Hullabaloo

Monday, November 07, 2011

 
Vote for UGG

by digby

He's very presidential:


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digby 11/07/2011 09:00:00 PM |

 
Mayor 1% goes to Washington

by digby

Gosh, what do you suppose he's going to say? I'm all on pins and needles...

Streaming Video

Watch the event live.

About This Event

This event is now full and we can no longer accept RSVPs. Please watch the live webcast here.

As the work of the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, also known as the super committee, comes to a head, the prospect for an agreement remains uncertain. On Tuesday, November 8 in an event co-hosted by the Center for American Progress and the American Action Forum, New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg will present his views on how Congress should address the pressing issues facing the committee, the economic implications that are at stake, and his ideas on how a pragmatic, growth-oriented consensus can be forged.

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digby 11/07/2011 07:30:00 PM |

 
Will Grover come over?

by digby

Brian Beutler has the latest on the Super Committee machinations:

Super Committee Republicans are floating a trial balloon that would produce new tax revenue, in apparent contravention of Grover Norquist’s taxpayer protection pledge, according to Wall Street Journal editorialist Stephen Moore.

But as Moore explains that the offer has a catch:

One positive development on taxes taking shape is a deal that could include limiting tax deductions, perhaps by capping write-offs on charities, state and local taxes, and mortgage interest payments as a percentage of each tax filer’s gross income. That idea was introduced on these pages by Harvard economist Martin Feldstein.

In exchange, Democrats would agree to make the Bush income-tax cuts permanent. This would mean preventing top rates from going to 42% from 35% today, and keeping the capital gains and dividend tax rate at 15%, as opposed to plans to raise them to 23.8% or higher after 2013.

Moore is a good indicator if the anti-tax fetishists are prepared to share in the "sacrifice" by allowing some revenue in the form of "tax reform." But that's not enough, of course. They're mulling over whether to bite that bullet and allow a few symbolic loopholes to be temporarily closed in exchange for the Democrats agreeing to destroy everything they've built over the past 60 years and now, permanently extending the Bush tax cuts. It's a tough pill for them to swallow but if they do I'm sure we can look forward to celebrating that the Democrats "won."

If Moore is offering this up I suspect it's a fairly good indication that Grover may be playing.

These guys do have guts. The Dems made "revenue" the Holy Grail and made it clear they were willing to sell their souls to get it. They defined the deal as "shared sacrifice" even though the only people who would feel any pain are their own voters and their kids and grandparents. And the GOP is squeezing them for more --- now they want the Bush tax cuts off the table too. You have got to give them credit for chutzpah.

Again, had the Democrats extended the Bush tax cuts only on the middle class when they had a majority and a mandate in 2009, they would be in a very different position today. Spoiled, curdled spilled milk ...

Update: This piece by Thomas Ferguson is only tangentially related, but it's worth reading anyway since it does mention this travesty going on in DC, even as Occupy grows around the nation. He's talking sense. A lot of sense.

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digby 11/07/2011 06:00:00 PM |

 
The most powerful man in the Republican Party

by digby

Limbaugh's associates:

Former President George W. Bush has appeared six times on the program. The first time was during the 2000 presidential campaign. Then, in 2004, he "called in" to a live broadcast during the week of the 2004 Republican National Convention to give a preview of his nomination acceptance speech. He called in again in 2006. The fourth time was April 18, 2008, when Limbaugh asked the White House to speak with Bush to thank him for the ceremony welcoming Pope Benedict XVI, which awed Limbaugh. The fifth call was during the show's 20th anniversary celebration, in which then-President Bush (and George H. W. Bush and Jeb Bush) congratulated Limbaugh. He appeared a sixth time for an interview regarding his autobiography, Decision Points on November 9, 2010.

Vice President Dick Cheney has made multiple appearances.

In 2007, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger called in to a live broadcast of the show a day after having called Limbaugh "irrelevant;" adding, "I'm not his servant. I'm the people's servant of California," on an appearance on NBC's Today show.[6]

Other notable guests who have called into Limbaugh's show include former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, unsuccessful Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork, economist Thomas Sowell, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, and television writer Joel Surnow, who took calls about events in his show, 24. In December 2006, Sylvester Stallone made an appearance on the show to discuss his upcoming movie Rocky Balboa. On February 27, 2004, actor Jim Caviezel called into the program to discuss The Passion of the Christ film, in which Caviezel played the role of Jesus Christ. Republican Vice-Presidential nominee Governor Sarah Palin (R-AK) also called into a show before a rally in October 2008 to discuss the election and the economic distortion and impact of Senator Obama's tax policy; Palin returned to the show in November 2009 to discuss her book Going Rogue. Phil Gingrey, a congressman who compared shows such as Limbaugh and Sean Hannity to "throwing bricks" in January 2009, gave an interview on Limbaugh's show the next day.

Limbaugh has also had author and Washington Times columnist Bill Gertz on his show to discuss Gertz's books as well as national security issues. In 2007, Limbaugh (among numerous other hosts) interviewed Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and was the first to interview Tony Snow after his departure from his post as White House press secretary. He also interviewed NBC News host Tim Russert in 2004.[7] In May 2010, country musician John Rich reported for Limbaugh on the May 2010 Tennessee floods.

Here's their good pal earlier today:

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digby 11/07/2011 04:30:00 PM |

 
The Irrelevant Science of Eggs and Embyros
by David Atkins

It's almost painful to engage the Right on the science of prenatal development, because that's not really where the passion of so-called "conservatives" actually lies. Anti-choice conservatives come in four sometimes overlapping camps:

1) The seriously hardcore misogynists who want women to be little more than vessels to carry babies. This is actually a fairly small minority of the movement, but these are the folks who are against not only abortion, but birth control and abortion even in cases of rape or incest. These people would still be branding women with scarlet letters if they had the chance. The abortion issue isn't about babies for them. It's about controlling women and sexuality.

2) The pro-punishment crowd that sees sex as inherently evil and carries around a softer version of the first group's misogyny. These folks tend to support birth control as a way for married people to plan families, and allow for abortion in cases of rape and incest because it "wasn't the woman's fault." This is actually the vast majority of the conservative base, who take the same punishment-and-reward attitude toward sex and pregnancy that they take to economics, unemployment, the death penalty and healthcare. Women who get pregnant should have crossed their legs, otherwise they "deserve" to be pregnant. If they were raped, well, then they tried to cross their legs, so they get a free pass on that one. For these people, the fetus is really irrelevant: it's not about "life," but about control. But unlike the first group, the control in question is less women's bodies per se (though it does come down to that in the end), than about ensuring the function of a cosmic punishment-and-reward mechanism in the sky, where everyone gets their "just reward" for their behavior. Women who wait until marriage for sex should be "rewarded" for their "virtue" by having planned pregnancies; women who have looser sexual behavior should be "punished" for their "sin" by having unplanned pregnancies and contracting venereal diseases. That's the way the world works for them. Easy access to HPV vaccines and abortion upsets their grand merit-based cosmic order.

3) The actual Bible-thumper crowd. A lot of these people obviously overlap with groups 1 and 2, but there is a segment of people who are legitimately convinced that all these little eggs and fetuses are imbued with a soul by the magic Creator, and that there is an unsung massacre ongoing everyday on a par with the Nazi Holocaust. These folks seem a little crazy to the first two groups, because they actually believe the religious rhetoric that simply serves as cover for the misogynistic social control that most conservatives use the abortion debate to enforce. But the people motivated less by misogyny than by genuine religious fervor are out there, and shouldn't be easily discounted as members of the first two groups.

4) The idiots who just follow along with whatever their "pro-life" pastor, youth group leader or similar charlatan says is the right thing to believe. They don't have strong convictions about these things, but everyone else in their social group seems to have anti-choice beliefs, so they might as well, too.

So it's almost useless to debate the actual scientific merits of conception, fetal development and abortion, because almost no one on the other side of the issue actually seems to care about it at all. The only people who really care are conflicted liberals who are mostly pro-choice, but a little uncomfortable with an absolutist statement that a woman can do with a fetus whatever she wants right up until birth. But in the vain hope that maybe a handful of people out there might actually care, here's what the actual science says:

It is true that for centuries science has shown that all human beings begin as fertilized eggs. But it is not true that all fertilized eggs can or do produce human beings. In fact, it is so utterly wrong to say that every fertilized egg is a person, that to even suggest that science provides support for enacting the initiative is utterly absurd.

What are the odds of a fertilized egg becoming a person?

This is what we know: During the period of embryonic development that begins with fertilization and ends with successful implantation, about 50 percent of human conceptions fail to survive. The main reason for this high failure rate is the inability of huge numbers of fertilized eggs to implant.

What science has found is that around half of all conceptions don't make it to implantation. Calling a fertilized egg a person flies in the face of this cruel biological reality. Half of all fertilized eggs cannot even become an embryo, much less a person.

Indeed, given the grim odds that face fertilized eggs, no one in science or medicine refers to a fertilized egg as an embryo unless it manages to implant. By talking about embryos and fertilized eggs as equivalent, supporters of Initiative 26 are not even using the correct scientific definition of an embryo.

If the rest of the story of human reproduction -- as medicine and science know the facts to be -- is brought to bear, things only get worse for Initiative 26.

Sadly, all too many couples know about the high rate of spontaneous abortion and stillbirth that haunts embryonic and fetal development. Roughly, one in six embryos will spontaneously abort or produce fetuses that do not develop properly and die in utero.

There are a huge number of embryos that are not properly genetically programmed for life. Nearly all of these completely lack the biological ability to develop into anything resembling a viable baby. Legislation -- like that about to be voted on in Mississippi -- that declares fertilized eggs to be persons from the moment of conception simply ignores that the failure rate of human embryos is very high. A considerable number of embryos and fetuses never have any chance of producing a baby.

Medicine and science know very well what many millions of heart-broken would be parents around the world know first-hand: To call all embryos “persons” flies in the face of spontaneous abortion, stillbirth and fetal death.

In the push to declare fertilized eggs “persons” advocates claim science is on their side. But it is only by ignoring what science has learned about the long odds that face fertilized eggs that anyone could even suggest that a fertilized egg is a person.

If the people of Mississippi choose to pass a law stating that fertilized eggs are people, it will simply be more proof that they don't really care about the science of fetal development or personhood. One can even be anti-abortion, and realize the idiocy and potentially horrible legal consequences of personifying a fertilized egg.

It will simply be more proof that the "pro-life" crowd doesn't really care about "life"--not even the "life" of a fetus. Because that's never what any of this was really about in the first place.


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thereisnospoon 11/07/2011 02:48:00 PM |

 
Maybe the bad guys don't always win

by digby

Wow:

Republican Arizona state Sen. Russell Pearce, the architect of the state's draconian anti-immigration law, may lose his seat in tomorrow's recall election. According to a poll by a local ABC affiliate, Pearce is running neck-and-neck with his Republican challenger Jerry Lewis:

Lewis holds a 46-43 percent lead over Pearce in the historic recall contest, but the edge is within the poll’s margin of error.

"Statistically here, what we’ve got is a dead heat," said Jeremy Moreland, a Valley pollster who conducted the survey. "Both Lewis and Pearce are within the margin of error of one another."

Pearce has a considerable financial advantage. According to the ABC affiliate, Pearce "raised an eye-popping $230,000—including donations from more than 40 states—compared to Lewis’ $69,000." Yet despite that advantage, and the fact that his campaign managed to get a sham candidate, Olivia Cortes, on the ballot, Pearce may still lose.

This guy is a full blown white supremacist so it shouldn't be surprising. But in these times, you just don't know. And he was a white supremacist before he was elected ...

If he loses it would be very good news. Keep your fingers crossed.

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digby 11/07/2011 01:30:00 PM |

 
Stupid Parasites are eating your children's brains

by digby

Teachers are so dumb and lazy they should be paying parents for the privilege of teaching American children:

Jason Richwine and Andrew Biggs, researchers at the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute, two leading conservative think tanks, argue in a new report that the country's 3.2 million teachers may be overpaid by over 50 percent or more, given their salary, benefits, job security, and intellectual ability.

This isn't the first study to take on the politically sizzling issue of how much we pay the molders of our nation's young. And shockingly, the results fall pretty cleanly along ideological lines.

According to Census data, Richwine and Biggs admit that teachers do look underpaid; they receive a 20 percent lower salary than private-sector workers with the same level of education, and have benefits approximately the same.

These numbers are flawed, however, according to Richwine and Biggs. They show that the typical worker who moves from the private sector into teaching receives a salary increase of 8.8 percent, and the typical teacher who enters the private sector receives a pay cut of 3.1 percent. If teachers were underpaid, they write, "this is the opposite of what one would expect."

Whoa. I think we're dealing with some very complicated analysis here.

They also admit, however, that given the small sample size of workers who switch between teaching and non-teaching, "these data should not be considered precise." It is also probable that a private sector worker who would receive a significant pay cut from becoming a teacher is less likely to fulfill that mid-career calling.

Oh heck.

But let's not forget the laziness factor:

The report further claims that the truncated work year of the average teacher skews the numbers. Teachers receive their salary for an average of nine months of work, which means their average workweek salary is higher than that of private employees, whose salary is for a full-year of labor.

This argument rehashes a 2007 report by The Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, another conservative think tank. That research looked at hourly wages. In weeks teachers worked, they labored apparently for 36.5 hours, and took home $34.06 for each of those hours, more than architects, psychologists, chemists, mechanical engineers, economists, and reporters. There's just one minor hole in this analysis: Teachers work 36.5 hours a week?

Teachers alleged higher salaries are cushioned by higher job security. The average unemployment rate for public school teachers between 2005 and 2010 was 2.1 percent, the report states, compared to an average of 3.8 percent for workers in similarly skilled occupations. That means less time, on average, job hunting without pay.

How come all the teachers I know are always grading papers and doing art projects and running after school programs on their own time? Just dumb, I guess, with a bunch of really dumb degrees:

The level of education measure obscures some important facts, according to Richwine and Biggs. While a large proportion of teachers have bachelor's or master's degrees, over two thirds have their highest degree in education, which they claim is not a particularly rigorous path of study. You don't have to work as hard and it's easier to score an A in education, supposedly, than in the sciences, social sciences or humanities.

While teachers score above average on national intelligence tests, they allegedly fare worse than other college graduates. Richwine and Biggs therefore conclude that teachers are overpaid, given their average raw intelligence. They get more bucks per IQ point (with IQ determined by the perhaps dubious measure of standardized tests).
But this also suggests that the teaching profession fails to attract and retain the highest skilled college students. So examined through a reverse lens, this could be an argument for even higher salaries.

(Should salaries be determined by IQ score? Probably not a very good idea. I'm not sure it would help the right wing ball team.)

All in all, I just have to be very, very glad that so many right wing fundamentalists are homeschooling their kids and keeping them away from these lazy, stupid parasites who call themselves "teachers." I don't know how I got out alive, honestly.

Update: Also too, they're greedy:

The report also argues that teachers' benefits are more generous than private employees'. On the surface, both teachers and private sector workers receive benefits at about 41 percent of their salaries.

Pensions, however, are financed differently in the public and private sector. The public sector, the researchers claim, invests in risky assets with an approximately 8 percent rate of return. If the investments fall in value, the "public employers -- meaning, ultimately, taxpayers -- must increase their contributions to the pension funds."

If teachers and private employees contribute the same percent of their salaries to their pension funds, teachers will receive retirement benefits 4.5 times higher, according the report, because teachers have a guaranteed higher rate of return.

The bastards. They actually believe that getting a college degree and teaching children is something that should allow a middle class life and decent retirement in the wealthiest nation on earth. Talk about dumb. Only jaaahb creators have any value in our society. I thought everybody knew that.

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digby 11/07/2011 12:00:00 PM |

 
Swiftboats are a comin'

by digby

Looks like somebody's getting into the swiftboat business:

In the official photograph, he looked every inch the commander in chief.
Strain etched on his face, Barack Obama watched as the raid to kill Osama bin Laden played out on a television in front of him.

According to a new book, however, the President was not nearly that engaged – and was actually playing golf until 20 minutes before the operation began in earnest. Only then did he down his clubs and return to the White House to watch what he later trumpeted as a great success of his presidency...

Mr Pfarrer says the President's role was largely inflated and suggests he stayed out on the golf course for so long so he could distance himself in case it went wrong. Mr Pfarrer writes: 'If this had completely gone south, he was in a position to disavow.'
[...]
The SEALS have decided to speak out after being enraged by the image that was being painted of them as cold-blooded murderers on a 'kill mission'.

Pfarrer said: 'I’ve been a SEAL for 30 years and I never heard the words ''kill mission''.

The soldiers were also said to be disappointed that Obama announced Bin Laden's death on TV a few hours later, making their intelligence-gathering futile.

Mr Pfarrer also said the President's announcement of the 'intentional' killing was understandable but nonetheless disappointing.

Mr Pfarrer told the Sunday Times: 'There isn’t a politician in the world who could resist trying to take credit for getting Bin Laden but it devalued the ''intel'' and gave time for every other Al-Qaeda leader to scurry to another bolthole.

'The men who did this and their valorous act deserve better. It’s a pretty shabby way to treat these guys.'

I recall hearing throughout my childhood in wingnutville that Jack Kennedy should have actually been court martialed for his heroic PT-109 actions. This is how they roll. Who knows if this particular charge will have any legs, but you can be sure that the right wing is not going to allow Barack Obama to enjoy his status as brave and tough Commander in Chief uncontested. It would destroy the very firmament of their belief system.


(Disclaimer: I happen to think the whole super-CIC thing's a crock too, although not for the same reasons. I have every reason to believe that the President is a very diligent and engaged Commander in Chief, preferring that work to any other aspect of his job. But ordering the killing of terrorists, alleged and proven, doesn't strike me as being indicative of any unusual courage. In fact, in our system it would be courageous not to.)


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digby 11/07/2011 10:30:00 AM |

 
Culture war battle lines

by digby

It doesn't get any starker than this:

It looks like the race to watch in Mississippi on Tuesday night will be the state's proposed 'Personhood Amendment,' which would make the state's laws regarding abortion and birth control the strictest of any state in the country. Right now it looks like it could go either way, with 45% of voters supporting the amendment and 44% opposed.

Men (48-42), whites (54-37), and Republicans (65-28) support the proposal. But women (42-46), African Americans (26-59), Democrats (23-61), and independents (35-51) oppose it. The good news for those opposed to the amendment is that 11% of voters are undecided and their demographics are 58% women, 54% Democratic, and 42% black- those still on the fence disproportionately belong to voter groups that oppose the amendment. That suggests when those folks make up their minds the proposal could be narrowly defeated.

Let's hope so.

That breakdown is a pretty clear illustration of who the friends of women really are, isn't it?

I've been hearing quite a bit of liberal chatter lately in which these issues are characterized as a cheap partisan trick that only serve the oligarchy. (I think the idea is that if we could just stop talking about these culture war issues we could all join hands and get down to fighting the class war properly.) But this really is a big deal that goes to the very heart and soul of our social and economic compact.

My friend Debcoop said it best in this email response to that argument:

NO NO NO

For women ALL Roads to freedom and equality - economic equality and most particularly the ability to avoid poverty START with control of their bodies. If they can't control how they get pregnant and when they will have a child then poverty is the result.

There is theory about something called the Prime Mover - the first action or the first cause. Well for women it IS reproductive rights. It precedes everything. It really is simple. Without the abilty to control your own body then you are a slave to everything else.

Frankly sexism, the need to control women's lives by controlling their bodies and the things that arise from it, are endemic to any social structure. It is ever enduring and even when it seems to be quashed it returns in another form. That is the story in the modern era of women's rights. One step forward after a long struggle - suffrage and then a step back. (And no way do I say that women are not complicit in their own subjugation. We are.)

I am reading The Reactionary Mind by Corey Robin. In the epilogue he makes a point of saying that the loss of power and control is what the elite and the reactionary fear the most. More than a specific loss itself the fear the rising volcano of submerged anger and power. And for them it is most acutely felt compulsion for control in the "intimate" arena. That is the most vexing and disturbing of all.

It is why they want to control women. And controlling their reproductive lives is the surefire way to control them.

It is why abortion rights are absolutely central to every other kind of freedom.

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digby 11/07/2011 09:00:00 AM |

 
A message for Mississippi voters
by David Atkins

Though it shouldn't require saying, here's a brief message for Mississippi voters:

is not



just as

is not



That is all. Bless your hearts, and y'all have a nice day now.


(creative commons photos courtesy joshme17, munstisue, wellcomeimages, and soupboy)


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thereisnospoon 11/07/2011 07:30:00 AM |

Sunday, November 06, 2011

 
Compass point

by digby

I don't know how many of you have ever taken this little online test called the Political Compass. I took it back in 2004 or something and found that I was close to the lower left quadrant. I took it again just now and many of the questions have changed and I ended up in the same place. Huzzah for consistency if nothing else.

The reason I bring this up is because a readers sent me this page from the 2008 election, which I hadn't seen before.

When examining the chart it's important to note that although most of the candidates seem quite different, in substance they occupy a relatively restricted area within the universal political spectrum. Democracies with a system of proportional representation give expression to a wider range of political views. While Cynthia McKinney and Ralph Nader are depicted on the extreme left in an American context, they would simply be mainstream social democrats within the wider political landscape of Europe. Similarly, Obama is popularly perceived as a leftist in the United States while elsewhere in the west his record is that of a moderate conservative. For example, in the case of the death penalty he is not an uncompromising abolitionist, while mainstream conservatives in all other western democracies are deeply opposed to capital punishment. The Democratic party's presidential candidate also reneged on his commitment to oppose the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. He sided with the ultra conservative bloc in the Supreme Court against the Washington DC handgun ban and for capital punishment in child rape cases. He supports President Bush's faith-based initiatives and is reported in Fortune to have said that NAFTA isn't so bad. Despite all this, some angry emailers tell us that Obama is a dangerous socialist who belongs on the extreme left of our chart.

Interesting, no?

This little test is basically a parlor game, so it's a mistake to treat it as more than that. But still, it's an interesting blast to the past which shows that nobody should have been surprised at the allegedly liberal constitutional scholar turning out to be pretty authoritarian. Of course, they pretty much all were. Which says it all.


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digby 11/06/2011 06:00:00 PM |

 
In a nutshell

by digby

Reader Gerald with a history lesson:

From FDR to Reagan--We hire you, you work hard, we prosper, you prosper.

From Reagan to present--we hire you, you work hard, we prosper.

That's about it.

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digby 11/06/2011 04:30:00 PM |

 
Washington Post Actually Worth Reading Today
by David Atkins

I normally cringe when I make my way to the Washington Post website. Of the major papers, the Post is usually the worst offender for faux objectivity, pandering to Beltway conventional wisdom, and "he said-she said" stenography disguised as journalism.

But there are a couple of excellent pieces at WaPo yesterday and today well worth reading. The first is a superb op-ed by Barry Ritholz:

I have a fairly simple approach to investing: Start with data and objective evidence to determine the dominant elements driving the market action right now. Figure out what objective reality is beneath all of the noise. Use that information to try to make intelligent investing decisions.

But then, I’m an investor focused on preserving capital and managing risk. I’m not out to win the next election or drive the debate. For those who are, facts and data matter much less than a narrative that supports their interests.
One group has been especially vocal about shaping a new narrative of the credit crisis and economic collapse: those whose bad judgment and failed philosophy helped cause the crisis.

Rather than admit the error of their ways — Repent! — these people are engaged in an active campaign to rewrite history. They are not, of course, exonerated in doing so. And beyond that, they damage the process of repairing what was broken. They muddy the waters when it comes to holding guilty parties responsible. They prevent measures from being put into place to prevent another crisis.

Here is the surprising takeaway: They are winning. Thanks to the endless repetition of the Big Lie.

A Big Lie is so colossal that no one would believe that someone could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. There are many examples: Claims that Earth is not warming, or that evolution is not the best thesis we have for how humans developed. Those opposed to stimulus spending have gone so far as to claim that the infrastructure of the United States is just fine, Grade A (not D, as the we discussed last month), and needs little repair.

Wall Street has its own version: Its Big Lie is that banks and investment houses are merely victims of the crash. You see, the entire boom and bust was caused by misguided government policies. It was not irresponsible lending or derivative or excess leverage or misguided compensation packages, but rather long-standing housing policies that were at fault.

Indeed, the arguments these folks make fail to withstand even casual scrutiny. But that has not stopped people who should know better from repeating them.

The Big Lie made a surprise appearance Tuesday when New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, responding to a question about Occupy Wall Street, stunned observers by exonerating Wall Street: “It was not the banks that created the mortgage crisis. It was, plain and simple, Congress who forced everybody to go and give mortgages to people who were on the cusp.”

As much traction as the 99% have gained in focusing the bright light of scrutiny on Wall Street, there are a huge number of people in this country who believe this zombie lie. They believe that government forced big banks to lend to poor minorities as a welfare program, and that the big banks would have lent responsibly but for Big Government's interference. No matter how many times Krugman, Taibbi, Michael Lewis, Ritholz and others disprove the lie, it never dies. In fact, it keeps growing stronger.

It does so because facts don't matter to conservatives. Emotional "truths" that they can feel in their gut do. Conservatives just "know" that the free market "works," and that left to their own devices without interference, the great institutions of capitalism would never make gigantic reckless bets that crash the entire system in the pursuit of greed. They also "know" that everything wrong with America is attributable to do-gooder bleeding heart liberals taking (white) producers' hard-earned tax money and giving it (brown) lazy people without the smarts or work ethic to have earned it. Therefore, if the financial system crashed, it must have been due to government forcing the great John Galts of finance to lend to the parasites, rather than due to an over-financialized system run by greedheads in pursuit of an American Versailles.

And no matter what, no bank bailouts would have been necessary because "free markets" don't fail; they can only be failed. Mass bank failures would simply be creative destruction, rather than catastrophic, Great Depression inducing events.

For about 30-35% of the American electorate defined as the conservative base, facts are irrelevant. Emotional truths rule. The Big Lie is easy to tell, because it's easy to swallow. These people aren't about to join the 99% protesting Wall Street, because they see Wall Street as the victim of Barack Obama's Socialist Commie Nazi policies.

Which, of course, is really ironic considering the second article worth a read in today's Post:

President Obama calls people who work on Wall Street “fat cat bankers” and his reelection campaign will try to harness public frustration with Wall Street. Financial executives, for their part, say the president’s pursuit of new financial regulations are punitive and “holding us back.”

But both sides face an inconvenient fact. During Obama’s tenure, Wall Street has roared back even as the larger economy has struggled.

The largest banks are larger today than when Obama took office and are returning to the level of profits they were making before the depths of the financial crisis in 2008, according to government data.

Wall Street firms — either independent companies or the high-flying trading arms of banks — are doing even better. They’ve made more profit in the first 21 / 2 years of the Obama administration than they did during the entire Bush administration, industry data show.

Behind this turnaround are government policies that saved the financial sector from collapse and then gave banks and other financial firms huge advantages on the path to recovery. For example, the federal government invested hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars in banks, money that the firms used for risky investments on which they made huge profits.

Reviving the financial system was necessary for preventing an even deeper economic recession. But the Bush administration, which first moved to bail out Wall Street, and the Obama administration, which ultimately stabilized it, took a far more tepid approach to helping ordinary Americans, critics say.

“There’s a very popular conception out there that the bailout was done with a tremendous amount of firepower and focus on saving the largest Wall Street institutions but with very little regard for Main Street,” said Neil Barofsky, the former federal watchdog for the Troubled Assets Relief Program, the $700 billion fund used to bail out banks. “That’s actually a very accurate description of what happened."

This is ultimately American politics in a nutshell. Republicans do Wall Street's bidding, telling lies about the entire economic system and blaming the unfortunate and the middle-class alike for their troubles. Democrats do slightly less of what Wall Street wants while using the occasional populist rhetoric, but Wall Street still gets most of what it wants. For their trouble, Democrats get portrayed as Communists. Meanwhile, most of the rest of the country fights endless culture wars--wars with consequences, mind, but wars that don't impact the precious, precious market indices.

About 25% of the country thinks that Dems are right, or that Dems are too conservative and beholden to Wall Street. About 35% of the country "knows" in their gut that conservative "truths" are right, no mater how much actual evidence runs to the contrary. Evidence doesn't matter to them. A bunch of people with mixed views in the "middle" vote social issues and / or their frustrations, and / or whichever person they'd rather have a beer with. And the rest vote the way their nice neighbor or pastor told them to.

And yet, for all its flaws, this is still the only system we have that allows us to create change. That may be the scariest reality of all.


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thereisnospoon 11/06/2011 02:07:00 PM |

 

"I will be that spokesman"

by digby

Regardless of how you might feel about Bill Maher, what he says here is absolutely correct:

This is Bill Maher, on “Why Alan Grayson Should Be in Congress.”

Because we lost him once, and we can’t afford to lose him again.

We lost Anthony Weiner -- but not for the same reason. I’d like to make that point again.

But Weiner was the only other Democrat who really said those kinds of things that make us liberals stand up and cheer.

And Grayson’s got BIG ONES, which is what we need.

We need someone to yank the debate back to what the center should be.

And that is Mr. Alan Grayson.

So please, Mr. Alan Grayson, run for Congress.

Run for the House.

Run for the Senate.

Someday, run for the White House. In my fantasies.

Sincerely,

Bill Maher

Here's what he's talking about:

Grayson's doing a money bomb today. You can send him a little love here.

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digby 11/06/2011 01:30:00 PM |

 

Scrap the Cap!

by digby

The "son" looks more like the grandson, but it's still funny. And true. If they insist on cutting Social Security benefits everybody had better plan on supporting their parents in their old age. 80 year olds aren't exactly competitive in the job market.

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digby 11/06/2011 12:30:00 PM |

 
Who pays for austerity?

by digby

This analyses of our current economic battle by Thomas Edsall gets to the heart of the issue:

The economic collapse of 2008 transformed American politics. In place of shared abundance, battles at every level of government now focus on picking the losers who will bear the costs of deficit reduction and austerity.

Fights in Washington are over inflicting pain on antagonists either through spending cuts or tax increases, a struggle over who will get a smaller piece of a shrinking pie. This hostile climate stands in sharp contrast to the post-World-War II history of economic growth. Worse, current income and employment trends suggest that this is not a temporary shift.

[...]

The new embattled partisan environment allows conservatives to pit taxpayers against tax consumers, those dependent on safety-net programs against those who see such programs as eating away at their personal income and assets.

In a nuanced study, “The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism,” the sociologist and political scientist Theda Skocpol and her colleagues at Harvard found that opposition to government spending was concentrated on resentment of federal government “handouts.” Tea Party activists, they wrote, “define themselves as workers, in opposition to categories of nonworkers they perceive as undeserving of government assistance.”

In a March 15 declaration calling for defunding of most social programs, the New Boston Tea Party was blunt: “The locusts are eating, or should we say devouring, the productive output of the hard working taxpayer.”

The conservative agenda, in a climate of scarcity, racializes policy making, calling for deep cuts in programs for the poor. The beneficiaries of these programs are disproportionately black and Hispanic. In 2009, according to census data, 50.9 percent of black households, 53.3 percent of Hispanic households and 20.5 percent of white households received some form of means-tested government assistance, including food stamps, Medicaid and public housing.

Less obviously, but just as racially charged, is the assault on public employees. “We can no longer live in a society where the public employees are the haves and taxpayers who foot the bills are the have-nots,” declared Scott Walker, the governor of Wisconsin.

For black Americans, government employment is a crucial means of upward mobility. The federal work force is 18.6 percent African-American, compared with 10.9 percent in the private sector. The percentages of African-Americans are highest in just those agencies that are most actively targeted for cuts by Republicans: the Department of Housing and Urban Development, 38.3 percent; the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, 42.4 percent; and the Education Department, 36.6 percent.

The politics of austerity are inherently favorable to conservatives and inhospitable to liberals. Congressional trench warfare rewards those most willing to risk all. Republicans demonstrated this in last summer’s debt ceiling fight, deploying the threat of a default on Treasury obligations to force spending cuts.

Conservatives are more willing to inflict harm on adversaries and more readily see conflicts in zero-sum terms — the basic framework of the contemporary debate. Once austerity dominates the agenda, the only question is where the ax falls.

From Greg Sargent, Exhibit A:

In a recent interview, a top Ohio Republican defended this in a curiously belligerent way, one that may reverberate in the race’s final days: He claimed lawmakers don’t need to take a pay cut in the spirit of shared sacrifice, because “I earn my pay,” adding: “Republicans earn their money.”

GOP state Rep. Lou Blessing — a prominent Republican voice in this fight, as the Speaker Pro Tempore of the Ohio House of Representatives — made the claim during an interview with Ohio public radio, audio of which is right here. Pressed on why he and some other GOPers wouldn’t agree to labor’s insistence that legislators also accept a pay cut, he said:

“Because it’s not merited. I earn my pay. I think that was just political baloney. So they can say in an ad, `Gee , you know, they didn’t support a pay cut.’ Well, no, I don’t support a pay cut. Republicans earn their money. Apparently Democrats don’t. They feel they should be paid less. That may be true. Maybe we’ll just cut the Democrats’ pay.”

Hmmm. What's he going on about?

Here's an excerpt from one of my stale old posts of yesteryear which has new relevance today:

In this paper Sociologist Nathan Glazer of Harvard answers a related question --- “Why Americans don’t care about income inequality” which may give us some clues. Citing a comprehensive study by economists Alberto Alesina and Edward Glaeser of Harvard and Bruce Sacerdote of Dartmouth called, "Why Doesn't the United States have a European-Style Welfare State?" (Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, 2/2001) he shows that the reluctance of Americans to embrace an egalitarian economic philosophy goes back to the beginning of the republic. But what is interesting is that both he and the economists offer some pretty conclusive evidence that the main reason for American “exceptionalism” in this case is, quite simply, racism.

The AGS [Alesina, Glazear and Sacerdote] report, using the World Values Survey, that "opinions and beliefs about the poor differ sharply between the United States and Europe. In Europe the poor are generally thought to be unfortunate, but not personally responsible for their own condition. For example, according to the World Values Survey, whereas 70 % of West Germans express the belief that people are poor because of imperfections in society, not their own laziness, 70 % of Americans hold the opposite view.... 71 % of Americans but only 40% of Europeans said ...poor people could work their way out of poverty."

[…]

"Racial fragmentation and the disproportionate representation of ethnic minorities among the poor played a major role in limiting redistribution.... Our bottom line is that Americans redistribute less than Europeans for three reasons: because the majority of Americans believe that redistribution favors racial minorities, because Americans believe that they live in an open and fair society, and that if someone is poor it is his or her own fault, and because the political system is geared toward preventing redistribution. In fact the political system is likely to be endogenous to these basic American beliefs."(p. 61)

"Endogenous" is economics-ese for saying we have the political system we do because we prefer the results it gives, such as limiting redistribution to the blacks. Thus the racial factor as well as a wider net of social beliefs play a key role in why Americans don't care about income inequality, and why, not caring, they have no great interest in expanding the welfare state.

Glazer goes on to point out how these attitudes may have come to pass historically by discussing the roles that the various immigrant support systems and the variety of religious institutions provided for the poor:

But initial uniformities were succeeded by a diversity which overwhelmed and replaced state functions by nonstate organizations, and it was within these that many of the services that are the mark of a fully developed welfare state were provided. Where do the blacks fit in? The situation of the blacks was indeed different. No religious or ethnic group had to face anything like the conditions of slavery or the fierce subsequent prejudice and segregation to which they were subjected. But the pre-existing conditions of fractionated social services affected them too. Like other groups, they established their own churches, which provided within the limits set by the prevailing poverty and absence of resources some services. Like other groups, too, they were dependant on pre-existing systems of social service that had been set up by religious and ethnic groups, primarily to serve their own, some of which reached out to serve blacks, as is the case with the religiously based (and now publicly funded) social service agencies of New York City. They were much more dependant, owing to their economic condition, on the poorly developed primitive public services, and they became in time the special ward of the expanded American welfare state's social services. Having become, to a greater extent than other groups, the clients of public services, they also affected, owing to the prevailing racism, the public image of these services.

Glazer notes that there are other factors involved in our attitudes about inequality having to do with our British heritage, religious backround etc, that also play into our attitudes. But, he and the three economists have put their finger on the problem Democrats have with white Southern voters who “vote against their economic self-interest,” and may just explain why populism is so often coupled with nativism and racism --- perhaps it’s always been impossible to make a populist pitch that includes blacks or immigrants without alienating whites.

I think the most important insight Edsall has in the first piece excerpted above is that a whole lot of public employees have been racial minorities (because private firms simply didn't make the effort the government did to seek them out.) This led, of course, to a huge and impressive leap into the middle class for many African Americans and lately, Hispanics. And that, again, is the essence of the problem.

Sure, it's more complicated than that and the whole issue has morphed into an ideological set point fairly divorced from any direct relationship to racism or xenophobia. But if people want to know how America developed the fault lines that are always playing themselves out in one way or another, this is fundamental to understanding it.


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digby 11/06/2011 11:23:00 AM |

 
Macho maidens

by digby

The boys at Powerline have always been very tough dudes who are nonetheless nearly paralyzed with fear of hippies. It's one of the more fascinating sideshows in the blogosphere. They rarely disappoint:

FASCIST OCCUPIERS TRY TO SHOUT DOWN GOVERNOR WALKER

The Occupiers’ outrages are piling up so rapidly it is hard to keep up with them. This one happened Thursday morning, but I first learned of it this afternoon via Ann Althouse. Governor Scott Walker spoke at a breakfast at the Union League Club in Chicago. The event was infiltrated by a group of around 50 Occupy Chicago protesters whom the Chicago Tribune describes as “union-backed.” Just after Governor Walker began speaking, the Occupiers stood up and started reading–screaming, actually–in unison from scripts they carried in their hands. The effect was truly creepy.

The sickos succeeded in delaying Governor Walker’s speech by around six minutes before they were escorted from the room. Althouse says:

The rudeness is sickening. I don’t understand how the protesters imagine that they will win support from anyone that way. … It only makes him look better.

That’s true, of course. The more people see of the Occupiers, the less they like them. This episode was interesting in that the Occupiers’ fascist tendencies were in sharp relief as they tried to bully the audience by yelling their script in unison. I can’t imagine that more than one percent of the population would want to be governed by such misfits.

Yes, that's just awful. I wonder if they were following these instructions?

– Artificially Inflate Your Numbers: “Spread out in the hall and try to be in the front half. The objective is to put the Rep on the defensive with your questions and follow-up. The Rep should be made to feel that a majority, and if not, a significant portion of at least the audience, opposes the socialist agenda of Washington.”

– Be Disruptive Early And Often: “You need to rock-the-boat early in the Rep’s presentation, Watch for an opportunity to yell out and challenge the Rep’s statements early.”

– Try To “Rattle Him,” Not Have An Intelligent Debate: “The goal is to rattle him, get him off his prepared script and agenda. If he says something outrageous,stand up and shout out and sit right back down. Look for these opportunities before he even takes questions.”

Oh wait. That was a Freedomworks instruction manual for the Health Care townhalls in 2009. Not that there's anything wrong with that. It's not fascism either, it's democracy. But then some rightwingers have always confused the two.

But get ready for more of this. The shape shifting right can switch from swashbuckling macho superheroes to fainting Aunt Pittypats trembling in fear for their lives without even stopping to switch undies. It's their special gift.


h/t to @FrankLynchBkln
digby 11/06/2011 09:30:00 AM |

 
Keeping Libraries Public
by David Atkins

An editorial by yours truly is appearing in this morning's Ventura County Star:

Keep Our Libraries Out of Corporate Hands

When Benjamin Franklin founded America's first public library and Thomas Jefferson sold his entire private library for the use of the people's representatives in Congress, they could scarcely have foreseen the day their descendants would send into reverse the process they proudly set in motion.

Following the Founding Fathers' examples, private citizens began to bequeath their collections and their fortunes to establish public libraries across America. That tradition of publicly held access to information, made available by the people and for the people, continued unabated until very recent history.

Today, sadly, many American cities are abandoning the proud tradition begun by Franklin and Jefferson in a paroxysm of radical pro-privatization ideology. They are placing public libraries in corporate hands, despite strong community backlashes against doing so.

These cities are bowing to an ideology so radical that it cannot properly be called "conservative," unless by "conservative" one means hearkening back to the days of debtors' prisons and the absence of flush toilets.

Read on for the whole thing. Several cities in Ventura County have already privatized their libraries, and at least two others are considering doing so. Library privatization is a quiet scourge that is happening under the radar of a national-issues-obsessed public. Citizens need to find out if this sort of thing is happening in their own backyards, and agitate against it if need be.

The City of Ventura's library hangs in the balance, with a City Council divided among 3 Democrats, 3 Republicans and 1 conservative-leaning Decline-to-State. With three seats up for grabs in a crucial City Council election happening in just a few days, the balance of power could shift dramatically. Despite the voices who insist that there is no difference between Democrats and Republicans, a Republican shift in the City Council will likely mean a privatized library. A Democratic shift will mean it stays in public hands. If nothing changes, the fate of the library is uncertain.

Elections have consequences, and it does matter which party takes office--even in officially "non-partisan" races.



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thereisnospoon 11/06/2011 07:30:00 AM |

Saturday, November 05, 2011

 

Saturday Night At The Movies

Chalkhills and children

By Dennis Hartley

During the peak of its imperialistic forays, it was oft-stated that the “sun never sets” on the British Empire. While that may have been an accurate cartographic assessment, there was a time or two along the way when His Majesty’s Government suffered a total eclipse…of the heart. In February 2010, British PM Gordon Brown issued an official apology for one of these little hiccups, a child migration policy that had been implemented in one form or another from the 19th century through the late 1960s. It is estimated that more than 130,000 children were affected. According to a CNN article from last year, the group who represents the tail end of this shameful chapter is known as the “Forgotten Australians”, who were shipped off starting just after the end of WW II:

The so-called "Forgotten Australians" were British children brought up by impoverished families or living in care homes who were shipped to Australia with the promise of a better life.

But many ended up in institutions and orphanages, suffering abuse and forced labor. They later told of being kept in brutal conditions, being physically abused and being forced to work on farms. Many were wrongly told they were orphans, with brothers and sisters separated at dock side and sent to different parts of the country.

It’s hard to believe that this Dickensian scenario continued to flourish under the auspices of the British government until 1970, which was when the final “shipment” arrived in Oz (the Australian government has since apologized as well for its part in the three decade-long collusion; whether or not all of the various church and charity organizations involved at the grass roots level have admitted as such is anyone’s guess). However, as some of these children might have recited at one time or another, “For every evil under the sun, there is a remedy or there is none.” In this case, the remedy (or at least a salve) arrived in the person of a British social worker named Margaret Humphreys, who, beginning in the mid-1980s, almost single-handedly brought this purloined period of systemic social injustice to world-wide attention, as well as reuniting hundreds of these “forgotten” children (adults by then) with their surviving parents in England. Humphreys wrote a book about how this all led to the founding of her Child Migrants Trust, which has now been adapted into the new film Oranges and Sunshine, directed by Jim Loach.

The story opens in 1986, in Nottingham. Initially, Margaret (Emily Watson) seems an unlikely candidate for facilitating long-overdue family reunions; in the opening scene, she is in fact doing exactly the opposite-taking custody of an infant from its pleading and obviously distraught mother, while the police stand by as dispassionate observers. Margaret keeps her professional cool, but her eyes telegraph a pained resignation to the fact that it is one of those necessary evils that real nitty-gritty social work entails at times.

One night, as she is leaving her office, Margaret is approached by an Australian woman who tells her she was born in Nottingham, but had been placed into government care as an infant and shipped off to an Australian children’s home. Although she had grown up under the impression that she was an orphan, the woman now has reason to believe that she may have been lied to all those years. She pleads with Margaret to help her find her family roots. Margaret reluctantly promises to investigate, if she can find the time. However, after another woman (Lorraine Ashbourne) in one of her counseling groups recounts an unusual story about how she was reunited in adult life with a long-lost brother (Hugo Weaving) who had also apparently been sent off to Australia not long after the siblings had been put into government care, Margaret becomes intrigued to dig deeper. Before too long, she connects the dots and a disturbing historical pattern emerges.

This is the directorial debut for Loach (son of Ken), who seems to have inherited his father’s penchant for telling a straightforward story, informed by a righteous social conscience and peopled by wholly believable flesh-and-blood characters. He doesn’t try to dazzle us with showy visuals; he’s wise enough to know that when you’ve got an intelligent script (Rona Munro adapted from Humphreys’ book, Empty Cradles) and a skilled ensemble, any extra bells and whistles would only serve to detract from the humanity at the core of the story. Watson never hits a false note; she doesn’t overplay Margaret as a saintly heroine, but rather as an ordinary person who made an extraordinary difference (even if giving up some of her nervous system along the way).

Don’t expect a Rocky-like third act (or buildup, for that matter), which is what I suspect a Hollywood production would have tacked on. While elements of this story are inherently inspiring, it also has a very sad and bittersweet undercurrent. After all, these people were not only essentially robbed of their childhoods, but denied foreknowledge of their true identity, the very essence of what defines each of us as a unique individual. As Margaret herself says in frustration at the film’s denouement to one of the now-adult migrant children (an excellent David Denham), after he has taken her to visit the Christian Brothers’ mission where he and many others were physically and sexually abused: “Everybody always thinks there’s going to be this one big cathartic moment when all the wrongs are righted and all the wounds are healed…but it’s not going to happen. I can’t give you back what you’ve lost.” Neither can a film; but like Margaret, it assures us that there is some compassion left in this fucked-up world. And that’s a comforting thought.

Previous posts with similar themes:

Marwencol

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Dennis Hartley 11/05/2011 05:30:00 PM |

 

Assholes and proud of it

by digby

In the middle of an Occupy Chicago teach-in this week, traders at the Chicago Board of Trade dumped several sheets of paper on top of the heads of protesters below. Demonstrators were angered to find out they were showered with employment applications for McDonald’s.

[...]

This is the second incident between the two groups, following Chicago Board of Trade’s “We Are The 1%” missive plastered on their windows last month.

I hadn't realized that John Galt was a 12 year old. But it explains a lot.

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digby 11/05/2011 04:30:00 PM |

 
Forbes gets scared
by David Atkins

Forbes is starting to get a little desperate, if their website is any indication. Two pieces today, one a frustrated op-ed and the other a strained attempt at faint praise, are trying to rally conservatives to the Romney bandwagon. But it's a tough sell.

The faint praise:

Mitt Romney's Vaguely Promising Plan for Entitlement Reform

Yesterday, at a speech before the Americans for Prosperity in Washington, Mitt Romney delivered a significant address on fiscal issues. In the speech, Romney outlined his plans for reforming Social Security, Medicaid, and—most importantly—Medicare. Romney’s Medicare plan is vaguely to the left of Paul Ryan’s Path to Prosperity, both for good and for ill. Critical details are still missing. But politically, the plan allows Romney to justly claim that he is helping to lead the fight against runaway health-care spending. And that, in turn, may help Romney get a second look from the skeptical Republican base.

Sure it will, guys. Sure it will. Especially when the Mittster is saddled with this, from later in the same article.

Romney’s Medicare plan can be simplistically described as the “Ryan plan with a public option.” And that’s both its strength and its weakness.

That will be endearing to the rabid base. But not as endearing, I suppose, as this bit of enraged hectoring:

The Republicans- Party Of Old Money- Are Destroying Their Chances in 2012

I watch dumbfounded as Cain and Ron Paul and Gingrich and Perry– as well as the cackling former Gov. of Alaska– show their lack of character to be President of the US– try to railroad the terrified populace into thinking they have answers for the troubled American economy. They are doing the Democrats job for them– underscoring that the Republicans stand only to destroy Barack Obama and many of the safety net reforms that have been in place for many decades. What’s more, their fierce and strident attacks on Mitt Romney are spoiling his chances in a general election as he ducks and weaves from the bruises and charges.

Romney, just barely, fills the potential bill for a national leader, if he surrounds himself with wise experts on foreign policy, national defense, the threat of terrorism. By next summer, what will the nation decided after seeing these politicians, some of them just clowns pushing extreme positions they could not ably defend in debate. Will America really want to take a chance on them.

Do any of them measure up to Dwight David Eisenhower, or Gerald Ford or Ronald Reagan or Teddy Roosevelt? Hardly. Do you think you really understand how the economy will function if any of them become President? Well, you don’t.

Cain not knowing the Chinese have had nuclear weapons for decades, Perry promising an electric fence to keep Mexicans out, Ron Paul promising to get rid of Social Security in its entirety and privatizing it– making it subject to the whims of the financial markets. What enlightened wisdom on economics. I haven’t heard any wisdom from these candidates on how to unfreeze the housing jam, or realistically balance the budget

Jobs, jobs, jobs. Romney’s promising them. But, I have a hunch, the 9.1% that just became 9%, is going to become 8.9%- and then we’ll see. And the other great irony is thsat America’s blue chip household name corporations, whose cash dividends give a higher return than 10 year Treasuries– are increasing their profits. Have a look at Kraft, Proctor & Gamble, Caterpillar, IBM, Colgate Palmolive, UPS- and many others.

I'm not even going to argue the actual policy details with the hacks at Forbes. No, Mitt Romney's plan doesn't have a realistic public option, and no, "entitlement reform" is not a good thing. And no, it's not ironic that blue chip companies are doing well even as unemployment rises. Unemployment is a feature of profitable American companies shipping joes overseas, not a bug.

What's more important here is the whiff of desperation from the big money base. They want to love Romney. They want the base to love Romney. But not even they can pull off with the accolades necessary to do it effectively. Not that the base would listen anyway.

Romney's only saving grace is that he has a solid 25% of the Republicans behind him. Unless enough of the rest of the GOP really unites behind Herman Cain, that means that the GOP nomination is still Romney's to lose.

And that means four more years of an even more embittered conservative base and even more whackadoo Tea Party protests. If Romney is the nominee, Obama will win re-election partly due to the depression of the GOP base, which will blame its 2012 defeat on not selecting a conservative enough nominee. Watch for a GOP candidate to the right of Genghis Khan rise to try to seize the White House in 2016, because all the momentum in the GOP is going to tend ever rightward.


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thereisnospoon 11/05/2011 03:05:00 PM |

 
Historical interlude for a Saturday afternoon

by digby

From Thomas Frank's "Wrecking Crew", about the rise of the conservative movement:

Side by side with "the Entrepreneur" in those days stood another great conservative hero: the Freedom Fighter, a ragged warrior who had, according to myth, spontaneously taken up arms against communism in Third World countries around the globe. American conservatives came to love these freedom fighters intensely, and for a simple reason. These tough anticommunists in faraway lands validated the conservatives’ most cherished fantasies of the Sixties turned right-side up. The freedom fighters proved it: Reagan’s revolution was for real.

Traditional conservatives had generally regarded anticommunist guerrilla movements as necessary evils, doing important if ugly work. The transforming fire of Reaganism, however, turned all such cutthroats and mercenaries into patriots. It was our guys who were the heroic underdogs now, disrespected and ill-supplied, going up against the high-tech, organization-men monsters of the Soviet Union—and, of course, its liberal proxies here in the United States.

The peerless darling of the freedom-fighter fan club was Jonas Savimbi, the charismatic Angolan guerrilla leader whose every utterance seemed to strike young Eighties conservatives as a timeless profundity. Angola had been one of the very last countries in Africa to be freed from colonial domination, but, unlike seemingly every other “national liberator” in the preceding decades, Savimbi was not a communist. In Angola, the communists were the ones who grabbed power in the capital as soon as the Europeans left; Savimbi, who fought them with the backing of the apartheid government in South Africa, supposedly believed in free enterprise and balanced budgets.

Conservatives were smitten with this self-titled general who struggled for free markets in his remote land. They fell for Savimbi as romantically, and as guilelessly, as Sixties radicals once did for Che, Ho, and Huey. Savimbi was “one of the few authentic heroes of our time,” roared Jeane Kirkpatrick, queen of the neocons, when she introduced him at the 1986 Conservative Political Action Conference. Grover Norquist followed the great man around his camp in Angola, preparing magazine articles for Savimbi’s signature. Jack Abramoff made a movie about Savimbi, depicting him as a tougher, African version of Gan- dhi. Even Savimbi’s capital—the remote camp called “Jamba”—was described in conservative literature with elevated language such as “Savimbi’s Kingdom.”

In truth, Savimbi’s main achievement was to keep going, for nearly thirty years, a civil war that made Angola one of the worst places on earth—its population impoverished, its railroads and highways and dams in ruins, its countryside strewn with land mines by the millions, even its elephant herds wiped out, their tusks hacked off to raise funds for his army.

This was the man the rebel right chose for the starring role in one of the strangest spectacles in American political history, a media event designed to cement conservatism’s identification with revolution. The organizer was Jack Abramoff; the place was Jamba; the model, I am told, was Woodstock—only a right-wing version, with guerrillas instead of rock bands. Every kind of freedom fighter was there, joining hands in territory liberated by arms from a Soviet client regime. There were Nicaraguan Contras, some Afghan mujahedeen, an American tycoon—and they all got together at Savimbi’s hideout.

This “rumble in the jungle,” as skeptics called it, came to pass in June of 1985. Of course, bringing it off required considerable assistance from Savimbi’s South African patrons. Nobody else even knew how to find Jamba.

Since these freedom fighters had no actual issues to discuss—no trade agreements or mutual-defense plans or anything—they signed the Jamba Declaration, a bit of high-flown folderol written by Grover Norquist that aimed for solemnity but sounded more like the work of a fifth-grader who has been forced to memorize the Gettysburg Address and the Declaration of Independence and has got them all jumbled up somehow.

Jamba was meant as a celebration of freedom, a word revered by Americans generally and a term of enormous significance to conservatives in particular. Yet as freedom’s embodiment Abramoff had chosen a terrorist: Jonas Savimbi, the leader of an armed cult.

Abramoff's out of jail now, and is out on a rehabilitation tour. Reed's making a strong comeback. Norquist is one of the most powerful men in American politics. And a whole new generation, weaned on their lunacy, has grown up around them.

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digby 11/05/2011 01:30:00 PM |