Another brief video diary. This is how Congress works now.
Notice how the Speaker pro-tem denies the points of order and inquiry by redefining the terms? Notice the uproar when he does so. Notice that the "nays" are clearly louder than the "ayes," but the Speaker pro tem declares the "ayes" have it. The vote here is the defunding of National Public Radio.
This is the atmosphere Peter Welch is working in. Thugs are running the place. We need to help other states elect Democrats. This is why it matters.
Who doesn't like the idea of having their taxes cut, right? After all, taxes are money out of your pocket, and nobody feels that they have enough money, so if they can hold onto some of it they'll be happy.
That's been the Republican mantra for decades, ever since Reagan was president, or even earlier (remember Jarvis-Gann in California, the proposition that has decimated California's educational and other public institutions?).
This idea continues to form the latest Republican tax proposal, and I think it really deserves a close look.
There's only one problem here. With all that money in tax cuts, who's not getting a tax cut?
You.
That's right, you and everyone else who makes less than $127,769 a year. In fact, the bottom 90% of all taxpayers would receive a tax increase.
Not to worry, though, because we are getting a big tax cut in the aggregate. Does it really matter if 100% of those tax cuts are distributed to the highest 10% of all earners?
The Republicans are betting that it won't matter one bit, because they'll still pitch the debate as one where they are proposing a tax cut and Democrats are proposing a tax increase.
I would think, though, that there should be a huge difference between the Republicans' usual tactic, which is to package a pittance in tax cuts to the middle class with gigantic tax cuts to the wealthy and this new plan, which is to actually raise taxes on the middle class to fund big tax cuts on the rich.
This is really Robin Hood in reverse. This should be a winning argument for us, but it has to be made, and made loud and clear, every single day.
Well, look at that; the Republicans squeak into control of the House, largely by exploiting the complete ignorance of much of the country with regard to the Healthcare Act; and immediately they set to work trying to find the most harmful way in which to use their "mandate" in order to ensure that the dysfunction of the Bush years be fully reinstated and even exceeded.
Ever since we learned, courtesy of a 2008 presidential debate, that the most influential Republicans do not even believe in evolution, we knew this day was coming. Cocooned in their own little fiefdom of faulty science, the new Republican brain-trust calls itself "conservative," but indulges in revisionist fantasies that are anything but. Throwing caution to the wind they have embraced, with gusto, the opposite of what the rest of the world considers to be settled science with regard to climate change and the need to "conserve" both our exploitable resources and the finite environment of the planet.
These so-called "conservatives" have allowed the superstitions of their fringe to seize control of the agenda, so that policy is being driven by people who believe that a supreme being gave them permission to use-up the planet's resources and atmosphere in a single lifetime after which he will deliver them, magically and without consequence, to Valhalla. If I saw this plot in a movie I wouldn't believe it.
What worries me most is that our president, elected in 2008 by an overwhelming majority to move this country forward in so many ways, has lately been showing signs of handing the whole operation back to the same corrupt forces who brought us to this unfortunate juncture in our democracy. Two days ago he was schmoozing those arch-enemies of environmental and social responsibility, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, who have recently gained even more power to influence elections, courtesy of the Supreme Court decision on campaign finance. Yesterday, we were treated to the news that he proposes to slash heating aid for the poor, a sure-hit with Dickensian partisans on the right. One has to wonder what sort of bouquet of "compromise" he plans to offer the Climate Change deniers.
If you had to say something nice about the Republicans, I guess it would be that they at least have the decency to to recognize how vile and shameful their constant appeals to racism are.
Of course, that's only when they get caught, and they don't have the decency to stop.
The first macaca moment of the 2012 presidential campaign has been provided by the crapulent Haley Barbour, whose efforts at backpedaling could have qualified him for the circus.
It's a long and sordid history, going back to Nixon's Southern Strategy, but we can also recall the multiple explicit appeals to racism by Ronald Reagan, including his choice of Philadelphia, Mississippi to kick off his presidential campaign, his references to food stamp fraud by "big bucks" who use them to buy liquor, or his support for the racist Bob Jones University.
More recently we have the racist campaign sponsored by the odious Lee Atwater, who capped off his life with a phony apology for his racist acts.
This year it's Haley Barbour and his praise for the White Citizens' Councils. Hodding Carter had a great explication of their nature and methods on NPR, but the short, although entirely accurate, version of it is that they were the clean hands, suit-wearing version of the Klan: they eschewed violence because they didn't need it as long as the Klan was there to enforce the more polite dictates of the Citizens' Councils.
Today's Republicans never miss a chance, particularly when their racism is exposed, to sputter that Abraham Lincoln was a Republican (yes, the same Republicans who still talk fondly about their secessionist forbears). Still, I don't think there is anyone outside of the Republican base, who buys it, so if you're a Republican reading this, just spare us.
What's the upshot of this week's brouhaha? Possibly not much, although it's important to expose today's Republicans for the racist dogs they are. That, and Barbour's shot at the 2012 campaign has taken a severe hit.
Hey, if he's not on the national ticket, I bet there's room for him on the ballot in Vermont as the candidate of the Second Vermont Republic.
(Actually, I didn't know about the wily procedural maneuver, but for a long time I've been saying that they should just go ahead and pass the cuts for incomes up to $250,000 and just let the R's do whatever they're going to do, but the principle's the same.)
They really put the Republicans in a box: vote for something they didn't like, or vote against tax cuts for people who make less than a quarter of a million a year. They chose the second option.
They can come back later in the lame duck session, or next year, and tell the American people that it wasn't good enough to cut taxes for 98% of us, they also want to cut taxes for the top 2%. Let them fight on that issue.
This is another major success for Nancy Pelosi. It also takes some of the pressure off Obama to make a deal with the R's on the other stuff.
What's the down side? The Republicans stop being accommodating?
... or more accurately, considering the sheer incompetence of most of the Washington Dems, here's another side of what we're up against, namely, in part, the ones who set the conventional wisdom that has aforementioned Dems and much of the MSM behaving the way that they do.
Daily Kos recently commissioned a poll of Republicans, and although I'm not surprised in the least, some might find rather shocking the depth of the sheer amount of ignorance and regressive thinking that typifies today's Republicans.
A small sampling illustrates, if anything, how this bipartisan nonsense needs to be jettisoned, as it will only work when you don't have one party completely living in the Dark Ages. The poll breaks it down into different regions as well as sex and likelihood of voting, but for brevity's sake, have a look at some of the "all" category.
QUESTION: Do you believe Barack Obama was born in the United States, or not?
NO YES NOT SURE
36 42 22
QUESTION: Should public school students be taught that the book of Genesis in the Bible explains how God created the world?
YES NO NOT SURE
77 15 8
QUESTION: Should contraceptive use be outlawed?
YES NO NOT SURE
31 56 13
QUESTION: Should openly gay men and women be allowed to teach in public schools?
YES NO NOT SURE
8 73 19
QUESTION: Do you think Barack Obama is a socialist?
YES NO NOT SURE
63 21 16
As to that last one, it might have been interesting to see how many Republicans actually know what a "socialist" is, but that would involve a level of thinking that is probably beyond more than a few of 'em.
Not surprisingly, there's also a lot of opposition to labor and immigration amnesty, as well. To its credit (and my surprise), a majority doesn't believe Obama should be impeached or that he's deliberately "wants the terrorists to win". Now, I've never been a fan of Republicanism, even the Eisenhower variety, but it seems there used to be some sort of intellectual component to the party, even if I disagreed with it.
And of course, nothing says more about the current intellectual bankruptcy of the Republican Party than this question:
QUESTION: Do you believe Sarah Palin is more qualified to be President than Barack Obama?
YES NO NOT SURE
53 14 33
It's going to be a long struggle, that much is certain. It's hard to fight a battle of ideas when your opposition is, for the most part, impervious to facts and reasoning,and the brain trusts of that party have figured out quite well how to take advantage of that virulent anti-intellectualism and channel it into a know-nothing, angry populism. 2010's gonna be a blast.
It's taken a very long time, between all the obstructionism, outright lies and manufactured outrage, but miracles evidently do happen. The Senate Republicans have finally found a tactic and a strategy that will actually benefit the American people, if you can believe it. What could it be? A sudden bout of conscience or something? Are you kidding?
Republicans on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence said Friday that they will no longer participate in an investigation into the Bush administration's interrogation policies, arguing that Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.'s decision to reexamine allegations of detainee abuse by the CIA would hobble any inquiry.
They're not too thrilled that Holder didn't stick with Obama's "make-nice-move-along-nothing-to-see-here" capitulation in regards to the CIA abuses perpetrated under Bush, so they're not participating:
"Had Mr. Holder honored the pledge made by the President to look forward, not backwards, we would still be active participants in the Committee's review," the ranking Republican on the intelligence panel, Sen. Christopher S. Bond of Missouri, said in a statement.
Ok, so after whipping up the Teabagging mouthbreathers into a perpetual pants-pooping frenzy about Obama's fascist/socialist/communist/antidisestablishmentarianist (insert your own "ist" here - they won't have a clue, regardless) lies, all of a sudden they took him at his word that he was gonna brush the Bush stuff under the Oval Office rug. Convenient.Yet they don't believe him when they say there's no "death panels". Go figure.
Of course, Diane Fienstein (D- Milquetoast) is all upset that now it can't be "bipartisan" - you know, you have to have some element of reality-detached craziness in there for it to be taken seriously by the Amuurrican people, but overall, I hope that this will be a new-found winning strategy the GOP is taking on... getting the hell out of the way. Think of the things we could finally accomplish.
There's still those Blue Dog Dems to deal with, the real impediment to progress nowadays, but at least we wouldn't have to hear McConnell or Boehner whinin' and lyin' anymore.
As you all know, I have the honor of being one of Vermont's three Electors, and since Obama won the state, I get to cast one of those three votes on December 15 in Montpelier.
I just received via certified mail a small packet of information purportedly sent by one "Terri Storm" of Bessemer, Alabama. It was addressed to me by name as an Elector. The gist of the message is that some group plans to mount an Electoral College "challenge" to Barack Obama's qualification for President based on their suggestion that he is not a "natural born citizen" of the United States.
This group charges that
Despite much public demand, Mr. Obama has not provided access to a classic Birth Certificate that proves the actual place of birth (Web site "short form" version simply does not address this question -- He [sic] must deliver the certified long form ...
In the waning days of peace and prosperity brought to us by the last Democratic administration, a really crappy Belgium Beer infected pop-culture with a viral commercial, which became the functional equivalent of a mass media "I'm with Stupid" t-shirt (clarification, NOW it's a Belgium Beer & it still tasks like yeasty seltzer). Of course it's fitting that Democratic administrations lose deficits while, under Republican administrations, we lose multi-national employers.
For those of you who enjoy the "WHERE ARE THEY NOW" entertainment genre, this follow-up succinctly demonstrates what happens when voters entrust peace, prosperity, national security, fiscal responsibility, global economic leadership and competitiveness and the governance of the U.S. to the Republican party.
Truly, we have come to point in U.S. history where there is no legitimate, objective debate that incompetency and fidelity to failed policies is the baseline "credential" to be a Republican leader. (and don't forget that corruption and deceit receive extra-credit for climbing the GOP leadership ladder). Fiscal irresponsibility, lost wars of ideological choice, regressive taxation, crony capitalism, rule-of-law and equal protection are jettisoned and fear is the structural foundation of every national policy and political campaign waged by GOP leaders. From the incompetency of the Reagan years to the lawlessness of the Bush years, this is the legacy of Republican rule.
Raw Story has a big McCain headline that's sure to shock some people ... or make them spit their morning coffee out.
According to Nick Juliano, "a new book on the presumptive Republican nominee will air perhaps the most shocking angry exchange to date."
"'The Real McCain' by Cliff Schecter, which will arrive in bookstores next month, reports an angry exchange between McCain and his wife that happened in full view of aides and reporters during a 1992 campaign stop."
Three reporters from Arizona, on the condition of anonymity, also let me in on another incident involving McCain's intemperateness. In his 1992 Senate bid, McCain was joined on the campaign trail by his wife, Cindy, as well as campaign aide Doug Cole and consultant Wes Gullett. At one point, Cindy playfully twirled McCain's hair and said, "You're getting a little thin up there." McCain's face reddened, and he responded, "At least I don't plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you ...
Dick Cheney pays George Bush $100 for an ole'fashioned Texas corn-holing and George is guilty of prostitution. He committed a CRIME!!!
George Bush pays Dick Cheney $100 to do the neocon nasty (with his pacemaker turned up to 11) and Dick is guilty of prostitution. He committed a CRIME!!!
However, I pay both George & Dick $100 to fuck each other. Or I pay $300 to George and Dick and Joe Lieberman AND I then film George & Dick fisting and felching Joe who is now reaching around the aisle instead of across it. I then sell copies of my magnum opus "George Dicks Joe," say - for instance - through a website. I have just paid three people to have sex, I have filmed it, I will now be paid myself due to the fact that I PAID THREE PEOPLE TO HAVE SEX SO I COULD MAKE A MOVIE OF THE ENTIRE DISGUSTING AFFAIR and it is ALL FUCKING LEGAL and I have a tape to prove it!
Land of opportunity, Baby! See, in America, if someone pays for sex, it is a crime. If someone pays two, three or twelve people to screw and then sells pictures or movies of it, its commerce. (Excuse me, "art").
Despite better education and more awareness within the general population, a pervasive bias remains against people with mental health problems.
Suffering from mental illness too often means suffering from prejudice or discrimination as well. The systemic biases in our communities and institutions exacerbate the very illness afflicting those who most need support and understanding. Prejudice and lack of access to care are another set of roadblocks for people struggling with acute and/or chronic serious mental health problems.
It is an all-consuming task, for many who have mental problems, to cope with their disabilities and work toward maintaining or preserving - to the full extent they can - a functional life. This burden frequently falls on the family and loved ones who help to care and take responsibility for those with mental/behavioral health and personality disorders.Now, throw in the added burden of prejudice, neglect, a judgmental community that fails at its duty to be a support system (or to allow a support system to be in place), and life for the mentally ill is one nasty uphill fight.
If you haven't guessed already, this is about the U.S. war on Iraq . . .(more below)
This is one of those stories that has to be passed on as far and as wide as possible, but it really makes you wonder if some of these partisan, win-at-all-costs Republicans are actually some different species or something. Think Progress has done the work on this, so I'll just excerpt from them:
If it weren’t for CHIP, I might not be here today. … We got the help we needed because we had health insurance for us through the CHIP program. But there are millions of kids out there who don’t have CHIP, and they wouldn’t get the care that my sister and I did if they got hurt. … I just hope the President will listen to my story and help other kids to be as lucky as me.
Now, you know what's coming - you just might not believe it. The right wing attack machine has, in response, gone after this kid and his family. And we're not just talking about a few easily dissmissable nutjobs here (although the smear did begin with an anonymous wingnut at freerepublic.com), the attack has been picked up and amplified by The National Review, Michelle Malkin, Wizbang, Powerline, the Weekly Standard blog, and House GOP leader John Boehner - and the attacks have crept into ABC's online site as well. The message is, as TP put it, "that Frost was actually a rich kid being pampered by the government" and that "Graeme and his sister Gemma attend wealthy schools that cost 'nearly $40,000 per year for tuition' and live in a well-off home"
The real message - given the above attacks and reports that the family is getting a barrage of harassing phone calls, and have picked up Michelle Malkin as a stalker into their private lives - is basically; don't open your mouth and screw with us or we'll come after you. Any conservative with any kind of conscience should damn well get out in front and condemn this twisted smear and intimidation campaign.
Here are the facts about the family, for the record:
1) Graeme has a scholarship to a private school. The school costs $15K a year, but the family only pays $500 a year.
2) His sister Gemma attends another private school to help her with the brain injuries that occurred due to her accident. The school costs $23,000 a year, but the state pays the entire cost.
3) They bought their “lavish house” sixteen years ago for $55,000 at a time when the neighborhood was less than safe.
4) Last year, the Frost’s made $45,000 combined. Over the past few years they have made no more than $50,000 combined.
5) The state of Maryland has found them eligible to participate in the CHIP program.
Desperate to defend Bush’s decision to cut off millions of children from health care, the right wing has stooped to launching baseless and uninformed attacks against a 12 year old child and his family.
In my post a few days ago, one of the things that I touched upon was how people are waking up to the fact that in the conservatives' mad rush to privatize just about every aspect of our economy, that when profit is the ultimate motive, often human needs are pushed to the side with disastrous results, and that when you combine that with having people who are anti-government in power, the problem is compounded to epic proportions. Nowhere was this more apparent than the government's inept handling of the Katrina disaster. And even more infuriating is the mindset that was all too apparent by those on the right as to how to benefit from the tragedy, as Rick Perlstein's article over at TomPaine.com clearly illustrates. Jump below the fold for your morning outrage. Don't spill your coffee...
I have to say, even though I still think it's way too early to be focusing on the '08 elections, and my biggest fear is probably a Hillary presidency, I am enjoying the hell out of watching the GOP continue to self-destruct at so many levels.
First, there's the Congress and Senate. So many of them are digging in their heels on supporting Bush and the war, it's making me seriously think that the conventional wisdom that politicians are only concerned about being reelected is very wrong. They're setting themselves up for an electoral bloodbath in '08. It really seems that the goal here, as some have already stated, is to keep the war going until Bush is out of office and let the next president clean up the mess. But you can tell they're getting nervous when Foghorn Leghorn himself is starting to talk about timetables. But what makes it funny is they still have the wingnuts like this one leading them around like a bull with a nose ring.
I'd like to point you to a great piece by Paul over at Alien and Sedition today, called 'It's Not the Liberals Who Should Worry About Evangelicals'. I think that Alien and Sedition is one of those great blogs that really excels at serious, thoughtful analysis of the conservative movement from many angles, and I encourage you to add it to your list of daily reads.
Now, if you follow these kinds of issues like I do, you may have noticed in recent months a bit of a rift in the evangelical camp, between the war-mongering, xenophobic, sex-obsessed faction and the quieter faction who actually take Jesus' philosophy regarding social justice seriously. Their side encompasses many things that many of us on the lefty side hold dear: environmental stewardship, world peace, and eliminating poverty. Granted, there are still fundamental differences, but there is at least some common ground.
Taking much from an article in the N.Y. Review of Books, Paul seems to believe that there is a coming rise of moderates from the evangelical side, who are not necessarily nutso fundamentalists. And, as someone pointed out in the comments of the Kos cross-posting of this article, if the Dems are able to appeal to those common ground issues, the Republicans truly have a lot to fear, because they are left with nothing but the extreme right-wing base, which is not exactly a sustainable way of keeping power. The key is for the Dems to not go overboard with the God talk, because then they're going to lose the support of those who hold secularism and rational inquiry in highest regard.
It just goes to show how screwed up some of these people are when talking about the GOP '08 roster, it still seems like a pro-choice candidate has no chance in hell of getting the nomination. With all the serious problems in the world that affect every single person, this obsession with holy wars, the well-being of pre-humans, and which orifice a penis ends up in may eventually do them in. Although they're not dead and buried yet, and I still am not convinced the Dems are going to turn everything around (especially as long as the DLC types have any kind of influence, which, thankfully is also on the decline), I think what we are witnessing now is the beginning of another long trek into the political wilderness for the GOP, and the next time they come out of it, it's going to be harder to pull this kind of stuff off. One can only hope.
Whenever I'm looking to put the political plays of the Bush "administration" in long-term context, I point people to "Constitutional Hardball," (PDF) a law review article written by Georgetown now Harvard Law Prof. Mark Tushnet. I think it's a real eye-opener for those who might otherwise advocate simply waiting out the Bush gang, and "fixing" the problems they've created at the ballot box.
What is constitutional hardball?
A shorthand sketch of constitutional hardball is this: It consists of political claims and practices -- legislative and executive initiatives -- that are without much question within the bounds of existing constitutional doctrine and practice but that are nonetheless in some tension with existing pre-constitutional understandings.3 It is hardball because its practitioners see themselves as playing for keeps in a special kind of way; they believe the stakes of the political controversy their actions provoke are quite high, and that their defeat and their opponents' victory would be a serious, perhaps permanent setback to the political positions they hold.
---------- 3 By this I mean the "go without saying" assumptions that underpin working systems of constitutional government. They are had to identify outside times of crisis precisely because they go without saying. (An alternative term would be conventions.)
How do you know when it's happening?
One way to distinguish periods of ordinary politics from periods of transformation is that during the former pre-constitutional understandings are taken for granted, whereas during the latter such understandings are brought into question.
And what's really going on when it's happening?
The idea is that the institutional arrangements characteristic of a particular constitutional order -- characteristic, that is, of each specific period of ordinary politics -- are the presuppositions accepted by all politically significant actors in that period, whereas the whole point of constitutional transformation is to alter the previously taken-for-granted institutional arrangements. Of course the proponents of transformation are going to place pre-constitutional understandings in question, because they want to replace those understandings with others.
How does this relate, exactly, to today's situation? Read on after the jump.
There's an interesting bit over at ThinkProgress. Now, we are wise to take anything and everything from the TV talking heads with the utmost degree of skepticism, yet once in a while something pans out. On this morning's 'Chris Matthews Show', NBC reporter Andrea Mitchell put out there that the top universal commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, has recently met with the Senate Republican caucus:
"Petraeus went to the Republican caucus and told them, I will have real progress to you by August," Mitchell said. The Republicans claim they told him that after August, they will end their support for the war. "They have told him at a caucus meeting as very, very recently, that if there isn't progress by August - and real progress means not a day of violence and a day of sanity - that they will pull the plug."
Mitchell also states that moderate Repubs had told the they didn't believe the surge would work and the President has until Labor Day. "After that, they're running."
"An unjust composition never fails to contain error and falsehood."-Ethan Allen
Lotta schadenfreude today, and we'll also examine a reprehensible example of the fascist jackbooted thugs being unleashed by their corrupt political masters to oppress the proletariat, just to make sure we don't lose focus on the glorious revolution against the yellow running dogs and the lackeys of imperialism.
Catamount's open. Check your sidearms at the door, and we'll see ya on the jump.
