Rep. Cantor admits extending Bush tax cuts will increase deficit

From Political Correction:

Today on MSNBC, House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) attempted to defend his party's push to preserve the Bush tax cuts, even as they fuel the huge deficits that Republicans love to rail against. While saying that the deficits are "dangerous," Cantor was reticent about the actual impact of leaving the tax cuts in place.

At one point, host Savannah Guthrie asked whether Cantor would "simply acknowledge that passing these tax cuts worsens the budget deficit problem." Cantor initially refused, saying, "Let's look at it through the prism of the working families who are seeking jobs and the small business people who are creating them." When pressed further, Cantor finally conceded that the Bush tax cuts increase deficits. "Certainly, you're going to dig the hole deeper," he said.

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Judge in VA health care reform case has financial ties to GOP attorney general bringing the case

The judge holds stocks in, and receives dividends from, a GOP campaign firm who includes among its clients the attorney general of Virginia, one of the guys behind the lawsuit the judge is ruling on. The judge issued a procedural ruling this morning, permitting the case to move ahead. Read the rest of this post...

Tea Party leery of Tea Party Caucus in the House

And that's okay, since a lot of the House is quite leery of the Teabaggers as well:

It didn’t help when one House member, whom neither Meckler nor others interviewed for this story would identify, said he felt he was taking a political risk by affiliating with the caucus and the movement.

That struck a lot of activists as “fairly patronizing,” said Andrew Ian Dodge, the Patriots state coordinator for Maine, who did not attend the conference but did participate the next day in a Patriots conference call at which Meckler and another attendee recounted the unnamed member’s trepidation.

“How is this a risk for the politicians?” said Dodge. “The tea party movement is made up of very engaged, well-informed, intelligent people. It should be the politicians’ pleasure to meet with us.”

Technically, it's not "patronizing." The House Repubs simply think you're f'g nuts. Read the rest of this post...

Lack of money hurting RNC's efforts to elect Republicans in the fall

Sad.

But comparing the RNC's 2010 finances with any year since 2002, the problems become clear. In May, CNN noted that the RNC's $12.5 million was less than a third of the amount it had on hand at the same time of either the 2002 ($47 million) or the 2006 ($44.6 million) midterm election cycle. The circumstances have all but ruled out the RNC's chances of substantially helping out the National Republican Congressional Committee, which is itself getting outfundraised by its Democratic counterpart by a ratio of nearly 2 to 1.

In addition to simply having less cash, concerns have also been raised about the RNC's ability to perform its traditional coordinating role: creating "victory centers" to support field operations and to synchronize voter identification and outreach programs for House, Senate and gubernatorial races in each state. "It's always helpful [for the RNC to coordinate]. You don't duplicate an organizational effort, or a fundraising effort, if you're on the same page," observes Republican political consultant Stuart Spencer.

"There are things the national committee does: managing voter lists and managing turnout programs, for instance," says David Norcross, a member of the Executive Committee of the Republican National Committee. He does not think the committee is so strapped for cash that it will neglect these functions. But he allows that the RNC's lack of funds might hurt its ability to provide ample support to state and local party organizations across the country. "Am I disappointed? Yes. Up in arms? No," he says.

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Paul Craig Roberts: Where did Clinton get $3,000,000 'to blow on a wedding'?

Paul Craig Roberts asks the obvious (and therefore unasked) question (h/t James Wolcott, "Let Them Eat Wedding Cake"):

The marriages of Madonna and film director Guy Ritchie, Tiger Woods and Elin Nordegren, and Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones pushed up the cost of celebrity marriages to $1.5 million.

Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes upped the ante to $2,000,000.

Now comes the politicians’s daughter as celebrity. According to news reports, Chelsea Clinton’s wedding to investment banker Mark [sic] Mezvinsky on July 31 is costing papa Bill $3,000,000. According to the London Daily Mail, the total price tag will be about $5,000,000. The additional $2,000,000 apparently is being laid off on US Taxpayers as Secret Service costs for protecting former president Clinton and foreign heads of state, such as the presidents of France and Italy and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair . . .

Before we attend to the poor political judgment of such an extravagant affair during times of economic distress, let us wonder aloud where a poor boy who became governor of Arkansas and president of the United States got such a fortune that he can blow $3,000,000 on a wedding.

The American people did not take up a collection to reward him for his service to them. Where did the money come from? Who was he really serving during his eight years in office? . . . These are not polite questions, and they are infrequently asked.

Let me add my impertinent voice. Clinton gave us NAFTA, that giant sucking sound, which sent muchos jobs abroad, then told us to retrain ourselves. For that he was named the "education president." How's that for serving Shinola and getting credit for Dutch chocolate?

As governor, he was very close to papa Tyson, the poultry king, whose chicken . . . effluent . . . was poisoning the rivers of Arkansas at the time. Tyson was a huge contributor, and Clinton was also called the "environmental president." You don't have to veer to the right to find this stuff, folks. It's everywhere you look — if you look.

It's icing on the (ahem) cake that the bride and groom are both hedge fund employees. Can you smell the Robert Rubin on those pumps and wing-tips?

Thank to Mr. Roberts for saying the obvious — and to James Wolcott for impertinently pointing us there.

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Putting marijuana on the ballot could energize Democrats to vote

A bit odd. And what a surprise, the story is coming from Ryan Grim ;-)

Putting the question of marijuana legalization on state ballots in 2012 may be one of the most effective ways for a dispirited Democratic Party to get reluctant voters out to the polls. The wild card in the coming midterms and in 2012 will be the "surge" voters -- people who were driven to the polls in 2008 through a once-in-a-generation mix of shame at the outgoing administration and hope in a new, barrier-breaking candidate. Democrats are investing millions in figuring out how to get those voters out, and the marijuana issue is getting increasing attention from political operatives.

A survey making the rounds among strategists, which has yet to be made public, indicates that pot could be just the enticement many of these voters need: Surge voters, single women under 40 and Hispanics all told America Votes pollsters that if a legalization measure were on the Colorado ballot, they'd be more likely to come out to vote. Forty-five percent of surge voters and 47 percent of single women said they'd be more interested in voting if the question was on the ballot. Most of these were energetic, with 36 and 30 percent, respectively, saying they'd be "much more interested" in coming out to vote. Roughly half said it would make no difference. For Latinos, 32 percent said they'd be "much more interested" in voting and another 12 percent said they'd be somewhat more attracted to the idea of trudging to the polls.

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Amazing photos from Afghanistan

A whole lot of them on one page. Quite a moving, and personal, look at the war. Definitely worth a look. Read the rest of this post...

Democrats doomed if they run on status quo

NOTE FROM JOHN: We're pleased to welcome Paul Hogarth to the blog. Paul will be writing for us on the main site, and on AMERICAblog gay. A little more background on Paul:

Paul Hogarth is a lawyer at the Tenderloin Housing Clinic in San Francisco, having worked there since 2000. He has a Bachelors in Political Science from UC Berkeley, and a J.D. from Golden Gate University. Paul made his first run for public office at the age of 22, when he was elected to the Berkeley Rent Stabilization Board. After one term, he moved to San Francisco where he is actively involved in local politics. In 2006, Paul was hired as the Managing Editor of Beyond Chron (http://www.beyondchron.org), a blog published by the Tenderloin Housing Clinic that was voted "Best Local Website" in 2008 by the SF Bay Guardian. He is active in the netroots (cross-posting at Daily Kos, Open Left, Huffington Post, Calitics and is now writing at AMERICAblog.) Paul was voted "Best State and Local Blogger" at the Netroots Nation conference in 2010.

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Today's latest graphic from Pollster.com, which accompanies this very insightful post on the front page of Daily Kos, illustrates nicely the predicament Democrats are in right now:



Voters are just as angry as they were in 2006 and 2008, and Democrats are gonna get screwed in 2010 because they're the "party in power." I found it a tad insulting at Netroots Nation when Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid kept on talking about how much this Congress has accomplished, because we all know what has not been accomplished.

Sure, we got health care reform - but only after Joe Lieberman's extortion killed the public option. Same with Wall Street reform. Meanwhile, we don't have climate change reform or immigration reform - and we probably won't before November.

So what to do about this election? Focus on Democrats who are running against the status quo. That means: (a) the incumbents who had our back and are in tough re-election fights, like Alan Grayson & Carol Shea-Porter, (b) more "red-to-blue" candidates who are running against Republican incumbents and (c) Democratic primary challenges. As voters continue to sour on the status quo, it's our job to make sure progressives don't go down a sinking ship. Read the rest of this post...

Obama to reaffirm Iraq withdrawal is on schedule

Hard to imagine it's really true. But the Times says it is:

By the end of this month, in accordance with the strategy Mr. Obama put in place after taking office, the American force in Iraq will have shrunk from 144,000 to just 50,000 troops. The remaining “advise and assist” brigades will officially focus on supporting and training Iraqi security forces, protecting American personnel and facilities and mounting counterterrorism operations. Those 50,000 troops are due to leave by the end of 2011.

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Dems have cash advantage for fall elections, is it enough?

From Cillizza at the Post:

In 23 out of the 30 Democratic-controlled House seats rated as tossups this fall by nonpartisan congressional handicapper Charlie Cook, the party's candidate carried a cash-on-hand edge as of the end of June. In fully one-third of those districts, the cash advantage was $900,000 or more.

The largest cash margins were enjoyed by Rep. Chet Edwards (D-Tex.), with roughly $1.7 million more on hand than Republican Bill Flores, and Rep. Tom Perriello (D-Va.), who had a $1.5 million edge over state Sen. Robert Hurt. (Worth noting: Flores and Hurt had to battle through primaries, which drained their accounts.)

Of the seven seats in which Republican candidates ended June with more cash on hand than their Democratic opponents, no incumbent is running. (The two exceptions are in Ohio, where freshman Reps. Mary Jo Kilroy and Steve Driehaus are in deep trouble.)

If you follow the former scenario, the Democrats' money edge in more than two-thirds of its most competitive seats should allow the targeted incumbents to define themselves and, more important, their opponents, in a sustained way -- traditionally a recipe for campaign success.

But if the mood of voters is such that they want change no matter what, money can become -- dare we say it! -- immaterial in some of these races. Simply being the candidate who isn't the incumbent could be all it takes.

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Monday morning Parisian open thread

Yesterday I spent a typical Parisian Sunday with a few of my French and American friends. My friend Arnaud, who works at a PR firm, took me to a late brunch at a Russian-ish tapas place in the Marais. The meal was nothing special - brunch is often better in concept in France - but we got to sit outside in this beautiful little square in low-70s weather on a sunny day.

At one point, the dog you see in the right hand side of the photo came over to greet us. We both found it cute, and typical (dogs in France are a bit like cows in India), and made appropriate cooing noises at the mutt. The owner, the guy standing up by the dog, was none too pleased with the animal. I told him, in French, not to worry, I loved dogs. He responded, yes, and she loves shit. Apparently the dog wasn't coming over to greet us, but rather had found a tasty morsel on the ground behind my seat. Such is Paris.

You'll note in the photo above that Arnaud is using a small device to pay his bill. They've had these in France for at least four or five years that I remember. They're very cool. The server sometimes even uses the device to write down your order, and then rings up each person separately at the end - the device takes, and verifies, credit cards. It's very cool. And kind of makes you wonder why they've been in France for years and I've still not seen one in the states. (We're number 1!)



From there, Arnaud went off to see a friend, and I met up with my friend Fabien at the open house our American friend Marcus was holding at his art studio. You'll remember Marcus' studio as the place I crashed at last year when I was recuperating from my eye surgery. Every Sunday, or so, Marcus holds a "salon de thé" at his studio, where people can stop by and check out the art, buy something if they like, and more generally have tea and speculos and good conversation. The window above was right across from Marcus' place - just some graffiti or something, but I thought it looked cool with the sun and shadows.



Inside Marcus' "atelier" (workshop), I found an old friend of Marcus', and new friend of mine, Donna from New York, who is studying French at the Sorbonne, in the same class in which I found myself 25+ years ago. Some Brazilian and German classmates of hers were there too. The photo above is of Marcus's desk in his studio.



Marcus is a good friend, with a good wit and a ready laugh, and also awfully photogenic. So I enjoy shooting shots of him inside his typically French apartment with those wonderfully large and reflective French windows.

After Marcus' tea, Fabien and I were going to rejoin Arnaud for a "Bal Portugais," some Portuguese dance that was taking place. But we got word around 7pm that the dance was kaput, over in only an hour and a half. So we went to Arnaud's and played pinball for a while, on the machine that Arnaud's roommate had gotten him for his birthday.



Between pinball matches, the boys, being French, had to take frequent nicotine breaks out the window. Did make for a lovely pic at least.



Finally, after were pinballed out, and the boys had enough nicotine in their blood, we went down the block, in the 11th, to some small plaza on a street where the houses and businesses were all painted different, fun colors (much like La Recoleta in Buenos Aires). You have to understand that in Paris, everything is beige. There we found two little cafe/restaurants, and sat at one while Arnaud had his dinner, and Fabien and I, having already eaten some sandwiches from the local patisserie, slowly worked on our typical evening fare of mojitos and caipirinhas as the late summer sun set on Paris, and the temperature drifted into a perfect upper 60s, as it will many a summer night.

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