What the President forgot

Back in the 00's, we liberals chortled at supporters of the Bush administration who derided members of the reality-based community.  And we might well still laugh at those on the Right who believe in faith-based answers to problems susceptible to solutions based on actual knowledge.

President Obama is certainly a member of the reality-based community.  As a general rule, that is a good thing in a President.  But Mr. Obama seems to have forgotten that one function of a leader is to change reality.


I had a professor in law school who said, "If you don't like the facts, change the facts."  He did not mean that we should falsify, but that when the situation was still evolving, we should try to influence the course of events in our client's favor.   In many instances, president's can do that, through appointments (including recess appointments), executive orders, the issuance of regulations and simple presidential leadership.  


The president can change the terms of debate.  That is, he (or she) can change perceptions of reality--which in many instances is to change reality itself.  He (or she) can speak to Congress or directly to the people.  If s/he makes an effective case, the voters will tell members of Congress what to do.  And the members ignore such a message at peril to their careers.  


One of the requisites for effective leadership is measured boldness--an appreciation of what the public will accept that proves superior to that of others--in Congress or the punditocracy.  Think of FDR's 50,000 airplanes and the New Deal or JFK's promise that America would reach the moon in 10 years.  No serious person thought that such goals were possible before the presidents expressed them.   Indeed, serious people said that FDR and JFK  were crazy.  And they were right--while FDR said that the United States would produce 50,000 aircraft in  four years, we produced more than that number in 1944 alone.  Kennedy's 10-year time span turned out to be just over eight.  Those were instances of leaders who changed reality.   


To this point, Mr. Obama's leadership has lacked boldness.  He has had a good grasp of what can be achieved--let's not forget health-insurance reform and the Dodd-Frank Act (among other measures) were given little chance.  But many of us have the nagging feeling that the President's grasp has exceeded his reach.  


This week, Mr. Obama will have a chance to show more boldness and more effective leadership in the way that he attacks the problem that threatens a new economic crisis.  It's an opportunity he has to grasp, not just for his presidency, but for the good of the nation.

Obama blinks again

Yesterday, the President formally requested to address a joint session of Congress on September 7th.  Apparently because that would conflict with a televised debate of Rebuplican nonentities, a/k/a the GOP presidential candidates, Speaker Boehner refused.  As far as I can tell, it is unprecedented for Congress to refuse a presidential request for a joint session.  And it's not as if there's nothing important to talk about.

As you have probably heard by now, the President blinked and agreed to talk to Congress on September 8th.  Instead of competing with the Rebuplican debate, he will be opposite the opening night of NFL football.  Just guessing, but the reception he gets from the GOPhers might be rougher than some NFL defensive lines present.  

I think the President made a mistake--not that the timing is a major issue.  Still, if Mr. Obama had asked me, I would have suggested that he go ahead and make his speech on September 7th, and if Congress does not want him in the Capitol that night, he should do it from the Mall out front.  Set up a stage, and lights, and invite the voters.  He's going to be talking over the heads of Congress and to the American people anyway, why not do it openly?

The GOPhers think this is a good thing

The New York Times reports that at least 25 CEOs earned more than their companies paid in federal income taxes last year.  These are not small or obscure companies.  The list includes Boeing, eBay, Verizon, and GE (whose CEO, Jeffrey Imelt, is the chair of President Obama's council on competitiveness).  

Yeah, we know, "Corporations are people, too."  No, they're not.  Verizon may be run by human beings (I know a bit about how that company is managed and one might question that), but to say that it is people is like saying that a huge earthmover or crane is simply the person at the controls.  No.  At some point, size takes over and the organization loses all but the most tenuous connection to the people it employs, its officers, directors and its stockholders; the connection is even more muted because of the differences among those groups.  As one of my professors said, a long time ago, at some point a difference in degree becomes a difference in kind.  

And don't bleat about how high our corporate taxes are and how they discourage American competitiveness.  That's Eco 101, but in the real world things are a lot more complex.  The fact is that the US is still by far the largest economy--and market--in the world.  International corporations need to be here.  Let them pay for the privilege.  Make them pay more for the privilege.  One of the first things we should do is to tighten rules that let companies use slick accounting to keep profits offshore.  

One idea that I have had is to tax companies according to their size.  Small, efficient companies would be taxed at a lower rate than large, inefficient ones.  (And at the same rate as large, efficient ones, although efficiency tends to go down as size goes up.)  The concept--I haven't got beyond concept--would be to give companies a choice:  their tax rates would be set by their return on investment or their gross income, although the tax would be levied only on net income.  Companies could change their election, but only after a period of years.  

I'm not an economist, and can't calculate exactly how all this would all work out.  If there ARE any economists out there, let TONE know and perhaps we can explore the idea.

More S&P looneyness

Not content with downgrading the United States, S&P has downgraded a number of cities and counties.  

Why?  Because these governmental entities have too much of their money in US Treasury securities.  

Now let me get this straight:  These cities and counties are being penalized for investing in the safest securities in the nation.  So if they had invested in riskier bonds, debentures, stocks, etc., that would have been better?

Does that make sense to anyone?  Except S&P, of course.

(Remember that after S&P downgraded the US, nervous investors fled the markets for...U.S. Treasuries.  And we trust these people to provide guidance to investors?)

Gold bubble

The price of gold is now more than $1800 per ounce.  (That's a troy ounce, which is a little heavier than a conventional ounce.)  

An ounce of gold is a cube about 2/3 of an inch on each side.  More than $1800.

Gold is going to prove to be a bubble.

You heard it here first.

What's different this time

William Black, litigation director of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board during the S&L crisis and now a law professor, tells NPR why no one is going to jail as a result of the financial melt-down, and what the regulators' strategy should be.  Listen.

Another boondoggle

Yet another obvious waste of the taxpayers' money.  The New York Times reports that the Justice Department is investigating whether Standard & Poor's improperly rated dozens of mortgage-backed securities in the run-up to the financial crisis.

Well, of course they did.  Isn't it obvious?  Indeed, it's been clear for years that S&P and the other big rating firms, Moody's and Fitch, were either totally incompetent, willfully blind in the service of the bottom line or corrupt in certifying as AAA investments that were junk.

So why do we need an investigation?

The greatest line

Wolf Blitzer interviewed President Obama and reminded him that he got his daughters a dog as a present after winning the 2008 election.  What, Blitzer wanted to know, would he get them if he wins reelection next year? 

When I'm reelected, what I'll be getting them is a continuation of Secret Service so that when boys want to start dating them they are going to be surrounded by men with guns.  That's their gift. 

Thanks to TalingPointsMemo for the report.

 

Why Mitt Romney cannot be elected President

Mitt Romney might well be the strongest Rebuplican nominee against President Obama, at least on paper, but he cannot be elected.  Why? I hear you asking.  In one word--or one name--Seamus.  

You don't remember Seamus (pronounced like the private eye in a Black Mask mystery, shamus)?  He was the Irish Setter that the Mittster tied to the top of the family car before the Romney's drove 600 miles to a vacation in Ontario.  

No one can be elected President who is cruel to dogs.  There are too many dog lovers who vote.  

If Mitt locks the GOP nomination, I, for one, am going to order a whole bunch of bumper stickers that say:

ASK SEAMUS

ABOUT MITT

I'll let you know where to order yours when--and if--the time comes.

A useful yardstick

Michele ("The Madwoman of Minnesota") Bachmann is touting her success as a small-businesswoman to show that she would be effective at restoring the economy if she should be elected President.

Seems to me that's like saying your experience coaching a pewee football team fits you to replace Bill Belichick.  

If he debated a post it would be hard to say who won

Rick Perry has joined the contest for the Rebuplican presidential nomination.  Down in Texas, where he's from, they have a saying about people who try to appear bigger than they have any right to be:  "All hat and no cattle."

In Perry's case, it's all hat and no brains.  Listen to him.  The man is dumb as a post.  He makes Michele Bachmann sound like a brain trust.

In his announcement, the governor pledged that if elected he'll spend every day trying to make Washington as inconsequential in our lives as possible.  

How would he do that?

Maybe he'll eliminate FEMA, so that the federal government won't get involved in natural disasters.

Maybe he'll eliminate the FDA, so that the federal government won't certify the safety of drugs before they go on the market.

Maybe he'll eliminate the Department of Agriculture, so that federal inspectors won't check the safety of meat before it reaches our tables.

Maybe he'll cancel the FAA, so that airline schedules won't be regulated and pilots won't have to take orders from federal bureaucrats.

Maybe he'll wipe out the Federal Highway Administration so that we don't have to look at those boring signs, all the same, on interstate highways.  Maybe he'll stop spending our tax dollars on interstate highways.

Surely, he'll cut back on the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and assure that each of us can own the assault rifle, shoulder-fired missile and IED of our choice.


We know he'd gut the EPA, because private industry has done such good job at assuring clean water to drink and air to breathe.


He'd certainly try to nail the new Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, because ordinary citizens don't need protection from predatory lenders or credit-card issuers.

Yes, there are limitless opportunities to pare the federal government, as long as you don't care about the health, welfare and safety of the American people

Back by popular demand

I thought we had pretty well seen the end of TONE, but here we are, back through the demands of our regular readers (both of them) who clamored (very quietly) for its return.

No promises on how long we'll stay, but for now at least, we're back!

Where is the poet to do it justice?

A couple in Florida forecloses on a Bank of American branch after the bank wrongfully tried to foreclose on their home.

To quote Barry Fitzgerald, "Warms the cockles of me heart!"

That sound you hear is flip-flopping

No, it's not Mitt Romney.  The Mittster does not have a monopoly on flip-flopping among Rebuplicans.  

Turns out T-Paw is a pretty good flipper himself, as Michael Tomasky illustrates.

Build on this

Can Democrats build on Kathy Hochul's upset win in NY-26?  Unless GOPhers manage to backpedal faster than Bobby Orr getting back to meet an odd-man rush, the answer is:  Yes.  Rebuplicans stand to be crushed next year, broken on the wheel of their plan for Medicare--that is, the plan to kill it.

But if Democrats want to build something more lasting than the Rebuplicans did in 2010, they need to win over voters on more than Medicare.  The Times quoted a couple of Republican voters who pulled the lever (well, actually, pushed the button) for Hochul:  "'I have almost always voted the party line,” said Gloria Bolender, a Republican from Clarence who is caring for her 80-year-old mother. “This is the second time in my life I’ve voted against my party.'”   "'Pat Gillick, a Republican from East Amherst, who also cast a ballot for Ms. Hochul, said, “The privatization of Medicare scares me.'”  If Hochul is to be more than a one-term congresswoman, she's going to have to find common ground with people like this.  Constituent service is one way to do that, but in these contentious times, it's likely to be more important to find issues on which there is common ground.  In suburban and exurban conservative districts, suspicion of big banks and Wall Street might be one of them.  Can that be used to get these voters to support reforms such as the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that has been such a lightning-rod for Rebuplicans beholden to those very interests?  Perhaps.  Indeed, the biggest risk for Democrats may be that so many of their own people are in thrall to the same masters.

Just another reason for Democrats to re-discover their roots.

The conventional wisdom: wrong again

Democrat Kathy Hochul has won the special congressional election in NY-26, one of the most conservative upstate districts.  The Tea Party candidate, Jack Davis, faded at the end.  Indeed, once again, the conventional wisdom proved wrong:  As late as last week, the MSM was attributing the close race to Davis' presence siphoning off votes from Jane Corwin, the Rebuplican candidate.  Even TalkingPointsMemo bought into this line.   

But When Davis' support melted away, a substantial part of it went to Hochul, as did the undecided.

Best line of the week

Or the month.  Maybe of the year.

Comment on a story about Harold Camping's reaction to finding that he was wrong that Saturday would be the Rapture:

"Oh cheer up Harold. We all make mistakes. Its not the end of the world."

It's all over

Hold the phone.  The Republican race is over.  Herman Cain has officially announced his candidacy for the nomination.  

Maybe true

Tim (the Man Who Vetoed Money for Infrastructure Before the I-35 Bridge Collapse) Pawlenty has announced that he is in the Rebuplican presidential race.  That's a relief to GOPhers  battered by the run for the exits of respected national leaders like Mike Huckabee, Mitch Daniels and, of course, Donald Trump.  Not to mention the self-inflicted damage incurred by New Gingrich as a result of his sudden brush with honesty last Sunday.  

Pawlenty's announcement--in a web video--is entitled "A Time for Truth," demonstrating that--especially in Rebuplican hands--veracity is an elastic concept.  Think of how Gingrich said that anyone who quoted his comments on Paul Ryan's budget proposal would be spreading a falsehood.  According to Pawlenty, this country is in big trouble.  Some of us would say that's because Obama and the Democrats have had only a couple of years to undo the disaster that was W.  Or we might say that Pawlenty's words are really meant as a preduction of the future:  what would happen if he and his party take over the White House and enshrine ignorance in the Oval Office.

(Note that Pawlenty is running in the Rebuplican presidential race.  That's not the same as the race for the presidency.  As the public learns more and more about what the GOPhers want to do to the nation, the possibility that Mr. Obama will be defeated next year diminishes with each passing day.)

Dropping like flies

Rebuplican candidates for President are dropping like flies.  First Mike Huckabee.  Then Donald.  Then Newt Gingrich angered the "conservatives" by dissing Paul Ryan's budget.  Now New has been revealed to have owed more than $250,000 to Tiffany's in 2006.  That will help his populist credentials.  (In Newt's defense, clearly he was just trying to help the wealth trickle down.  Oh, and he was presumably spending it on his current wife, not his next one--a welcome change from past behavior.)

Last night, Chris Matthews called Sarah Palin "profoundly stupid." (Usage alert:  isn't that a contradiction in terms?)  Matthews may be revealing his misogyny, because also yesterday Rick Santorum, yet another as-yet-unnanounced Rebuplican candidate for the Oval Office, told an interviewer that John McCain doesn't understand torture.   Yes, he really did.  Talk about profound stupidity.  Say what you may about McCain (and this page has), if anyone in the United States government understands torture, it's him.

Oh, and Michele Bachmann says she may "move up" her decision on whether to run for President.  

Fun times!

How far we've come

There was a time when we actually enforced the antitrust laws.  Indeed, I took antitrust from Donal Turner, who was the chief of the Justice Department's Antitrust Division under LBJ.

Which leads me to ask who in his or her right mind would think that Microsoft should be permitted to purchase Skype--a service that it could (and should, if it wants to be in the business) easily develop on its own.

On code names

Some American Indians have expressed anger (or disgust) over the use of the code name Geronimo for Osama bin Laden.  One one level, the name may have been meant to pay tribute to the wiliness of both the al Qaeda leader and the chief of the Chiricahua Apaches.  But tying the courageous Indian leader who was defending his ancestral lands against invaders to a mass-murdering religious fanatic was, at best, insensitive.

Which brings up one of my pet peeves:  the whole use of code names these days.  I'm thinking particularly of names for military operations--"Iraqi Freedom," "Desert Storm," but the example of Geronimo/bin Laden shows the same confusion.

Code-names are supposed to be CODE.  They are meant to conceal, not reveal.  Historically, the names given to operations had nothing to do with the objective; that was the whole point.  So, the invasion of North Africa was Torch, of Sicily Husky and of Normandy--as we all know--Overlord.  None of the titles had anything to do with the target.  During WWII, the names were picked at random from a long list (sometimes a name was rejected as being perhaps too revealing or perhaps embarrassing if known).

That's the other thing about code-names:  they are not revealed at the time; that would defeat the purpose.  They are held secret until revealing them will not hurt anyone.  

What we have today is clumsy propagandizing meant to evoke heroic warmaking.  Arrogant foolishness.

Will they ever learn?

"Raid Account, Hastily Told, Proves Fluid"

The title of a piece in the NYTimes this morning, recounting the shifting descriptions of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.  The article goes on, "it was a classic collision of a White House desire to promote a stunning national security triumph — and feed a ravenous media — while collecting facts from a chaotic military operation on the other side of the world."  

Now it's become a self-inflicted wound.  Not serious, but wholly unnecessary.

I've never been in the Oval Office or the Situation Room.  I've never dealt with vital issues of national security.  But I don't need that kind of experience to know that talking about the details of an operation like this, especially within the first forty-eight hours, is just plain dumb.    Even in today's world of instantaneous communications, the story is going to change as it's examined.  The chances that the details will look better when re-examined are slight, and if that occurs, the original story will still be the one people remember.

For a White House full of very smart people, this was just stupid.  And it was totally foreseeable, because it happens every time there is a story like this.  Remember, "Brownie, you're doin' a heck of a job?"  

What the administration should have said was:  "United States forces killed Osama bin Laden at a hideout in Pakistan on May 1st.  His body was positively identified.  His remains were treated with respect and in accord with Muslim custom, and  he was buried at sea.  Further details will not be forthcoming at this time."

At a joint news conference with Harry Truman, Winston Churchill told reporters, "I think no comment is a splendid expression.  I am using it again and again.  I got it from Sumner Welles [FDR's trusted aide]."  Mr. Churchill was a wise man.

Joke's on them

In the dear dead days beyond recall--that is, before the announcement that US forces had killed Osama bin Laden--Donald Trump wore a bulls eye at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner.  (For those who have forgotten, it was last Saturday night.)  As you have probably heard, host Seth Meyers (allegedly of another Saturday Night Live, though you couldn't prove it by me) noted that The Donald had announced that he was running for President as a Rebuplican, "which is surprising, because I thought he was running as a joke."

Good line, but grossly unfair to Mr. Trump, because--as we know--the Rebuplican Party is a joke.

But seriously, why haven't you heard any of the commentariat note that the weakness of the Rebuplican presidential field (something that has been mentioned) is directly related to the party's intellectual bankruptcy?  The mix of fallacy, foolishness and outright lies that pass for thought on the Right must be toxic to any serious political debate.  Oh, a few of the Rebuplican leaders--I'm thinking of Eric Cantor and Paul Ryan--can sound sensible when producing a sound bite or a set speech.  But as Paul Krugman has shown in his columns, what passes for reasoning quickly crumbles when challenged by real knowledge and thought that is not constrained by "conservative" cant.  

To make this argument, I ought to be able to show a plausible Rebuplican candidate who is not running, because he or she cannot stomach--or surmount--the bunkum that the party now celebrates.  I cannot do so, but I think that is because the anti-intellectualism of the Right has so hollowed out its intellectual basis that there is nothing left.

-30-

Don't cheer, boys

The killing of Osama bin Laden is a signal achievement in the struggle against those who would use terror as a legitimate weapon to impose their narrow, rigid view of the world on others.  It was a necessary step, once he was located.  Had I been the President, I should have ordered it.  

Yet I cannot celebrate the death of any person, even one who has brought so much death and suffering to so many others.  

For a long time, I have admired Capt. Tom Philip, commander of the U.S.S. Oregon at the Battle of Santiago during the Spanish-American War.  As the Spanish ships came out of the harbor, the overwhelmingly superior US fleet engaged them.  When one of the Spanish ships began to blaze, sailors on the Oregon began to shout.  "Don't cheer, boys," Capt. Philip called out.  "The poor devils are dying."  The simple humanity of that statement moves me.  

And so my feeling this morning is, Let's not cheer.  Let us, instead, regret the necessity to take human life in defense of human dignity.  

Second coming?

Four years ago, when I started working for Barack Obama, I hoped that he would be the second coming of FDR.  Now I'm afraid that he's turning out to be the second coming of Grover Cleveland. 

Marking time

Today is the 150th anniversary of the firing on Fort Sumter that started the Civil War.

Saturday, April 9th, was the 144th anniversary of Lee's surrender at Appomattox.  

What Mr. Obama should be doing

This morning on NPR, Cokie Roberts, dependable voice of Conventional Wisdom, said that for President Obama, "it's all about the independents;" according to her, that was the reason that the President dug in his heels over the social-issue riders that the most radical Rebuplicans wanted to stick on the budget deal.  

She may well be right, but that's not a good thing.  In fact, it exposes a central fallacy of Mr. Obama's approach:  He should not be trying to appeal to independents.  He ought to be working at changing their minds so that they become Democrats.

Fighting a rear-guard action to protect the English language

NEW ARRIVALS

  JUST IN 

Sign in an overpriced casual men's 

store on Newbury Street in Boston

Thanks for the clarification.  We should never have known.

.....

You will almost certainly read or hear that Japan is marking the one-month anniversary since the country was devastated by the earthquake and tsunami.  Even the Voice of America used that locution.

Well, no, the Japanese aren't.  There's no such thing as an anniversary for a period of less than a year.  "Anniversary" comes from annus, Latin for year, and versus, which did not mean "against" as it does now, but "turning."  (There's no 18-month anniversary, either.)

Oh, and 12 months from an event is not the one-year anniversary--a clumsy and ugly phrase that is an outgrowth of the mis-use of anniversary.  It's the first anniversary.  

Read this

John Thompson, the unjustly and illegally convicted man whose $14 million verdict against the New Orleans DA was stolen from him by the reactionaries on the Supreme Court a couple of weeks ago, had an op-ed in yesterday's Times.  He destroys the decision, not in legal but in human terms.  And those are the terms that matter, because in the end the law deals not in abstract principles, but in real life.

Read his article.  Read it even if you have to sign up and pay to get the Times on line.  (As ab aside, why shouldn't we on-line users be prepared to pay the cost of bringing us the news?)

Bad policy, bad politics

The deal that congressional leaders and the White House signed off on last night is bad policy, because the budget cuts on which Democrats caved will hamper economic recovery and hurt the very people that government is supposed to help.

It is bad politics for Democrats, because having signed on they cannot criticize Rebuplicans for hampering recovery, and cannot blame Rebuplicans for reviving the shades of Herbert Hoover.  

And the Rebuplicans can go on, virtually unfettered, with their war on working- and middle-class Americans, women and anyone else who is not in their base.  

Once again, Democrats--including President Obama--have failed to draw a line in the sand.  

The bullies won.  Again.

The Best

The best--I mean it, the best--commentary I have seen on the Rebuplican program and what Americans really think of it appears in, of all places, something called the Ironton Tribune.  Ironton seems to be in southern Ohio.  (There's also one in South Dakota, I think.)

Read it and see what you think.  If you scroll down through the comments, you'll see that I could  not resist.  And you'll see that I was the only one of those commenting who agreed with the writer.

Bad sign

I just sent an email to the White House, telling the President to show a little backbone and stand up for the people who elected him.  But when I went to the White House site, I found that when entering the topic of my message, there was no option for "budget."

HAVE THEY TAKEN LEAVE OF THEIR SENSES?

Or only their backbones?  Just heard Larry O'Donnell say that negotiators--presumably including Democrats in the Senate, and the White House--are now discussing budget cuts of 35 to 39 billion dollars to avoid a government shut down.

It's hard to agree with the Tea Party demagogues, but Shut It Down.  Make the case--it shouldn't be that hard, because it's true--that Rebuplican intransigence, duplicity and selfishness are responsible.  Put it to them.  

If we Democrats don't have the guts to stand up for those who are forced to depend on government for the essentials of of daily life, we don't deserve to govern.

What a disgrace.

A different angle

Most of the attention given to Rep. Paul Ryan's (R, WI) budget proposal has been focused on his plan to turn Medicare into yet another subsidy for health insurers.  (Why are Rebuplicans so sure that Americans like health insurers more than gummint bureaucrats?  Seems to me that if there is one group below bureaucrats in the popularity scale, it's health-insurance people.)

I'd like to focus on another aspect of the proposal:  Ryan wants to reduce the top corporate and personal income tax rates to 25%.  That's because, as we all know, the rich and powerful don't get enough reward for what they do.  Remember, these are The Folks Who Brought You the Great Recession.

What's really interesting is that Ryan and his ilk reason that slashing the top rates will encourage economic activity and so there will be no net loss of tax revenue (although even more of it will come from people at the bottom end of the income curve).  In fact, they argue that net tax revenues will actually increase.

Think of the implications:  Slash the top tax rate to zero and what would we have?  So much tax revenue that we'd be able to pay for every imaginable government program (well, at least for huge DOD cost overruns, subsidies for corporate farmers and other assorted boondoggles).  Indeed, the government would be taking in so much money that we'd have to RAISE taxes to CUT government revenues, before government has ALL the money!

As you no doubt recall (those of you over 30 anyway), this is the same crock that the supply-siders sold in the 1980's.  It was discredited then and it's still dreck.  Yet the Republicans, shameless as ever, go on peddling it.  Clearly, we need not only to slay this idea--and all of the junk that the Rebuplicans are trying to put over on us--but to drive a huge wooden stake through its heart.

Now, what are we going to have to do to get what passes for mainstream media to see this?

Is this the message she wants to be sending?

Bristol Palin earned more than $260,000 for warning about the dangers of teen pregnancy in 2009.  

Hmm.  What do you think she would have made if she hadn't been pregnant as a teen?

It's war

"Don't fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here."

                                                                                                    
                                                                                                     Col. John Parker   

                                                                                                     Lexington Green

                                                                                                     April 19, 1775

In case you haven't noticed, the Right has declared war on the rest of us.

Last week, an assistant district attorney in Indiana had to resign after it came out that he had sent emails to Gov. Scott Walker (R.WI) suggesting that an agent provocateur be employed to carry out a mock attack on the governor as a means of discrediting union supporters.  He was the second prosecutor from the Hoosier State to be forced out over the tumult in Wisconsin; earlier, another assistant district attorney resigned after we learned that he had suggested that the protesters in Madison be met with "live ammunition."

These images of violence are not isolated.  Remember Sharron ("Obtuse") Angle suggesting "Second Amendment remedies" during last year's campaign?  

Half-serious (?) suggestions for violence are a small and--so far--minor part of the assault on those who do not share the agenda of the hard Right and their allies (implausibly, the banks, Wall Street, most large corporations).  There is, as you have heard at great length, the attack on labor rights being waged in such at first blush unlikely venues as Wisconsin, Michigan and Ohio.  The war on labor and working people is not an isolated phenomenon.


There is a bill in the US House that would make it impossible for unions to win representation elections; the White House has threatened a veto, a very unusual move for this administration.  


While Tea Party extremists in Congress say they will accept nothing less than a $61 billion slash at the parts of the budget that aid those who cannot help themselves, investments for the future and other worthwhile objects, Democrats are touting a "breakthrough" to avoid a government shutdown that will involve a whack of $30 billion.  


The best description of the effect of Rebuplican extremism that I have seen came from, of all people, the food writer Mark Bittman.  In an op-ed piece in The Times, Bittman notes that "The budget proposes cuts in the WIC program (which supports women, infants and children), in international food and health aid (18 million people would be immediately cut off from a much-needed food stream, and 4 million would lose access to malaria medicine) and in programs that aid farmers in underdeveloped countries. Food stamps are also being attacked, in the twisted 'Welfare Reform 2011' bill."  He goes on to state the simple truth:

These supposedly deficit-reducing cuts — they’d barely make a dent — will quite literally cause more people to starve to death, go to bed hungry or live more miserably than are doing so now. 

That is what we have come to.


The Right's war is total.  It ranges from sanctifying the rights of wealth to destroying women's privacy in the quest to outlaw abortion.  While we may chortle over the silliness of Newt Gingrich's contortions over Libya, they are symptoms of the single-minded aim of those on the Right not simply to overawe and defeat their opponents in elections, but to crush them.  When Scott Walker and his cronies--allegedly heirs of the law-and-order Rebuplicans of the 1960's and 1970's--threaten to ignore a court order holding up their cherished union-busting law, they make it clear that the ends are all, and that means have become meaningless.


Yes, friends, it's war.


What will we do now?  Will we continue to be nice guys?  Will we continue to assume that those on the other side of the divide (it's much more than an aisle) are reasonable people?  Or will we remember Col. Parker and tell the Right that if it wants a war, it will have one?

Doesn't look good

Video of what appears to be a low-level flyover of the stricken nuclear plan in Japan.  The damage is much more widespread and obvious than the photos we've been seeing, probably file photos and videos.

Dumb questions department

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R. TX), a man who is a walking argument for an IQ test for members of Congress, asked FBI director Robert Mueller, "How is your outreach going with Baptists or Catholics?"  Gohmert was trying to question the FBI's overtures to American Muslims, and by implication associate Muslims with violence, disloyalty, whatever.  Clever guy.

Unfortunately, Mueller blew the opportunity, replying lamely that the FBI's citizens academies involve "individuals  from a wide segment" of local communities.

What he should have said was, "Congressmen, we don't need outreach programs to those communities, because they haven't been stigmatized by bigots like you and your political allies."

No flies on us

The world dithers while Muammar Khadaffi batters the Libyan people.  It's always easy to find reasons to do nothing.  (My favorite is the widely-heard observation that no-fly zones in Iraq and Yugoslavia were followed by more military action.  If that sounds like an attractive piece of reasoning, look up post hoc ergo propter hoc in your dictionary.)

Meanwhile the ever-shifting eye of the MSM has shifted to Japan.

But think of it this way:  If Khadaffi gets his way, more people will die in the Libyan revolt (in a nation of only six or six and one-half million) than in Japan from the earthquake and tsunami.  And probably the nuclear catastrophe, too.  

The difference is, we can do a lot to prevent slaughter in Libya.

NPR under attack

I see that the Rebuplicans in the House are going to vote on denying federal funds to NPR (and, I assume) CPB tomorrow.  If they succeed in this, and in getting the Senate to go along, we leftists will just have go get together and make up the difference.  Then we can turn NPR into the kind of liberal news and cultural outlet that the wingnuts have ways thought it is.

Echoes

The House Homeland Security Committee, chaired by Rep. Peter King (R, Lon Guyland), began its hearings into the purported radicalization of American Muslims.  TONE is mightily tempted to dilate at length on the absence of hearings on the radicalization of the Rebuplican Party, but it seems more appropriate to remember the words of Joseph Welch to Joseph McCarthy at a similar juncture in our history:

Have you no sense of decency, sir?  At long last, have  you left no sense of decency?

That sound you heard from Madison last night

was the door closing on Rebuplican hopes to recapture the White House next year.  (The sound was not too loud, because the GOPhers' chances were already slim to the vanishing point.)

I think it's safe to say that Americans don't like bullies.  And if there were any doubt to fair-minded people--who still hold the balance in this country--the Rebuplican steamroller of workers' rights in the Badger State put an end to them.  Not to mention any question about the party's respect for truth.  As a Wisconsinite told talkingpointsmemo:  

It's not just the budget bill needs a quorum -- the big issue is that *any* bill with fiscal implications is supposed to have a quorum in the Wisconsin state Senate. So there are two choices here:

1. Collective bargaining has fiscal implications, and so the bill will be blocked in the courts and ruled unconstitutional.

2. Collective bargaining DOES NOT have direct fiscal implications, and Gov. Walker has been lying this entire time by making the case that it's fiscally necessary.

So either the state R's just passed an illegal bill, or Walker has been lying this entire time and really is just interested in union-busting.

For another example of the Rebuplican respect for truth, see todays NYT.


The trouble with lies is that they catch up with you.  That's why David Mamet has one of his characters say to another in Glengarry Glenross:  "Always tell the truth--it's the easiest thing to remember."

Every day, more Americans come to realize that the GOP stands for three things:  1) Money; 2) Power; and 3) The power of money.

Sometimes there is progress

Illinois Governor Pat Quinn has signed a bill--passed by both houses of the legislature--abolishing capital punishment.  He has also commuted the sentences of 15 men on death row.  This is a major step forward--a major state abolishing the death penalty through legislative, not court action.  

Somebodies being dumb

Mitt Romney is going around the country trying to run away from his past.  Specifically, from his history as governor of Massachusetts.  More specifically, from the healthcare reform that he sponsored, which was one of the progenitors of the national reform that Congress passed in 2009.  


For a smart guy, the Mittster is being remarkably dumb.  The more he tries to avoid his history, the more his opponents will tag him with it; he'll have to spend more time defending himself than he would if he were straightforward.  (Those who followed Mitt's campaign in 2008 will recall that that was a feature of his effort then.  He has not learned from his history.)


Mitt would be smarter to take the opposite tack.  He should say, "The Massachusetts healthcare reform package was imperfect.  So is Obamacare [let him use the word; to digress, I think Democrats should take the name on as a badge of honor].  But it has many good features.  In today's world, everyone needs healthcare, and insurance is the way we pay for it.  No one except an insurance executive wants people to be denied coverage because of a pre-existing condition.   No one wants a cancer patient to be told that he can't get more treatment, because his insurance has a limit and that limit has been reached.  So, let's reform Obamacare, not repeal it.  And, you know, if you look at my home state of Massachusetts, almost everyone does have health insurance, the state has a lower unemployment rate than most, it did not suffer as much from the recession and it is coming out of the recession better than other comparable states.  The work we did in Massachusetts had a lot to do with that."


Mitt won't say that, of course.  He doesn't have the guts to go against the Rebuplican tide.  And he's probably right that the message I have outlined will not get him the nomination.  But the one he is trying to peddle won't, either, and if by some mischance he is nominated, he'll go down to ignominious defeat against President Obama.  


Oh, and the Rebuplicans are being dumb in their refusal to recognize the need for real reform of the nation's healthcare system.  As in their refusal to recognize reality in so many other forms.  Don't be misled by the mid-term elections:  Americans are waking up to the intellectual bankruptcy of what used to be the Grand Old Party.

A new motto for the GOP

IGNORANT AND PROUD OF IT!

(See following post for one example.)

Is this the same guy?

As I recall from 2008, Mike Huckabee was a very conservative but decent guy, characterized by good humor and a tolerant attitude. He sure has changed. I'd guess that the presidential bug has really dug deep in him, but maybe this is what comes from too much time hanging around the toxic precincts of Fix Schmooze.

You probably saw this story: Huckabee was asked by a "conservative radio host," Steve Malzberg, about President Obama's background. (Republicans have not paid so much attention to a president's upbringing since Abe Lincoln, "the Railsplitter.") Malzberg, whose grasp of facts is at best shaky, said, " How come we don’t have a health record, we don’t have a college record, we don’t have a birth certificate — why, Mr. Obama, did you spend millions of dollars in courts all over this country to defend against having to present a birth certificate?"

None of those assertions is true, but Huckabee didn't bother to correct his host, or to enhance the radio audience's understanding. Instead he wandered off: “I would love to know more. What I know is troubling enough," he began. Then he said, “If you think about it, his perspective as growing up in Kenya with a Kenyan father and grandfather, their view of the Mau Mau Revolution in Kenya is very different than ours because he probably grew up hearing that the British were a bunch of imperialists who persecuted his grandfather.”

That statement, too, is devoid of facts. Mr. Obama did not grow up in Kenya; he did not set foot in that country until he was 26, and then on a short visit. He did not grow up with his father, whom he met only twice after the man left the President's mother when Mr. Obama was a baby. Clearly, he did not hear tales of the Mau Mau at his father's or grandfather's knees.

One of the things notable about this story is Huckabee's amazing ignorance of American history; I mean the guy is a conservative who achieved high office and is seeking an even higher office. But the former governor seems to think there is something essentially different about stories of British imperialists persecuting freedom-loving fathers and grandfathers in Africa from the stories we hear as children, about British imperialists persecuting our forefathers. (Coincidentally, today is the anniversary of the Boston Massacre.)

When it was pointed out that Mr. Huckabee had engaged in fiction, his spokesman, Hogan Gidley, the executive director of the former governor's PAC, said that Huckabee "simply misspoke," and that “he meant to say the president grew up in Indonesia."

Now, that makes sense. It's so easy to confuse a nation in Africa characterized by high plains, large mountains and people with a pastoral background with one strung through Asia on more than 1,000 islands. And who of us has not mistaken the Serengeti Plain for Borneo? Or British overlords with the Dutch?

What really gets to me is the utter contempt for the American people that Huckabee shows. "Simply misspoke?" Huh? At least he could have asserted that he spoke in ignorance--although that is highly unlikely as well; too much thought must have gone into the comment about Kenya and the Mau Mau movement (the leader of which, Jomo Kenyatta, became the first president of an independent Kenya). The fact is that Mr. Huckabee lied (that is, he told a knowing and intentional untruth), and that he tried to cover it up with another lie.

Sadly for the party that gave us Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt and Eisenhower, this incident is now par for the course for today's Rebuplicans. They have become the Party of Ignorance.

Anniversary

Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated as President (for the first time), 150 years ago today.

FDR was inaugurated for the first time 78 years ago today.*

They still live in our hearts.

*The date of inauguration was changed to January 20th during FDR's first term.

The big lie

Guess how much Wisconsin taxpayers are paying for state workers' pensions.

You're wrong. Unless you guessed $00.00. That's right, the Badger State's taxpayers don't pay any part of the pensions. The workers do, because their pensions come out of deferred compensation--that is, money that's owed to them as wages, but that they have elected (through their collective bargaining agreements) to defer and put into the pension system.

It is true that taxpayers would have to make up shortfalls if the projections of payouts fall short (i.e. retired workers live too long). But that is the product of short-sighted public officials who made overly-optimistic projections to make the deal seem sweeter to employees. (The plans are defined-benefit plans; if Gov. Walker really wants to save money down the road, he should negotiate with public workers so that new contracts, or perhaps newly-hired workers, go into less generous defined-contribution plans. But then again, saving money isn't what he's really about.)

You can read the details here, from Tax.com, and a further commentary here, from Forbes.com, of all places.