Tag: frames

“Fiscally responsible” is code for cutting taxes on rich people and gutting Social Security. Those are their goals, and that’s always been the case.

Duncan Black, simplifying it for you.
I’d only add that these same forces, and (of course) their media enablers, repeatedly include Social Security despite the fact that SS has its own funding source, is not in any imminent danger, and does not contribute to the deficit at all, nor will it for at least 45 years, even if we do nothing. But, by all means, it MUST BE DESTROYED by the end of the week or we all die. It’s the only possible conclusion for any serious person.

[President Obama] announced a pay freeze for federal workers. This was an announcement that had it all. It was transparently cynical; it was trivial in scale, but misguided in direction; and by making the announcement, Mr. Obama effectively conceded the policy argument to the very people who are seeking — successfully, it seems — to destroy him.
So I guess we are, in fact, seeing what Mr. Obama is made of.
[…]
[He] apparently intended the pay freeze announcement as a peace gesture to Republicans the day before a bipartisan summit. […] There were no comparable gestures from the other side. Instead, Senate Republicans declared that none of the rest of the legislation on the table — legislation that includes such things as a strategic arms treaty that’s vital to national security — would be acted on until the tax-cut issue was resolved, presumably on their terms.

Paul Krugman bringing the shrill. Excellent stuff.
Find me a single MSM story that in any way frames this as a GOP minority temper tantrum and willful, dangerous obstructionism in the face of overwhelming public opinion. This is before you even get to utterly foolish in light of the GOP’s supposed deficit focus. I think you’ll find it being framed systematically and pervasively in quite the opposite direction. Liberal Media.

I have said it before and I will say it again: Impeachment is off the table.

Nancy Pelosi.  I wonder if we will be so fortunate with Speaker Boehner.  (via jonathan-cunningham)
I’d say it’s actually more important to recall that Pelosi was fairly literally dragged in front of cameras and forced to make this statement before it was even entirely clear just how many laws the Bush/Cheney trek to the DarkSide had broken or denied the existence of. Has Boehner even been asked? Of course he hasn’t. And won’t be. After all, Obama sets the agenda, and the GOP is certainly now pursuing a life of diligent Broderism.

The Existential Nature of Foreclosure Fraud

It is a legal impossibility for someone without a mortgage to be foreclosed upon. It is a legal impossibility for the wrong house to be foreclosed upon, It is a legal impossibility for the wrong bank to sue for foreclosure.

And yet, all of those things have occurred. The only way these errors could have occurred is if several people involved in the process committed criminal fraud. This is not a case of “Well, something slipped through the cracks.” In order for the process to fail, many people along the chain must commit fraud.

That it is being done for expediency and to save a few dollars on the process is why the full criminal prosecution must occur.

Excellent rundown on the current meltdown in foreclosures. That these excesses (and the ones that preceded them) should be prosecuted is obvious. That they won’t be is both obvious and the reason our Republic is crumbling by the day. The oligarchs and their political cronies have established themselves as above the law. Until that system utterly collapses or a political will to clean it up arises, nothing will change.

And, psst: Democrats. You’re looking for a unifying and message that gets people to the polls in big numbers? You could do a lot worse than this one. Of course, delivering it means you actually have to, you know, back it up with some legislative action. So I guess that’s out. Back to the witchcraft angle.

The Existential Nature of Foreclosure Fraud

Why Does John McCain Want To Kill Soldiers?

Why does Susan Collins hate the military so much that she wants them to starve to death while those brave men and women are out there fighting and dying in harms way? How dare she endanger funding for even a second over procedural concerns.

These and other simple frames are things you will never hear from the mouth of The Democrat. They, after all, have the facts on their side. Why, this amendment doesn’t actually even end DADT at all, it simply creates a mechanism by which [blah de blah de blah blah blah]. Why, those little devils actually used the same mechanism to pass DADT when [blah de blah de blah blah].

Repeat after Lemkin: The Facts Do Not Matter.

John McCain hates soldiers. Period. There is no other possible explanation.
When asked to apologize, up the ante (not only does John McCain hate soldiers, I’m fairly sure he is committing an act of treason by blocking this legislation).

It’s this ceaseless inability to identify whatever policy the Democrat prefers and fight for it, whatever may come, that really poisons the electorate. As The Big Dog himself once said:

When people are insecure, they’d rather have somebody who is strong and wrong than someone who’s weak and right

“Weak and right” so perfectly sums the modern Democrat that it really should have made the exciting new website redesign and bumper-sticker that we’re all so pumped up by.
And nothing, nothing depicts the modern Tea Klan GOP’s limbic politics more perfectly than “strong and wrong.”

Bait and Switch

agreatnation:

“Second, this is obviously — obviously — a setup. The whole point is to avoid a vote on the middle-class tax cuts while Democrats control the House; when and if Republicans regain control, they can refuse to let anything but a full extension reach the floor. So the goal is actually permanent extension; what they’re offering isn’t a compromise, it’s a trap.”

— Temporary Tax Cuts For The Rich? No. – NYTimes.com

Which is why I fully expect Democrats to start talking up the many benefits of compromising and offering a temporary extension of the tax cuts for the rich.

A truly crafty Democratic leadership would realize the fiscal exigency of letting all the tax cuts expire as soon as possible. Thus, you hit the GOP with stalling it now (while steadfastly offering your own package of middle class relief), and then let them block these same measures from the floor because of their desire to please the richest of the rich. A two-fer. Once the outcry reaches sufficient heights, you allow the GOP to allow a middle-class-only tax plan to reach the floor.

Naturally, this means that we’ll get full extension of everything forever and give it to the GOP using terms such as “compromise.”

There is no policy that President Obama has passed or proposed that added as much to the deficit as the Republican Party’s $3.9 trillion extension of the Bush tax cuts. In fact, if you put aside Obama’s plan to extend most, but not all, of the Bush tax cuts, there is no policy he has passed or proposed that would do half as much damage to the deficit. There is not even a policy that would do a quarter as much damage to the deficit.

Ezra Klein – Putting the $3.9 trillion extension of the Bush tax cuts in context (via southpol)
Yep. And, if you’re The Democrat, you shall never speak of this. Ever. Too complicated, apparently.
Source: Washington Post

Can I Finish? Can I Finish?

We can’t let the people who’ve been hit hardest by this recession and who we need to create the jobs that will get us out of it foot the bill for the Democrats’ two-year adventure in expanded government.

–Mitch McConnell

May as well unpack this idiocy, since I know there not a living Democratic strategist or seat-holder that will deign to do so.

We’re apparently meant to believe that those

“who’ve been hit hardest by this recession”

are uniformly located in that >$250k/yr bracket. And, I guess it’s true, Time tells us that:

A wealthy Boston matron has forsworn her weekly massage and canceled the family’s spring skiing trip to Utah.

A West Coast tycoon has sold one of his two yachts. A socially prominent Manhattan couple has switched from vintage to nonvintage champagne, while some of their affluent friends provide only California jug wine—in Waterford decanters. A Los Angeles millionairess, Elsie Pollack, now features chili at her dinner parties; another wealthy hostess has replaced cut flowers with synthetic centerpieces. A Chicago industrialist has turned in his Cadillac for a relatively miserly Mercedes 220 with a diesel engine that gets up to 32 m.p.g.

So they pretty much may as well commit suicide rather than face those living conditions. We can only assume that the lower-income individuals still blessed with jobs are likewise switching to different $70,000 cars with marginally better gas mileage. Or, I guess, we can look at silly things like the proportional tax rates by income, courtesy New York Times:

My God, it’s almost as if the poor (and relatively poor) are and have been bearing most of the weight of running this country (as measured by proportion of income) for a long time now. Who knew?!? We’re also meant to forget they are the group more likely to have lost homes, jobs, and every thing else as a direct result of this downturn. And will be more likely to end up in a lower-wage, lower-opportunity job as a result of long-term unemployment. But pity the very rich. They’ve had to get new cars and switch wines.

Then there’s this:

“the Democrats’ two-year adventure in expanded government.”

Has government increased in size over the last two years? Over the last 50 as a share of GDP? Again, let’s go to the charts, this one courtesy of Econobrowser, showing the non-defense consumption and gross investment (by government) as a share of GDP:

Astounding! How will the Republic survive that kind of Socialistic tidal wave?

This is why they fail.

All of which to say is there’s no need to parse the ethnic origins or political philosophies of Obama’s parents to understand the ideology of Barack Obama. He is a center-left Democrat who supports mainstream Democratic policies. But some conservatives don’t want to talk about policy. They are unable to engage in an argument with liberalism on substantive terms; they know only argument by epithet. They want to talk about the fact that our blackety black president is blackety black.

Adam Serwer Archive | The American Prospect (via Balloon Juice)
Agreed, except this isn’t an “argument with liberalism.” It’s an argument with center-rightism.
Source: prospect.org