Wherein Obama loses me

Okay. I've been cutting this White House a lot of slack out of empathy for Obama's burden and poltical pragmatism, but this is too much. The OFA wants me to write letters in support of the stupidest cave-in to GOP bullying in the last two plus years?

That’s right, the organizing project of the Democratic National Committee wants you to organize in support of freezing public worker salaries.

And don’t worry, later in the email, OFA tells you how the Administration has really been responsible on this issue – they’ve frozen salaries of White House officials and political appointees, froze non-defense discretionary spending, and more.

To quote my second favorite pundit in the universe, Harry H McColgan: "Are you shittin' me?"

If I had wanted to deal with this Burkean bullshit I would have voted for McCain. I'm beginning to think Obama is sick of the gig and is deliberately trying to lose his base. [via Atrios]

And as Ezra notes, this is not a pragmatic choice, it's about the optics.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Bipartisanship!

Dear President Obama: This is why your stubborn insistence on chasing some mythical bipartisan consensus is doomed. Exhibit A, Joe Barton's battle plan:

Then comes the money slide, titled: "What's in Store for the Obama Administration," with photos of President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Generals Omar Bradley and George Patton in uniform.

"Speaker Boehner is our Dwight Eisenhower in the battle against the Obama Administration. Majority Leader Cantor is our Omar Bradley. I want to be George Patton - put anything in my scope and I will shoot it."

These blowhard conservatives never had the balls to fight in a real war, but boy do they love pretending to be soldiers in some great esoteric battle. You'll recall Barton was also the guy who apologized to BP for the White House's investigation of the Gulf Oil blowout while he benefits from his connections as a former lobbyist for the oil industry. And Wikipedia tells me, Barton is an avid video gamer who particularly enjoys the war game Civilization.

In a sane world, guys like this would be heavily medicated and living in psyche wards, instead of being placated by world leaders.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

What the Wikileak doc dump damaged

Didn't really expect to have so much to say about this latest Wikileak dump but at TNR, Heather Hurlburt points out a major concern that I haven't been able to articulate well:

In the last few years, there has been some progress toward classifying fewer documents and using the more rarefied classifications less frequently. This series of leaks will almost surely reverse that progress. A top-secret classification would have kept any of these documents off the shared network from which they were allegedly downloaded by a very junior soldier.

You can bet that the intelligence community will make that point—not only to justify stronger classification of new documents but also to slow the declassification of old ones. Civilian administrations at least since Clinton’s have been trying to speed up those efforts. Now they will go even more slowly, making it harder to learn the whole story of how our government analyzed an issue, treated an individual, or reacted to a crisis.

You'll of course recall that the Bush administration classified even the most innnocuous material that had been in the public record for decades. For all the media whining about lack of access, and the left's complaints about less than perfect transparency, the Obama White House never really got enough credit for declassifying documents and rolling at least some of that secrecy back.

Hard to see how this current doc dump is going to enhance that effort.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Where Wikileaks does good

While I continue to think the Julian Assange's latest document dump did more harm than good, exposing corporate corruption is a leak I can support:

The founder of whistle-blower website WikiLeaks plans to release tens of thousands of internal documents from a major U.S. bank early next year, Forbes Magazine reported on Monday. [...]

"We have one related to a bank coming up, that's a megaleak. It's not as big a scale as the Iraq material, but it's either tens or hundreds of thousands of documents depending on how you define it," Assange said in the interview posted on the Forbes website.

He declined to identify the bank, describing it only as a major U.S. bank that is still in existence.

[The referenced Forbes article on Assange at this link.]

This is a situation where the small intrigues could add up to a big scandal that actually changes something for the better. And to be fair, Anne Laurie reminds me that he's done this before:

Over the last four years he has been so busy embarrassing various governments, from Washington to the corrupt Kenyan regime of Daniel arap Moi, that many forget the corporate scandals already on WikiLeaks’ trophy wall. In January 2008 the site posted documents alleging that the Swiss bank Julius Baer hid clients’ profits from even the Swiss government, concealing them in what seemed to be shell companies in the Cayman Islands. The bank filed a lawsuit against WikiLeaks for publishing data stolen from its clients. Baer later dropped the suit—but managed to stir up embarrassing publicity for itself. The next year WikiLeaks published documents from a pharma trade group implying that its lobbyists were receiving confidential documents from and exerting influence over a World Health Organization project to fund drug research in the developing world. The resulting attention helped crater the WHO project…

I forgot about the Swiss bank thing and I barely heard about the WHO project. Don't think anyone went to jail over it though, did they? That would be my goal if I had Julian's resources.

Meanwhile, as I said in comments below, if Assange wants to hack the US government, I think it would be much more useful to expose the sausage making inside the Senate. We need a shakeup there most of all.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Wikileaks - What's the point? Part Two

Mark Kleiman answers the Wikileaks - Pentagon analogy that I've seen made often:

In connection with the latest WikiLeaks flap, commenter Brett Bellmore asks rhetorically, “Do you think America would be better off if the Pentagon Papers hadn’t been leaked?”

Yes! Hell, yes! Much better off.

The Pentagon Papers leak didn’t end the Vietnam War. It did ensure that no subsequent Secretary of Defense would commission a frank, independent analysis of the decision-making processes that led to war.

I don't entirely agree that the Pentagon Papers didn't at least help end the Vietnam War. They certainly weren't solely responsible and Mark is right, the price we paid for that leak was high. But still, they had a lot more import than these Wikileaks. They exposed large corruption and big lies, not the small intrigues inherent in foreign dealings both miltary and diplomatic.

And that's the problem with I'm having with the Wikileaks. So far all I can see they did is expose some of our informants in the first round and greatly damaged two years of repair work on the part of the White House in the second.

The only good I see in this so far is it did expose a serious security hole in the State Department's archiving system. Presumably they'll plug that one. So there's that...

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Wikileaks - What's the point?

I've held off talking about the latest Wikleak extravaganza, waiting to see if anything of real import was leaked. I haven't seen it yet. So far, it feels like some jerk hacked into your private email account and broadcast all the mean stuff you said about your employer, co-workers and mother during a private bitchfest with your BFF.

I have to agree with Steve Benen:

I would, however, like to know more about the motivations of the leaker (or leakers). Revealing secrets about crimes, abuses, and corruption obviously serves a larger good -- it shines a light on wrongdoing, leading (hopefully) to accountability, while creating an incentive for officials to play by the rules. Leaking diplomatic cables, however, is harder to understand -- the point seems to be to undermine American foreign policy, just for the sake of undermining American foreign policy. The role of whistleblowers has real value; dumping raw, secret diplomatic correspondence appears to be an exercise in pettiness and spite.

I'm just not seeing the greater good in releasing these either. Obama's best success as President has been in repairing our international relations after Bush virtually destroyed them. Both the previous document dump and this one, particularly, when the START treaty is being hotly contested, feels more destructive, than constructive to our foreign policy to me.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

The great tax scam

I was thinking about how the Bush era slogan justifying tax cuts for billionaires was something like "a rising tide lifts all boats." But as I pointed out at DetNews, in reality, when the tide only lifts the big yachts, the little boats sink under their wake. As this old chart illustrates, the empirical evidence is so clear, the best times for the working class have been when the tax rates on the wealthy have been high.

Meanwhile, Thom Hartmann chronciles how the well connected wealth holders have so successfully sold the lie. It reminds of the workplaces I've toiled in. Just as there are some people who will put more energy into getting out of doing any work than it would take to do a good job, the wealth holders spend many millions to save a few million on taxes. In both cases, the greater good would be served by doing the right thing, but I guess some people just can't feel like "winners" unless they cause other people to lose.

Have to wonder if we aren't really in the end times when greed and sociopathy are admired while empathy and honesty are not only reviled, but punished by the inadequately educated masses.

The Corporatocracy owns us

Holiday weekend so not much news. Best reading of the morning is Frank Rich on the corporate takeover of our government. By all means, read it all but here's the salient points:

As John Cassidy underscored in a definitive article titled “Who Needs Wall Street?” in The New Yorker last week, the financial sector has paid little for bringing the world to near-collapse or for receiving the taxpayers’ bailout that was denied to most small-enough-to-fail Americans. The sector still rakes in more than a fourth of American business profits, up from a seventh 25 years ago. And what is its contribution to America in exchange for this quarter-century of ever-more over-the-top rewards? “During a period in which American companies have created iPhones, Home Depot and Lipitor,” Cassidy writes, the industry reaping the highest profits and compensation is one that “doesn’t design, build or sell a tangible thing.”

And of course, it is a bi-partisan bugaboo:

Such is the ethos in his own party that Senator Jim Webb, Democrat of Virginia, complained this month that he “couldn’t even get a vote” for his proposal for a one-time windfall profits tax on Wall Street bonuses. Republicans “obviously weren’t going to vote for it,” he told Real Clear Politics, but Democrats also demurred, “saying that any vote like that was going to screw up fund-raising.”

Our election process has been corrupted by the endless campaign cycle and the need to raise money to finance it. There was a time when I thought putting a spending limit and a time limit on them would help. However, now with Citizens United skewing the rules, that fix won't work. Some days it really does feel hopeless and the best days of our republic look like they're behind us forever.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

So, who will be the next RNC Chair?

Truth be told, I'm going to miss Michael Steele when he's gone.

Republicans are spending freely on their 2012 national convention in Tampa, burning through money at a pace that has alarmed some veterans of past conventions and causing more potential problems for Republican National Committee Chairman Michael S. Steele.

Spending through September topped $636,800, according to figures in a report to the Federal Election Commission. That is 18 times the amount spent in a comparable period four years ago. [...]

Steele named Belinda Cook, formerly his assistant, as liaison to the convention. The Washington Times reported last week that her contract calls for $15,000 a month in salary as well as a bonus of $25,000. Cook's son is also on the RNC payroll.

And that doesn't include about $20K spent on renting Ms. Cook some fancy digs on Treasure Island just through January.

Looks to me like Mikey has seen his future and it doesn't include chairing the RNC anymore so he's going to squeeze all the perks he can out of the position while he still has it. RNC won't be the same without him.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Michael Gerson is an idiot

But you knew that. He and Steve Benen have been in a blog spat about Steve's GOP sabotage post. Gerson's weak response attempts to spin it into a hysterical lefty conspiracy theory to cover up the alleged failures of liberalism. Benen reminds Gerson that he ignored the obvious facts:

It's against this backdrop that congressional Republicans have vowed to take capital out of the economy, create more public-sector unemployment, eliminate effective jobs programs, urge the Federal Reserve to stop focusing on lowering unemployment, and fight tooth and nail to protect a tax policy that's been tried for nearly a decade without success. By their own admission, GOP officials have said economic growth is not their priority; Hoover-like deficit reduction is.

While advocating this agenda, one of the most powerful Republican officials on Capitol Hill has argued, more than once, that his "top priority" isn't job creation, but rather, "denying President Obama a second term in office."

Limbaugh made that clear early on and the GOP eagerly followed their leader ever since. And they don't just want to discredit Obama, they want to destroy liberalism. It's their life long dream.

Don't Touch My Junk Guy

I agree with Glenzilla that The Nation's hit piece on "Don't Touch My Junk" guy, who started the meme that swept the internets and spilled into the nation's airports, is shameful. It's the sort of work you expect to see from the Malkins of Blogtopia. Certainly surprising coming from a magazine with a liberal bent and a propensity for sticking to the facts.

However, I do have one small quibble about Glenn's characterization of the guy as an innocent and naive bystander:

I spoke with Tyner several days ago and he was very worried that his public stance would jeopardize exactly the ordinariness which The Nation claims is fake: his job, his family, his reputation, and the cost from government recriminations.

I have to agree with The Nation on the one point. It also immediately struck me, not so much strange, as deliberate, just in case he got pulled out for the patdown. The "don't touch my junk" line just felt pre-planned and designed to become an internet meme.

That doesn't excuse the rest of the hit piece but this guy is obviously an intelligent person. And his motives may well have been good, wanting to draw attention to a troublesome policy. But, you don't tape something like this and put it on the internets unless you're hoping to become the next internet sensation and maybe cash in on the attention. If he was really worried about the impact on his personal life, he could have, and should have, kept it private.

A GOP Holiday Greeting

On a more somber note, Katrina van den Heuvel reviews the GOP's agenda for holiday cheer:

...The new Republicans have the same old leaders - and their passion hasn't changed. It isn't about offering a hand up to the afflicted - it's about handouts to the connected.

In the lame-duck session now convened until the end of the year, Republicans have continued their strategy of obstruction - opposing the New START treaty, opposing repeal of "don't ask, don't tell," opposing consideration of immigration reform, opposing even passage of appropriations for the current year. Their passion is focused on getting one thing done. They will run through the wall to extend the extra tax cuts enjoyed by those, largely millionaires, earning more than $250,000 a year.

And of course, their Christmas gift to the unemployed workers of America is to refuse to extend unemployment benefits. Millions will lose their only source of income during this holiday season without the extension. They should use a picture of Scrooge instead of an elephant as their logo.

Happy Thanksgiving

Hope everyone has a great holiday with good food and the warm company of friends and family. I'm thankful for every single of one of you that shares my world in this lifetime. And keeping with my personal tradition, here's the full WKRP Turkey Drop episode. It just never gets old.

If you prefer the just the punchlines, here's the 30 second version.



Safe journeys to those who travel to celebrations.

Justice DeLayed

Having spent some 20 years in the business, I can testify the wheels of justice turn slowly, thus it was only today, after five years of the customary continuances, the BugMan, Tom DeLay was convicted "on felony charges of political money laundering."

DeLay faces two to 20 years in prison on a conspiracy charge and five to 99 years or life on a money laundering charge. DeLay remains free on bail, with sentencing tentatively set for Dec. 20. [...]

DeLay and two political aides were accused of arranging to trade $190,000 in corporate money with the Republican National Committee in 2002 in exchange a like amount of money raised from individual donations that the RNC gave to seven specified Texas candidates. Texas law bars the use of corporate contributions in candidate elections.

I didn't know Texas had that rule. Hadn't noticed that it's vigorously enforced either.

Anyway, the tentative sentencing is sort of a joke. He will, of course, appeal the conviction. I'm willing to guess it will be another 3-5 years at least, before a final judgment is rendered. By then no one will remember what the big deal was and he'll probably get off with a meaningless fine and probation.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Obama: Sarah Who? - Updated

President Obama tells Barbara Walters he doesn't think about Sarah Palin. He acknowldeges that she's built a base of support among the Tea Party Republicans, but his focus is on governing.

Neither do I waste time thinking about her; hard as it is to avoid the continous media/internet fascination with the surreality star and half-term governor. I don't care at all what her latest mindless spewing on Facebook says. I don't care about her book, or her teevee tirades and neither should any thinking person.

That especially goes for "the left" who builds her up even as they think they're tearing her down. The attention, even negative attention, simply cements her place as the main ring attraction in the media circus. And no it's not necessary to marginalize her. There's not a person with two or more firing synapses who doesn't realize by now she's a cleverly manipulative, yet intellectually void, incompetent boob.

But with every clever snark, Palin wins. With every sneering derision, Palin wins. Because it makes it all about her. And it doesn't marginalize her with her supporters. They believe every garbled word she tosses out. So when you call their Sarah stupid, you're calling them stupid. It cements their loyalty and raises their resentment. It makes them all the more determined to show us dirty elite liberals up. I mean we're talking about people who are willing to spend hours a day gaming a voting system so her daughter can do well in a stupid dance contest.

If the left wants to marginalize Palin, then stop talking about her. Stop reading and linking to every breathless media report on her latest unintelligible utterance. If the media stops getting traffic from it, they'll stop reporting on her. And losing the limelight is the greatest punishment of all for an attention whore.

Update: I rest my case. Sarah says something stupid and everyone on the internets instantly has to say something about it. She wins the news cycle. You think she really doesn't know that North Korea is not our ally? Nobody making millions on their fame is that stupid. This vapid poseur is playing everyone on both sides to keep her name recognition high. This is how "refudiate" became word of the year.

As further evidence, I saw today the second episode of her new reality show lost 40% of the audience. I'm pretty sure those were the lefties that got bored after the first episode.

Sociopaths rule us

Building a bit on my earlier post about record breaking corporate profits, John Cole makes an additional point I meant to add on corporate caterwauling about Obama:

They got everything they wanted the last couple of years, the stock market has rebounded, bonuses are hitting records, corporate profits are at an all time high, no one went to jail for their obvious crimes, and they still aren’t happy and think Obama, who has been business friendly to a fault, is “hostile” to them.
At some point, we are going to have to realize we are dealing with sociopaths.

Read the link for the comment that inspired this quote. For crying out loud, Obama lost his base largely for being so corporate friendly. The fat cats of the Corporatocracy are making tons of money but they're still hell bent on destroying his presidency. And it's not because he's black. It's because he's a Democrat.

No government health care for Tea Party candidates

It's going to be amusing to watch this play out. The Tea Party voters demand no "gummit" health care for their candidates:

Most Americans think incoming Congressmen who campaigned against the health care bill should put their money where their mouth is and decline government provided health care now that they're in office. Only 33% think they should accept the health care they get for being a member of Congress while 53% think they should decline it and 15% have no opinion.

Democrats are actually the most supportive of anti-health care Congressmen taking their health care, with 40% saying they should accept it to 46% who think they should decline. But Republicans and independents- who put these folks in office in the first place- strongly think they should refuse their government provided health care. GOP voters hold that sentiment by a 58/28 margin and indys do 56/27.

Sure it was all fun and games while they were pitching the anti-health care reform slogans to win the election, but now the Tea Party Republicans want their newly elected representatives to walk that cheap talk. Wonder what they're going to do now? As far as I know there's only one guy in Congress who refused the benefit on principle and I'm pretty sure he's a Democrat.

Under Bush, they called it a boom

The economic dynamic here isn't all that different from what was widely touted as the Bush Boom years. Poor and middle class were losing ground and the rich got richer:

American businesses earned profits at an annual rate of $1.66 trillion in the third quarter, according to a Commerce Department report released Tuesday. That is the highest figure recorded since the government began keeping track over 60 years ago, at least in nominal or non-inflation-adjusted terms.

Corporate profits have been going gangbusters for a while. Since their cyclical low in the fourth quarter of 2008, profits have grown for seven consecutive quarters, at some of the fastest rates in history.

This breakneck pace can be partly attributed to strong productivity growth — which means companies have been able to make more with less — as well as the fact that some of the profits of American companies come from abroad. Economic conditions in the United States may still be sluggish, but many emerging markets like India and China are expanding rapidly.

In other words, all that outsourcing pumped money into India and all the cheap labor imports from China that created these huge profits also created new markets for Big Business. Productivity grew because they fired workers and redistributed the workload among the remaining employees under threat of being cast onto the unemployment rolls. Scared employees don't complain. The only real difference is there is no real estate bubble that allows the slogan voters to use their homes as ATMs in order to feel rich anymore.

In practical terms, the annual corporate profit rate is larger than the 2010 fiscal year budget deficit which currently stands at $1.3 trillion. Yet the media hypes the corporate/GOP narrative that Obama is the anti-business president? Hell, if he was a Republican they would be shouting about the emerging new boom. And deficits wouldn't matter a bit.

Uneducated, over-informed

Adding to my earlier post on GOP voters, one of my "fans" from Detroit followed me home to complain about my paraphrasing the WaPo description as, "GOP base is uneducated, under-informed, white hicks."

I deleted him for redundancy, but he did remind me of a point I forgot to make. I almost fit that demo. For reasons more complicated and personal than I care to explain, I don't have impressive academic creds. And I'm verging on the knife edge of elderly, enjoy simple pleasures and prefer marginally rural areas of residence. I could be accurately described as a self-educated, over-informed, white hick. Not all that different.

One of reasons I didn't go the academic route is a deep, life-long aversion to institutionalized learning. It may be a path to instant scholastic credibility, but not necessarily a path to knowledge. The system is so easily gamed. [Via John Cole]:



Of course, cheating has been going on since long before I was in school but it appears the number of cheaters have grown. I find it a good sign that for the moment, the technology seems to be finally outpacing them. Thinking it's good for civil society when dishonesty is punished instead of rewarded.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Who votes for Republicans?

Hate to link to Kaplan Test Prep Daily, but this piece of old news disguised as a breathless revelation is worth remarking on briefly. Shorter: GOP base is uneducated, under-informed, white hicks. Or as I call them, slogan voters. Not necessarily stupid people, but rather gullible and easily deluded by slick agitprop.

A large percentage of them are elderly. It's a shrinking demo that's going to die off either from old age or really bad health habits and an ever shrinking access to health care. Furthermore, since it's rather clear the GOP has no intention of doing anything to improve the economy while a Democrat is sitting in the Oval office, they're likely to lose the so-called swing vote element in that demo in 2012. All the Democrats have to do to re-energize their own base and win the majority back is to actually put up a fight for policy that benefits the working class and at least look like they're trying to win.

I don't want to get sucked into 2012 predictions at this stage but the Democrats do have a clear path to retaining the White House and regaining the majority. The big question is whether the country can survive the damage the GOP will surely do to us in the next two years.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

The Saboteurs of Amerikkka

I've been saying this at DetNews for months now, but of course no listens to me, so I'm happy to see someone with a bigger megaphone, namely Steve Benen, finally point out Republicans are deliberately sabotaging the economy:

But we're talking about a significantly different dynamic now. This general approach has shifted from hoping conditions don't improve to taking steps to ensure conditions don't improve. We've gone from Republicans rooting for failure to Republicans trying to guarantee failure. [...]

And that, in and of itself, strikes me as remarkable. We're talking about a major political party, which will control much of Congress next year, possibly undermining the strength of the country -- on purpose, in public, without apology or shame -- for no other reason than to give themselves a campaign advantage in 2012.

They get away with it because so few on the left with a big soapbox will unequivocally call them out on it. Yes, I'm talking to you Kevin Drum. You're right, squishy excuses enable them and weakens the influence of the left in the public discourse.

Guys like Rove, Murdoch and Koch brothers aren't stupid and neither is the GOP leadership. They didn't "convince" themselves destructive obstruction of good policy that would actually improve the economy is really in the best interests of the country. They know they're holding back economic recovery. They don't care. These guys have enough money to survive anything short of a total collapse. They know inflicting as much pain as possible on the middle class and the working poor is their ticket to power. There is no legitimate excuse for it.

Every picture tells a story, don't it...

Once upon a time, when the world was young there was no cable teevee, no instant video satellite transmissions and no internets. There weren't any cell phones, fax machines or laser printers. Back then, news anchors were not sexy. Hell, a lot of them weren't even particularly physically attractive. An invitation to appear as a guest commentator rested on scholastic cred and verifably factual commentary. Wonkery, not wankery, ruled the newsrooms. Those days are sadly gone.

This is the face of "news" today. Behold, the megastar teleprompter reader at Fox News, Megyn Kelly. Does that photo shout "very serious newsperson" or what? Clearly her fans love her for her mind and she so deserves this recognition.

"TVNewser learns that 'America Live' anchor Megyn Kelly is in the 2010 GQ Men of the Year issue, which hit newsstands this week. Kelly is the only tvnewser to be selected for the 2010 media personality."

Chosen for this honor, of course, for her academic achievements and incisive commentary that contributed so greatly to a reasonable and well-informed political discourse.

Some dare call it treason

Building on my love letter to the media, over at The Lake, Ruth eloquently calls out the GOP's traitorous obstruction of the START treaty.

There can be no greater show of how low the right wing will go, at least not since the previous administration’s destroying that segment of the U.S. intelligence on nuclear facilities which Valerie Plame was conducting. Oh, yes, and the Reagan campaign’s conducting negotiations for a separate peace with Iran to put itself in place by condemning U.S. hostages there to stay in place to get the ‘Gipper’ elected. [...]

When Joseph Wilson said there were no WMD’s, his wife, and who knows how many of her associates, were betrayed. Question: How low will they go? Answer: Treason. Again, as with the Iranian hostage situation, the Democrats refused to conduct inquiries when this administration came into power. It’s sweet, but not looking back only encourages the enemy, and this time the enemy is working not just against the U.S. public, but against the world’s continued peaceful existence.

As the saying goes, read it all...

Democrats talking the talk on tax cuts

Okay. If Harry Reid pulls this off, I'll take back every criticism I ever made about him being a hopelessly ineffective Senate leader.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has adopted a hardball strategy for dealing with Republicans on the expiring Bush-era tax cuts.

Reid will force a vote on extending tax cuts for families earning below $250,000 and individuals below $200,000 that would allow tax rates on the wealthy to expire. But it’s not clear whether that vote will be on a permanent or temporary extension because of a split in the Democratic caucus, a notable change since the election.

Yes, if you read the whole piece, it's typically wishy-washy and signals an all too possible "compromise" but he does seem to have a better plan than usual.

Reid will also give senators the option of voting for legislation sponsored by Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (D-Ky.) that would extend all of the Bush tax cuts permanently. The bill would permanently extend current tax rates for the nation’s wealthiest families and eliminate the estate tax.

The strategy is designed to draw a sharp contrast between Democrats and Republicans on tax policy. The intent is to portray Democrats as protectors of the middle-class and Republicans as beholden to the wealthy.

Of course, they should have been doing this sort of thing for the last two years and maybe they wouldn't have been beaten up so badly at the ballot box, but power of postive visualization and all that, so I'm going to believe in it unless or until he disappoints me -- again.

As always, the talk in the House is much stronger.

Steny Hoyer, the number two in the House Dem leadership, told Democrats at a caucus meeting this morning that they would get to vote this year on just extending the Bush tax cuts for the middle class, a senior Dem aide tells me, signaling support for a confrontational move towards the GOP that liberals have been pushing.

Asked if Democrats would definitely get a chance to hold this vote, the senior aide responded: "Definitely."

No, I haven't forgotten all the tough talk during the height of the war protests when they told us what we wanted to hear and then caved like a bowl of melting Jello, but I'm an optimist at heart. Maybe they finally decided to listen to the hippies and stand up and fight. There's always hope.

Update: MikeR in comments brings up a very good point that's been largely missed: [W]ould it not be better to call the vote this way, as retaining the tax cuts on the first $200,000 of income for individuals and the first $250,000 for families. Everyone benefits even the top 2%. To not state that everyone retains some tax relief just plays into republican talking points.

[Big thanks to Don Davis sitting in for Mike at the C&L Roundup for the kind link.]

Dear Establishment Media

Please drop the ridiculous narrative. Try to get this straight. The failure to ratify START is not Obama's fault. It says nothing about his presidency. Obama did his part of the job. He restored diplomatic relations and negotiated a really good treaty.

The onus is on Republican obstructionism, blocking a vote on something critical to our national security and indeed vital to the security of the entire planet.

It couldn't be clearer that the GOPers are engaging in the most irresponsible political machinations ever simply to deny our President even one political victory, not matter how critical the policy, in order to spin him as a loser. So can we make that the story please?

Love,

Libby

Morning quiz

Pew Research comes out with yet another piece on what Americans know and don't know about the specifics of government policy and politics. I love these quizzes since I always come out in the top percentile.

I did get the phone question wrong. Since I've successfully avoided that particular addiction, I don't know from smart phones. Still came out better than 98% of the general public. This is why Republicans manage to win elections despite sabotaging the middle class at every turn.

Take the quiz. It's very short and quick.

When Democrats stood for something

In a remarkably rare, profanity free post, Rude Pundit recalls when the Dems stood for the working class. Read it in full, but here's part of the vignette he uses to illustrate the point:

"This is the only place in American history where we used our Air Force to bomb our own people," the old woman said, gesturing at a ridge on Blair Mountain, West Virginia, puffing on a cigarette. "To protect the property of the coal barons." We ran into a group of elderly people who wanted to see the mountain before it was blown up. It's why we were there, too. [...]

The woman wasn't entirely right. While the fairly new Army Air Corps had planes go out on reconnaissance missions, the bombs that were dropped on the miners from the air were homemade and came from private planes that the coal barons had hired. The miners turned back and the United Mine Workers Association lost its chance to unionize the southern coalfields of West Virginia for another 15 years. In fact, the union went from 50,000 members to 10,000 members, part of an ongoing effort to crush unions during the 1920s, under Republican presidents. Union membership did not climb until FDR came into office and the National Labor Relations Act was passed.

Most of the political activists I know on the tubes are too young to recall that even as late the 60s and 70s there were many more Democrats who actually fought for the social safety net, for the working poor, for equal rights and corporate accountability. Watching old video of MLK or JFK is moving, but there's no way to really recreate how inspiring and transformational it was to hear it live for the first time.

Of course it wasn't perfect, but back then it was a whole lot easier to define the differences between the two parties. Then again, it also took three days to get video from China, there were tens of thousands of independent local news outlets, political campaigning didn't run on an endless loop and sports had definable seasons. Today, an unfounded rumor can explode around the world in minutes on the internets and once planted, is impossible to fully dislodge.

It's ironic really. Advances in communication allow us to interact instantly and internationally, but it made our politicians timid and created so much noise that honest, sensible voices can hardly be heard above the din. Society at large is less informed than ever. [Via BGinKC.]

Poisoning the political discourse

A postponed meeting, even a very important bi-partisan meeting between President Obama and the GOP leadership wouldn't normally be worth mentioning. However, Politico's pathetic ploy to win the morning news cycle with a Drudge-baiting post, apparently "supported" by entirely made up sources, is worth some notice.

Thankfully, Josh Marshall captures Politico's opening grafs so we don't have to link to the purple prose factory.

The roots of the partisan standoff that led to the postponement of the bipartisan White House summit scheduled for Thursday date back to January, when President Barack Obama crashed a GOP meeting in Baltimore to deliver a humiliating rebuke of House Republicans.

Obama's last-minute decision to address the House GOP retreat - and the one-sided televised presidential lecture many Republicans decried as a political ambush - has left a lingering distrust of Obama invitations and a wariness about accommodating every scheduling request emanating from the West Wing, aides tell POLITICO.

"He has a ways to go to rebuild the trust," said a top Republican Hill staffer. "The Baltimore thing was unbelievable. There were [House Republicans] who only knew Obama was coming when they saw Secret Service guys scouting out the place."

Of course, we all know this is pure bullshit. There was no ambush, and in case you somehow forgot the specifics, TPM has all the appropriate links proving Obama was invited to the GOP confab and as the youngsters say -- he drank the Republicans' milkshake. They thought they were going to shoot him down. Instead, he left them looking like utter fools.

Contrast Politico's fabulism with the fully sourced report at The Caucus:

“At the request of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Minority Leader John Boehner due to scheduling conflicts in organizing their caucuses, the President’s meeting with bipartisan leaders will now take place at the White House on Tuesday, November 30th,” read a statement released by the White House.

Don Stewart, a spokesman for the Mr. McConnell, the Kentucky lawmaker, said in an email that there had never really been a firm date. ...

It couldn't be clearer that Politico's shoddy "reporting" is a fatal toxin polluting our public discourse and an affront to responsible, fact-based journalism. Which makes me wonder anew why the Pulitizer Prize committee ever sat Politico's Jim VandeHei on their board and how on earth they can justify keeping him on it in light of Politico's ongoing journalistic malfeasance.

Left raises Palin's profile - Updated

You know I try to avoid her but it's been a really good week for Sarah Palin. "Her" invention, refudiate was named word of the year.

"From a strictly lexical interpretation of the different contexts in which Palin has used 'refudiate,' we have concluded that neither 'refute' nor 'repudiate' seems consistently precise, and that 'refudiate' more or less stands on its own, suggesting a general sense of 'reject.' "the New Oxford American Dictionary said in a press release.

Palin’s use of “refudiate,” launched critics into a frenzy when she first posted the made up verb on her Twitter page over the summer.

It's become a staple of snark on the left. Can't really recall the right adopting it. And then there's this:

The debut of her new reality show Sunday night was the number one program launch in TLC’s history...

Willing to bet fully half of that audience were lefties watching so they could point and laugh at her. I'm sure she's crushed by all the negative attention. You know how she hates being in the spotlight.

Update: I rest my case. Palin's "popularity" is largely based on the train wreck phenomenon. And to put the show ratings in perspective, I'm told on twitter that 750 million watched Charles and Diana's wedding. But as the old saying goes, "There's no such thing as bad publicity, as long as they spell your name right."

President Obama goes tone deaf

I've given President Obama a ton more slack than I would have any other politician. Possessing an overdeveloped sense of empathy, I felt the burden of multiple crises he inherited the minute he took the oath. I didn't demand instant solutions. I accepted and defended trade-offs for the slightest of policy gains as a pragmatic matter. But it's clear to me that he needs to get out of his bubble somehow, because he's obviously listening to the wrong people. This is the second time I've seen it reported Obama is lamenting his failure to change the "tone" in Washington, along with mumblings about better bi-partisanship.

Someone needs to get through to him. "The people" don't give a flying leap about tone. Neither do they care how it's done, they just want tangible results that improve their lives. It's not about playing nice, it's not about deficits or so-called socialist government take-overs. Those are phony narratives he allowed to foment and grow out of control until they became conventional wisdom via an ever complacent media whose existence depends on placating conservative Republicans.

What the people want is economic security. They want a booming job market. They want money in their bank accounts and their pockets. Everything else is just ginned up controversy.

Obama's biggest problem is he ran as a leader. He talked like a leader. He promised to lead and the majority of the country believed him. But he's governed like an appeaser. He gave too much ground before the battles even started. I don't think one man can fix everything, nor can everything broken in this country be repaired at once or immediately. But Obama's problem is bad optics.

He gave ground without a symbolic, rhetorical fight. He didn't draw the bright line between his goals and the GOP obstruction. His persona is viewed by slogan voters as the nerdy kid who hides on the playground for fear of the class bully that is today's GOP. The demo he's after will side with the bully every time, because they're impressed, and comforted, by strength -- not finesse. That's why they supported Bush for so long. They don't care if it's wrong or right, true or false. They just want to be believe in a strong leader and his vision.

I don't think a lot of legislation failed because Obama didn't "use his bully pulpit." But I do think he failed to use it to define himself and articulate his vision in simple enough terms for the average slogan voter to grasp. And neither did he articulate it in strong enough terms, or clear enough metrics, for the informed voters to believe in it.

It's not the tone in Washington that Obama needs to worry about. It's his own.

Mrs. Clarence Thomas "stepping down" as Tea Party chief

Wife of the SCOTUS justice, Ginni Thomas announced today she is going undercover.

Ms. Thomas plans to resign as CEO of Liberty Central, a group designed to be a clearinghouse for conservative activists and the Tea Party movement, according to a person with knowledge of the group’s plans.

The Washington Post this morning quoted a spokeswoman for the group as saying that Ms. Thomas will take a “a back seat so that Liberty Central can continue with its mission without any of the distractions.” The spokeswoman, Caitlin Carroll, told the Post that “after discussing it with the board, Mrs. Thomas determined that it was best for the organization.”

And by taking a "back seat" I assume they mean she's done her job. She rallied the base and got them to the ballot box and now she no longer needs to grub around with the hoi polloi at Tea Party rallies. She can resume her more refined deal making with the big money elites in the back rooms as they plot their government takeover for 2012.

Income inequality - it's the policy, stupid

Frank Rich posts a good column today on income inequality. He rehashes many of the points you high denominator readers already know but this is the money quote:

Inequality is instead the result of specific policies, including tax policies, championed by Washington Democrats and Republicans alike as they conducted a bidding war for high-rolling donors in election after election.

It's about filling the war chests for the perpetual campaigns. On a related note, Steve Hynd posted a fine rant the other day that makes another point that can't be over-stated:

In 2008, the average net worth of a Senator was almost $14 million. The average net worth of a Congressman was $4.6 million. Every single one stands to gain $3 million from those Bush tax cuts over the next decade. Do you think that might just be a wee, tiny tad of a conflict of interest? [...]

Does your rich Senator or Congressman - or President - really get this? No. While median wealth in the U.S. plunged 39% during the housing crash, the wealth of the upper 1% dropped less than 12%. The rich aren't hurting nearly as much as the poor and mostly just don't care about our getting to work - the priority for them is debt reduction because it helps safeguard the value of the investments they hold. Those Senators and Congressman - and President - no matter which party political lable is affixed to them, have no fucking idea what it is to be truly poor in America. While you were suffering, they have increased their wealth.

The bottom line is their bottom line and the same can be said for our very well paid media stars. It's all just a ratings game for them because they're so economically secure the marginal downturns that devaste working people who are living on the knife edge of poverty, just don't affect them all that much. For them it's a choice between the expensive and the obscenely expensive restaurant for dinner. For the working poor, it's a choice between turning on the heat or having dinner at all. Unless you've been there, there is really no way to know how horribly scary it feels.

So you want to be a budget buster

Working today so I won't time to play with this, but NYT posts an interesting interactive puzzle that asks you to make the cuts to balance the budget. It's pretty obvious to me what the choices are, but it's worth a scroll just to look at the numbers on the proposed savings.

Best post-mortem on Election 2010

I've read a lot of post-mortems on the election and I have to agree this is one of the best. Gin and Tacos explains the "mandate" and the Democratic bloodbath The crappy economy aside, on the most basic level, Democrats lost because "the base" didn't show up at the ballot box. But I especially liked this analysis:

But for those who need the grand explanation, the sweeping conclusions drawn from limited data, the themes that allow us to boil elections down to slogans, I humbly submit the following.

1. Social Security reform that guarantees my current level of benefits, alters someone else's, and cuts everyone's Social Security taxes to boot.

2. A world-class national infrastructure that can be built and maintained without tax dollars.

3. A balanced budget that doesn't sacrifice any of the government programs – especially the sacred military-industrial complex and the various old age benefits – that we like.

Read the whole list at the link. It's biting because it's true. And the summation is brilliantly succinct.

It couldn't be any clearer: we want a government that will resolve every problem we currently face with solutions that require no effort, no sacrifices, and no money. And I have no doubt that we have elected a group of people brave enough to promise exactly that.

And, of course, who won't deliver on those promises at all. [Via matttbastard.]

Really too weird

Of all the strange outcomes of the 2010 election, if someone had told me two years ago that I would be sitting here today cheering for Lisa Murkowski to win in Alaska -- well -- you know...

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

The secret to Christie's success

Weigel makes an obvious point that I agree has been largely missed by the chattering class. The real secret behind Christie's "charisma," at least on the national level among those who don't have to live with the effects of his "governance."

And that's where Christie's fame has come from! He makes news less for his specific accomplishments, more for viral videos of himself taking names, which are rebroadcast on conservative sites, talk radio, and cable news.

I'm amazed that no other Republican or Democrat who wants to make a national impression has done what Christie did -- hire a new media director and have him pump out video of the man at his best throwing down some down and dirty, substance free, trash talking.

[Strike out and addition mine] Come to think of it, that's what made Sarah Palin what she is today, too.

[Addendum to: Christie is no Fred Thompson.]

Happy 10th to TPM

Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo turns 10 today. Well okay, it's really tomorrow but it's never too early to start celebrating.

Hard for me to believe it's been that long but time moves differently on the internets and I've been reading him since I ventured into the tubes. Truthfully, since he got all that money and went more or less mainstream, I think the site has lost a little bit of the edginess of the early days of Blogtopia. It's not the same blog that forced Attorneygate into the spotlight and probably invented crowd sourcing. But then again, so has most of Blogtopia morphed into more of an echo of the legacy media, than a challenge to it.

TPM is still breaking important news and focusing attention on events that might otherwise be overlooked, so I'm willing to forgive the occassional overindulgence in trivia. I'm grateful for their longevity and the many contributions they made, and still make, to informing us about matters of importance. Hope they're around for another ten and another ten after that.

Chris Christie is no Fred Thompson

He claims he has no interest in a presidential run in 2012 but NJ Gov. Chris Christie toured the country this fall and raised nearly $9 million for Republican candidates. He's been doing the Sunday bobblehead circuit. He's a favorite of the far right conservatives for his "in yer face" style of political confrontation and he's attacking all their favorite targets like teacher's unions and "big government" spending. Sure smells like testing the waters to me.

He also vehemently claims his personality is too strong to take second chair, but NJ poli-watchers are speculating he has his eye on the VP slot.

“He’s Cheney with a personality,” Codey said. “He’s a hardass.”

I don't know about that. He has more of a media persona than a personality, kind of like Snooki on Jersey Shore and I think of him as more of a big ass than a hardass, and no I'm not talking about his obesity.

On the other hand, what he does share with Cheney is -- it's really not that difficult to envision him shooting someone in the face. So there's that...

Disband the Deficit Commission

Building on Citizen k's post about the tax reform proposals I referenced below, Krugman sees its value differently:

Matters become clearer once you reach the section on tax reform. The goals of reform, as Mr. Bowles and Mr. Simpson see them, are presented in the form of seven bullet points. “Lower Rates” is the first point; “Reduce the Deficit” is the seventh.

So how, exactly, did a deficit-cutting commission become a commission whose first priority is cutting tax rates, with deficit reduction literally at the bottom of the list? [...]

Actually, though, what the co-chairmen are proposing is a mixture of tax cuts and tax increases — tax cuts for the wealthy, tax increases for the middle class. They suggest eliminating tax breaks that, whatever you think of them, matter a lot to middle-class Americans — the deductibility of health benefits and mortgage interest — and using much of the revenue gained thereby, not to reduce the deficit, but to allow sharp reductions in both the top marginal tax rate and in the corporate tax rate.

The one point everyone seems to agree on is that they didn't address health care costs, but from the vague mention that Krugman highlights, it sure sounds like a prelude to cutting Medicare coverage to me. Krugman says they should cut their losses and disband the commission. I have to agree.

They should listen to Atrios

It's so blindingly obvious, but our political geniuses in the Democratic party just don't seem to get it. They really should listen to Atrios:

Fix The Economy

Here's my unsolicited advice for the administration and the Dems: fix the goddamn economy. At least outline a plan to fix it. If Republicans won't pass it, blame them.

Alternatively, you could not fix the economy and try to get credit for "cutting the deficit" or some other crap that no one actually gives a shit about, least of all teabaggers or Republicans.

He's on fire today. Go over and scroll for links like maybe government austerity isn't such a great idea after all.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Catfood Commission not all bad

To be fair, the Catfood Commission did make some good proposals about the tax system that Citizen k details in a long and wonky post at the GOS. I noticed them but was reluctant to give them any play because I think it's a ploy.

The thing is I don't believe they would ever take those recommendations. My fear is their intent is to use them to gain credibility for the Commission in order to push the cuts to the social programs and benefits for the poor and middle class.

Still, the post is well worth reading in full for those interested in reforming the tax structure.

Pelosi responds

I don't want to spend too much time on the Catfood Commission guys but Pelosi's response to their proposal was one for the archives:

This proposal is simply unacceptable. Any final proposal from the Commission should do what is right for our children and grandchildren’s economic security as well as for our nation’s fiscal security, and it must do what is right for our seniors, who are counting on the bedrock promises of Social Security and Medicare. And it must strengthen America’s middle class families–under siege for the last decade, and unable to withstand further encroachment on their economic security.

Maybe it's just selective memory but I swear, I've seen more attention paid to Pelosi in the last week than I have in the last six years. It's about time. Yeah I remember she made made some irritating tradeoffs. She's not perfect, but she's probably the best establishment leader we can reasonably hope to have.

Catfood Commission takes its first scratch

I've been reading a lot of the reaction to the Catfood Commission chair's initial recommendations but my first take was why did they release this at all? It's just two guys' opinions that carry no weight, though it certainly captured the news cycle on all sides. I found myself wondering if it was one of those eleventy chess moves to force the GOP to get specific on how they're going to keep their promise to cut the deficit.

But whatever the reason, the shorter version is these two rich guys want to keep their Bush era tax breaks, cut their taxes even further and balance the books by forcing the poor and the middle class to make up the difference. Of all I've read, Kevin Drum put it best, illustrated with this handy chart. As he said:

To put this more succinctly: any serious long-term deficit plan will spend about 1% of its time on the discretionary budget, 1% on Social Security, and 98% on healthcare. [...]

This document is a paean to cutting the federal government, not cutting the federal deficit.

In other words, just another stab at realizing the conservative pipe dream of destroying our current form of government and restoring a feudal system with themselves as the new aristocrats.

It's a joke of a proposal but Atrios pins down the biggest hazard for the White House. It may well be a bi-partisan commission, but it was established by the president and it will hereby be called Obama's Deficit Commission. Bad optics for 2012 when the President's handpicked guys are calling to cut the most beloved social program in the country.

In any event, I fully expect this commission will turn out to be as effective as any previous ones. Meaning, they'll spend a lot of time and tax dollars to make recommendations that will be officially released long after the issues are decided and everyone will ignore them.

And one last thought. Not proposing changing it's nym, but Catfood Commission isn't really that apt. Catfood isn't all that cheap anymore. I can buy regular chunk light tuna cheaper than pet food, but of course, Ramen Noodle Commission just isn't as catchy.

[Much more commentary at Memeorandum yesterday and today.

Sotomayer to headline fundraiser for MoveOn

Just kidding. But imagine the multi-week media meltdown if it were true...

Of course it's okay if you're a conservative judge. Sam Alito was caught at a big GOP hoedown and tells Think Progress it's no big deal when he does it. And he's right. No one with a big microphone going to make an issue of it. Nothing to interest that librul "lamestream" media here.

You'll recall Think Progress also recently caught Thomas and Scalia cozying up with the Kochtopus. Not that it has any effect on their rulings. Heck, the "conservative majority of the Court only "favored the position of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the nation’s largest big business lobby, over 80% of the time."

No connection at all. Everybody knows only liberals can be "activist judges."

Wake up, (your dream sounds so sad)

I didn't have time to read it all yet, but this piece on the end of the American dream is a knockout evaluation of the dynamics behind our current state of income equality. This one quote really resonates:

"The fundamental bargain, the core of America, has always been that we can live with big gaps between rich and poor as long as there is also equality of opportunity," Putnam says. "If that is no longer true, then the core bargain is being violated."

It's bigger than just a contract violation. A handful of rich and powerful megalomaniacs are seriously plotting to take over the bulk of the world's wealth. It's like we're trapped in the worst game of Risk ever. These guys aren't just hiding their cards under the board, they're using rigged dice.

[Post title taken from my favorite William Topley song.

Pelosi perfect

Greg Sargent finds more support for keeping Pelosi in leadership. The next two years will almost surely be devoted to procedural warfare on The Hill. Pelosi has years of experience and a track record of success on that front. He even finds an AEI guy who agrees:

But he dismissed the idea that Dem losses last week are relevant, insisting that the new minority leader's chief role will be to "hold the line against repeal and keep the troops together and use the limited weapons available to the minority to put the Republicans on the defensive."

"She's in a stronger position to do that than others," Ornstein continued. "She showed in the last two years how strong she is as a strategist, and she may very well be able to use that strategic capacity to exacerbate some of the schisms that Republicans already have. She understands at least as well as anyone else how to use the process."

Even more interesting, Greg points out this isn't the first time the New York Times posted a hit piece on Pelosi disguised as an editorial. In 2002, they opposed her using the same bogus argument against her effectiveness. Maybe that's why they pretty much ignored her accomplishments since then and now pretend she has none.

Lame Duck quackery on DADT - Updated

It doesn't get any lamer than this for the upcoming Lame Duck session. The Wall Street Journal tells me Carl Levin and McCain are scheming to derail DADT by stripping it out of the military appropriations bill. I really hope this is just another badly informed WSJ report. I can't think of anything more sucidal for the Dems than to cave on this issue.

Adam Serwer expresses my "awe":

Look, if Democrats can't repeal a policy more than two thirds of the American people, including a majority of conservatives want gone then they can't expect people to vote for them. Preserving DADT is rank absurdity, even in 1993 the RAND study commissioned by the government showed that combat effectiveness would not be harmed by allowing openly gay servicemembers to serve, and the fact that DADT investigations are sometimes delayed when servicemembers are deployed undermines the notion that openly gay servicemembers harm the war effort.

If this is true, then I give up myself. There isn't a safer victory they could go for than DADT. And yeah, I've heard that a lot of the LGBT voted for Republicans. (No, I don't understand why either but John Cole already has the ultimate rant about it.) But surely the Dems can't be so clueless to think they did it because they wanted to kill the policy.

Update: The good news is it appears to be shoddy reporting at WSJ. No evidence that Dem leadership is on board with Levin and:

[UPDATE @ 7:25 PM: Dan Pfeiffer, White House communications director, said in a statement on Monday evening, "The White House opposes any effort to strip 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' from the National Defense Authorization Act."]

We still need Pelosi

The New York Times posts an editorial today, slamming Nancy Pelosi, suggesting it's a really bad idea for her to hold onto her leadership position in the House. It says in part:

That job is not a good match for her abilities in maneuvering legislation and trading votes, since Democrats will no longer be passing bills in the House. What they need is what Ms. Pelosi has been unable to provide: a clear and convincing voice to help Americans understand that Democratic policies are not bankrupting the country, advancing socialism or destroying freedom.

Does the NYT think there will be no horse trading in the back halls on Capitol Hill now that Boehner has the gavel? We still need a skilled negotiator as the minority party. And as Steve Benen points out, she did hold this position before and did very well at it.

The editorial goes on to say:

If Ms. Pelosi had been a more persuasive communicator, she could have batted away the ludicrous caricature of her painted by Republicans across the country...

Well maybe the NYT forgot that the false, anti-Pelosi caricatures were largely paid for by the influx of anonymous, corporate-based Citizens United spending. CNN tells me "more than $65 million was spent on 161,203 ads." Democrats simply didn't have the same cash advantage to push back. And how much ink did NYT give to her in the last four years? The media amplified every biizarre utterance of Boehner constantly, but I didn't see the same attention paid to Nancy. And why was she never on the TV, except when the reporters were giving free air time to anti-Pelosi ads? And how about the Sunday bobblehead shows? They were largely dominated by GOP over the last four years. They couldn't get enough of McCain and Lindsey Graham, but if Pelosi was invited and refused to appear, I never heard about it.

The editorial claims that she "seem[ed] to visibly shrink on camera when defending [her] policies," but I recall her triumphant march into the House, looking like an avenging angel, carrying that historic gavel during the health care reform war. Again, she just didn't get the attention she deserved for her accomplishments.

That raging independent backlash the editorial is concern trolling about is what elected the Tea Party types, but what beat the conservaDems was their failure to support their Speaker and the policy work the progressive voters mandated with the 08 sweep. Sure, the GOPers are running around crowing about how happy they are that she's running. But it sounds a bit like a B'rer Rabbit ploy to me. I suspect they're scared stiff of having to face her down and if she meekly bows out, they'll claim her scalp. If they want to win in 2012, the Democratic party would be fools to give it to them.

Banana Republic

Banana Republicans used to be a sort of internet joke, but it's no laughing matter. Nicholas Kristof notices the United States now arguably has a more unequal distribution of wealth than traditional banana republics like Nicaragua, Venezuela and Guyana.

Worse yet, there are all these voters who just elected a bunch of real Banana Republicans who are hell bent on making us number one -- in income inequality. And they intend to make the poor suffer for being "too stupid" or "too lazy" to reach that top 1% of wealth holders by shrinking the government spending on social programs that alleviate the misery of poverty. The slogan voters don't care. They feel important when the 1%ers wine and dine them, even if they always leave just before it's time to pick up the tab.

All while the ranks of the impoverished grow daily. One person tweeted today, "My son spent the weekend helping the homeless in Boston. Middle class families a year ago, homeless now." Another tweep tells me 1000 people live under Las Vegas in tunnels. Nothing lazy about those people. Surviving on nothing is hard work.

Slogan voters are feeling good right now. "They" won. They can't hear the 1%ers snickering at them while they plot to rig the game and end up with all the money. They don't realize how fragile their own safety nets really are and they won't until they break and they find themselves in the tunnels too. By then it will be too late.

War is good for GOPers (and their military contractors)

Ink not even dry on the official election returns and already emboldened GOP neo-cons are rattling their sabres:

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said his fellow conservative, fresh from their historic elections romp this week, support "bold" action to deal with Iran.

If President Barack Obama "decides to be tough with Iran beyond sanctions, I think he is going to feel a lot of Republican support for the idea that we cannot let Iran develop a nuclear weapon," he told the Halifax International Security Forum.

"The last thing America wants is another military conflict, but the last thing the world needs is a nuclear-armed Iran... Containment is off the table."

The South Carolina Republican saw the United States going to war with the Islamic republic "not to just neutralize their nuclear program, but to sink their navy, destroy their air force and deliver a decisive blow to the Revolutionary Guard, in other words neuter that regime."

And he wants to bully China, just for good measure.

"The last thing America wants is another military conflict" but Lindsey wants to give it to us anyway. Actually, he could get me on board if every single politician and pundit who calls for an invasion leads the first brigades into the country. They want more cursed war, let them take up their guns and fight in it. And maybe they could practice up for this impending and necessary combat by joining the troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, since those invasions were such successes that the wars are just about won over there.

And so it begins again...

Atrios lists the Sunday Bobbleheads. Notice anything missing?

Face the Nation has Senate Majority Leader McConnell and James Clyburn.

This Week has Senator Majority Leader Rand Paul and Mike Pence.

Meet the Press has Senate Majority Leader DeMint and President Elect Chris Christie.

And no, Evan Bayh doesn't count as a Democrat. Hear he's on one of the roundtables.

Pro-Left missing the big picture on Olbermann?

While Keith's suspension is ridiculous, and I'm sure he's just hating all the attention, the Comcast connection is being widely overlooked. Building a bit on my last post, I feel reasonably certain that one big issue that won't be addressed on teevee by anyone is why the reporters are barred from contributions but the owners are free to give millions -- mainly to GOPers. Nor will the related issue of media consolidation.

In the flurry of immediate reaction, it was being reported Comcast had already taken over MSNBC. But it hasn't happened yet:

We have been notified that Comcast has not yet officially taken over MSNBC/NBC Universal. Although Comcast has tentatively finalized a deal to purchase a majority stake in NBC, Comcast awaits final approval of the takeover from the Justice Department and from the Federal Communications Commission.

Comcast, of course, publicly denies any involvement in current personnel decisions. But it's not hard to imagine a cocktail meeting where Comcast's very right wing COO casually mentions he's thinking of pulling out of the deal unless certain changes are made before the final signing.

Our major media is in the hands of a half dozen very rich men. No matter how they strategically place their political donations, their self-interest in shilling politicians who will maintain the corporate welfare system is obvious. Whether they do it "in your face" overtly like Fox or covertly like NBC, it's still the real problem. A dangerous one.

The point being, it would be really good to stop this merger. Maybe I'm just old and indulging in revisionism, but thinking there was a time, back in the dark ages when Leftopia was still young, that the pro-left would have coalesced around that larger issue.

Maddow on Olbermann

Jumping in late on the Olbermann thing. Most everything worth saying has been said, but I have to admit I'm disappointed in Maddow's response. I didn't watch the vid at the link but though she said he should be reinstated, the blog post was a bit weak on defending Keith and bit too strong on excusing the corporate policy.

She sequed nicely into busting any false equivalency between MSNBC and Fox but not a word about the unequal application of said NBC policy towards Scarborough and Keith. The post seemed to imply Joe asked for permission first, but I haven't seen that stated as fact anywhere. I have seen MSNBC's ever evolving justifications for treating the two differently.

I understand she can't exactly bust her employer and that's the problem with corporate control of the mega-media. As good as Maddow is, she's still constrained by her job depending on not pissing off the owners. And the owners are invested in protecting their power and keeping their profits. I suspect the big issues of media consolidation and net neutrality won't be addressed on her show. Though she's thoroughly fact based and pushes certain truths into the narrative, it's not all that different otherwise from Beck or O'Reilly. Not to diminish her good work, but in the end she and Keith are still just a side show to entertain the lefty base.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Team Pelosi

Expected but still laughable. The decimated remains of the Blue Dog caucus, led by the hapless Steny Hoyer, are challenging Nancy Pelosi for minority leader. The Hill version at the link is the shorter of the Politico/Reuters hit piece.

Well count me as a member of Team Pelosi. The media clearly intends to run with the Blue Dogs but she already announced she is running. Sign the petition to let her know you support her. I even left a personal thank you note. She deserves it for the work she did for liberal legislation. Can't remember if it was 206 or 406 bills she got passed that died in the Senate.

I'd like to see a challenge to Harry by someone with more guts for the game, but we need Nancy's leadership now, more than ever.

Hope for change

I've been catching up on my reading and processing Tuesday's results today. While I'm fairly certain in the short term, it's going to be a bloody mess and we're going to lose ground, I found some hope in the long term we may make some progress in reforming the Democratic party.

The NYT raises an important point on Dem losses, (via James Joyner):

The horrible economy, frustration over the bailouts (which were, at the end of the day, bipartisan with Bush having done two before Obama’s), and other factors set the stage for a Republicans to take substantially more seats than out parties typically do in a midterm cycle. So did the fact that Democrats held dozens of House seats they had no business holding (in terms of the ideological preferences of the constituency) after backlash elections in 2006 and 2008.

That was always the blessing and the curse of the 08 Dem majority. We accepted the necessity of those Blue Dogs in order to hound the GOP out of power. But they come from very red districts. Three who survived are from the part of western NC where I currently live. In my district, the voters returned Foxx with a crushing margin. It's not a wealthy district. Seriously. I saw the numbers and was struck cold to the bone with the realization that I am so out-numbered by such easily deluded slogan voters. Who own guns. And hate liberals.

But that aside, the nationwide view is brighter. Almost half of the Blue Dogs are gone now, including 21 of the 34 who voted against HCR and most of the Dems who voted against unemployment benefits. Despite the media hype about this new power in politics, only 32% of the Tea Party candidates won their races.

Meanwhile, a full 94% of the rest of the Progressive Caucus won. We kept Michael Bennet, Kristen Gillibrand, Jared Polis, and Chellie Pingree who supported the public option. Raul Grijalva, whom you might recall received numerous death threats and that toxic substance in the mail that was barely mentioned in the liberal media, overcame huge odds to win. Boxer spared us from the horror of demon sheep.

In the end, a lot of old wood was pruned out of Congress. Progressives ended up with a more powerful presence in this branch of government. Thinking whether that grows into meaningful change will depend on whether our power activists feed them with narrative support, rather than lavishing the majority of their attention on tearing down the crazies.

Message to progressive non-voters

I don't want to engage in the circular firing squad, and Morford is a bit harsh in his message to whiny young Dems, but I liked the end grafs.

Look, I'm sorry. I know I'm being far too hard on you. Of course it's not just you. It's not completely your fault these dimwit Repubs were allowed to ooze back into a bit of power so soon. As many analysts have pointed out, this wasn't a vote for the Republicans, but against the limp-wristed Dems who didn't step up and lead with more authority and clarity of purpose. Truly, libs and independents of every age are frustrated Obama isn't governing with the same kind of magical, balls-out visionary zeal that fueled his campaign.

So here's what you need to know, right now: Barack Obama is, and will continue to be, a bit of goddamn miracle. He's simply as good as we're going get for an articulate, thoughtful, integrity-rich Democratic prez in your lifetime. Period. To hamstring his administration out of spite and laziness is childish and sad. Check the accomplishments. Understand the process. Deal with the messiness.

It will never be perfect. It will never be giddy liberal nirvana, because it doesn't work that way. Politics is corrosive and infuriating, de facto and by definition, even with someone as thoughtful as Obama in the Big Chair. Understand it. Deal with it. Get back in the game. If you don't, we all lose.

The point being, political change doesn't happen by engaging once every four years. All the "mad as hell and I'm sitting it out" progressives sent their message and now we lost Nancy Pelosi, who was the most ignored and under rated Speaker we've had in a very long time. I'd remind them that hundreds of good bills she got passed died in the Senate while progressives were busy bitching on the internets about Obama's failings instead of celebrating Democratic successes. We'll now be enjoying two years of Speaker Boehner. I'm pretty sure what we won't be seeing is any gains in advancing progressive policy.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

A wave, not a tsunami

While I'm not exactly cheery, both my progressive national candidates lost in my state, I was much more devasted on the day after in 2004. So there's that.

Spent the morning checking out the results. Outside of my personal disappointment is seeing Burr and Foxx win, losing Feingold was the worst outcome, but a quick scan tells me he's not just going home and sobbing into his crying towel. And overall, Dems left this battlefield with a fighting force. Now if only they can learn how to fight...

Anyway, there were a number of bright spots. Looks to me what basically happened is the country reverted from sort of purplish to rigidly red/blue again. Like I often say, the pendulum always swings. Hoping the silver lining here is that libs/progs will now find common cause on working on issues again and stop fighting with each other.

Meanwhile, I'm off to work again this afternoon. For the moment, my longer morning after post is at DetNews.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

ABC's own - personal - Breitbartpocalypse

I'm ashamed of myself for taking quite so much pleasure in this dust-up between Andy Brietbart and ABC News:

But now, in an utterly predictable twist, the brawling has become internal, as it were, with Breitbart battling ABC reps over what exactly his role will be and what he claims it was supposed to be. (He's published private emails to state his case.)

That's right, ABC is now publicly feuding with one of its soon-to-be guests, with Breitbart claiming ABC execs lied about what their plans were for him on Election Night, and ABC responding that it's Breitbart who's confused about what the emails said and what his participation was supposed to be. So yes, the obvious question arises: If ABC doesn't think Breitbart can read emails, why do they want him to comment on Tuesday night's election results?

If you missed the back story on this one, Breitbart made a big announcement on his BigEgo site that he would have a starring role in ABC's election night coverage and would appear on-air as an analyst. Apparently a lot of people contacted ABC to let them know what they thought about giving a microphone to a proven fabulist and irredeemable con man like Andy.

This led to a disclaimer by ABC:

The following is attributable to Andrew Morse, Executive Producer, ABC News Digital:

Since conservative commentator Andrew Breitbart announced on his website that he was going to be a participant in ABC’s Town Hall meeting at Arizona State University, there has been considerable consternation and misinformation regarding my decision to ask him to participate in an election night Town Hall event for ABC News Digital. I want to explain what Mr. Breitbart's role has always been as one of our guests at our digital town hall event:

Mr. Breitbart is not an ABC News analyst.

He is not an ABC News consultant.

He is not, in any way, affiliated with ABC News.

He is not being paid by ABC News.

He has not been asked to analyze the results of the election for ABC News.
Mr. Breitbart will not be a part of the ABC News broadcast coverage, anchored by Diane Sawyer and George Stephanopoulos. For the broadcast coverage, David Muir and Facebook's Randi Zuckerberg will contribute reaction and response gathered from the students and faculty of Arizona State University at an ABC News/Facebook town hall.

He has been invited as one of several guests, from a variety of different political persuasions, to engage with a live, studio audience that will be closely following the election results and participating in an online-only discussion and debate.

Breitbart was, of course, furious at being made to look like a fool and thus engaged ABC in a smear contest.

I have to say, I wouldn't be surprised if, this one time, Andy was telling the truth. I suspect he was going to be an on-air analyst and ABC reneged in the face of the huge public outcry against such a dunderheaded decision. But leaving him as even an on-line only guest is still too much for me. I'm still boycotting the ABC coverage in protest.

Meanwhile, I'm off to work and won't be home till after 6:00 tonight. So see my other election blogging at DetNews. [More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Breaking: Fox "News" journalistic integrity in doubt

The title of this post is, of course, a joke. No reality-based observer believes that Fox, acting as the official spokesmouth of the GOP, has any integrity. However, Fox's latest issue advocacy crosses over a new line of pure hubris.

The Fox Business Network focused on what it called “The War on Business” all last week, but on Tuesday its coverage was decidedly more focused — with a series of reports about a California ballot initiative that its parent company, the News Corporation, had spent $1.3 million to defeat.

To be fair, Fox is the only major media corporation that's contributed to the opposition to CA Prop 24 that "would repeal $1.7 billion in corporate tax breaks to help close the state’s budget gap."

Executives at media companies, which employ tens of thousands in the entertainment industry, say defeating the proposition is one of their biggest priorities in the midterm elections, and they question how they would continue to operate in the state if taxes go up. [...]

The News Corporation, the Walt Disney Company, Time Warner, Viacom, CBS and General Electric, the owner of NBC, make up six of the nine biggest donors to No on 24. The companies declined to comment about the proposition. The three other contributors of more than $1 million are Cisco, Genentech and Qualcomm.

It becomes more clear every day that media consolidation is at the root of our toxic political discourse. Information is power, and while Fox may be the greatest offender, all the major media companies are guilty of abusing it. It's well past time to break up the conglomerates before they destroy civil society completely.

Eleventy Chess Moves

What I really want on Tuesday is a massive defeat for the crazy GOP candidates, simply to prove the smug pundits and the incessant pollsters wrong. I want the conventional narrative and its inherent assumptions to be so discredited that it forces a wholesale change in the news cycle dynamic. Not holding my breath.

Frank Rich posts an op-ed today that looks at how the GOP played the Tea Party to set up the trajectory of this election. But he opens with a point that has been rankling in the back of my mind for a while. A Tea Party win/GOP takeover isn't the worst thing that could happen in terms of 2012 for Obama's prospects.

Frank's closer predicts the future:

But those Americans, like all the others on the short end of the 2008 crash, have reason to be mad as hell. And their numbers will surely grow once the Republican establishment’s panacea of tax cuts proves as ineffectual at creating jobs, saving homes and cutting deficits as the half-measures of the Obama White House and the Democratic Congress. The tempest, however, will not be contained within the tiny Tea Party but will instead overrun the Republican Party itself, where Palin, with Murdoch and Beck at her back, waits in the wings to “take back America” not just from Obama but from the G.O.P. country club elites now mocking her. By then — after another two years of political gridlock and economic sclerosis — the equally disillusioned right and left may have a showdown that makes this election year look as benign as Woodstock.

Not sure about the showdown, but while a GOP takeover will be a disaster for marginally solvent Americans, for our well off polictical class, it could be a big win in the long run for the Dems. It would disarm one of the Republican's most powerful rhetorical weapons -- that the party "in power" takes the blame for the mess. If you're playing eleventy chess, it's probably a brilliant move to let the other guy win this one game in the series.