Hullabaloo

Thursday, December 22, 2011

 

*I'll keep this post at the top of the page for a while. Please scroll down for new posts.

A little holiday cheer for the kitty?

by digby

For those who haven't been by in a while, this is just a reminder that I'm running our Hullabaloo holiday fundraiser and asking that if you have a little extra to spare this year that you put a couple of bucks in the old Hullabaloo stocking.

You can just click the buttons on the left column or use the snail mail address just below them. (To those of you who have already generously donated, thank you, thank you, thank you. It means more to me than you can know.)

These are tough times and I know we are all pinching our pennies and choosing how to spend our money carefully. But if you have a buck or two to spare to help us keep fighting the good fight, we'd all be most grateful.

Happy Hollandaise everyone.

cheers,

digby

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digby 12/22/2011 11:00:00 PM |

 
Orange Face Saver

by digby

From the Speakers Office:

Bipartisan legislation extending payroll tax relief for working Americans will now include a fix secured by House Republicans that ensures small businesses, already struggling in the current economy, won’t face added confusion and compliance costs. Without this fix, employers would have been hit with a costly new reporting burden that independent tax experts have warned against and employees’ tax cuts would have been in doubt at a time when millions of Americans are already out of work.

Oh thank goodness he held out!

I don't think anyone believes this pathetic little band-aid, but they had to throw something in so the Republicans could save face and this was it.

Greg Sargent points out that it was a very unusual situation:

This is a very significant victory for Obama and Dems, and it stands as an all too rare example of what can happen when they draw hard lines and refuse to budge, secure in the knowledge that the public is on their side. That said, a few caveats are necessary. First, Dems already made significant concessions just to get to this point: They dropped the millionaire surtax (which had very broad public support) and agreed to an expedited decision on the Keystone XL pipeline (though it remains unclear what this means in practice, both substantively and politically).

Second, this tough stand by Dems was enabled by a unique turn of events. Either through a failure of communication among GOP leaders or a bad misjudgment of sentiment in the House GOP caucus, a bizarre situation developed which gave Dems all the leverage and left the House GOP with none. This upended the dynamic we’ve seen for the last year, in which Dems had regularly been placed on the defensive and Republicans held much of the leverage, due to their apparent willingness to flirt with true disaster in order to get the concessions they were demanding. In this case, the Senate passed the extension with overwhelming bipartisan support — putting virtually every GOP Senator on record in favor of the proposal, before they went home for the holidays — even as the House GOP leadership was confronted with a rebellion in its caucus that suddenly left the House GOP isolated. This strange turn made it far easier for Obama and Dems to drive a wedge among Republicans and ensured that pressure on House Republicans would only mount from within their own party.

Third, this is the only piece of Obama’s jobs plan that Dems have been able to pressure Republicans into supporting. As a result, the basic overall dynamic may remain unchanged: A bad economy next year; Congressional gridlock; rising public disenchantment with government; and an incumbent running for reelection after failing to prevail on Congress to pass many of his major proposals to fix the economy. And forth, on the payroll tax cut itself, there’s a whole new set of talks set for January

Oh goodie.

If you have a little extra, we'd be grateful for a donation to our Hullabaloo holiday fundraiser:

Thank you

digby 12/22/2011 04:44:00 PM |

 
ProPublica gets it wrong on California redistricting

by David Atkins

The organization ProPublica wrote a recent article about supposed Democratic influence in Calfornia's non-partisan redistricting process, alleging that the it was subject to undue influence from Party interests. Their argument essentially goes that because Democrats attempted to lobby the non-partisan Commission, that necessarily the Commission did what the state Democratic Party wanted. The supposed evidence for that claim lies in the fact that the maps, at least for Congress and State Senate, are fairly advantageous to Democrats. Conservative interest groups have been latching onto the ProPublica story to claim the process was rigged.

Predictably, the State Democratic Party is literally calling bullshit:

California Democratic Party chair John Burton, asked moments ago for his comment about the new ProPublica story that contends Democrats here manipulated the state’s redistricting process, was pretty direct: “It’s complete bull…t, an absolute f…ing fabrication.”
Burton said he was never contacted for comment on the story which published by the San Jose Mercury News this afternoon — and only just heard about the allegations it contains.

The story, titled “How Democrats Fooled California’s Redistricting Commission,” alleges party operatives “secretly organized testimony,” and “surreptitiously enlisted local voters, elected officials, labor unions and community groups,” often hiding their affiliations to outwit the members of the independent commission and win favorable lines for the party officials.
But in California, where Democrats enjoy a robust 44-30.9 percent (and widening) advantage in registration over Republicans, a fired up Burton lambasted those suggestions.
“As the chair of the party, I know the party didn’t do this…the Democratic Party didn’t do sh..t,” he said. “As far as I was concerned, there was nothing you could goddamned do.”
Burton said that “if the Democratic Party did that, one would think the (California Republican Party) would challenge all three redistricting” efforts — and not mounting just a challenge to Congressional and State Senate lines. He said that while he wasn’t called for comment, a source from the Rose Institute — which he dimissed as a “Republican Party subsidiary” – was included in the story.
Democratic Party campaign advisor Bob Mulholland, in an email, said it would have been “easier to influence North Korea” than the redistricting commission, which was made up of five Republicans, five Democrats and four decline to state voters chosen through a lengthy vetting and lottery process.

Of course, one might argue, that's what one might expect the Democratic Party to say, right?

Well, Robert Cruickshank has a good take on it at Calitics, part of which I'll quote here:

First, ProPublica seemed to not notice that pretty much everybody in California organized to try and influence the commission. That includes Republicans, Democrats, unions, businesses, progressives, teabaggers, MALDEF, Asian American voting rights activists, white supremacists, and so on. And there's nothing inherently wrong with that. That's how democracy works, and the commission was mandated to take public testimony.

Second, ProPublica did not bother to actually to look at California's demographics or voter choices. They claim that the new maps did not reflect the will of the people. One reason they say this is that supposedly population growth benefited Republicans:

"Very little of this is due to demographic shifts," said Professor Doug Johnson at the Rose Institute in Los Angeles. Republican areas actually had higher growth than Democratic ones. "By the numbers, Republicans should have held at least the same number of seats, but they lost."

We'll come back to the Rose Institute in a moment. But this claim itself is absurd on its face. Most of that population growth came from Latinos - who, as anyone familiar with California politics knows, have little love for Republicans. The reason is obvious: the California GOP is a white man's party that despises Latinos. So why on earth should Republicans benefit from Latino population growth?

In fact, the notion floated by the Rose Institute that certain parties have a claim on districts is exactly what the commission was intended to challenge.

Of course, the core assumption that California Republicans deserved any new seats is challenged by their collapse in the November 2010 elections. While Republicans across the country were having a banner night, California Republicans lost every single statewide election (including losing the governor's race by 13 points despite outspending the Democrats nearly 10 to 1). They also failed to pick up a single seat in either the legislature or Congress, losing one Assembly seat. California voters made explicitly clear in November 2010 that they do not like Republicans. That doesn't appear to have actually influenced the commission's deliberations, but it does mean the claim that Republicans had any reasonable expectation of gains is ridiculous.

And as it turns out, the Rose Institute is not a neutral observer, even though they were treated as one by ProPublica. John Burton and the CDP pointed out in their press release about the article that the Rose Institute is Republican-funded and had a score to settle with the commission...

Robert is exactly right. I'm 1st Vice-Chair and Field Operations Chair of the Ventura County Democratic Party, so I know a thing or two about this. My county is purple, with slightly more registered Democrats than Republicans, but due to voting patterns and the previous redistricting process, most of the local elected officials are Republican. It would be considered a "Republican area" by the Rose Institute.

Yes, Ventura County has had some big population growth. But as Robert says, it's mostly Latino population growth, as well as growth from people like me moving north from Los Angeles. Both of those population types tend to have no love lost for Republicans. So "population growth in Republican areas" actually weakens the Rose Institute's claims. It means that formerly red areas are getting bluer, making protecting Republican districts more difficult.

But the problems with ProPublica's story don't end there. Their article alleges that Democrats were well organized in attempting to game the process by sending in committed activists and pre-prepared alternative maps for the Commission, but Republicans and conservatives were not. That argument is simply untrue.

I was at the redistricting hearing in Oxnard. Conservative and Republican activists, many of them organized through the Chamber of Commerce, outnumbered Dem and progressive activists at the hearing. They used coordinated talking points and submitted prepared maps designed to protect the incumbent Republican districts held by Elton Gallegly (CA24) and Tony Strickland (SD19).

When the final maps in Ventura County turned out unfavorable to Republicans, it's not because Democrats out-lobbied Republicans. Quite the opposite. It's because demographic changes in Ventura County rendered Republican efforts to argue for their conservative incumbent protection ridiculous. Their arguments were essentially that their white-flight bedroom communities shouldn't be lumped in with "urban" and "different values" (read, black and Latino) communities in Los Angeles and Oxnard. They were comical arguments that I took some heat for intemperately calling racist at the time, and the Commission ignored them for very good reasons that had nothing to do with Democratic or progressive lobbying.

It's true that progressives attempted to sway the Commission. But so did conservatives. That's the whole point of the public process, particularly on an issue that would only interest the politically obsessed. What kind of person who doesn't have a partisan stake in politics is actively interested in the way these lines are drawn?

But perhaps the biggest problem with ProPublica's argument is the assumption that the State Democratic Party organized and coordinated to have the lines drawn as the Commission drew them. That's far from the truth.

Ten years ago, the California Democratic Party used gerrymandering the way all partisan state legislatures do: to protect its incumbents, even at the expense of doing what would be best to potentially pick up seats. The old maps protected Democrats and Republicans alike, leading to a dearth of competitive seats across the state. That lack of competitiveness is part of why voters wanted a non-partisan process in the first place. In my area, Democratic power and safety was largely minimized in order to maximize it elsewhere, resulting in largely protected Republican congressional and statehouse districts.

If the big power players in the Dem party had had their way, the maps would have been similar to those of a decade earlier, and protected incumbents again. I hated the old maps for that reason, and that's why I voted for the redistricting commission proposition, even though it was Democratic heresy at the time. I had confidence that a non-partisan process would actually be more favorable to us overall (though it might give some of our incumbents headaches) than the partisan one had been--particularly in my county, which had been gerrymandered to weaken Democratic power in order to maximize it elsewhere.

Now there are many areas, such as the Sherman vs. Berman and Osborn vs. Butler races in Los Angeles, where the entire Democratic power infrastructure has been overturned by the Commission, causing all sorts of inane distractions for the State Democratic Party, as each candidate's partisans attempt to game the endorsement process in their own favor. In the case of the Osborn versus Butler race, Betsy Butler left the area she used to represent because the new districts have made the race more challenging, and moved to a district that Torie Osborn was largely expected to run in. Betsy's abandonment of her old turf means that it will likely fall into Republican hands, hurting Dems' chances of taking a 2/3 supermajority in 2012. But since Betsy is a current Assemblymember and therefore technically an "incumbent" despite not having represented the district she is running for, Speaker Perez is leveraging major endorsement help in her direction.

And this messy situation is only one of many facing the CDP this year.

To put it mildly, these maps are not the ones that California Democratic Party power players would have concocted in smoke-filled backrooms if they had had their way.

In sum, ProPublica got it entirely backwards. The new maps do favor Dems overall. But that's largely in spite of the efforts of the CDP, not because of them. The real reason for the Dem gains in the non-partisan maps is demographic shifts and the implosion of the California Republican Party. ProPublica should have been able to do a little research and recognize that.


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thereisnospoon 12/22/2011 02:26:00 PM |

 
Dear Jamie, can we talk?

by digby

I'm reprinting this entire letter from Josh Brown over at The Big Picture because I think it needs to be preserved for posterity. If you want to leave a comment, I urge you to click over and do it there:

Dear Jamie Dimon,

I hope this note finds you well.

I am writing to profess my utter disbelief at how little you seem to understand the current mood of the nation. In a story at Bloomberg today, you and a handful of fellow banker and billionaire “job creators” were quoted as believing that the horrific sentiment directed toward you from virtually all corners of America had something to do with how much money you had. I’d like to take a moment to disabuse you of this foolishness.

America is different than almost every other place on earth in that its citizenry reveres the wealthy and we are raised to believe that we can all one day join the ranks of the rich. The lack of a caste system or visible rungs of society’s ladder is what separates our empire from so many fallen empires throughout history. In a nation bereft of royalty by virtue of its republican birth, the American people have done what any other resourceful people would do – we’ve created our own royalty and our royalty is the 1%. Not only do we not “hate the rich” as you and other em-bubbled plutocrats have postulated, in point of fact, we love them. We worship our rich to the point of obsession. The highest-rated television shows uniformly feature the unimaginably fabulous families of celebrities not to mention the housewives (real or otherwise) of the rich. We don’t care what color they are or what religion they practice or where in the country they live or what channel their show is on – if they’re rich, we are watching.

When Derek Jeter was toyed with by the New York Yankees when it came time for him to renew his next hundred million dollar contract, the people empathized with Derek Jeter. Sure, this disagreement essentially took place between one of the wealthiest organizations in the country and one of the wealthiest private citizens – but we rooted for Jeter to get his money. Nobody begrudged him a penny of it or wanted a piece of it or decried the fact that he was luckier than the rest of us. In the American psyche, Jeter was one of the good guys who was deservedly successful. He was one of us and an example of hard work paying off.

Likewise, when Steve Jobs died, he did so with more money than you or any of your “job alliance” buddies – ten times more than most of you, in fact. And upon his death the entire nation went into mourning. We set up makeshift shrines to his brilliance in front of Apple stores from coast to coast. His biography flew off the shelves and people bought Apple products and stock shares in his honor and in his memory. Does that strike you as the action of a populace that hates success?

No, Jamie, it is not that Americans hate successful people or the wealthy. In fact, it is just the opposite. We love the success stories in our midst and it is a distinctly American trait to believe that we can all follow in the footsteps of the elite, even though so few of us ever actually do.

So, no, we don’t hate the rich. What we hate are the predators.

What we hate are the people who we view as having found their success as a consequence of the damage their activities have done to our country. What we hate are those who take and give nothing back in the form of innovation, convenience, entertainment or scientific progress. We hate those who’ve exploited political relationships and stupidity to rake in even more of the nation’s wealth while simultaneously driving the potential for success further away from the grasp of everyone else.

Here in New York, we hated watching real estate and financial services elitists drive up the prices of everything from affordable apartments to martinis in midtown with the reckless speculation that would eventually lead to mass layoffs, rampant joblessness and the wreckage of so many retirement dreams. No one ever asked the rest of us if we minded, it just happened. I’m sure people across the country can tell similar stories.

So please, do us all a favor and come to the realization that the loathing you feel from your fellow Americans has nothing to do with your “success” or your “wealth” and it has everything to do with the fact that your wealth and success have come at a cost to the rest of us. No one wants your money or opportunities, what they want is the same chance that their parents had to attain these things for themselves. You are viewed, and rightfully so, as part of the machine that has removed this chance for many – and that is what they hate.

America hates unjustified privilege, it hates an unfair playing field and crony capitalism without the threat of bankruptcy, it hates privatized gains and socialized losses, it hates rule changes that benefit the few at the expense of the many and it hates people who have been bailed out and don’t display even the slightest bit of remorse or humbleness in the presence of so much suffering in the aftermath.

Nobody hates your right to make money, Jamie. They hate how you and certain others have made it.

Don’t be confused on this score for a moment longer.

I hate slow-clapping or I'd do it.

I'd especially like to highlight this one line:

"...it hates people who have been bailed out and don’t display even the slightest bit of remorse or humbleness in the presence of so much suffering in the aftermath."

That's the part that tells us that they have no intention of changing and don't even believe they did anything wrong. That's why people are so angry. We know they'll do it again the first chance they get.

If you have a little extra, we'd be grateful for a donation to our Hullabaloo holiday fundraiser:

Thank you

digby 12/22/2011 01:45:00 PM |

 

Stand-off

by digby

So the payroll tax standoff continues with everyone, including the Wall Street Journal, telling the House Tea Partiers they need to give in on the two month tax cut and UI extension and come back and fight another day. The conventional wisdom is that the Democrats are in the drivers seat and are unlikely to blink.

It certainly looks that way. But the Republican wrecking crew has shown that they are not only willing to kill hostages but that they positively enjoy it. Moreover, their followers are the types to run primaries against them and win if they don't toe the line.

You have to believe that the likelihood is that the Republicans will sign on at the last minute if they can get something juicy in return. It is Christmas, after all. Maybe a promise from the president that he won't kill Keystone on the basis of the State department recommendation. Perhaps a tacit agreement that further Unemployment Insurance "reforms" will contain their desired Dickensian measures. Dday thinks it could be something as simple as changing the extension to three months.

Whatever happens, Boehner's so far out on a limb that I think they're going to have to find some face saving way out for him if they want to make an agreement. The question is how real it's going to be and whether there are some side deals that don't get any publicity. The Tea Partiers are willing to take a hit with the Village, and even the Wall Street Journal if it advances their prospects. They just don't care what the cognoscenti thinks. That's powerful.

Update: Looks like they did it:

House Republicans on Thursday crumpled under the weight of White House and public pressure and have agreed to pass a two-month extension of the 2 percent payroll-tax cut, Republican and Democratic sources told National Journal.

The House made the move after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., agreed to appoint conferees to a committee to resolve differences between the Senate's two-month payroll-tax cut and the House's one-year alternative.

The House will pass the two-month extension with a technical correction to the language designed to minimize difficulties businesses might experience implementing the short-term, two-month tax cut extension.

Hats off to dday who predicted this might be the way out.

Update II: Mr Killjoy is probably right about this, but then that was always the case with the two month punt to begin with...

If you have a little extra, we'd be grateful for a donation to our Hullabaloo holiday fundraiser:

Thank you

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digby 12/22/2011 12:45:00 PM |

 

The Totally Awesome Ayn Rand Teen Club

by digby

Here's a great read about the Ayn Rand cult which discusses not just the pernicious effect of its adolescent philosophy but the soap opera of Rand's personal life --- perfectly illuminating the bad Romance novel character of the books:

While Greenspan (tagged “A.G.” by Rand) was the most famous name that would emerge from Rand’s Collective, the second most well-known name to emerge from the Collective was Nathaniel Branden, psychotherapist, author and “self-esteem” advocate. Before he was Nathaniel Branden, he was Nathan Blumenthal, a 14-year-old who read Rand’s The Fountainhead again and again. He later would say, “I felt hypnotized.” He describes how Rand gave him a sense that he could be powerful, that he could be a hero. He wrote one letter to his idol Rand, then a second. To his amazement, she telephoned him, and at age 20, Nathan received an invitation to Ayn Rand’s home. Shortly after, Nathan Blumenthal announced to the world that he was incorporating Rand in his new name: Nathaniel Branden. And in 1955, with Rand approaching her 50th birthday and Branden his 25th, and both in dissatisfying marriages, Ayn bedded Nathaniel.

What followed sounds straight out of Hollywood, but Rand was straight out of Hollywood, having worked for Cecil B. DeMille. Rand convened a meeting with Nathaniel, his wife Barbara (also a Collective member), and Rand’s own husband Frank. To Branden's astonishment, Rand convinced both spouses that a time-structured affair—she and Branden were to have one afternoon and one evening a week together—was “reasonable.” Within the Collective, Rand is purported to have never lost an argument. On his trysts at Rand’s New York City apartment, Branden would sometimes shake hands with Frank before he exited. Later, all discovered that Rand’s sweet but passive husband would leave for a bar, where he began his self-destructive affair with alcohol.

By 1964, the 34-year-old Nathaniel Branden had grown tired of the now 59-year-old Ayn Rand. Still sexually dissatisfied in his marriage to Barbara and afraid to end his affair with Rand, Branden began sleeping with a married 24-year-old model, Patrecia Scott. Rand, now “the woman scorned,” called Branden to appear before the Collective, whose nickname had by now lost its irony for both Barbara and Branden. Rand’s justice was swift. She humiliated Branden and then put a curse on him: “If you have one ounce of morality left in you, an ounce of psychological health—you'll be impotent for the next twenty years! And if you achieve potency sooner, you'll know it’s a sign of still worse moral degradation!”

This is the muse for many of the GOP leaders who pronounce themselves social conservatives.

The important point in all that is the one in which the 14 year old Nathan says that he was "hyponotized" and that Rand's novels made him feel like a hero. That's the key to Rand's influence: the people who organize their lives around Rand's overwrought philosophy are emotional adolescents and the pretense of "rationality" in her books is little more than a justification for youthful narcissism. Her own life bears this out as does the application of Randism to actual policy.

What's frightening about all this is the number of leaders who count themselves as adherents. It's common for narcissists to make it to the top of the food chain, but empowering this peculiar brand is akin to giving a 15 year old a Ferrari and a gun and taking off for the week-end. These are not people you want to put in charge of anything.

If you have a little extra, we'd be grateful for a donation to our Hullabaloo holiday fundraiser:

Thank you

digby 12/22/2011 11:00:00 AM |

 
Newtie: the original Tea Partier

by digby

I was unaware of this, but apparently Newtie headlined Tea Party events from the very beginning:

Think back to the Tax Day Tea Parties of 2009. It was April 15th and all this was a wild gamble for a party unaccustomed to public protest. He was at the New York City rally held in City Hall Park, blocking off both sides of Broadway, and the only major figure in the conservative movement to dedicate his time and prestige to the new movement. He received a hero’s welcome, flanked by the devoted Callista, speaking as a self-styled historian, reminding the faithful about how the 1773 Tea Party was only a start, while offering a well-timed dig at the New York Times editorial boardas “bigoted.”

It shouldn’t have been a surprise. Newt has always excelled at team building. He was at his best in the road to 1994, recruiting candidates and rallying a populist movement around conservative reform causes.

“Gingrich supported the Tea Party movement in its earliest days and helped it achieve critical mass.”

Newt’s group, AmericanSolutions.com, was among the top-tier groups supporting the early Tea Party rallies in every respect, chief among which was the value of his conservative celebrity and advocacy, offered on Fox News in the days leading up to those initial Tax Day 2009 rallies. In an tub-thumping interview with Greta Van Susteren, he said“My challenge to every member of the House and Senate is have the courage to go to the tea party in your state or district….My prediction is that there will be over 300,000 Americans and I think it’s the beginning of a huge movement of fundamental reform…in all the places where the lobbyists, politicians and the bureaucrats have been running over their citizens.”

I'm guessing it's the Fannie Freddie charges that have hurt him among these people. Their whole rationale for the economic meltdown rests on the fact that ACORNFannie and Freddie helped the wrong people buy houses.

Still, he's surviving, which means they may be in the process of absorbing and forgiving him for it. He truly is one of them.

If you have a little extra, we'd be grateful for a donation to our Hullabaloo holiday fundraiser:

Thank you

digby 12/22/2011 09:30:00 AM |

 
Insider Trading

by David Atkins

Color me shocked:

When Senate Democrats finally brokered a compromise over the proposed health-care law, a group of hedge funds were let in on the deal, learning details hours before a public announcement on Dec. 8, 2009.

The news was potentially worth millions of dollars to the investors, though none would publicly divulge how they used the information. They belong to a select group who pay for early, firsthand reports on Capitol Hill.

Seeking advance word of government decisions is part of a growing, lucrative—and legal— practice in Washington that employs a network of brokers, lobbyists and political insiders who arrange private meetings.

Consider this another in a long line of reasons by the public is fed up with both Congress and Wall St. The institutions of American government work almost entirely on behalf of the 1%, and much of the most appalling aspects of it are still perfectly legal.


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thereisnospoon 12/22/2011 07:30:00 AM |

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

 

Bo and emotion-free crisis management

by digby

I love Bo, the first dog. Not only that, I'm a post-partisan first animal lover. I loved Bush's dogs Barney and Miz Beasley too. They were the only good things about the administration. My main gripe is that the Obamas don't show Bo off enough.

Today the president took him to Pet Smart to shop for a Christmas present.(Naturally, the jerks at FoxNation apparently think he should have been hunkered down in the White House running spread sheets on the payroll tax rather than shopping for his daughters' Christmas presents.)

Whatever. It's a cute picture of Bo and that's what it's all about for me:

But let's stop for a moment and ponder another possible president's outing with his dog:

The white Chevy station wagon with the wood paneling was overstuffed with suitcases, supplies, and sons when Mitt Romney climbed behind the wheel to begin the annual 12-hour family trek from Boston to Ontario...

Before beginning the drive, Mitt Romney put Seamus, the family's hulking Irish setter, in a dog carrier and attached it to the station wagon's roof rack. He'd built a windshield for the carrier, to make the ride more comfortable for the dog.

Then Romney put his boys on notice: He would be making predetermined stops for gas, and that was it.

The ride was largely what you'd expect with five brothers, ages 13 and under, packed into a wagon they called the ''white whale.''

As the oldest son, Tagg Romney commandeered the way-back of the wagon, keeping his eyes fixed out the rear window, where he glimpsed the first sign of trouble. ''Dad!'' he yelled. ''Gross!'' A brown liquid was dripping down the back window, payback from an Irish setter who'd been riding on the roof in the wind for hours.

As the rest of the boys joined in the howls of disgust, Romney coolly pulled off the highway and into a service station. There, he borrowed a hose, washed down Seamus and the car, then hopped back onto the highway. It was a tiny preview of a trait he would grow famous for in business: emotion-free crisis management.

I'm not normally one to base my opinion of politicians on anecdotes. But I just can 't ignore this. It's horrible. I think most people who aren't psychopaths can see why that is so. It isn't "crisis management." It's robotic insensitivity at best and conscious cruelty at worst.

It's true that George W Bush was nothing if not bloodthirsty and "you know who" famously loved dogs and children. But based on this behavior, I have to believe that Romney must be capable of even worse. It's one thing to be an animal lover who is also violent. Being cruel to animals is a baseline behavioral concern.

Update: oh fergawdsakes:

Fox News Radio ran a report that read this way,

The official White House holiday card makes no mention of the word ‘Christmas’ and instead focused on Bo the First Dog based on the wishes of the First Family.

“From our family to yours, may your holidays shine with the light of the season,” read the inside of the card, featuring the presidential seal.

The front of the card features Bo the First Dog lounging by a fireplace. Holiday greenery is draped over the fireplace mantle. Holiday presents are placed on a table underneath a poinsettia – instead of a Christmas tree.

"It's odd," Palin said, wondering why the president's Christmas card highlights his dog instead of traditions like "family, faith and freedom."

I'm sure she would have preferred a card showing someone shooting him. For "family, faith and freedom" of course.

By the way, click the link to see the "Christmas" cards from Ronnie and Nancy. They make this one look like a manger scene.

If you have a little extra, we'd be grateful for a donation to our Hullabaloo holiday fundraiser:

Thank you

digby 12/21/2011 08:00:00 PM |

 
Rhetorical Sloppiness

By tristero

It's very simple: As long as the right's language is the default language used to describe the world in the mainstream discourse, the extremists win. That's why no liberal should accept the right's terms for their objections to the science of evolution, let alone safe, legal reproductive choices.

But it requires vigilance. For example:

[Gingrich's] latest manifesto, which should have been addressed “Dear Iowa Fundamentalist Caucus-goers,” states: “As litigants demand that courts and judges intervene to create new ‘rights’ out of whole cloth, such litigants and their supporters seek to limit the freedom of others to express their deeply held religious commitments to, for example, the value of every human life and to marriage as between one man and one woman.”

As opposed to one man and three women? Nobody is forcing Christians to marry anyone they don’t want to marry; they’re preventing gays from marrying people they want to marry.

MoDo probably knows better: she almost surely realizes that you most certainly can be Christian AND gay. But religious nuts have so succeeded in characterizing their addled beliefs as Christian (while anyone professing to be Christian who disagrees with them is considered to be just pretending to be a Christian) that Dowd, or her copy editor, unforgivably let this one slip by. There''ve been a lot of these kinds of slips in the past 30 years.

Until the rhetoric of liberals, moderates, and even center-right Americans is more precise and does not, for an instant, buy into any of the language of extremism, the far right will continue to exercise undue influence.

If you have a little extra, we'd be grateful for a donation to our Hullabaloo holiday fundraiser:

Thank you

tristero 12/21/2011 05:30:00 PM |

 
Helping out John Boehner

by digby

Dave Weigel deconstructs the GOP strategy in the payroll tax fight and sadly, despite my earlier hopeful post, I think he's probably got it right:

The cynic’s bet is that the story of GOP dysfunction won’t matter, so long as there’s eventually some compromise. Eyes on the prize: If the other side blinks, and it always does, what can Republicans get out of them?

They want a few things. The House’s version of the one-year extension included reforms that Republicans plan to stick to. On unemployment, the GOP wanted to cut the maximum duration from 99 weeks to 59 weeks and add in some new requirements. Beneficiaries who didn’t have GEDs would have to try to get them. States implementing unemployment insurance could require drug tests. These and other reforms were necessary, according to LaTourette, because “you couldn’t get 218 votes that extended unemployment benefits without reform.” In his district, employers were tired of having jobs open but lacking workers with the skills to fill them. Here was a chance to fix that.

They need to do this to validate the GOP in their belief that "those people", the lazy-good-for-nothings who haven't earned their benefits, are the ones who must pay the price for this bad economy. The "jaaahb creators" certainly aren't to blame -- they'd love to hire if it weren't for all the "urban youth" and "illegals" and "drug users" and "hippies" who can't or refuse to fill the good jobs they are offering. "Welfarizing" unemployment is very important to keep the rubes focused in the right direction.

Weigel also points out that they want to give the EPA a big fat finger and jam the President on Keystone (although they explain it as "job creation,") and concludes:

Yes, the Republicans are coming off as intransigent. But Democrats want to re-elect the president, so they’ll ultimately give up a lot to extend a tax cut and unemployment benefits. In the meantime, Republicans can figure out what leverage they have to weaken the welfare state. Despite how it looks right now, it doesn’t make sense to doubt them. After all, they’ve had a lot of practice at this.

Indeed they have.(Read the whole piece to see just how often this has worked.)

It's always possible that it really will blow up in their faces this time and they will capitulate to the Senate compromise and just come back in two months and do it all over again. What looks most likely to me that that the Dems will end up giving them a little something now with a promise for more later. (I'm surprised there isn't another women's rights issue in there to bargain away, but maybe after Plan B, they figure they've played that out.) But however it goes down, Weigel is right: they are showing their usual willingness to ride out any short term bad press to get what they want in the long run.

When you see things like this, you can see why:

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digby 12/21/2011 03:30:00 PM |

 
Nice

by digby

Petty Officer 2nd Class Marissa Gaeta, left, kisses her girlfriend of two years, Petty Officer 3rd Class Citlalic Snell, at Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek in Virginia Beach on Wednesday, Dec. 22. It's a tradition at Navy homecomings that one sailor is chosen by raffle to be first off the ship to kiss a loved one. Wednesday, for the first time, the reunited couple was same-sex.

An awful lot of things are screwed up right now, but this is one thing we can all be grateful for.

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digby 12/21/2011 01:30:00 PM |

 
The Unemployment Insurance Extension that isn't

by digby

Arthur Delaney brings up a little known fact about the bipartisan Senate bill we are all cheering so loudly:

Republicans and Democrats have clashed frequently over federal unemployment insurance ever since the unemployed first became eligible for 99 weeks of benefits at the end of 2009.

Despite the high-profile disagreements, which have repeatedly led to lapsed benefits for millions of people, Republicans and Democrats broadly agree on what to do next: reduce the duration of benefits and make sure their cost isn't added to the federal budget deficit. But unless Congress reaches a compromise in the next week or so, federal unemployment benefits will lapse again for nearly 2 million people come January.

In December, Republicans proposed reducing the number of weeks available by 40. Democrats are willing to meet them halfway by cutting 20 weeks, albeit in a backdoor fashion: Congress would reauthorize the two federal unemployment programs, but the second would automatically phase out in one state after another over the course of 2012.

So part of the great bipartisan compromise to extend UI before Christmas is to only cut extended benefits by 20 weeks instead of 40. Huzzah. I guess those green shoots are sprouting again. And this provision applies beyond the "two month" place holder:

Although the Senate legislation would keep the federal programs in place for just two months, the second Extended Benefits program would phase out in 11 states during that time. It's a "wholly inadequate" outcome, said Rep. Sander Levin (D-Mich.), the top Democrat on the committee overseeing unemployment, because "with very little warning, tens of thousands of long-term unemployed Americans will be cut off unemployment insurance." Levin did not say, however, that he opposed the bill...

As Republicans have noted, the Obama administration was the first to suggest letting Extended Benefits dwindle in 2012.

Merry Christmas.

And remember that's the allegedly good bill, passed by the Senate. It could actually get worse.

By the way:

The Extended Benefits program, which provides help for up to 20 weeks, kicks in after workers exhaust up to 53 weeks of federal Emergency Unemployment Compensation following 26 weeks of state benefits. The program is restricted to states with high and rising jobless rates. If a state's jobless rate isn't significantly higher than its rate three years ago, the program is not triggered.
So, basically, Democrats and Republicans agree that it's time to cut unemployment benefits in the states with the highest unemployment rates. That makes a lot of sense.

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digby 12/21/2011 12:30:00 PM |

 
Quote Of The Day

by digby

That's from famous conservative Michael Crichton's 1996 forgttable novel Airframe.

You can easily substitute the words "homeowner" or "taxpayer" or "worker" or "customer" for "passenger" and it works just as well.


h/t to reader LM

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digby 12/21/2011 11:15:00 AM |

 
Cornered Tea Partiers are dangerous

by digby

I think this says it all:

This is how they roll. They just don't believe in voting:

House Republicans blocked a Democratic attempt Wednesday to call up the Senate payroll tax bill by quickly gaveling today's pro forma session to a close.

Rep. Michael Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) presided over the brief pro forma session, and after the pledge of allegiance closed the session and said the next pro forma would be on Friday. But as he walked away, House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) protested the move.

"You're walking out, you're walking away, just as so many Republicans have walked away from middle class taxpayers, the unemployed, and… those who will be seeking medical assistance from their doctors."

Fitzpatrick never recognized Hoyer, and gaveled the session closed.

"We regret, Mr. Speaker, that you have walked off the platform without addressing the issue of critical importance to this country," he added.
Hoyer then yielded to House Budget Committee Ranking Member Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), who began to speak to a chamber that had no presiding officer. C-SPAN's coverage of the floor ended moments after Van Hollen started speaking.

This is crazy stuff even for them. Dday speculates that they really are trying to "fix it in conference" despite the fact that conferences have gone the way of the dodo bird. Why? Because they have backed themselves into a corner and this is their only way out.

The Republicans may have finally gone too far. If the Democrats don't blink and bail them out they may finally have to face some consequences for their radicalism.

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.
digby 12/21/2011 09:30:00 AM |

 
Republicans Divided

by David Atkins

As much as we progressive bloggers are fond of pointing out "both sides do it" journalistic malpractice, sometimes even the traditional can't help but notice how bizarrely discombobulated Republicans have become lately. Case in point: the L.A. Times.

Facing that unpleasant reality, Republicans fell into an angry family feud over their strategy. Several GOP senators who face reelection next year accused their House colleagues of acting irresponsibly. The House voted to disagree with the bipartisan bill the Senate had passed to preserve the tax cut for two months so Congress would have more time to work on a full-year extension.

Democrats, meantime, were happy to accuse Republicans of voting to block a tax cut and leaving town without finishing their work — the same argument Republicans planned to use on them.

"The issue right now is this: The clock is ticking; time is running out," President Obama said in a statement at the White House after the vote. "And if the House Republicans refuse to vote for the Senate bill, or even allow it to come up for a vote, taxes will go up in 11 days."

This was not a fight that seasoned Republican lawmakers, most prominent among them House Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio, would have chosen. They see no value in having Americans think Republicans are allowing a tax increase, a message the White House continues to broadcast daily. Senate Republicans calculated that it was better to agree to an imperfect compromise, one that extends the tax break a couple of months and buys more negotiating time, than to try to argue otherwise.

But as has happened so many times this year, those voices were drowned out in the House by hard-charging conservatives and their newly arrived tea party partners, who pushed the GOP to instigate one last round of brinkmanship as the year ends. Boehner took up their cause, and is now withstanding grumbles from within his ranks and the arrows of Republican allies in the Senate who view this as a no-win battle.

It's increasingly clear that Boehner isn't in control of his caucus, and that no one is really driving the ideological train in the Republican Party except maybe Rupert Murdoch and Grover Norquist, who themselves don't always see eye to eye.

And speaking of ideological train wrecks, there's the whole Ron Paul Goes to Iowa problem:

Conservatives and Republican elites in the state are divided over who to support for the GOP nomination, but they almost uniformly express concern over the prospect that Ron Paul and his army of activist supporters may capture the state’s 2012 nominating contest — an outcome many fear would do irreparable harm to the future role of the first-in-the-nation caucuses.

In spin rooms, bar rooms and online forums, the what-to-do-about-Paul conversation has become pervasive as polls show him at or near the top here just weeks before the January 3rd vote.

Paul poses an existential threat to the state’s cherished kick-off status, say these Republicans, because he has little chance to win the GOP nomination and would offer the best evidence yet that the caucuses reward candidates who are unrepresentative of the broader party.

If the shoe were on the other foot, the traditional media would be predicting the end of the Democratic Party as we know it.


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thereisnospoon 12/21/2011 07:30:00 AM |

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

 
So much funnakah

by digby

Happy Hannukah everybody:

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digby 12/20/2011 07:00:00 PM |

 
Newtie "arouses passions" in people

by digby

I don't know what this fellow's political leanings are, but it doesn't matter. The crude political world we live in was largely created by Newt Gingrich. And now he's reaping the whirlwind:

Here's the true intellectual backbone of the Republican party:

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digby 12/20/2011 05:30:00 PM |

 
Narrative building for dummies

by digby

Facts, spin and journalistic malpractice:

This is the problem.

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digby 12/20/2011 04:30:00 PM |

 

Stepping back for the good of the family

by digby

It looks like the big boys are telling the girl that it's time for her to step aside for the good of the cause:

Iowa evangelical leader Bob Vander Plaats called Michele Bachmann and urged her to drop out of the race and endorse Rick Santorum, a source with knowledge of the conversation told POLITICO Tuesday.

The phone call took place Saturday, three days before Vander Plaats announced he – but not his organization, the Family Leader – was backing Santorum.

Bachmann declined, the source said, noting to Vander Plaats that she has consistently polled ahead of Santorum in the race and still does.

“It just makes a lot of sense to me,” he said. “You need a team to run a country. So this isn’t about one person, this isn’t just about Rick Santorum."
[...]
Perry spokesman Ray Sullivan said Perry spoke with Vander Plaats on Friday, but dropping out and backing Santorum “absolutely did not come up.”

Sorry Michele. It's getting close to the caucuses and that means it's time for people to start demanding that candidates drop out. And since your fellow travelers are all patriarchal throwbacks they will, of course, tell you that you need to make the sacrifice while leaving the man's man Rick Perry alone.

This happens in Democratic politics as well, although it isn't confined to the women. Just before the voting begins there is always a call for people to drop out. And if it remains undecided for a while, the calls become shrill and cacophonous. It's the damnedest thing. An awful lot of people don't want to take a chance on the voters making the decision.

But asking someone to drop out in favor of some single digit nobody who doesn't have a ... prayer, may be a first. Singling out the woman pretty much says it all.

But maybe Michele shouldn't have been so eager to serve as the boys' waitress at that religion debate. It looks like it gave them the wrong idea...

Update: Rick Perlstein writes in to say I missed the best part and he's right:

“It just makes a lot of sense to me,” he said. “You need a team to run a country. So this isn’t about one person, this isn’t just about Rick Santorum."

I.e., right wing preachers are upfront in their plain expectation that with a Republican president they will be part of the "team" that "runs the country."

It's reminiscent of the way the NRA boasted that they'd have an office in the Bush White House.

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digby 12/20/2011 02:30:00 PM |