Hullabaloo

Tuesday, October 02, 2012

 
CA26 debate liveblog between Julia Brownley & Tony Strickland

by David Atkins

One of the top contested districts in the country is CA26 spanning most of Ventura county, California. The race is between Republican tea party State Senator Tony Strickland, and Democratic Assemblymember Julia Brownley. The district leans slightly Democratic. Tonight Cal Lutheran University is hosting the first debate between the candidates, and I'll be liveblogging it here in a few moments...

7:03 A bunch of Republicans, one of them reeking of cologne, have occupied the front row reserved for the Press. Hilarious.

7:07 The debate is getting started a little late. Brownley and Strickland both waiting at the podia.

7:13 Moderators are Timm Herdt, Henry Duboff of Pacific Coast Business Times. So a centrist and a conservative. Balance!

7:16 Brownley: "Ventura County has a choice it hasn't had in decades...We want to protect Medicare and Social Security, and a woman's right to choose...President Obama needs a Congress that will help him expand the middle class and move the country forward." Good opening statement.

7:17 Strickland: "Are we going to leave the next generation in a better spot than what we found?" "I don't care if it's a Democratic idea or a Republican idea, if it's a good idea I'm all in." Strickland continues his fraudulent "moderate" credentials. Strickland is one of the most extreme Republicans in the California State Senate, and leader of the so-called "Taxpayers Caucus." But Strickland knows that he has to pretend to be a moderate to win.

7:20 Herdt: Both of you say your opponents are too extreme for Ventura County. What is it that makes your opponent too extreme? BROWNLEY: "Two candidates with different visions and values. Mine is to grow the economy by strengthening the middle class." Wants to protect Medicare and Social Security the way we know it. Have the wealthy pay their fair share so we can protect Medicare and Social Security. Protecting a woman's right to choose. My opponent wants to privatize and voucherize Medicare and Social Security, turn the clock back on women's rights, and cut taxes on the wealthy.

STRICKLAND: Stresses how he lived in Ventura County. Lies about her never having lived in Ventura County. Capitol Weekly rates the legislators based on their voting record. Talks up Nancy Pelosi talking Brownley into coming to the district, uses his "didn't need to use Mapquest to get here." Basically, it's an anti-SanFran, anti-Los Angeles campaign of division while claiming to be a moderate.

Brownley responds as well.

7:25Duboff asks about the fiscal cliff and Simpson Bowles. Would you endorse or support something along the lines of Simpson Bowles? Duboff uses a bunch of glowing words about Simpson Bowles, in a horribly biased question.

STRICKLAND: The best way to get out of the fiscal crisis is to make sure we create jobs. Right now the economy is stagnant. The best way to get out of this fiscal mess is to grow the economy. What is being proposed in Washington is these deep defense cuts. That would have a devastating impact in Ventura County. Republicans and Democrats need to come together to fight for the military bases. Essentially, Strickland is totally dodging the question on Simpson-Bowles.

BROWNLEY: The fiscal cliff is not an option for our country. The Simpson-Bowles proposal is just a proposal. The Congress has other options at this time. I agree with Tony that it needs to be a bi-partisan effort. And at the end of the day there have to be solutions that Republicans aren't happy with and Democrats aren't happy with. But we can't balance the budget on the backs of the middle-class and seniors. We need a balanced approach. She takes an Elizabeth Warren approach to the answer, which is good. Even generals have recommended where we can make cuts to the defense budget, and Democrats and republicans can come together, but not balance the budget on the backs of the middle class, and not by hurting our seniors.

STRICKLAND: I grew up lower-middle class, and Brownley has voted for tax increases that fell broadly on the middle class.

7:31 QUESTION: How far have we come to protect ourselves from another Wall Street collapse like 2008?

BROWNLEY: I believe that the steps taken by the Administration to create and save jobs were the right thing to do. Not fast enough, but we're on the right path. The wealthy need to pay their fair share. We can't balance the budget on the backs of the middle class. The stock market has improved. Our employment numbers have improved slightly. It's going in the right direction and we're looking toward a greater economic recovery.

STRICKLAND: I would have opposed the stimulus program. Now our grandkids will pay for our overspending. Promotes the overseas jobs tax repatriation idea. If you want unemployment to go below 8%, that's how you do it, with private sector solutions.

BROWNLEY: The choice is whether we're going to grow the middle class. The failed economics of the Bush era of trickle-down economics haven't worked, and we need to expand the middle class.

7:35 HERDT: Please explain why you believe your opponent's position would cut Medicare:

STRICKLAND: I signed a Medicare protection pledge, and oppose the Ryan plan. Brownley supports the Nancy Pelosi healthcare act. Strickland has the Republican talking points down. As if cuts to MEdicare Advantage providers amounts to Medicare cuts. It doesn't, of course.

BrOWNLEY: You support privatizing Medicare for those under 50. Democrats and Republicans in Washington both scored a $716 million savings. But Democrats closed the doughnut hole and increased funding for seniors presecription, and extends Medicare through 2024. We also have the Affordable Care Act, so that we have all the advantages it affords us, no caps, no pre-existing conditions. The Republicans did it to give tax relief to the wealthy and that's where it goes. We do preventive care and extend the life of Medicare for 8 years.

STRICKLAND: I have a history of voting different from my party. I oppose the Ryan plan. We need to preserve and protect Medicare. I don't support vouchers. I said for 40 or 30, we need to contribute a little more. My Mom would kill me if I touched Medicare.

BROWNLEY: You praised Paul Ryan for thinking up ways to change Medicare. You founded the California Club for Growth. I don't know what your plan is to save MEdicare. But I'm going to protect Medicare for today's seniors and tomorrow's as we know it.

7:41Question about alternative energy.
BROWNLEY: I would be supportive of anything that helps to leverage those kinds of alternative energy. I would look honestly at oil subsides. We should move to alternatives.

STRICKLAND: I‘ve always been fighting in Sacramento for renewable energy. We should pass the Keystone Pipeline. Now we’re buying oil from Hugo Chavez. Fails to mention oil is sold on a global market.

7:46 Dream Act and immigration question.

STRICKLAND: We wouldn't need the Dream Act if we had a sensible immigration policy. Attacks the system of bringing immigrants in for education then go back to their home countries. I want to be part of the solution, not part of the problem.

BROWNLEY: I authored California Dream Act legislation. I support Obama's approach to this. It's very important for young people who have come here by no fault of their own.

7:50 Both candidates talk about the need to keep the naval base in Ventura County. Strickland jumps on Brownley for saying that the closure isn't an imminent threat. She's right. It isn't. But Strickland will demagogue it anyway.

7:55 Duboff: What will you do to encourage individuals to take the jump into entrepreneurship and how will you reward those risk-takers? What a load of crock question. The problem isn't rewarding risk-takers. The problem is reducing the risk so that people will actually dare take the leap.

STRICKLAND: I passed a bill with Senator Padilla to offer a manufacturing jobs tax credit. People are having a tough time getting access to credit. We have too many regulations. We need to cut red tape, look at the tax structure. Manufacturing and small business, I'll be a champion in Washington.

BROWNLEY: Small business is the backbone of the economy. One thing we need to do is get healthcare costs under control. We need tax credits for startups, small business needs access to capital. Big banks were bailed out, but aren't giving loans to small business. We have to continue to create incentives for small business.

STRICKLAND: Small business owners don't like the "Pelosi healthcare act."

BROWNLEY: I just had a talk with a small business owner who said we need more money in the hands of the middle class. If we expand the middle class, they'll have customers to buy those goods and services.

8:00 QUESTION: If elected to Congress, you would represent the nation. Your advice on foreign policy would be relevant. With regard to the Israeli contention that Iran is on a path to making a nuclear weapon, what is your response?

BROWNLEY: We must be vigilant to prevent proliferation. A nuclear Iran would present a serious threat to Israel, and we cannot let that happen. We are 30 days from a presidential election, and we shouldn't be politicizing an issue as serious as this. I take my job seriously, I do my reserach, I learn the issues before I cast a vote. This is something we have to approach very carefully, but nuclear proliferation is not an issue. I support Israel unequivocally. I have a long track record to demonstrate that kind of support. But by drawing a red line, we should be careful about politicizing that. All options need to be on the table. But at the end of the day, we have to be ever so vigilant in preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

STRICKLAND: Sadly both the past two Administrations waited too long in implementing sanctions. We must do everything we can to prevent Iran from using nuclear weapons. I have a long track record of supporting Israel. We need to do whatever we have to, to prevent this from happening. If Iran gets nukes, it will threaten not only Israel, but us at home.

BROWNLEY: I think it's very very important on these foreign policy issues, that Democrats andRepublicans need to stick together on these issues. We have to continue that bipartisanship.

STRIckLAND: On a bipartisan level, we missed the boat. They're closer every day that goes by.

8:05 Would you vote for the Defense of Marriage Act?

STRICKLAND: I support marriage between a man and a woman. Dodges the question like a coward.

BROWNLEY: I support the repeal of DOMA. And I strongly support the LGBT community and the right for same sex couples to marry. It's a civil rights issue. I'm pleased the Obama Administration has taken necessary steps. I support gay marriage 100% (ugh, "marriage equality!"). Benefits differences is all the reason we must repeal DOMA.

Favorite Supreme Court Justice?

STRICKLAND: I would have said Roberts before the healthcare decision. Now I would say Clarence Thomas, or still Roberts.

BROWNLEY: Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

STRICKLAND: Upon reflection, I would say Alito. (!!!! Keep digging, Tony.)

Both candidates wax on about earmarks. Local funding is good, says Brownley. Same, but legislators have to put their names on it, says Strickland.

What about student debt?

BROWNLEY: Higher education is extremely important. California has superior higher education. Investment in science and research couldn't be more important. The research on renewable energies and other new technologies are the backbone of California's economy. Education creates opportunity and prosperity. It also creates wealth with a state, county and country. Students should have access to federal grants, Pell grants.

STRICKLAND: Wants to cut Administrator salaries. We need to put a feeder into good-paying jobs that work with your hands, community colleges, invest in those jobs as well. And we're behind in math and science. We've done a good job with our public universities as well.

BROWNLEY: You can't give tax breaks to the millionaires and billionaires and halve the investment that we put into our higher education systems. You can't have it both ways. I believe again that the wealthy have to pay their fair share and expand the middle class, providing opportunities for college students and middle class families so that our next generation can have the same opportunities that the next generation was afforded.

STRICKLAND: We can't build a high-speed rail initiative, and then reach for more money from families.

What are you reading these days?

BROWNLEY: Last book I read was "Thoughts before dying."

STRICKLAND: "Strong fathers, Strong daughters." Strickland is good at the personal schmooze and storytelling.

Question: Let's talk about taxes. What does fair share mean? What should the highest level of income tax rate should be?

BROWNLEY: I think everyone has to pay their fair share of taxes. I'm not sure exactly where the right balance is. But I know that in today's economy we need to grow our economy and I believe that extending the tax cuts for the wealthy isn't going to help us and assist us in getting out of the stranglehold we are in. We need tax relief. No question we need to study our tax system and go over line item by line item where the loopholes are. But what I hear from the Ryan plan and Romney plan is that we're going to give tax cuts to the rich while eliminating deductions for the middle class. I'm not a tax expert, but if I go to Congress, you will seriously believe that I will study and be prepared.

Herdt: 35%? What number should it be?

BROWNLEY: I don't know what the number should be. But when the wealthy can use tax deductions to pay 10% or 12%, that's not right. (Brownley needs to study up on this. The easy answer is that we should go back to the tax rates on the wealthy that drove so much of our economic growth under Clinton or Ronald Reagan. Easy, easy answer and should have come prepared with it.)

STRIcKLAND: 35% is much too high. We need to simplify the tax code. The death tax isn't right. Strickland voted for a broad-based tax increase on the sales tax. People should keep more of what they earned.

BROWNLEY: I think a lot of what Tony stays isn't true. It's been very difficult to balance California's budget. We need a more balanced approach. When we're cutting child care and healthcare and higher education, we need to take a more balanced appraoch. We too need to get an economic stimulus going, we have not been able to take a more balanced approach to this because Tony and others have signed the Grover Norquist pledge, and when you signed a pledge and you're not able to come to the table, that's the wrong way to approach it. We have to be responsible and reasonable about the budget, but we need to simultaneously balance budgets and grow our economy. You have to do that very carefully, and in a bipartisan way. And Democrats and Republicans would walk away with things they didn't like.

STRICKLAND: California already has the 3rd highest tax rate in the nation. California government should live within its means.

CLOSING STATEMENTS:

STRICKLAND: I grew up in Ventura County, want to solve problems, but if I go to Washington will never forget where I grew up and why I'm there.

BROWNLEY: Strickland wants to go back to the failed policies of the past. Wants to take away a woman's right to choose, cut programs for the middle class and education to provide tax breaks for the wealthy. We need to protect Medicare and Social Security. And for the many people who have succeeded and done well, they too should pay their fair share so the middle class can thrive.

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thereisnospoon 10/02/2012 07:03:00 PM

 
Conservatives will fight for your freedom --- to starve

by digby

I've been wondering where all those conservative alleged protectors of individual rights have been as institutions claimed the Bill of Right for themselves. And I haven't seen many of them standing up for the individual against these claims that an employers' religious liberty trumps the religious liberty of their employees.

A judge did just that this week:

Like the many copycat lawsuits asserting similar legal claims, the plaintiffs in this suit argued that the birth control rules substantially burden their faith by requiring them to pay for employee health benefits which might then in turn be used to pay for birth control. As Judge Jackson’s opinions explains, however, this argument proves too much:

The burden of which plaintiffs complain is that funds, which plaintiffs will contribute to a group health plan, might, after a series of independent decisions by health care providers and patients covered by [an employer's health] plan, subsidize someone else’s participation in an activity that is condemned by plaintiffs’ religion. . . . [Federal religious freedom law] is a shield, not a sword. It protects individuals from substantial burdens on religious exercise that occur when the government coerces action one’s religion forbids, or forbids action one’s religion requires; it is not a means to force one’s religious practices upon others.

[It] does not protect against the slight burden on religious exercise that arises when one’s money circuitously flows to support the conduct of other free-exercise-wielding individuals who hold religious beliefs that differ from one’s own. . . .
[T]he health care plan will offend plaintiffs’ religious beliefs only if an [] employee (or covered family member) makes an independent decision to use the plan to cover counseling related to or the purchase of contraceptives. Already, [plaintiffs] pay salaries to their employees—money the employees may use to purchase contraceptives or to contribute to a religious organization. By comparison, the contribution to a health care plan has no more than a de minimus impact on the plaintiff’s religious beliefs than paying salaries and other benefits to employees.

A key insight in this opinion is that religious plaintiffs can hardly claim they refuse to provide a benefit to their employees that those employees could later use to purchase birth control, because they are already providing those employees with a benefit they can use to purchase birth control — money. An employer cannot assert a religious objection to how their employees choose to use their own benefits or their own money, because religious freedom is not a license to “force one’s religious practices upon others.”

There is a school of thought (and its quite a large one) that says employers pretty much own their employees and if the employees don't like it they can just exercise their freedom to quit. And starve. Especially if there is no safety net.

My suspicion is that the same argument will be made here: if these feminazis want to practice their witchcraft religion and whore themselves without paying the consequences, they've got the freedom to quit their jobs. (I've got their religion liberty for 'em, right here...)

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Frankly, I could see some appellate wingnut arguing that now that he's thought about it, an employer does have the right to object to how their employees use their benefits and pay. It's really the natural next step of their civil rights for corporations, religious institutions and wealthy employers movement. They shall overcome.

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digby 10/02/2012 06:00:00 PM

 
If they can't suppress the vote, maybe they can just buy it outright

by digby

Golly, I'm so old I can remember when the Republicans used to go into a fugue state and start speaking in tongues upon hearing tales of Democratic campaign organizers offering free cigarettes to homeless people to get them them to vote:

"This is just plain and simply wrong. There is a right way and a wrong way to turn out the vote in this country and handing cigarettes to homeless people in an effort to entice them to vote is as wrong as wrong can be. It raises questions as to whether similar activities are going on at other places around the country," [Ari]Fleischer said.

But hey, this is completely different:

Americans for Prosperity (AFP), the nonprofit financed by David Koch and other wealthy Republican businessmen, has spent some $31 million on anti-Obama ads since April. The group recently opened 98 Get-Out-the-Vote offices, hired some 200 field staffers and has been distributing its state-of-the-art voter-targeting technology on Samsung tablet computers to its volunteers. Now AFP is hoping to win hearts and minds with gifts of free gas.

AFP is hosting events at gas stations across the country to provide gasoline to motorists for the price of $1.84 per gallon. The group is paying for up to fifteen gallons for 100–150 drivers at each station, telling them that the $1.84 price symbolizes the price per a gallon before Obama took office in 2009.

A CBS news affiliate in Iowa reports that at least one driver, Louis Lumpkin, said that the free gas would make a difference on his vote for president.

AFP is spending about $4,000 giving away gas at every stop, and has been to stations throughout Nevada, Iowa and Michigan. Along the way, they’re earning free, largely uncritical airtime for their message and maybe some votes in swing states.

Click over to Lee Fang's article at The Nation to read all the reasons why the opil-soaked Kochs are the biggest hypocrites in history for this little gambit.

Considering how much money is out there and how willing these plutocrats are to spend it on this campaign, it's probably worth wondering how much straight up vote buying is going to happen. They're doing this in plain sight and asking for publicity. Clearly, they are not concerned about any appearance of impropriety or legal exposure. Why not go for it?


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digby 10/02/2012 04:30:00 PM

 
Democrats shouldn't clean up Republican fiscal messes

by David Atkins

Greg Sargent points out how full of shit Paul Ryan is:

But there's another moment that deserves more attention. In it, Ryan finally did get a bit more specific about the middle class deductions the Romney plan would not target to pay for its enormous tax cuts.

This makes the Romney plan’s math even harder — and more likely to explode the deficit. Here’s the key bit (at around the 5:30 mark), in which Ryan is talking about taxes on the rich:

“If you subject more of their income to taxation — more of their income is taxed — and that allows us to lower revenues for everybody across the board. That means middle class taxpayers have lower tax rates, and there’s plenty of fiscal room to keep these important preferences for middle class taxpayers — you know, like charitable donations, or buying a home, or health care. Every time we’ve done this, we’ve created economic growth.”

Ryan seems to be saying the Romney plan won’t touch the charitable deduction, mortgage interest deduction, or exclusion for health insurance enjoyed by middle class Americans. He doesn’t take them off the table officially, but he articulates that as a specific goal.

But this will make it even harder for Romney and Ryan to keep their pledge to make their plan revenue neutral. Remember, the Romney plan would cut taxes across the board by 20 percent for everyone, and would supposedly pay for those tax cuts by targeting loopholes and deductions enjoyed by the rich. But the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center found that this is not mathematically possible — to maintain the plan’s deficit neutrality, you would have to target loopholes that benefit the middle class, too, hiking their tax burden. Yet here Ryan seems to be ruling some of them out as targets.

They're just lying.

If they were telling the truth on one level, it would mean massive tax decreases on the rich, and massive tax increases on the poor and middle class. I think Republicans would like to do that. After all, they think students and seniors and the working poor are freeloaders who should pay more into the system that is already screwing them. Politically, however, they would never do it.

No, they'll just do what Republicans always do: cut taxes, balloon the deficit, and then whine and scream about the deficit when a Democrat takes office so that the Democrat will make the "starve the beast" cuts for them.

There is no reason for Democrats to cooperate with this. Since Republicans or some version of them will inevitably win the White House about half the time in our binary system, let the Republicans take responsibility for cutting the popular stuff. They're the ones who "starved the beast" in the first place. It's not our job to clean up their mess. Let them embrace Simpson-Bowles and the rest of the lemmings, and we can do things the Keynesian way.


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thereisnospoon 10/02/2012 04:08:00 PM

 
Grand Bargain BS talk 'o the day

by digby

I would probably be more worried about this latest Senate Gang of whatever, Simpson Bowles circle jerk if I thought it had the least chance of going anywhere.  This is basically the same stuff they've been saying for a while, but with a new mixture of details between triggers, downpayments and threats of new and different drop dead dates and cliffs to be hurtled over later:

First, senators would come to an agreement on a deficit reduction target — likely to be around $4 trillion over 10 years — to be reached through revenue raised by an overhaul of the tax code, savings from changes to social programs like Medicare and Social Security, and cuts to federal programs. Once the framework is approved, lawmakers would vote on expedited instructions to relevant Congressional committees to draft the details over six months to a year.

If those efforts failed, another plan would take effect, probably a close derivative of the proposal by President Obama’s fiscal commission led by Erskine B. Bowles, the Clinton White House chief of staff, and former Senator Alan K. Simpson of Wyoming, a Republican. Those recommendations included changes to Social Security, broad cuts in federal programs and actions that would lower tax rates over all but eliminate or pare enough deductions and credits to yield as much as $2 trillion in additional revenue.

If we don't do what they say today, just wait until daddy Simpson and Bowles come home!

Whatever. This is far more salient to this discussion:

On Monday, the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center released a new study estimating that if nothing is done, the expiration of all the Bush-era tax cuts would raise taxes by more than $500 billion next year alone, an average increase of $3,500 per household. Middle-income families, it said, would see taxes rise by an average of almost $2,000.

Senator Tom Udall, Democrat of New Mexico, said figures like those and forecasts anticipating a recession if nothing is done have prompted some consideration for postponing any tax increases or spending cuts for a year. But he said lawmakers want to lock in action on the deficit now.

What they "want" and what they will be able to get are two different things. Sure they want to "force" all kinds of action, but nobody agrees on what that action should be. And for my money, the only action that makes sense isn't even being discussed, so I'm happy to have them put this off and perhaps eventually put it in the trashbin.

Considering the circumstances and political environment, the best result of all this deficit fulminating we can hope for would be to postpone the tax hikes and postpone the spending cuts. And that's because the "fiscal house" is still on fire and if anyone has any sense at all they'll stop this talking about how much it's going to take to rebuild it and put the blaze out first. Or at the very least stop putting gasoline on the fire. That's pretty weak considering what really needs to be done but at least there's some basic Keynesian logic to it.

I don't know if that's what will happen. It all depends on whether the Democrats agree to take any kind of chump change the Republicans throw out there as a victory and whether the Republicans wise up and see how that would advance their own agenda. If they stay stuck, then postponing both tax hikes and spending cuts would be far better for the economy than anything else that's on the menu. It's not much, but I'd take it.


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digby 10/02/2012 01:30:00 PM

 
Sniveling billionaires: Tales of the most epic whiners in American history, Part XXIII

by digby

If you've been wondering specifically what it is that the wealth coddling, Wall Street protecting Obama has done to offend these greedhead Billionaires, here it is:

Although he voted for McCain in 2008, Cooperman was not compelled to enter the political debate until June, 2011, when he saw the President appear on TV during the debt-ceiling battle. Obama urged America’s “millionaires and billionaires” to pay their fair share, pointing out that they were doing well at a time when both the American middle class and the American federal treasury were under pressure. “If you are a wealthy C.E.O. or hedge-fund manager in America right now, your taxes are lower than they have ever been. They are lower than they have been since the nineteen-fifties,” the President said. “You can still ride on your corporate jet. You’re just going to have to pay a little more.”

Cooperman regarded the comments as a declaration of class warfare...

Seriously, that's it. (Whatever you do, don't tell him about Roosevelt's 1936 acceptance speech. He could expire on the spot.)

“It’s a question of tone,” Cooperman said. “The President makes it sound like the problems of the ninety-nine per cent are caused by the one per cent, and that’s not the case.”

Yet some of the harshest language of this election cycle has come from the super-rich. Comparing Hitler and Obama, as Cooperman did last year at the CNBC conference, is something of a meme. In 2010, the private-equity billionaire Stephen Schwarzman, of the Blackstone Group, compared the President’s as yet unsuccessful effort to eliminate some of the preferential tax treatment his sector receives to Hitler’s invasion of Poland. After Cooperman made his Hitler comment, he has said, his wife called him a “schmuck.” But he couldn’t resist repeating the analogy when we spoke in May of this year. “You know, the largest and greatest country in the free world put a forty-seven-year-old guy that never worked a day in his life and made him in charge of the free world,” Cooperman said. “Not totally different from taking Adolf Hitler in Germany and making him in charge of Germany because people were economically dissatisfied. Now, Obama’s not Hitler. I don’t even mean to say anything like that. But it is a question that the dissatisfaction of the populace was so great that they were willing to take a chance on an untested individual.”

That's a pathological lack of self-awareness. These people need an intervention. They are obviously mainlining FoxNews.

Those quotes and observations come from this fantastic article by Christia Freeland in the New Yorker about the plutocrats and their delicate sensibilities. She lists many of the examples of billionaire's alleged victimization we've chronicled here on the blog since the financial crisis began. And she shows how completely out of touch and entitled these ridiculously influential rich people really are:

It’s easy to see how even a resolutely unflashy billionaire like Cooperman can acquire a sense of entitlement. In a single hour at his desk one morning in April, the C.E.O.s of two well-known public companies were on the phone to Cooperman lobbying for his support. (He is a major investor in their firms.) Companies courting his investment dollars pick up Cooperman at Teterboro Airport in their private jets to give him a tour of their projects. The Coopermans have chosen an emphatically low-key life style, but when they went to visit a grandchild in Vermont one summer weekend they flew in a private plane.

Last July, before he had written the letter, Cooperman was invited to the White House for a reception to honor wealthy philanthropists who had signed Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett’s Giving Pledge, promising to donate at least fifty per cent of their net worth to charity. At the event, Cooperman handed the President two copies of “Inspired: My Life (So Far) in Poems,” a self-published book written by Courtney Cooperman, his fourteen-year-old granddaughter. Cooperman was surprised that the President didn’t send him a thank-you note or that Malia and Sasha Obama, for whom the books were intended as a gift and to whom Courtney wrote a separate letter, didn’t write to Courtney. (After Cooperman grumbled to a few friends, including Cory Booker, the mayor of Newark, Michelle Obama did write. Booker, who was also a recipient of Courtney’s book, promptly wrote her “a very nice note,” Cooperman said.)

When Cooperman told me the story of his lucky escape from dental school, he concluded, “I probably make more than a thousand dentists, summed up.” (A thousand dentists would need to work for a decade—and pay no taxes or living expenses—to collectively earn Cooperman’s net worth.) During another conversation, Cooperman mentioned that over the weekend an acquaintance had come by to get some friendly advice on managing his personal finances. He was a seventy-two-year-old world-renowned cardiologist; his wife was one of the country’s experts in women’s medicine. Together, they had a net worth of around ten million dollars. “It was shocking how tight he was going to be in retirement,” Cooperman said. “He needed four hundred thousand dollars a year to live on. He had a home in Florida, a home in New Jersey. He had certain habits he wanted to continue to pursue.

“I’m just saying that it’s not an impressive amount of capital for two people that were leading physicians for their entire work life,” Cooperman went on. “You know, I lost more today than they spent a lifetime accumulating.”

What was that story about some cake and the Bastille? I keep forgetting.

Many billionaires have come to view charity as privatized taxation, paid at a level they determine, and to organizations they choose. “All things being equal, you’d rather have control of the money than the government,” Cooperman said. “Even if you’re giving it away, you’d rather give it away the way you want to give it away rather than the way the government gives it away.” Cooperman and his wife focus their giving on Jewish issues, education, and their local community in New Jersey, and he is also setting up a foundation that will allow his children and grandchildren to support their own chosen causes after he dies.

Foster Friess, a retired mutual-fund investor from Wyoming who was the backer of the main Super pac supporting the Republican primary candidate Rick Santorum, expounded on this view in a video interview in February. “People don’t realize how wealthy people self-tax,” he said. “If you have a certain cause, an art museum or a symphony, and you want to support it, it would be nice if you had the choice.”

Of course those charitable donations for museums and symphonies are tax deductible, but that's not good enough. They don't want to spend any of their money on the "wrong people" which in Friess' case is apparently anyone who doesn't attend the symphony. What could be wrong with that?

And that attitude has certainly "trickled down" to the right wingers. I won't post it again, but this sickening video spells it out. ("I choose [to throw a dollar in your face and lecture you like a child, Mr Parkinson's victim who needs health care.] I choose!")

Someone said to me the other day that Americans think their problem is that the system is broken and it's not, it's the culture that's broken. I'm increasingly afraid that's true. Certainly, the idea that these filthy rich, privileged elites feel victimized at a time when they are paying historically low taxes and making historically high sums of money is indicative of something very amiss at the heart of our social contract. I'm not sure if that can be fixed.

In any case, there's only one thing to say to these whining 1% wimps who feel so victimized by President Obama's painfully tepid suggestion that while they are truly heroes of epic magnitude perhaps they could just pay a teeensy weensy bit more:

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digby 10/02/2012 12:00:00 PM

 
You might be a terrorist if ... "you're frustrated with mainstream ideologies"?

by digby

Uh, I think I know a lot of terrorists:

These are some warning signs that that you have turned into a terrorist who will soon kill your co-workers, according to the U.S. military. You’ve recently changed your “choices in entertainment.” You have “peculiar discussions.” You “complain about bias,” you’re “socially withdrawn” and you’re frustrated with “mainstream ideologies.” Your “Risk Factors for Radicalization” include “Social Networks” and “Youth.”

These are some other signs that one of your co-workers has become a terrorist, according to the U.S. military. He “shows a sudden shift from radical to ‘normal’ behavior to conceal radical behavior.” He “inquires about weapons of mass effects.” He “stores or collects mass weapons or hazardous materials.”

Of course, aside from the mass weapons and hazardous material, which should be a real tip-off, all the rest sounds like tens of millions of Americans and almost all adolescents at one time or another.

But hey, if you do believe that these are indicators of radicalism, I'd take a look at the Ayn Rand acolytes. They certainly fit the bill in nearly every particular.


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digby 10/02/2012 10:30:00 AM

 
How a centerfold Senator plays for the meathead vote

by digby

This may play well with the meathead vote, but it will royally piss off their wives:

I don't know if anyone's told Brown that women really, really, really don't like it when men do this sort of shutdown. But someone should. There are just too many of us.


But this was just downright stupid:

From Steve Benen:

For those who can't watch clips online, the Republican senator, after a lengthy pause, first named far-right Justice Antonin Scalia. This was no small admission -- for all of Scott Brown's efforts to give the appearance of moderation, here he was, after pausing to reflect on his ideal justice, identifying one of the least moderate justices Americans have seen in a generation.

After months of trying to assure voters he'll ignore his party's right-wing inclinations on a host of key issues, Brown endorsed a partisan Supreme Court ideologue who's eager to do exactly what Brown claims to oppose -- including reject privacy and reproductive rights.

In context, it's true that if you read the transcript, you'll see that the Republican senator went on to mention Justices Kennedy, Roberts, and eventually Sotomayor. But as the clip makes clear, Brown only mentioned the other names when the audience booed his praise for Scalia, and the senator felt the need to scramble.

You say Scalia when you are from Mississippi, not when you are from Massachusetts. Even the meatheads aren't that right wing. And there just aren't enough of them.

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digby 10/02/2012 09:00:00 AM

 
Birds of a feather

by David Atkins

It seems that wherever fundamentalist religion is strongest, women suffer the most. Often so much that they must be as literally invisible as possible. Case in point:

The Ikea catalog distributed in Saudi Arabia is the same as in other countries except for what it's missing — women.

The Swedish publication Metro has posted a comparison of the Saudi Arabian mailer and the Swedish version, showing that women present in the latter were missing from the former.

In one instance, a pajama-clad woman — shown standing at a bathroom sink along with a man, young boy and toddler nearby — was erased from the catalog distributed in the Arab nation, leaving just the three other people in the picture.

Here's one of the examples:


It's not just Islamic fundamentalists. There's also this:

A Hasidic newspaper said it was following Jewish modesty laws when it printed a Situation Room photo that was doctored to remove Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and a second female White House staffer.

The Brooklyn-based Der Zeitung sparked Internet outcry after it published the now iconic photo Friday showing only men present to monitor the daring 40-minute Navy SEALs raid that killed Osama Bin Laden.

National Security team member Audrey Tomason was also scrubbed from the image.

The ultra-Orthodox Der Zeitung released a statement Monday apologizing if the edited image "was seen as offensive," but said it was following Jewish modesty laws when it made the decision to delete Clinton and Tomason from historical record.

And while it usually doesn't amount to pictorial erasure, Christian fundamentalists aren't far behind with the Quiverfull movement.

Birds of a feather flock together. No women may apply for the glorious fundamentalist celestial kingdom.

Something tells me that if there is a divine presence in this world, She's far, far, far away from these misogynist lunatics.

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thereisnospoon 10/02/2012 07:30:00 AM

Monday, October 01, 2012

 
Dreaming of the day when we can let the drones decide who lives or dies

by digby

What could go wrong?

While military forces, police/intelligence agencies and interior ministries have set their sights on drones for missions spanning the full spectrum from terrain mapping to targeted killings, today’s unmanned vehicles remain reliant on human controllers who are often based hundreds, and sometimes thousands of kilometers away from the theater of operations. Consequently, although the use of drones substantially increases operational effectiveness — and, in the case of targeted killings, adds to the emotional distance between perpetrator and target — they remain primarily an extension of, and are regulated by, human decision making.

All that could be about to change, with reports that the U.S. military (and presumably others) have been making steady progress developing drones that operate with little, if any, human oversight. For the time being, developers in the U.S. military insist that when it comes to lethal operations, the new generation of drones will remain under human supervision. Nevertheless, unmanned vehicles will no longer be the “dumb” drones in use today; instead, they will have the ability to “reason” and will be far more autonomous, with humans acting more as supervisors than controllers.

Scientists and military officers are already envisaging scenarios in which a manned combat platform is accompanied by a number of “sentient” drones conducting tasks ranging from radar jamming to target acquisition and damage assessment, with humans retaining the prerogative of launching bombs and missiles.

It’s only a matter of time, however, before the defense industry starts arguing that autonomous drones should be given the “right” to use deadly force without human intervention. In fact, Ronald Arkin of Georgia Tech contends that such an evolution is inevitable. In his view, sentient drones could act more ethically and humanely, without their judgment being clouded by human emotion (though he concedes that unmanned systems will never be perfectly ethical). Arkin is not alone in thinking that “automated killing” has a future, if the guidelines established in the U.S. Air Force’s Unmanned Aircraft Systems Flight Plan 2009-2047 are any indication.

And to think people are worried right now about the "distancing effect" of drone warfare. Imagine how carefree we'll all be when we don't have to make any decisions about all this at all. "This is drone business. Move along citizen."

I'm going to have a little drinkie winkie and watch 2001: A Space Odyssey now. Buh-bye.

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digby 10/01/2012 05:30:00 PM

 
Blue collar women moving away from Romney and GOP

by David Atkins

An interesting tidbit from Ron Brownstein in the National Journal:

A National Journal analysis of recent polling results across 11 states considered battlegrounds shows that in most of them, Obama is running considerably better than he is nationally among white women without a college education. Obama’s gains with these so-called “waitress moms” are especially pronounced in heartland battlegrounds like Iowa, Ohio, and Wisconsin.

Combined with his continued support among other elements of his “coalition of the ascendant,” including young people, minorities, and college-educated women, these advances among blue-collar women have been enough to propel Obama to the lead over Republican Mitt Romney in the most recent public surveys in all 11 states (albeit in some cases within the polls’ margins of error).

Democrats say blue-collar women have been the principal, and most receptive, target for their extended ad barrage portraying Romney as a plutocrat who is blind, if not indifferent, to the struggles of average families.

Being a smirking, arrogant plutocrat is only an advantage with frat boys and codgers who see themselves as temporarily embarrassed millionaires. It doesn't help with other constituencies. But it's not just economics, of course.

Beyond the opposition’s portrayal of Romney as obtuse to the problems of working families, both sides agree that he has been hurt among blue-collar white women by the skirmishes over defunding Planned Parenthood and access to contraception in health insurance. Many of these women view such women’s-health matters not as moral issues but as practical pocketbook concerns. The combined effect of all this is measured in the most recent CBS News/New York Times/Quinnipiac survey in Ohio, which found that while about three-fifths of noncollege white women agreed that Obama “cares about the needs and problems of people like you,” roughly an equal number of them said Romney did not.

Both campaigns agree the Democratic ads have damaged Romney much more with blue-collar women than blue-collar men. But both sides also agree that these women are the least stable component of Obama’s emerging coalition. “I still say the noncollege white women are the moving piece of the electorate,” Garin said. “But Romney is an imperfect vessel for them to say the least.”

Romney has to win these votes. And his problem is that even if he were likeable enough to get it done, his actual base of good ol' boys won't really let him.


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thereisnospoon 10/01/2012 03:59:00 PM

 
A point to taking part

by digby

Alternet is featuring an interview by Matthew Filipowicz with the always fascinating Noam Chomsky. You can listen to it here.



It's a long conversation about activism and tactics which many of you will find interesting, I'm sure. But I must take a moment to just point this one thing out:

We discussed many aspects of activism including how he felt activists and progressives should approach two party politics and specifically the 2012 election.

Chomsky stated, "I think they should spend five or ten minutes on it. Seeing if there’s a point in taking part in the carefully orchestrated electoral extravaganza. And my own judgment, for what it’s worth, is, yes, there’s a point to taking a part.”

Professor Chomsky said he will probably vote for Jill Stein for president in effort to push a genuine electoral alternative, but that if he lived in a swing state he would vote “against Romney-Ryan, which means voting for Obama.”

I took boatloads of heat (and still am) for quoting Chomsky on this from 2008, in which he said, "of course you can vote for the lesser of two evils. You get less evil." I was told that it had no application to this cycle and have generally been vilified by lefties for my own view that our two party system means that we are often forced to weigh the options with an eye toward mitigating as much harm as we can rather than standing on principle.

I recognize that many of you don't agree with me, that you believe as a matter of conscience that you cannot vote for a candidate who offends you sense of morality and I respect that. One of the great things about democracy is that you can express yourself by both voting and not voting. (Or voting with your feet, for that matter.)

On the other hand, if your view is that these leaders need to fail in order to learn a lesson, my reading of human nature is that they don't necessarily learn the lesson you think they will. And people shouldn't be used as pawns to make a point. So I disagree with that argument on the merits. Basically, I take a utilitarian approach to voting. I certainly see all the similarities in the candidates and wish there was a chance that someone different could win. I have no hope that any of them will deliver the kind of government I wish we had. But if, on the margins where the differences between the candidates do lie, the election of one of the candidates will result in less suffering for actual human beings, I will choose that candidate. ("You get less evil.")

I've been told that I'm a hack and a sell-out for abandoning my principles in taking that position, especially since I have demonstrated a strong commitment to civil liberties in my writing. But since I don't believe that civil liberties will be improved in any way by voting for Mitt Romney --- indeed, I think it's likely they will be much worse, since he's advocated a return to torture --- I see no value in electing him on that issue (or any other.) As for lessening the suffering of real humans, I believe that President Obama's policies, while hardly the best he could do, will be on balance, kinder to more people.

I know that is unsatisfying. It's not easy for me either. But given the system we have, I've made the choice to push as hard as I can for principles I believe in every single day and support politicians who believe as I do with my money and labor. But when it comes to election day, I take the position that I can only try to do as little harm as possible. And it would seem that old sell-out Noam Chomsky still agrees with me.

Update: Howie Klein wrote a post on this recently in which he agrees with Chomsky's assessment. He puts it in his own inimitable way:

[T]here's a threat that Pete Peterson and his minions' nonstop lobbying for a toxic Grand Bargain that will destroy the Democratic Party brand is exactly what Obama intends to do after he's reelected. Except reading what's he's been saying about his willingness-- if no eagerness-- to compromise with the adamantly Austerian Republicans, I'd say there's a lot bigger chance of a horrid Grand Bargain after November 6 than there ever was that Hope and Change would lead to anything aside from the requisite election results last cycle.

So, yes, if you read DWT you know with which utter contempt I hold Republicans and conservatives and corporate whores and you know I agree with all that horrifying stuff Nick Kristof claimed about the Republican war against women in his NY Times column yesterday. Would it be catastrophic if Obama were to lose and Romney win in November? Yes. And if I lived in Ohio or Florida or Colorado or Wisconsin or any other swing state, I might even hold my nose and vote for Obama. But I live in California and I care barely wait to go to the polls and not vote for him.

Read on to find out what he really thinks.

Update II: My Bad for forgetting to credit Matthew Filipowicz for the interview with Chomsky. So, fixed.

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digby 10/01/2012 01:30:00 PM

 
A word on the subject that must not be discussed

by digby

We may have just suffered two new major mass murders in the last six months but there's no reason that a national political campaign should mention it. There's nothing we can do. The NRA has spoken and we are not only not allowed to discuss gun control, we are not allowed to even acknowledge massive gun deaths and repeated mass murders as a social or political program.

I've said it before: if you want to see what a massively successful political issue campaign looks like, look at the the NRA. They've completely changed this country's relationship to murder. That's quite an achievement.

But that's not saying you can't ask.

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digby 10/01/2012 11:20:00 AM

 
Meet the blood-sucking 47%-er who picks up Romney's trash

by digby

Mitt Romney says it's not his job to worry about people who won't take personal responsibility and care for their lives. Like Richard Hayes.

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digby 10/01/2012 09:30:00 AM

 
Housekeeping

by digby


Comments will be down for a few days. But they'll be back.

You can still tweet!

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digby 10/01/2012 08:00:00 AM

 
It's a political disaster, too

by David Atkins

Digby highlighted Paul Krugman's excellent piece immediately below, but I just wanted to reinforce this bit with emphasis:

Barring an upset, however, that environment will come to an end on Nov. 6. This election is, as I said, shaping up as a referendum on our social insurance system, and it looks as if Mr. Obama will emerge with a clear mandate for preserving and extending that system. It would be a terrible mistake, both politically and for the nation’s future, for him to let himself be talked into snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

Sounds like something I said the other day:

If the Congress and the President take up Simpson-Bowles during the lame duck session or the new year and enact minor tip money tax increases for the wealthy in exchange for cuts to the most vulnerable, a majority of Republicans will oppose the deal. Democrats will be left holding the bag, insisting on being the "bipartisan adults in the room."

Voters will hate the deal. Republicans will run successfully against Democrats for the next twenty years, accusing us of cutting Medicare and raising taxes. And when Republicans easily win that argument and gain Executive and Legislative power, President Christie and Speaker Ryan will voucherize Medicare, restore the funding for current seniors, and act as the cavalry riding to America's and Medicare's rescue.

The Village Consensus is awful, immoral policy. It's also suicidal politics.

Krugman is right, of course. But the fix is in. Everyone knows what cuts are coming down the pipe, because the only thing that would prevent those cuts is a reorientation of the economy that would make the plutocrats a little uncomfortable.

And we can't have that, now, can we?


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thereisnospoon 10/01/2012 07:30:00 AM

 
A mandate to preserve and extend our social insurance system

by digby

Those of you who read this blog know that I've been nearly apoplectic over the past few months over the behind the scenes maneuvering to enact a Grand Bargain after the election.

It is a great relief to see Paul Krugman take up the cause:

If the polls are any indication, the result of that referendum will be a clear reassertion of support for the safety net, and a clear rejection of politicians who want to return us to the Gilded Age. But here’s the question: Will that election result be honored?

I ask that question because we already know what Mr. Obama will face if re-elected: a clamor from Beltway insiders demanding that he immediately return to his failed political strategy of 2011, in which he made a Grand Bargain over the budget deficit his overriding priority. Now is the time, he’ll be told, to fix America’s entitlement problem once and for all. There will be calls — as there were at the time of the Democratic National Convention — for him to officially endorse Simpson-Bowles, the budget proposal issued by the co-chairmen of his deficit commission (although never accepted by the commission as a whole).

And Mr. Obama should just say no, for three reasons.

First, despite years of dire warnings from people like, well, Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, we are not facing any kind of fiscal crisis. Indeed, U.S. borrowing costs are at historic lows, with investors actually willing to pay the government for the privilege of owning inflation-protected bonds. So reducing the budget deficit just isn’t the top priority for America at the moment; creating jobs is. For now, the administration’s political capital should be devoted to passing something like last year’s American Jobs Act and providing effective mortgage debt relief.

Second, contrary to Beltway conventional wisdom, America does not have an “entitlements problem.” Mainly, it has a health cost problem, private as well as public, which must be addressed (and which the Affordable Care Act at least starts to address). It’s true that there’s also, even aside from health care, a gap between the services we’re promising and the taxes we’re collecting — but to call that gap an “entitlements” issue is already to accept the very right-wing frame that voters appear to be in the process of rejecting.

Finally, despite the bizarre reverence it inspires in Beltway insiders — the same people, by the way, who assured us that Paul Ryan was a brave truth-teller — the fact is that Simpson-Bowles is a really bad plan, one that would undermine some key pieces of our safety net. And if a re-elected president were to endorse it, he would be betraying the trust of the voters who returned him to office.

Thank you.

I feel as if I've been caught in a nightmare, watching a slow motion trainwreck right in front of me and nobody could hear me scream.

Someone was talking the other day about the President's mandate and I wondered what exactly it would be. There's a lot of unfinished business from the first term, but he's not exactly running on any of it this time. It's "stay the course" without saying it, I guess.

But Krugman makes an explicit claim that I would love to believe will be seen as the mandate, by the people, the press and the president should he win:

This election is, as I said, shaping up as a referendum on our social insurance system, and it looks as if Mr. Obama will emerge with a clear mandate for preserving and extending that system. It would be a terrible mistake, both politically and for the nation’s future, for him to let himself be talked into snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

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digby 10/01/2012 05:00:00 AM

Sunday, September 30, 2012

 
Amateurs Played For Suckers

by tristero

The joke in the music industry is that if you want to go be creative, you go into accounting. And like many such jokes, it's no joke at all:

Fender’s chief executive, Larry Thomas, used to be the chief of Guitar Center. He sold the company to Bain at the top of the market in 2007 for $2.1 billion, including debt.

Guitar Center has been losing money since. Moody’s issued a junk rating of B2 on Guitar Center’s debt in October 2007, and has since downgraded the company two more times, most recently in November 2010, to Caa1.

When it comes to money, you really shouldn't fuck with the music industry unless you know exactly what you're doing.

(As the proud owner of two Fender guitars - neither bought from Guitar Center, btw - here's a personal digression:

(I've actually had my hands a few times on vintage Strats from the 50's and despite being awed by the experience of playing a legendary instrument, I can't say I noticed any particularly magical difference in the sound, so I concluded the obsession with vintage Strats was probably hype. Hell, modern Strats are built to quality standards no one practiced in the 50's. These people are guitar obsessives. Fender really does makes great, great guitars.

(Then again, I was never a very good guitar player. And musicians I do respect strongly believe those 50's and early 60's Strats are doubleplus better than anything since.  Therefore, I've concluded that the most likely reason why older Strats might sound better is because of the wear and tear on the instruments. They've been broken in, the pieces have settled in a way that makes for a grateful experience, especially the woods. And that takes time.

(And that means that in 50 years, my 2004 Strat is gonna sound awesome!)

tristero 9/30/2012 08:00:00 PM

 
Creepy video of the day

by digby

It looks like something out of a dystopian sci-fi movie, but it isn't. It's the police trying to round up activists in Spain:

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

 
More loons on the way

by digby

Move over Steve King and Michele Bachmann, and make room on the crazy couch for Chris Stewart:

Glenn Beck likes to say that he never endorses candidates—he just tells his followers how he feels about them. In Chris Stewart, the Republican nominee in Utah's 2nd Congressional District, Beck has found someone he feels pretty damn good about. "If he wasn't running, I'd be trying to convince him to work for me, to help me stay the course, strategize, and save the country," he said last winter , as Stewart's campaign was just getting off the ground. "I've actually tried to talk him out of running, because it's a lion's den in Washington."

But, Beck added, "I believe he's a Daniel."

Beck's a great fiction writer himself so he knows a genius when he sees one:

The villain of the Great and Terrible series—other than Satan, that is—is Drexel Danbert, a cigar-smoking, white-haired, ultra-rich European émigré. Danbert controls politicians across the globe like a puppeteer and, as one would expect from an agent of Satan, has the power to control the media too.

In one scene, Danbert and a Saudi crown prince (also an agent of Satan) plot a strategy to undermine the US government by planting a fake story in the media about a massacre by American troops. "Those who hate the United States will believe it, no matter what evidence is eventually revealed. The New York Times will front page the story for five weeks, at least," the crown prince says. The pair ultimately succeed in creating global chaos by setting off an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) that destroys America's electrical infrastructure and forces a small group of heroes to band together to survive and defeat the forces of evil.

Stewart scoffs at the notion that his books, like the Left Behind­ series to which they're often compared, are religious tracts. "They're not theological books; they're not history books or predictions," he says. "They're not nonfiction. They're just novels. And we would never read anything more into them than that. They're just a way of telling a story." He adds, "The only thing that we think is meaningful in the book in terms of, 'Listen people, we should be aware of this,' again is the threat of electromagnetic pulse."

Of course we should. Plus Satan.

I really love this:

It's near certain that Stewart, running in a deep-red district in a deep-red state, will get his chance at fixing Washington next January. But his campaign has raised eyebrows in Utah, where Stewart has left a trail of furious Republicans calling for an investigation into electoral dirty tricks and old hands in both parties predicting the second coming of Michele Bachmann. "From time to time, we get a certified nutcase," one former Utah Republican politician told me. "And Chris Stewart truly is a certified nutcase."

More than "time to time" I'm afraid. He's going to have lots of company.

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

 
The unpoppable bubble

by digby

Chris Hayes's story of the week on the conservative bubble is a must see:

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

The only thing I would add to that is to just warn everyone that while it's true the conservative bubble has them all believing the polls are wrong and that they will win on election day, it is also preparing them to believe that their "analysis" was right and the election was stolen when they come up short. The bubble has an answer for everything. Also watch this on the Supreme Court. It will make your hair stand on end:

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

In fact, watch all the segments on the court on today's show if you didn't see it. We're in for a bumpy ride.


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

 
They've been saying it for years

by digby

It looks like there are some people out there who think Romney hit the nail on the head:

Retired Air Force Major Joseph Smith said Romney's "47 percent" remark held a kernel of truth, and the truth was that President Obama "wants to buy" poor people. And Smith should know, since he says he used to run an unemployment office:

Romney was simply saying that there are a good number of people in the country on the one hand that don't pay taxes. They really don't. But they get most of the welfare and those types of handouts. Most of them would rather actually be working. And the current administration wants to buy them so they can make them dependent on the government rather than working on their own. Which is totally the antithesis of anything that this country stands for…I used to work in unemployment, run an unemployment office, I saw it everyday. I used to run the office in Virginia for almost 30 years.

Smith added off-camera that he was currently a government contractor.

Uh oh. That sounds like someone who spent his entire life as a blood-sucking gummint worker to me. But never mind. He's one of the "good ones" and I think you know what I mean.

This woman almost let it slip:

He was applauded by another woman, a Vietnam-era Air Force vet who identified herself as Jo Watts, president of the Barbara Bush Republican Women's Club. Romney's 47 percent video, Watts said, was misrepresented:

He doesn't feel that way except for…I take that back. He probably does feel that way. But he told the truth, and people don't want to hear the truth…People on the dole. It's like, how do people go off unemployment and go on disability? Where is that coming from? How did that happen? You're not disabled just because you don't have a job. We should be out there finding people jobs instead of scooting people from one dole to the other.

This does not surprise me. These views have been common among a certain group of Americans since ... well, forever. It defines their worldview. But it is highly unusual for a presidential candidate to espouse them, or at least it has been for a century or so. And it's taken its toll.

Nate Silver and other pollsters and poli-sci wonks are quite skeptical that campaign comments in general mean all that much in American politics. (Indeed, it would seem that their models indicate that voters and citizens don't have much effect on anything and that our entire system is mostly based on factors external to the democratic process.) So, when the Romney video came out Silver said he doubted that it would have much effect, because gaffes rarely do.

He wrote this on Friday:

By Sept. 17, the date when the video of Mr. Romney’s remarks was released and received widespread attention, the momentum from Mr. Obama’s convention appeared to have stalled (although not necessarily reversed itself). Mr. Obama led in the popular vote by 4.1 percentage points on that date, according to the “now-cast.”

Since then, however, Mr. Obama has gained further ground in the polls. As of Thursday, he led in the popular vote by 5.7 percentage points in the “now-cast,” a gain of 1.6 percentage points since Mr. Romney’s remarks became known to the public.

It’s hard to tell whether this recent gain for Mr. Obama reflects the effect of the “47 percent” comments specifically. But the most typical pattern after a party convention is that a candidate who gains ground in the polls cedes at least some of it back.

Instead, the more pertinent question seems not whether Mr. Obama is losing ground, but whether he is still gaining it.

The gaffe question is interesting, but I think you have to make a distinction between the usual manufactured gaffes and gotchas that make up the modern campaign narrative. They aren't real. They are opportunities for journalists to tell a story they want to tell and for the campaigns to try to spin them. But people instinctively know the difference between that and a gaffe that truly reveals the candidate saying something that is considered socially unacceptable to a majority of the country. This was one of those times.

But that is not to say that millions of people don't agree with him. He felt very comfortable saying that in front of his rich friends, of course, but there are a whole lot of Americans like those quoted above. They are sure that a huge number of their fellow Americans are lazy bums who are living off the government and by extension, them.

Head over to Mother Jones to see the videos.


Update: of course, he does have other problems.
digby 9/30/2012 01:38:00 PM

 
Yet another taser casualty

by digby

They re reported every day. I noticed this one in particular because it's yet another in a long line of tasers killing epileptics:

An electrical discharge from a Vermont state trooper’s Taser weapon caused the death of a Thetford man three months ago outside his home, the New Hampshire Medical Examiner’s Office advised Vermont State Police Friday.

Macadam Mason, 39, suffered “sudden cardiac death due to conducted electrical weapon discharge,” Vermont State Police reported late Friday afternoon in a statement relaying the conclusions from Mason’s autopsy in New Hampshire.

Mason died June 20 outside his Thetford home after Senior Trooper David Shaffer fired his Taser at Mason’s chest.

The finding on the cause of death spurred more calls for change in how Vermont law-enforcement officers are trained on and use Tasers.

The man was an epileptic.  People on the scene told the police he was an epileptic and was having a mental break following a seizure.  They begged them not to use the taser.  They did anyway.

And the following will make it far less likely that there will be sanctions against the police:

State Police said the New Hampshire Medical Examiner’s Office also reported Mason had other “significant conditions” — including heart disease and Excited Delirium Syndrome.

Right. If you have a heart disease and a cop tasers you (for whatever reason) it's your fault for dying from the electrical charge that stops your heart. And I don't need to reiterate the absolute pile of stinking garbage that is Taser International's favorite "syndrome" called "excited delirium." All this means is that if you are stressed when a policeman kills you with a taser, it's your fault for dying.

I've been writing about this for a long time. But it's getting more and more common for medical examiners to cite this "cause of death" when police electrocute citizens with tasers. Unfortunately, this has been lost in all the controversy:

In "Taser firms picked up coroner's lecture tab" the Globe reports that Taser International has paid hotel and travel expenses for prominent Canadian coronor Dr. James Cairns, Ontario's deputy chief coronor, who has given seminars "on the phenomenon of "excited delirium," a medically unrecognized term that the company often cites as a reason people die after being tasered". The article indicates that Dr. Cairns does not see any conflict of interest on his part. [The Globe & Mail also reports that Dr. Cairns admitted in testimony yesterday at an Ontario inquiry that he had helped shield disgraced pathologist Charles Smith.] 

In "Symposium aims to define 'excited delirium' DEATHS IN CUSTODY: TASER HELPS FUND RESEARCH" the Globe and Mail reports on the second annual Sudden Death, Excited Delirium and In-Custody Death Conference underway in Las Vegas. Many of the nearly 20 talks touch on the role of Tasers. "The key issue is "excited delirium", a collection of symptoms that is quickly becoming the leading explanation offered when a person dies in police custody or after a taser is used." Two researchers who presented disclosed that Taser International funds their research. As reported by the Globe & Mail, the Taser subsidized research presenters "conducted research on the negative effects of taser use on the human body; they found very few".

Taser International conducted junkets to "educate" medical examiners on "excited delirium." The result is that while it's not accepted as a professional diagnosis according to the medical manuals, it's now accepted as an excuse for the authorities to hold police harmless when they kill someone with a taser.

As the spokesman for Taser explained:

Tuttle defended the safety of the Taser, noting the National Institute of Justice “concluded that there is no conclusive medical evidence in the current body of research literature that indicates a high risk of serious injury or death to humans from the direct or indirect cardiovascular or metabolic effects of short-term Taser exposure in healthy, normal, nonstressed, nonintoxicated persons.”

See? If you get stopped by the police and you are sure you are healthy, normal, non-stressed and nonintoxicated (which is still legal, by the way) you have nothing to worry about. So just make sure you don't have any unknown heart conditions or physical abnormalities --- or suffer from anxiety when confronted by police --- because they have the right to kill you on the spot. Just a little word to the wise.


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

 
"Revenue neutral" deficit hawk

by digby

Anyone who still thinks Paul Ryan is a serious person is not a serious person:

WALLACE: You are the master of the budget, so briefly, let's go through the plan. The Obama camp says independent groups say if you cut those tax rates for everybody, 20%, it costs $5 trillion over ten years. True?

RYAN: Not in least the bit true. Look, this just goes to show if you torture statistics enough they’ll confess to what you want them to confess to. That study has been so thoroughly discredited. It wasn't even a measurement of Mitt Romney, his policy. Here's what we’re saying --

WALLACE: But how much would it cost?

RYAN: It’s revenue neutral. It doesn’t cost $5 trillion.

WALLACE: I'm just talking about the -- we'll get to the deductions. But the cut in tax rates.

RYAN: The cut in tax rates is lower all Americans tax rates by 20%.

WALLACE: Right. How much does that cost?

RYAN: It is revenue neutral.

WALLACE: It's not revenue neutral unless you take away the deductions.

RYAN: That’s where I’m going.

WALLACE: We're going to get to that in a second. The first half, lowering the tax rates. How much -- does that cost $5 trillion?

RYAN: No. No. Look, I won’t get into a baseline argument with you because that’s what a lot of this is about. We're saying, limited deductions, so you can lower tax rates for everybody and start with people at the higher end. Here's the way it works. I have been on the Ways and Means Committee for 12 years. Both parties, Republicans and Democrats have junked up the tax code with so many giveaways and special interest tax breaks. What we're saying is you keep your money in your pocketbook and your business and your family in the first place. The way it works today is, you send more of your money to Washington, and then if you do what Washington approves of you can have some of it back. We’re saying keep it in the first place. And every time we have done this, whether it was Ronald Reagan working with Tip O'Neill, or the ideas coming from the Bowles-Simpson commission on how to do this -- there has been a traditional Democrat and Republican consensus, lowering the tax rates, by broadening the tax base works and you can –

WALLACE: But I have to point out, you haven’t given me the math.

RYAN: No, but, well… I don't have the time… it would take me too long to go through all the math, but let me say it this way: You can lower tax rates by 20% across the board, by closing loopholes and still have preferences for the middle class for things like charitable deductions, for home purchases, for health care. So what we are saying is, people are going to get lower tax rates and, therefore, they will not send as much money to Washington, and they’ll keep it and decide for themselves. When we’ve done this, we’ve created economic growth.

WALLACE: If, just suppose, that the doubters are right, President Romney takes office and the math doesn’t add up --

RYAN: First of all, we’ve run the numbers. I've run them in Congress and they do. We’ve got about five other studies that show you can do it this way.

WALLACE: But let's assume it doesn't. The question is what is most important to Romney? Would he scale back on the 20% tax cut for the wealthy? Would he scale back and say, okay, we’re going to have to raise taxes for the middle class? I guess the question is, what is most important to him, in his tax reform plan if the numbers don’t…

RYAN: Keeping tax rates down. By lowering tax rates, people keep more of the next dollar that they earn. That matters. That is incentives. That’s pro-growth policy. That creates 7 million jobs and what should go first --

WALLACE: So that is more important than…

RYAN: That’s more important than anything and more importantly, it is not what deductions are in the tax code but it’s who gets them. And, don't forget, that the higher income people have a disproportionate amount of the loopholes that they use. So when you close a tax write off or a tax shelter for a higher income person, more of their income is subject to taxation so you can lower tax rates.

It would have been really revealing if Wallace had had the gumption to ask him how he was going to do the very necessary God's work, when his tax policies were all "revenue neutral"?

Oh, and if you believe that the wealthy won't be able to game that system with lobbying money and campaign donations, I have some million dollar condos in Vegas to sell you.

Tax reform is the biggest scam going, which the magical thinking and gobbldygook in that very softball interview makes obvious. The bigger problem is that Democrats are selling the same snake oil.

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digby 9/30/2012 09:46:00 AM

 
Santorum just can't quit you

by David Atkins

This should be fun:

Rick Santorum is positioning himself for a possible White House run in 2016.

The former Pennsylvania senator has thrown his support behind Mitt Romney, but it is clear he is mulling another White House bid down the road...

Santorum, 54, has previously indicated that he might run in 2016 should Romney lose.

In an April interview with Greta Van Susteren on Fox News, Santorum said, “I feel like a young man, and hopefully I feel like a young man four years from now.”

As I said yesterday, should Barack Obama win reelection next month and should he and the Democrats in Congress succeed in their suicidal plan to replay 1937 by cutting key programs like Social Security and Medicare, a Republican win in 2016 will be almost inevitable.

The only thing that would save the nation at that point would be a hard push by the social conservatives to declare that the nomination of a supposed social moderate is what cost Republicans in 2012, leading to the successful GOP nomination of a nut like Rick Santorum.

So Godspeed, Rick. Throw yourself in front of the Chris Christie train. More power to you.


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

Saturday, September 29, 2012

 
Saturday Night at the Movies

You’re gonna have to serve somebody: The Master

By Dennis Hartley

Starring Montgomery Clift and Charles Laughton?

The characters and events depicted in this photoplay are fictitious. Any similarities to actual persons, living or dead are purely coincidental (Standard end of film disclaimer)

“Comparisons are not invariably odious, but they are often misleading,” Orson Welles once wrote, in reference to the long-running debate over whether or not the many parallels in his film Citizen Kane to the real life story of William Randolph Hearst and the rise of his powerful publishing empire were purely coincidental. It is quite possible that current and future generations of critics and audiences will engage in similar debate regarding the parallels in writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest film, The Master to the real life story of L. Ron Hubbard and the founding of his Church of Scientology. As of this writing, neither the church nor Anderson have officially confirmed or denied. I just wanted to get that out of the way first (of course, I can’t stop you from reading this).

Despite the number of erm, “coincidences”, the answer to the most obvious question is, “no”. This is neither a hagiography nor a smack down of any specific doyen or belief system (thinly disguised or otherwise). Anyone who would pigeonhole the film with such a shallow reading likely has not seen it (or is perhaps unfamiliar with certain prevalent themes running through all of PTA’s previous films). What he has crafted is a thought-provoking and startlingly original examination of why human beings in general are so prone to kowtow to a burning bush, or an emperor with no clothes.  Is it a spiritual need? Is it an emotional need? Or…is it purely a lizard brain response, embedded in our DNA?

As Inspector Clouseau once ruminated, “Well you know, there are leaders…and there are followers.” At its most rudimentary level, The Master is a two-character study about a leader and a follower (and metaphorically, all leaders and followers). It’s also a story about a complex surrogate father-son relationship (one of those aforementioned recurring themes in Anderson’s oeuvre; more on that in a moment). Anderson frames his narrative using the zeitgeist of America’s existential post-war malaise, in the person of ex-sailor Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix). Socially withdrawn, prone to dipsomania, odd sexual compulsions and unpredictable fits of rage, Freddie’s transition back to civilian life has not been a smooth one. His character embodies many traits of the quintessential “disillusioned vet” protagonist that fueled post-war noirs like Act of Violence, Thieves’ Highway, The Blue Dahlia, Ride the Pink Horse and High Wall (in fact, The Master vibes overall with the verisimilitude of a great lost genre film of the late 40s or early 50s).

Freddie’s laundry list of personality disorders has not endeared him to the 5 o’clock world; he drifts from job to job. He hits rock bottom after his indirect responsibility for a tragic mishap has him literally fleeing for his life from a work site. Desperate to get out of Dodge and headed for a meltdown, Freddy skulks in the shadows of a San Francisco marina, where he crashes a shipboard wedding party, hoping to blend in with the revelers and then surreptitiously stow away. It turns out that the ship, a converted cattle trawler rechristened the Aletheia, is captained by the father of the bride, Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman). Dodd is a self-described writer/doctor/nuclear physicist/ philosopher and “…a hopelessly inquisitive man.” (if he were to take up guitar and form a rock band comprised of fellow scientists, he’d be Buckaroo Banzai). He is also a burgeoning cult leader; the boat is chock-a-block with devotees in thrall with Dodd and his philosophy, referred to as “The Cause” (the tenets have been laid out in Dodd’s eponymous book).

Initially, the paranoid Dodd admonishes his uninvited guest (suspecting him to be some manner of government spook assigned to infiltrate and/or sabotage his organization); but instead of giving him the heave-ho, “something” compels him to do a sudden 180 and invite the twitchy and troubled Freddie along for an imminent (Homeric?) ocean voyage   with his family and followers to New York (some shades of The Stuntman). And so begins the life-altering relationship between the two men, which vacillates tenuously between master/servant, mentor/apprentice, and father/son (the latter recalling Philip Baker Hall and John C. Reilly in Hard Eight, Burt Reynolds and Mark Wahlberg in Boogie Nights, Tom Cruise and Jason Robards in Magnolia, and Daniel Day-Lewis and Dillon Freasier/Paul Dano in There Will Be Blood). It’s also the catalyst for two of the most fearless, intense and extraordinary performances that I have seen so far this year.

Not to denigrate Hoffman, who is mesmerizing as always (he continues to astound with every role he tackles); nor fine supporting performances from the likes of Amy Adams (as Dodd’s subtly controlling wife, who plays a sort of shrewd Livia to his mercurial Augustus), Laura Dern, or Breaking Bad’s Jesse Plemons (as Dodd’s son), but Phoenix in particular has really hit one out of the park, achieving an Oscar-worthy transformation. I don’t know if this was by accident or by design, but I swear he is channeling Montgomery Clift, not only replicating his acting tics and vocal inflection, but his physicality (right down to the hunched shoulders and sunken chest-it is downright eerie).

The film is beautifully shot in 65mm by DP Mihai Malainare, Jr. (try to catch it in a 70mm presentation if you can), and nicely scored by Jonny Greenwood. Those with short attention spans are warned: This film demands your full attention (and begs repeated viewings). It’s exhilarating, audacious, and while at times a bit baffling, it is never dull.

Previous posts with related themes:

There Will Be Blood

Saturday Night at the Movies review archives

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Dennis Hartley 9/29/2012 05:30:00 PM