GOP as currently constituted is and always will be against good policy until such time as they are forced to change tactics. Period. The existence of good policy (and its outcomes) fundamentally weaken their entire volitional paradigm. Period. Democrats need to message accordingly and queue legislation initiatives (like this tax reforms package) that highlight that. Period.

    They never will.

    Antonin Scalia, Thinking Man

    Salon reports some amazing cogitation on the part of Scalia:

    [Peter Eliasberg, whose client objects to the cross suggests that] “a statue of a soldier which would honor all of the people who fought for America in World War I and not just the Christians.”

    “The cross doesn’t honor non-Christians who fought in the war?” Scalia asks, stunned.

    “A cross is the predominant symbol of Christianity, and it signifies that Jesus is the son of God and died to redeem mankind for our sins,” replies Eliasberg, whose father and grandfather are both Jewish war veterans.

    “It’s erected as a war memorial!” replies Scalia. “I assume it is erected in honor of all of the war dead. The cross is the most common symbol of … of … of the resting place of the dead.”

    Eliasberg dares to correct him: “The cross is the most common symbol of the resting place of Christians. I have been in Jewish cemeteries. There is never a cross on a tombstone of a Jew.”

    “I don’t think you can leap from that to the conclusion that the only war dead the cross honors are the Christian war dead,” thunders Scalia. “I think that’s an outrageous conclusion!”

    Truly the conservative intellectual at work.

    The cross in question:

    <![CDATA[// ]]>

    I’m sure that many, if not most Jewish and Muslim veterans would look to this as a fitting memorial to their service in WWI… who could possibly view it in any other way!?! It defies belief.