Hullabaloo

Monday, September 10, 2012

 
QOTD: Mary Matalin

by digby

Can you see what's wrong with this picture?

"Janna is a seasoned political partner who lives a real middle-class mother life with real Americans in the middle of the country,” said veteran GOP strategist Mary Matalin. “Hard to imagine a greater asset to the campaign than such an authentic presence.”

This is a perfect Villager comment. "A seasoned political partner" who is also an "authentic" middle class mother just like "real Americans" in the middle of the country.

Uhm no. "Seasoned political partners" aren't average people and Janna Ryan is not just like real American moms in the middle of the country living a real middle-class mother life. She's married to one of the most powerful men in the US Government, a man who routinely hob-nobs with the wealthiest people in world. He's also running for Vice President of the most powerful nation on earth. I'm sure millionaire celebrities consider all these things to be signs of normal middle class life since they think they are all salt 'o the earth reglar folk themselves, but it just ain't true.

Oh, did I mention this?

An Oklahoma native, her cousin is retiring Rep. Dan Boren (D-Okla.), and her uncle David Boren is a former governor and senator.

And hilariously, the very next paragraph after Matalin's absurd spin says this:

“She has good and sharp political instincts. She knows Capitol Hill well, having worked as both a staffer and a lobbyist,” Cole said. “She was a tax lobbyist, so she knows the fiscal issues as well as anybody and probably more than any of the spouses that, with all due respect, didn’t come from that background, whether it’s Michelle [Obama] or Ann [Romney] or Jill [Biden]. She did.”

Sure, most all-American soccer moms are lobbyists. What could be more common?

That's the very essence of the Village, right there. They honestly believe they are average people. They're all just regular folks like you and me --- well except for all the money, the power and the celebrity. But what difference could that possibly make?


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digby 9/10/2012 04:30:00 PM |

 
The power of emotion is humiliating the quants

by David Atkins

If President Obama manages to hold onto his lead and win in November, one of the most pleasant side effects will be the humiliation of elections models (such as this much ballyhooed one from Colorado University) based on economic determinism. It will be a pleasant reminder to all the Ivy-educated poli sci quants that context, emotion and qualitative factors are what carry the day in politics. That in turn should take some of shine out of the advocates of bloodless technocracy as good political policy. Jamelle Bouie steps in for Greg Sargent today and points out the obvious:

As Greg has been pointing out, it’s clear that the Romney campaign is governed by a crude economic determinism — “as long as the economy is bad, all we have to do is show up, and voters will reward us with the presidency.” Hence Romney pollster Neil Newhouse’s declaration that “the basic structure of the race hasn’t changed.” This is true, but not in a way that helps Romney. Simply put, the “basic structure of the race” still favors President Obama. The economy is poor and job creation is sluggish, but growth is on an upward trajectory, and according to most election models, this makes Obama a slight favorite for reelection. That the Romney campaign fails to see this explains everything from Romney’s refusal to provide policy detail to his team’s inexplicable decision to cede summer advertising to the Obama campaign.

The simple fact is that voters aren’t making a crude economic calculus based on objective conditions — they’re weighing context and evaluating both candidates’ plans for the future. And when it comes down to it, they’re not necessarily convinced that Obama has completely failed to fix things. If Romney can’t overcome and account for that, he’ll lose.

They're doing even more than that. They're actually weighing a deeply personal, almost romantic soap opera triangle between themselves and the two candidates.

Which is perfect. Mitt Romney is the ultimate bloodless quant. As Biden said, he looks at the world as a series of spreadsheets, with the goal of tilting the balance sheet toward the wealthy. The President, meanwhile, has a natural gift of emotive power in his campaigning, but governs like a technocratic quant who often underestimates the power of symbolism and values-driven policy.

Hopefully if the President defeats Romney handily, it will help sully the reputation of the quants and validate those who know that elections, like life, are much more fluid and emotional than deterministic models would suggest.


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thereisnospoon 9/10/2012 03:00:00 PM |

 

Romney's greatest foreign policy coup

by digby

So there are a substantial number of voters in both Ohio and North Carolina who believe that Mitt Romney is responsible for killing Osama bin Laden. Seriously.

In Ohio:

38% of Ohio Republicans say Barack Obama is most responsible for the bin Laden's death, 15% say Romney, and 47% were unsure.

In North Carolina:

29% of Republicans said Obama deserves more credit, versus 15% Romney and 56% unsure.

I think Comedy Central gets this one about right:

There's not much in Romney's foreign policy that can be credited for bin Laden's demise, but maybe his anti-porn stance is what drove the al Queda mastermind into the path of a Navy SEAL's bullet. A connoisseur of smut, what else could bin Laden do when confronted with Romney's plan to take away his Internet access to Weapons of Ass Destruction IV?

It's also possible that these majorities of Republican voters who refuse to credit Obama with the Bin Laden's killing aren't really answering the question that's being put to them, just as many Republicans translate questions about Obama's faith into questions about how much they hate the president. For many voters, telling a pollster that President Obama is a Muslim who doesn't deserve credit for the country's most visible recent military achievement is just another way of saying that Obama sucks.

But that can't be every voter. Somewhere in Ohio or North Carolina, there's a guy who thinks SEAL Team Six arrived in Pakistan's on Romney's charter plane and shot bin Laden using equipment financed by Romney's off-shore accounts. And that guy's vote counts just as much as yours.

Scary, isn't it?

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digby 9/10/2012 02:00:00 PM |

 

Campaign of the people

by digby

photo by Charles D Harapak, via instagram

That's the very best way to send a message to the press about your appeal to those white working class males in Ohio...

h/t to @BagNews

digby 9/10/2012 01:00:00 PM |

 
Win an Eric Clapton BB King platinum award plaque

by digby

... by helping Patsy Keever win her seat in North Carolina. Howie writes it all up here:

When I was a teenager I worked at the Cafe Au Go Go in Greenwich Village for a stint. It's where I first met many artists I later became involved with, from Jimi Hendrix, Joni Mitchell, the Grateful Dead to the Jefferson Airplane and The Animals. In 1967 I saw Eric Clapton, then 22 and a member of Cream, perform with American blues great, B.B. King. More than 30 years later I was the president of Reprise Records when Eric, one of our biggest-selling and most respected artists, told me he had gone into the studio with B.B., who he idolizes, and they had recorded several songs. This turned into a collaborative album, Riding With The King, which hit #1 on the Billboard blues chart, #3 on the Billboard album chart, sold over 2 million copies and won a Grammy Award. The RIAA certified the album "double platinum" in 2000 and the custom award plaque is one of the most aesthetically beautiful RIAA awards ever made. Only a small handful were given out and, of course, it was never sold or made available to the public. Eric and B. B. gave me one. I want to use it to help raise some money for one of the most deserving progressives running anywhere in America, Rep. Patsy Keever, an intrepid Democrat taking on Wall Street shill Patrick McHenry-- much the same way we used the Green Day signed guitar to raise $37,000 for Alan Grayson's campaign a few weeks ago.

Another fighter for working families from North Carolina, Congressman Brad Miller, is supporting Patsy's run. He told us that "The contrast between Patsy and Patrick McHenry couldn't be greater. Patsy is a respected community leader, not a self-promoting political operative. Patsy has strong progressive instincts grounded in her understanding of what people's lives are really like." Patsy's record as a representative of the North Carolina legislature showed she is a staunch believer in helping working families, standing up for civil rights and including everyone who wants to pitch in and work hard in the American dream.

I never talked with either Eric or B. B. about politics and don't know where they stand on the issues... but they did cover Charlie "Hoss" Singleton's classic "Help the Poor" on Riding With The King-- and they're both very decent, generous human beings so... I'll just jump to the logical conclusion. To get a chance to wind up with this plaque on your wall, just contribute to Patsy's campaign-- any amount-- at this ActBlue page. We'll randomly select one person to thank by sending him or her the plaque.

Click over to Down with Tyranny for the full story.

And if you're of a mind to help a great progressive fighter win a winnable seat and possibly win a Clapton-King collectable for yourself, just go here.

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digby 9/10/2012 12:00:00 PM |

 
The GOP "I told you so"

by digby

Mark Halperin chronicles the many woes of the Romney campaign in the wake of their epic Meh Convention. It's not pretty. If this is the conventional wisdom, they've got to be getting pretty desperate.

But Halperin shares a little inside knowledge from earlier in the campaign that's rather interesting:

Romney still has the debates, millions and millions in TV ads, and weeks of campaigning to try to turn things around. But he faces the immediate threat of quiet and loud we-told-you-so’s from Republicans who last year had the very worries they fear are being manifested now. Romney is an awkward, unlikable candidate. The author of RomneyCare is ill positioned to attack ObamaCare. And Romney’s shifting positions make him an easy mark for an aggressive White House.

And that's not even counting the fact that he's a massively wealthy vulture capitalist who refuses to even release his tax returns at a time of economic suffering among the people he wants to vote for him. He is the Marie Antoinette of American politics. Almost anyone would have been better at a time like this. (Except Palin ...)

I've never believed that Obama would be beaten in this election. It seems counter-intuitive, I know. The economy sucks. But my feeling has been from the beginning that the Republicans' heart wasn't in it. They don't want the mess and they are such an effective opposition party that they can accomplish many of their goals without the presidency. (I suppose that the fact the first string didn't jump in was the first clue.)I'm sure they would have loved to make Obama a one termer. But they can live without it if they fail.

But any idea that this loss will be so traumatic that they'll change their spots and become partners like old Tipnronnie back in 82 is delusional. None of this is personal.It's strictly business. And they have an agenda to advance. The only question is whether the Democrats, including the president, will help them.

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digby 9/10/2012 10:30:00 AM |

 

The True the Vote bullies

by digby

There have been quite a few recent court rulings for the good guys on the vote suppression laws, but another problems remains. This, from Common Cause and Demos, explains:

Will Partisan Bullies at the Ballot Box Change the Outcome of Election 2012?

Voting Rights Groups Release Report on Voter Protection Laws in 10 Key States as Self-Appointed Activists Promise To Block, Intimidate Voters

WHAT: Self-appointed partisan activists are reportedly working to recruit 1 million volunteers to challenge and block certain voters’ right to vote on and before Election Day, creating an atmosphere of intimidation at the polls. In response to these efforts, voting rights organizations Common Cause and Demos will release a new report on voter protection laws in 10 states considered critical in the 2012 election. “Bullies at the Ballot Box: Protecting the Freedom to Vote Against Wrongful Challenges and Intimidation,” highlights laws in key states like Florida and Pennsylvania that could allow partisan activists to prevent voters from casting regular ballots on Election Day and could create chaos for election officials.

The report also details laws in states such as Ohio and North Carolina that do a better job protecting eligible Americans from those who seek to stop them from voting. Wrongful challenges in states with weak voter protection laws could impact the outcome of the elections due to the number of voters who could be wrongfully removed from voting lists or prevented from voting regular ballots on Election Day by the actions of groups like True the Vote and others.

The ten states reviewed in “Bullies at the Ballot Box” include Colorado, Florida, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and Virginia.

I've been writing about this group for a while. They've had some real success, notably in Wisconsin, which has served as a sort of trial run for a bunch of GOP GOTV initiatives as well. I hope the Democrats in these targeted states are ready for it.

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digby 9/10/2012 09:00:00 AM |

 
Exclusive interview with Sen. Whitehouse (D-RI) on lame duck cuts: "There will be colossal war...if they try to do that."

by David Atkins

My brother Dante and I got a chance to conduct a brief interview with Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island during his visit to the independent media building at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte on Wednesday. The three subjects covered were filibuster reform, tax cuts for the wealthy, and potential cuts to Social Security and Medicare during the lame duck session. First up, Social Security:

David Atkins: At Hullabaloo, we've been covering a lot the of Simpson-Bowles issue and what's going on with Social Security. Clinton gave a speech last night and the only part that didn't resonate with the audience was that whole discussion of cuts to Medicare and Social Security. There's a lot of fear out there--obviously, a lot of people are paying attention to the election, but a lot of us are looking ahead of the election. Assuming Obama wins, which is a big assumption, but even if he doesn't, what happens during the lame duck session? There's a lot of fear that that would be used to sort of ram through unnecessary cuts to Social Security on the Simpson-Bowles template, and I was wondering what your plans were, and are we going to fight back on this? What is going to happen?

Senator Whitehouse: I think that as a very general expression of a bipartisan and compromising way to deal with the debt and deficit problem that we have in this country, the Simpson-Bowles outline represents a pretty fair starting point. It has a fatal flaw in my estimation which that it rolls Social Security into the equation. Social Security has a $2 trillion surplus. It contributes virtually not at all to our national debt and deficit. It has long been kind of a bogeyman to the Republican Party that we have Social Security. They want to get rid of it, they want to privatize it, they never liked it. We cannot use this debt and deficit discussion as an excuse or vehicle to go after Social Security which is a separate discussion. It's sound until 2027, I think, at this point. It has got a huge surplus, and we need to make sure there is airspace between our debt and deficit discussion and Social Security. That's one of the reasons I helped found the Defending Social Security Caucus, and one of the things I think has happened in the Senate, not invisibly perhaps as it might have, but visibly to those of us who are there, setting Simpson-Bowles aside, the discussion about using Social Security to solve the deficit, has really gone away. And I think in part it's because I believe we're up to thirty Senators who have signed on and said, "No way. No way. Not going to happen." And we make a blocking minority that makes that very difficult for the White House. They've backed off, everybody has backed off. And I think that's an important line. We have a success so far. But when you look at $2 trillion that Wall Street would love to get its hands on, and privatizing Social Security that Wall Street would love to do, this is a fight that's not going to go away. We're in a good position on it now, we should not give in, and we need to be alert really for the rest of our lives to protect against those efforts to encroach on it.

David Atkins: So you would expect that that would probably not be successful if they try to roll that through during the lame duck session?

Senator Whitehouse: They would have a colossal war with the vast majority of the Democratic caucus.

David Atkins: Thank you.

Those are very strong words. It would appear that Social Security remains the third rail of American politics, and that very significant efforts are being made to prevent a backslide of toward any sort of Catfood Commission attempts to make cuts to those earned benefits. One doesn't use the phrase "colossal war" lightly.

Before moving on to questions about Medicare, Dante asked about filibuster reform:

Dante Atkins: What are your thoughts on filibuster reform in the upcoming session? Obviously we're going to have a very very tight Senate, maybe 51-49, maybe 50-50 with a couple of independents. How do you expect that to go regarding potential rules changes in the upcoming term?

Senator Whitehouse: I support filibuster reform. I'd be cautious about turning us into another House of Representatives and removing the filibuster entirely. But what has happened is that the filibuster has morphed from the old Jefferson Smith, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington filibuster, where you stand out on the floor, and your hair goes awry, you quote from the Bible, you quote from the Constitution, the wily old codger press guy is up in the gallery saying, "Down on the Senate floor, great expression of American democracy, one Senator alone having their say." There was some excitement to it. Now the signal of a filibuster is the droning quorum call with nothing going on on the floor. And Republicans have moved from filibustering things that they hate and want to stop, to filibustering anything and everything, because each filibuster that they threaten requires the Majority Leader to knock out 30 hours of floor time for a cloture vote, and like bricks, you stack up those 30 hour bricks, and pretty soon you've taken away all the free time of the Senate to do any work. You do that 200 times as they did recently, 6,000 hours of Senate time gone, that's some pretty serious blockading. So that needs to be taken away, and I think you can do it by forcing--first of all limiting the filibuster to, if you're going to filibuster the motion to proceed to the bill, you shouldn't have a second right to filibuster again on the bill itself. So I think we can restrict that. But the key thing is that whoever is filibustering, the minority party is filibustering, they should have to control the floor. They should have to be out there making their case. If I'm going to have to filibuster to defend Social Security, if I'm going to have to filibuster on climate change, I don't mind getting out there on the Senate floor and making that case, and doing it the way it should be done. These filibusters in hiding, in which they don't come out on the floor, they don't defend anything, they just block for obstruction's sake, that is not a productive parliamentary vehicle. It's simply a timewaster and makes life difficult. They should change it.

David Atkins: Do you think that you would support that reform even if Democrats find themselves in the minority?

Senator Whitehouse: Yes, I think we should. Because I think the institution of the Senate has been degraded by this new Republican filibuster strategy. I think we should reject it. And what it will require us to do if we need the filibuster, is we need to get ourselves out onto the floor. We need to stand on our desks, we need to take the time, we need to make the speeches, and think we're going to. And I think they should do that. They should be willing to when it's their turn. I'm comfortable with that, whichever way the Senate control falls.

The idea of forcing the opposition to stand on the Senate floor with an old-school filibuster has been something of a progressive consensus for some time now, so it's good to see the Senator embrace it as well even if Democrats are in the minority. But what was shocking to me was the 30 hours needed for every cloture vote. I suppose it makes sense from a certain context, but explains why nothing can get done legislatively. It's not just the gridlock. It's also the basic time constraints. The Senate is messed up beyond belief.

As far as the tax cuts for the wealthy go, the answer from the Senator was quite interesting:

Dante Atkins: If the Senate remains Democratic, do you expect Senate Democrats to hold the line on refusing to extend the Bush tax cuts for the upper income earners?

Senator Whitehouse: I very much hope that we do, and I expect that we will. I think there is a relationship between how and whether we do that, and how and whether the crisis does that. If the President draws a strong line, I think he'll have the backing of enough Democratic Senators that he won't be able to have a veto overridden. That puts him in a very strong negotiating position. And I think that he should take advantage of that, and call and ask for our support. I think if it becomes questionable whether or not the President will stick to his guns, then there are a considerable number of my colleagues, including those who might be up in 2014, who may have to take a more practical and defensive position so they're not out on this, and then undercut by a White House move later on. So I think that the support is there, but I would just have as my caveat that it has to be really clear from the White House that they're there with us, and they're not going to walk back and leave a lot of Senators exposed on a position they're not willing to hold themselves.

This is incredibly important, and one of the most overlooked problems with the Administration's near obsession with "compromise" and being the "adult in the room." Fair or not, the President will always be labeled by the opposition as its most partisan heavyweight. Think how often Democrats would excoriate Republicans in Congress who were to right of even President Bush on issues ranging from immigration to AIDS policy. No matter how far to the middle Obama hews, the Republicans will always accuse him of being a Communist.

That in turn means whenever the Administration caves and waffles, members of Congress who stood alongside the President prior to the compromised retreat are automatically marginalized as "even more liberal than Obama." Uninformed voters in midterm elections will naturally assume that they're extremists when the attack ads start rolling in. It may be that tax cuts for the wealthy are so unpopular at this point that a Senator threatened in 2014 could stand on their own two feet on it regardless of the President's position, but it certainly makes it much harder.

Finally, on Medicare and the lame duck session again:

David Atkins: Got it. One last thing. Thrilled about your answer on Social Security and thank you for all your activism on that. In terms of the other major issue which is, of course, Medicare, I guess a lot of plans have come out and I'm surprised there hasn't been more of a push for raising the caps as opposed to making earned benefit cuts. What is going on there, and what do you expect to see happen during the lame duck session?

Senator Whitehouse: Well, either in the lame duck session or assuming we do a continuing resolution in March when we have the sort of big budget discussion, I think those are issues that are going to be on the table. I'd love to raise the cap on Social Security, so that someone who is making $100 million isn't paying the same amount into Social Security as someone making $100,000. That just doesn't make to me any logical sense. If Social Security could use the support in way out years, why not get started now when it's an easier foundation to build?

I think the Medicare discussion is one that we need to grab a hold of and win. And we need to do two things: one is to point out that there's a difference between savings in the Medicare system that come from making a better healthcare system for people, and cutting people's benefits and giving them less access to the healthcare system. And there's a clear distinction between those two strategies, and the Republicans have worked very hard to blur those two, and to say that the $716 billion in savings in the Affordable Healthcare Act is actually a cut. It's not. Unless you're a big insurance company or a provider. Then maybe it's a cut to you, but it's a signal to get more efficient and deliver the care better. And to kind of get that morphed into the plan for the Republicans to take Medicare and get it turned into a voucher program is something we've got to be really, really clear on. And the last point I would make, even though this gets a little bit techy and geeky, is that there really is a huge savings potential not in Medicare per se but in our healthcare system from better healthcare delivery, more primary care, more prevention, less administrative overhead, electronic health records, paying doctors for results and keeping patients healthy rather than procedures and treating them when they're sick, that whole arena of activity is estimated to saving between $700 billion a year and $1 trillion a year in American healthcare, and that needs to be a Democratic issue. That is how you bring down the cost of Medicare and veterans' care, and TriCare, and Blue Cross and United and all of it, in a way that people in the country can see difference in their lives in better care that costs less because you're not getting sick, you're not taking drugs that react badly with each other because nobody kept track that they do react badly with each other and you prescribe both of them. I mean, that's an arena we need to put light into and we need to own. It's good policy, it's innovation, it's high tech, it's all the things that we're for.

David and Dante Atkins: Thank you.

There wasn't time to press for a follow-up on this issue or on Medicaid, but this answer was something of a dodge. Almost all the admirable provisions for healthcare efficiency that the Senator mentioned are already in the Affordable Care Act. Nor did he seem confident that cuts to Medicare would be avoided, which is almost crazy given the easy political distinction to be made with Paul Ryan and his plan for voucherizing Medicare. While the transcript doesn't reflect it, his tone seemed to indicate that he would want to avoid cuts, but that he wasn't so sure others would do the same.

Healthcare advocates know that the only way to truly keep Medicare solvent in the long run is to achieve a universal single-payer system, so that Medicare isn't constantly covering only the sickest portion of a graying population. But even without that, Medicare is solvent well beyond the next decade--and even if nothing were done at all, it's "insolvency" wouldn't collapse the program, but simply reduce benefits. So why reduce them in advance? It makes no sense except to give into conservative demands.

Ultimately, the conversation with Senator Whitehouse gave me confidence that he and other Democratic Senators would fight and win the battle over Social Security regardless of the President's wishes, and that real filibuster reform might well be in the works. But the ground is much shakier on Medicare, Medicaid and repeal of the tax cuts for the wealthy.

On Medicare and Medicaid it will take direct lobbying of Congress to prevent a Simpson-Bowles fiasco, along with an assist from intransigent Tea Partiers. On tax cuts, it seems that the most effective lobbying effort by progressive grassroots groups would be with the President to keep in him firm, so that Congress can stay firm as well.


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thereisnospoon 9/10/2012 07:30:00 AM |

Sunday, September 09, 2012

 
"Norah, you're mistaken": Pot and kettle edition

by digby

O’DONNELL: Now you’re criticizing the President for those same defense cuts you’re voting for and called a victory.

RYAN: No, no — I have to correct on you this, Norah. I voted for a mechanism that says the sequester will occur if we don’t cut $1.2 trillion in government. … We can get into this nomenclature; I voted for the Budget Control Act. But the Obama Administration proposed $478 billion in defense cuts. We don’t agree with that, our budget rejected that, and then on top of that is another $500 billion in defense cuts in the sequester.

O’DONNELL: Right. A trillion dollars in defense spending, and you voted for it!

RYAN: No, Norah. I voted for the Budget Control Act.

O’DONNELL: That included defense spending!

RYAN: Norah, you’re mistaken.

Ryan, unsurprisingly, is "fudging" here. It's what he does:

The Budget Control Act, as passed, included both the roughly $600 billion in “sequestration” cuts that will happen if there’s no compromise on the budget by December as well as the $487 billion of military-supported cuts that will take place regardless. The fact that Ryan may have wished that the bill didn’t contain said defense cuts does not absolve him of the fact that he and 201 other Republicans voted for the bill as-passed.

Moreover, Ryan’s statement after voting for the bill contained not a single word of criticism about the defense cuts. As O’Donnell correctly noted, Ryan said the bill “represents a victory for those committed to controlling government spending and growing our economy” and that “The agreement – while far from perfect – underscores the extent to which the new House majority has successfully changed Washington’s culture of spending.”

The problem is that lyin' Ryan can't reconcile his image as a hardcore fiscal hawk with the Party boy who does whatever it takes to beat the opposition. It's tripping him up all over the place.

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digby 9/09/2012 05:30:00 PM |

 
The Romney Welfare State

by digby

This morning on This Week, Krugman and Rand Paul went back and forth on Romney's "weaponized Keynesianism" and agreed that it was hypocritical. (Baby steps ...) And it's true that the Romney campaign is out there fearmongering about job losses from Obama's phantom "defense cuts."

Will Saletan at Slate wrote a story about this on Friday:

Mitt Romney has launched a flurry of new TV ads explaining how he’ll protect and create jobs: more government spending.

The ads, available on Romney’s YouTube channel, are tailored to eight swing states. The one running in Virginia, near me, says: “Here in Virginia, we’re not better off under President Obama. His defense cuts threaten over 130,000 jobs—lowering home values, putting families at risk.” Similar ads in other states complain that Obama’s reductions in military spending threaten 20,000 jobs in Colorado, 20,000 in Ohio, and “thousands more” in Florida and North Carolina.

Romney promises to save these jobs by shielding the Pentagon budget. Here’s his pitch in Virginia: “Romney’s plan? Reverse Obama defense cuts. Strengthen our military, and create over 340,000 new jobs for Virginia.”

This really takes some chutzpah coming from the "we built that" people. You can parse it a number of ways and I'm sure they'll say they aren't promising to create 340,000 new defense jobs, but you can forgive voters for thinking that's what he's saying.

Romney has been talking up the military and the defense industry as an employment haven for weeks. On Aug. 14, he warned that looming defense cuts would “threaten 150,000 defense-related jobs” in Virginia. A week later, his new running mate, Paul Ryan, declared that the cuts “could put almost 44,000 jobs at stake right here in Pennsylvania. We're not going to let that happen.” In North Carolina, Ryan said he and Romney opposed the cuts because “we don't want to trade small-business jobs for military jobs. We want more jobs across the board.” And last week, Romney protested that under the cuts, “up to 1.5 million jobs could be lost. GDP growth could fall significantly.”

For the most part, the cuts to which Romney has objected are automatic. It’s perfectly sensible to argue that military spending should be reduced instead in a more targeted, deliberate way. But Romney doesn’t propose such targeted reduction. He rejects it. In last week’s speech, he pledged:

The Obama administration is set to cut defense spending by nearly a trillion dollars. My administration will not. Working together with my running mate, Paul Ryan, I will make reductions in other areas and install pro-growth policies to make sure that our country remains safe and secure. There are plenty of places to cut in a federal budget that now totals well over $3 trillion a year, but defense is not one of them.

In an interview with Fortune last month, Romney said he would use any savings in the Pentagon budget not to reduce the deficit but “to increase the number of active-duty personnel by approximately 100,000, to restore our military equipment which has been destroyed in conflict, and to invest in the coming technologies of warfare.” What’s more, in his 2012 budget proposal, Ryan allocated more money for defense than the Pentagon requested, arguing, “We don’t think the generals are giving us their true advice.”

Earlier I mused about the possibility that the GOP will become dovish in Obama's second term and wondered how anti-war lefties might leverage that if it came to pass. My reasoning wasn't based on any illusions that the Republicans were reverting to their old pre-commie isolationism, but rather partisan advantage. I think this proves it.

The Democrats are very competent stewards of the Authoritarian National Security States and some of them show a real flare for the creepiest covert stuff. But they are still amateurs in comparison to the GOP. Ostentatious, aggressive Military hegemony is absolutely central to their plans, economically as well as philosophically. What a choice.

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digby 9/09/2012 04:00:00 PM |

 
The Medicare Strategy

by digby

This is an interesting analysis of Romney's Medicare campaign advertising from Alex Koppelman:

I disagree with this a bit, actually. It is true that they are using this gambit but I think it has little to do with Ryan. In fact, I would imagine they were always planning this ad blitz. After all, it worked very well for them in 2010:

No, they know very well that their only growing demographic is senior citizens and the best wedge they have is those cuts to Medicare providers in Obamacare. This was always the plan.

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digby 9/09/2012 02:00:00 PM |

 
QOTD: Mittens

by digby

Clear as mud:

On NBC’s “Meet The Press,” Romney dodged multiple questions about which deductions or credits he’d target, saying only that he’ll get rid of “some of the loopholes and deductions at the high end” while seeking to “lower the burden on middle income people.”

Pressed for one specific example, Romney replied, “Well, the specifics are these which is those principles I described are the heart of my policy.”

Is it possible that Mitt was just a figurehead at Bain? Because he just doesn't seem like he kind of guy who put together complicated deals to me.

Anyway, both campaigns are being somewhat cutesy about what "loopholes" they'd end, but there are substantial differences on this issue:

Individual income tax rates: They are currently 10%, 15%, 25%, 33%, and 35%. Those rates are scheduled to expire at the end of the year and higher rates will take their place. The increases would affect those who report wage and business income on individual returns.

Obama: Would make those Bush-era tax rates permanent for everyone except those making more than $200,000 ($250,000 if married). For those high-income households, Obama would preserve the Bush tax rates at the low end (10%, 15% and 25%) but raise the top two rates to 36% and 39.6%.
Romney: Would reduce each of the Bush-era income tax rates by 20%. So the top rate would fall to 28% and the bottom rate would fall to 8%.
Romney would also like to repeal the new health reform law. If he succeeds, that would mean a repeal of the 0.9 percentage point increase in the Medicare tax on high-income households called for under that law. (Watch video: Romney's economic plan in 90 seconds)

Alternative Minimum Tax: Currently, unless Congress makes special adjustments for inflation to the amount of income exempt from the AMT, the so-called wealth tax would hit tens of millions in the middle class. Making the adjustment is costly; getting rid of the AMT altogether is really costly.

Obama: Would permanently adjust the AMT for inflation.
Romney: Would abolish the AMT.

Investment income tax rates: Long-term capital gains and qualified dividends are currently taxed at 15%. Interest is subject to ordinary income tax rates. For those at or below the 15% income tax bracket, however, they have a 0% capital gains and dividend rate.

Obama: Would raise the capital gains rate to 20% and tax dividends at ordinary income tax rates for those making more than $200,000 ($250,000 if married).
Romney: Would maintain the current 15% investment income tax rate, but exempt from taxation all capital gains, dividends and interest for those with adjusted gross incomes up to $100,000 ($200,000 for married couples).
Given that Romney has said he would like to repeal the new health reform law, if he succeeds in doing so, that would result in the repeal of the new 3.8% Medicare tax on investment income for high-income households, which the health reform law created. The new tax is scheduled to go into effect for the first time in 2013.

Carried interest tax rate: Managers of private equity, venture capital and hedge funds are taxed at 15% on the portion of their compensation known as carried interest -- which represents a share of the profits from the funds they manage.
Obama: Would tax carried interest as ordinary income, meaning rates for fund managers would more than double.
Romney: In the past has said the rate should not be raised. But during this campaign cycle, Romney's advisers have left open the possibility that he'd consider increasing the rate.

Tax breaks: Tax credits, deductions and other breaks reduce revenue by more than $1 trillion every year. To pay for lower income tax rates and reduce deficits, many breaks -- including the largest and most popular -- have to be eliminated or curtailed, experts say.

Obama: Has proposed limiting the value of itemized deductions and other tax breaks such as exclusions for those with adjusted gross income over $200,000. Today, many filers in that group can deduct 33% or 35% of a qualified expense. Obama would limit that to 28%. Obama also has proposed making permanent some expanded tax breaks for the middle class, such as one for college costs.
Romney: Has failed to specify which tax breaks he'd eliminate or reduce to help pay for his proposed tax cuts. He has suggested that he would limit them for high-income filers, but has offered no details. Economist Martin Feldstein, a Romney campaign adviser, noted in a recent Wall Street Journal editorial that he would keep all deductions but limit their value to a small percentage of a taxpayer's adjusted gross income.

Estate tax: Until the end of this year, only estates valued at more than $5.12 million are subject to an estate tax up to a 35% top rate. Barring congressional action, all estates worth more than $1 million will be subject to the estate tax at a top rate of 55% next year.

Obama: Would reinstate the estate tax at 2009 levels -- meaning estates worth more than $3.5 million would be subject to the tax and face a top rate of 45%.
Romney: Would repeal the estate tax but preserve the gift tax rate at 35%.

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digby 9/09/2012 12:30:00 PM |

 
The illusion of substance: The Paul Ryan story

by digby

Get a load of the This Week roundtable this morning. Headache inducing:

Watch More News Videos at ABC
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2012 Presidential Election
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Watching the very, very slooow Rand Paul lecture Paul Krugman about economics is too much for me on a hot Sunday morning. "Roads don't create business success" Oy vey ...

And Cokie, Cokie ... Has there ever been a bigger font of conventional wisdom, much of it pressed into the conversation as a non-sequitor?

But this made it worth sitting through:

BOOKER: I want to attack this idea, the certainty for small businesses. This is a president who has cut taxes on small businesses 18 different times. He’s done enough to target incentives to small businesses, everything, to hire our men and women coming home in addition to the fact to giving them breaks for investment.
So I disagree with that on small business. But I think it’s more important, and I really want to call the question that Paul Ryan left wide open, is, how can you call for $5 trillion worth of tax cuts, give us no specifics?
This is Paul Ryan who used to be a man of substance, who put up plans, I may disagree with some of them, but with great levels of specificity. Now they’ve said they’re going to cut $5 trillion in taxes, increase spending in the military, and somehow not dig us into a deeper deficit budget… deficit.

ROBERTS: This is Bill Clinton and arithmetic. That was a good one.

KRUGMAN: I’m going to disagree, respectfully, he was never a man of substance. This is who he always was. That was always an illusion.

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digby 9/09/2012 11:00:00 AM |

 
Drone liberalism

by digby

This is a fascinating conversation on Chris Hayes' show about the drone war and executive secrecy:

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Scahill is very likely to be right, I think. In Obama's next term we'll be moving to what he dubbed a Clintonian "cruise missile liberalism" where there will be few to no big deployments but an increase in these precision air wars in God knows how many countries.

This isn't being discussed in the campaign of course. But if history were to repeat itself we'd see the Republicans become downright dovish in response to such a policy. Not out of any real dovishness, of course. They're naturally bloodthirsty. They take the stance for partisan advantage and a preference for traditional warfare.

Scahill points out that the Republican convention erupted in cheers when Clint Eastwood said that we should get out of Afghanistan immediately and I think that's mostly a reflexive opposition to anything Obama does. But it's also a sign that they could be going back to their stance under Clinton. That will present some very interesting short term tactical possibilities for the anti-war left.

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digby 9/09/2012 09:30:00 AM |

 
The "Don't Break Up With Me" Election

by David Atkins

There's been a great deal of kvetching--or morbid celebrating, depending on one's side of American political aisle--about the supposedly dramatic impact that jobs and unemployment will have on the election. Pundits across the spectrum are convinced that the entire election will hinge on the economic numbers and their revisions for the remaining months of the campaign.

But belief in that theory requires belief in two things: 1) that economic tallies that were basically irrelevant in shifting presidential poll numbers through the rest of this year will suddenly become relevant now, despite an extremely static and seemingly immobile electorate so far; and 2) that both the Obama and Romney campaigns and their allies are filled at the top levels with political incompetents who can't take the pulse of the American people.

Let's take a brief look at the ads the Republicans are running. The first one ends with:


"He tried. You tried. It's OK to make a change." That's interesting. The second is stranger:


"Tell us why you're breaking up with President Obama."

More tellingly, the entire RNC Convention was designed almost as a dating profile for Mitt Romney, extolling his supposed virtues as a human being, a family man, a responsible businessperson, and so on. It wasn't so much a political convention as a first date introduction.

And what of President Obama? A careful listener can hear the same message, but in reverse:

So you see, the election four years ago wasn't about me. It was about you. My fellow citizens — you were the change...

If you turn away now — if you turn away now, if you buy into the cynicism that the change we fought for isn't possible, well, change will not happen. If you give up on the idea that your voice can make a difference, then other voices will fill the void, the lobbyists and special interests, the people with the $10 million checks who are trying to buy this election and those who are trying to make it harder for you to vote, Washington politicians who want to decide who you can marry or control health care choices that women should be making for themselves. (Cheers, applause.) Only you can make sure that doesn't happen. Only you have the power to move us forward.

You know, I recognize that times have changed since I first spoke to this convention. Times have changed, and so have I. I'm no longer just a candidate. I'm the president.

That isn't so much the speech of a man seeking election to higher office as the speech of a man asking the American people to focus not on him, so much as on their relationship and the future that they committed to, if only they will persevere in the relationship.

Trained focus group moderators have enough experience taking answers in focus groups and crafting nuanced messaging conclusions from them that it's not difficult for us to watch advertisements and work backward from them to guess what respondents had said in the research environment.

In this case it barely takes training. It's quite clear that both campaigns understand that this election isn't being driven by facts, figures or economic data. The American people understand that the economy is doing poorly for most working people. Another set of poor numbers won't change that any more than a set of good numbers will.

Especially for persuadable voters in swing states, both campaigns know that this is a purely emotional moment for voters. Voters like the President on a personal level more than they like the job he's doing. They understand that the bad economy is much more George Bush's fault than Obama's. Voters feel like they made a commitment to the President to see things through to recovery. They're irritated by the slow pace of progress and change, but feel guilty for thinking of throwing away the commitment they've made. And they wonder if the other suitor is worth leaving Obama for, and the heartbreak that would entail.

The Romney campaign understands this: it cannot hit the President too hard, or voters who like Obama personally and still feel this "relationship" with him will themselves be insulted. That's why the campaign itself and Karl Rove are softpedaling their attacks. But they can't control their surrogates and the angry hysteria of their conservative media empire and its rabid base. That in turn is damaging Mitt Romney's chances of wooing persuadable voters. More than that, Mitt Romney's message of "you're on your own" isn't exactly a warm, fuzzy or likeable start for a man attempting to win the heart of a person in a teetering but committed relationship. It's a trap from which Romney and his team have a difficult time escaping, and it shows.

The Obama campaign, meanwhile, knows that to preserve the President's station requires reminding the American people of the commitment they have made not just to him but to one another. It's a message that ties in naturally with progressive economic and social values, and it's a message that unites and binds voters against the predation of the other side's heartless Lotharios.

None of this has much at all to do with specific policies or tidbits on the news.

All elections are driven more by emotion than by reason. They are almost always about values, likeability and relationships. This one just happens to be very personal. On Facebook it might be called "complicated." But that complexity has little to do with to do with facts and figures.

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thereisnospoon 9/09/2012 07:30:00 AM |

Saturday, September 08, 2012

 
Saturday Night at the Movies


Postcards from the dreamtime: Samsara

By Dennis Hartley

Though the Christian view of the world has paled for many people, the symbolic treasure-rooms of the East are still full of marvels that can nourish for a long time to come the passion for show and new clothes. What is more, these images — be they Christian or Buddhist or what you will — are lovely, mysterious, and richly intuitive.-Carl Jung

In 1982, an innovative, genre-defying film called Koyaanisqatsi quietly made its way around the art house circuit. The piece (directed by Godfrey Reggio, photographed by Ron Fricke and scored by Philip Glass) was generally received as a transcendent experience by admirers and dismissed as New Age hokum by detractors. The title is taken from the ancient Hopi language, and describes a state of “life out of balance”. There are likely as many interpretations of what it’s “about” as there are people who have viewed it; if I had to make a generalization, I’d say it’s about technology vs. nature. Reggio followed up in 1988 with Powaqqatsi (a more political entry illustrating Third/First World disparity) and the slick yet curiously uninvolving Naqoyqatsi in 2002.

Cinematographer Fricke has since become a director in his own right; most notably with his 1985 IMAX short Chronos , and the 1992 theatrical length feature Baraka. The latter film is frequently mentioned in the same breath as Koyannisqatsi; while it shares some themes and (obviously) a very similar visual aesthetic, Baraka stands on its own. The title is a Sufi term that roughly translates to “a blessing”, and indeed, this globe-trotting cultural/anthropological journey was more pan-spiritual in nature than Reggio’s film; proving that Fricke had his own unique vision. Taken as a whole, all of the aforementioned films form a subgenre I have dubbed the “Jungian travelogue”; a narrative-free collage of mesmerizing and thought-provoking imagery (natural and man-made) that jacks the viewer directly into humankind’s collective unconscious (or…not).

For those familiar with the director’s oeuvre, Fricke’s latest film, Samsara (currently in limited release) may initially unfold like a “greatest hits” collection of somewhat familiar imagery. Languidly paced scenes of Buddhist rituals? Check. Joshua trees silhouetted against a time-lapsed night sky? Check. Hyper-accelerated time-lapse sequences mirroring the dizzying pace of a mindless consumerist society going nowhere fast? Check. And so on. The title is a Sanskrit term signifying “the ever turning wheel of life”. And appropriately, Fricke plays “pick up stix” with the spokes (in a manner of speaking), leaving it up to each individual viewer to reinvent their own wheel, as it were. In other words, if you just “turn off your mind, relax and float downstream” (as a great English poet advised) there is as much here for a thinking person to ponder as there is to savor.

Or, if you prefer to enjoy it on aesthetic terms, I think the film (much like its predecessors) works just fine as pure cinema; a visual tone poem that intoxicates all the senses. Be forewarned, however, that it isn’t all soothing images (animal lovers in particular should be advised that there are scenes filmed in a Chinese poultry processing plant that are potentially upsetting). If you have an opportunity to catch it on the big screen, I would highly recommend you do so; this is one of the most beautiful looking films of 2012. Interestingly, it was shot in 70mm, but the 65mm negative was scanned to DCP, enabling exhibitors to project it in a hi-res 4k format. The results are quite stunning.

And again, don’t feel pressured to “connect the dots”, because there will not be a pop quiz afterwards. At the end of the day, whether you interpret the film as a deep treatise on the cyclic nature of the Omniverse, or see it merely as an assemblage of pretty pictures, doesn’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. I think the director drops us a clue early on in the film, as we observe a group of Buddhist monks painstakingly creating a sand mandala (it must take days to complete). At the very end of the film, we revisit the artists, who now sit in silent contemplation of their lovely creation. This (literal) Moment of Zen turns out to be the preface to the monks’ next project-the ritualistic de-construction of the painting (which I assume must take an equal amount of time). And yes, it is a very simple metaphor for the transitory nature of beauty, life, the universe and everything. But, as they say, there’s beauty in simplicity. Take the wheel, for example…

Previous posts with related themes:
Surviving Progress
The Tree of Life
Alamar

Saturday Night at the Movies review archive
Dennis Hartley 9/08/2012 05:00:00 PM |

 
They're cousins, identical cousins

by digby

Nobody puts it in perspective like Colbert:

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

But you can't deny this either:

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

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digby 9/08/2012 02:30:00 PM |

 
The dueling appeals to the white working class

by digby

Ed Kilgore gets to something I had only vaguely understood about this election. Both sides are making essentially populist appeals: the Republicans are blaming the all-powerful government for our woes and the Democrats are blaming the rapacious 1%. Kilgore discusses the strategic thinking of both sides in depth, which basically comes down to appealing to white working class voters.

But I think this is even more interesting:

Beyond these fairly obvious if sometimes underestimated aspects of the general election campaign, there’s something about the competing appeals to the middle class that’s more of a simple identity test: it gets to competing understandings of who created the economic mess in the first place.

By that I don’t just mean “Barack Obama” or “George W. Bush,” but the people they are thought to represent. Because it is axiomatic to progressives that the housing and financial crises and the Great Recession that ensued were mainly the product of an underregulated Wall Street drunk on debt and greed, they sometimes fail to understand or remember that to most of the conservative movement, it’s equally axiomatic that those people abetted by socialist politicians and government-dependent, rent-seeking bankers were at fault.

This was, lest we forget, the master narrative at the heart of the Tea Party Movement from the very beginning (as dramatized by its original cri de couer, the Santelli Rant): the Alinsky Coalition of irresponsible poor and minority folk, given official advantages by the Community Reinvestment Act and egged on by ACORN and Freddie/Fannie, created a housing bubble that predictably burst and then demanded “relief” in the form of government bailouts and handouts coming right out of the pockets of virtuous white folk (many older people with paid-off mortgages) who saw their wealth dissipating, their tax liabilities (it’s a myth, but many believe it fiercely) going up, and their children and grandchildren losing opportunity. The fact that many serious conservatives are willing to apportion part of the blame to George W. Bush and/or to the banks saved by TARP shouldn’t obscure the fact that the main blame is fixed on those people and their political representatives. Indeed, Bush and the banks are objects of right-wing fury precisely because they cooperated with the poor/minority/socialist shakedown game, or at least did little to fight it.

So the “kick down” efforts of the GOP are not just based on mischaracterizations of Obama’s record as part of the obsessive drive to make the election a “referendum” on the last four years, but also on the powerful beliefs of conservative activists about the period prior to 2009. Because these beliefs are not that widely shared beyond Tea Folk circles, Republicans are vulnerable to the very counter-argument Democrats are seeking to make: we know wealthy predators like Romney and the people financing his campaign are to be feared and avoided because they got us into this mess in the first place. And so the GOP appeal to “kick-down” class resentment has had to get cruder and more racial as the campaign has proceeded, with Obamacare and “gutting welfare reform” presented as a new threat to white middle-class families, even as they represent continuations of the assault on America building for years to the “base.” That’s one reason GOP efforts to half-heartedly suggest they think Obama is feckless rather than evil are not very convincing: to big elements of “the base,” the terrible things he’s done since taking office are exactly what they expected, and will be read into everything he says and does whether or not it makes sense to the non-initiated.

I think he's right. There are a lot of people who may want to believe that the economic crisis wasn't caused by those nice rich bankers in New York but rather those dangerous you-know-whats buying houses and then getting on welfare. But there aren't enough of them. Not even in America.

The Republicans made a mistake with their "job creators" nonsense. Yes, it's a way to excuse their throwback policies so maybe they had no choice. But in an epic economic downturn only the stupidest people would believe that rich people are the victims. If Obama weren't the first black president, they wouldn't even be in contention with that ridiculous argument.


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digby 9/08/2012 01:00:00 PM |

 

Romneylies

by digby

If it's Saturday, it must be time for another Romney campaign lie. John Aravosis caught this little bit of everyday mendacity:





I love the fact that the guy who did this is director of special projects and won an award for twitter.

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digby 9/08/2012 11:30:00 AM |

 
Depraved Moral Authority

by digby

What a horrible story to wake up to:

On the surface, the Rev. Shawn Ratigan was just the kind of dynamic new priest that any Roman Catholic bishop would have been happy to put in a parish. He rode a motorcycle, organized summer mission trips to Guatemala and joined Bishop Robert W. Finn and dozens of students on a bus trek to Washington for the “March for Life,” a big annual anti-abortion rally.

But in December 2010, Bishop Finn got some disturbing news: Father Ratigan had just tried to commit suicide by running his motorcycle in a closed garage. The day before, a computer technician had discovered sexually explicit photographs of young girls on Father Ratigan’s laptop, including one of a toddler with her diaper pulled away to expose her genitals.

The decisions that Bishop Finn and his second-in-command in the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, Msgr. Robert Murphy, made about Father Ratigan over the next five months ultimately led to the conviction of the bishop in circuit court on Thursday on one misdemeanor count of failing to report suspected child abuse. It was the first time a Catholic bishop in the United States had been held accountable in criminal court in the nearly three decades since the priest sexual abuse scandals first came to light.

Look at those three paragraphs. The depraved irony of some pedophile organizing a student "march for life" is too much to bear. In the next paragraph we find out that the priest was molesting babies, which makes his anti-abortion stance even more depraved. And then finally we find out that the church authority covered it up, which is even more depraved.

I just don't know what to say about this anymore. Whenever I see the Catholic Church hierarchy strong arming the government and issuing moral edicts, I just want to scream.

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digby 9/08/2012 10:00:00 AM |

 
If rhetoric doesn't matter, then this doesn't matter either

by David Atkins

It looks like the President won the ratings competition:

President Barack Obama can beat rival Mitt Romney as a television draw, but can't eclipse his old self.

The Nielsen company said 35.7 million people watched the final night of the Democratic convention on Thursday between 10 and 11 p.m. Eastern time. That's when the president delivered his nomination acceptance speech.

Last week, Mitt Romney had 30.3 million viewers for his speech at the GOP convention, with an assist from Clint Eastwood.

And it looks like the President is getting a serious boost in his personal approval rating as well.

I guess none of that matters if the bully pulpit and soapbox are irrelevant to policy and elections. But something tells me the people who say that are wrong.

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thereisnospoon 9/08/2012 08:13:00 AM |

Friday, September 07, 2012

 
Let's not let the wingnuts own the constitution

by digby

If you don't lay claim to the constitution, they will:

Last week, the Republican Party released a party platform which treats the Constitution as if it were a manifesto composed by Paul Ryan himself. The GOP platform would declare Medicaid unconstitutional. It inflates the Second Amendment into a license to obtain weapons of mass murder. It lavishes love on Citizens United, hates on Roe v. Wade, and tells gay Americans they can forget about that whole “equal protection of the laws” thing. Oh, and just in case there are any judges out there who can tell the difference between the Constitution and a Tea Party pamphlet, the GOP platform floats impeachment as the solution. Altogether, the GOP platform devotes six pages to its abomination of the Constitution.

The Democratic platform, by contrast, mentions the Constitution by name just five times — once to endorse a constitutional amendment permitting campaign finance reform, twice to tout the party’s support of faith-based initiatives, once to promise judicial appointees who show “faithfulness to our law and our Constitution,” and once to state that our homeland security policy “must always be in line with our Constitution.”

Where the GOP platform lays out a comprehensive rewrite of America’s most important document, casting aside the founders’ vision for a meaner society in which powerful interest groups can flourish, the Democratic platform barely mentions the document at all — and when it does it normally only does so in passing.

That's not good. I don't much care if they failed to drop God's name all over the place since that's really not appropriate for civic life, but like it or not, the constitution is our secular "sacred" text and if the Democrats don't tie their values and their principles to it, the other side will. And since they've already got the Bible and Atlas Shrugged they'll hit the trifecta.

It's nice that we have "This Land is Your Land" and George Clooney. But we should at least grab the Bill of Rights. After all, liberals tend to want to protect all it, not just the 2nd Amendment.

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digby 9/07/2012 05:00:00 PM |

 
Fact Check please

by digby

The AP has got to stop putting interns on its Fact Check desk. It's getting embarrassing:

"The idea of taking war savings to pay for other programs is budgetary sleight of hand, given that the wars were paid for with increased debt. Obama can essentially 'pay down our debt,' as he said, by borrowing less now that war is ending. But he still must borrow to do the extra "nation-building" he envisions."

Dean Baker responds:

There is not much sleight of hand here. President Obama is working off a baseline set by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) that assumes war spending continues over the next decade. If he doesn't intend to continue this spending then he is freeing up money relative to this baseline. AP may not like this method of scoring, but it is absolutely standard in Washington policy debates. Changes are measured against a baseline. President Obama is just doing exactly what figures in both parties routinely do in discussing the budget. It would be more appropriate to make its complaint against CBO than against President Obama's speech.

There are a bunch of similarly bizarre complaints, which Baker handily dispatches. But this "check" on Biden is really weird:

"What they didn't tell you is that the plan they've put down on paper would immediately cut benefits to more than 30 million seniors already on Medicare."

AP responds:

"THE FACTS: Biden wasn't referring to any Medicare plan of Romney or running mate Paul Ryan, but to the consequences of fully repealing Obama's health care law"

Yes, and? He didn't say it was their "medicare plan" although that's literalist nonsense. He said they've put it on paper and they have. And they say it every single day over and over again. Why is this even controversial? As Baker says:

If it is not their intention to eliminate the benefits in this law for people currently receiving Medicare then they would presumably be able to say something like:

"we will repeal Obama's health care law, except for the benefits that it provides seniors already on Medicare."

Romney and Ryan have not ever said anything like this, therefore it is reasonable for Biden and others to assume that their plan is to eliminate these benefits for seniors.

Sheesh.

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digby 9/07/2012 03:30:00 PM |

 
"It could have been worse"

by digby

ICYMI: The Daily Show does an Obama Campaign Video, narrated by Larry David:

The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

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digby 9/07/2012 02:00:00 PM |

 
I know you're Honey Boo Boo, but what am I?

by digby

I don't know why I'm bothering, but this story isn't complete:

Fox, in their haste to make President Clinton look less influential than a former Toddlers and Tiaras contestant, got the story completely wrong. In fact, Clinton's convention speech drew 25.1 million viewers across the seven networks that carried his speech. By contrast, Honey Boo Boo drew 2.4 million viewers. Only if you compare Honey Boo Boo's ratings with Clinton's ratings among the 18-49 demographic on one cable news network, CNN, did the two tie each other.

The total numbers for the evening as provided by Nielsen showed that not only did total coverage on all networks for Clinton far surpass the ratings for Honey Boo Boo as well as the ratings for Paul Ryan's speech from the same night of the week during the Republican National Convention, they also beat the ratings for the second half of the opening game in the NFL regular season.

Now, the reason they're doing this --- aside from the fact that everyone wants to say the words "Honey Boo Boo" -- is because last week a bunch of people went around saying exactly the same thing about the Republican convention.


Now, those articles all make clear that it's in the 18-49 demographic while Fox elides that entirely, but the headlines don't.

So, we have people who read the Huffington Post believing that Honey Boo Boo beat out the RNC and people who watch Fox believe that Honey Boo Boo beat out the DNC. And this is partly why people believe we live in alternate realities half the time.

The obvious fact is that way more humans watched both conventions than watched Honey Boo Boo in that time slot. The bigger question is why would anyone would believe otherwise? It makes no sense.

And I say this as someone who has watched Here Comes Honey Boo Boo and kind of enjoyed it. They all seem to be laughing at the audience as much as the audience is laughing at them. Which is more than I can say about the political networks.


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digby 9/07/2012 12:30:00 PM |

 
Romney doesn't understand his base

by digby

This is incredibly lame, even with the softball question:

I honestly can't see why average (non-nuts) Republicans could ever vote for this phony. Any Republican presidential candidate who doesn't reflexively and ostentatiously genuflect before the military and loudly declare his devotion to the troops is totally inept.

Keep in mind, it's not that he won't radically increase useless defense spending. That's GOP Keynesianism and he's very likely to do it. But as a politician, if he doesn't understand that the GOP coalition is dependent upon its belief in itself as a better defender of the troops than the hippie team on the other side, then he's just too incompetent to be president.

I've never seen any Republican in the last 40 years, no matter how lame, allow the Democrats to out-Patriot him. But he did it.


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digby 9/07/2012 11:00:00 AM |

 

A Modern, Deficit-busting Republican

by digby

Andrew Sullivan parsed the president's speech as I did and agrees with my assessment. But where I'm worried, he's hopeful:

Digby worries - and I hope - that this means that Obama is prepared to put Medicare on a much more serious path to lower costs if he can win tax revenues that do not disproportionately fall on the middle class. In other words, the sentence I was waiting for:

Now, I’m still eager to reach an agreement based on the principles of my bipartisan debt commission. No party has a monopoly on wisdom. No democracy works without compromise. I want to get this done, and we can get it done.

And we can only get this done if Obama wins this one handily and the Democrats retain the Senate. The GOP is just not serious about the debt and not serious about the compromise needed to get it. Anyone calling for more tax cuts and more defense spending than even the Pentagon wants and rules out any new revenues is not a fiscal conservative. He's a modern, deficit-busting Republican

I can't say I disagree with any of that. Except I'm not a deficit-busting Republican so it doesn't make me happy.

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digby 9/07/2012 09:30:00 AM |

 
The Obama speech in full

by David Atkins

Here it is:



Digby already noted the Grand Bargain hedging we're all watching out for in the lame duck session. For now, then, I'll just note the following:

The President had a singular task tonight: take a message of hope and change, and adapt it to the reality of the struggling economy. Attack Romney while looking presidential, not punching down, and remaining statesmanlike. Show empathy without showing weakness.

And I think he accomplished those goals very well, in one of the most progressive speeches I've heard him give. It wasn't the greatest speech he's ever delivered, but that's because the message is hard and doesn't lend itself to the most soaring rhetoric.

He made it clear that the American people (and, I would argue, the citizens of the world) are in a project together, and that we can only succeed in that project if we have faith in it and in one another, without "othering" groups or allowing selfish cynicism to take hold. That's a daring message for a U.S. president.

It's also worth noting that in a convention where the words "climate change" seemed conspicuously and intentionally absent, it was the President who directly said "climate change is not a hoax" in his own speech. A low bar, to be sure, but quite interesting.

Now the key is, of course, to make sure that President's policies match his rhetoric.


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thereisnospoon 9/07/2012 07:30:00 AM |

Thursday, September 06, 2012

 
Parsing the Grand Bargain promises

by digby

There are many fine passages in Obama's speech tonight, of course. I would expect nothing less. He's great at this stuff and I'm sure he fired up the base and brought over some undecideds too.

But you had to know that I was going to look at what he said about deficits. Here's the main passage. It's very interesting. He promised not to cut the safety net in return for tax cuts:

You can choose a future where we reduce our deficit without wrecking our middle class. Independent analysis shows that my plan would cut our deficits by $4 trillion. Last summer, I worked with Republicans in Congress to cut $1 trillion in spending – because those of us who believe government can be a force for good should work harder than anyone to reform it, so that it’s leaner, more efficient, and more responsive to the American people.

I want to reform the tax code so that it’s simple, fair, and asks the wealthiest households to pay higher taxes on incomes over $250,000 – the same rate we had when Bill Clinton was president; the same rate we had when our economy created nearly 23 million new jobs, the biggest surplus in history, and a lot of millionaires to boot.

Now, I’m still eager to reach an agreement based on the principles of my bipartisan debt commission. No party has a monopoly on wisdom. No democracy works without compromise. But when Governor Romney and his allies in Congress tell us we can somehow lower our deficit by spending trillions more on new tax breaks for the wealthy – well, you do the math. I refuse to go along with that. And as long as I’m President, I never will.

I refuse to ask middle class families to give up their deductions for owning a home or raising their kids just to pay for another millionaire’s tax cut. I refuse to ask students to pay more for college; or kick children out of Head Start programs, or eliminate health insurance for millions of Americans who are poor, elderly, or disabled – all so those with the most can pay less.

And I will never turn Medicare into a voucher. No American should ever have to spend their golden years at the mercy of insurance companies. They should retire with the care and dignity they have earned. Yes, we will reform and strengthen Medicare for the long haul, but we’ll do it by reducing the cost of health care – not by asking seniors to pay thousands of dollars more. And we will keep the promise of Social Security by taking the responsible steps to strengthen it – not by turning it over to Wall Street.

There's a lot of wriggle room in there, and quite a few straw men, but if you read it literally, he specifically promised not to slash those programs in exchange for tax cuts. What he didn't do was promise not to cut those programs in exchange for tax hikes --- which is what the Democrats are seeking.

He won't agree to tax cuts for millionaires. That's a good thing. But will he agree to cuts if the Republicans agree to raise some taxes? We don't know. But we do know that David Koch's on board with that.

I'm frankly a little bit non-plussed. He named student loans, Head Start, the mortgage interest deduction which I wouldn't have thought would be on the menu. And maybe they aren't. But if the line in the sand is "no tax cuts for millionaires," all those things could theoretically be part of an agreement that raises taxes on millionaires.

Let's hope this is just paranoid and that he actually promised outright to protect all these benefits. But the construction of the sentences is strange if that's the case.

Stay tuned.

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digby 9/06/2012 08:30:00 PM |