Category: politics

News of US politics

Sarah Palin and TLC

Seth Anderson0 comment

The rumors are Discovery Communications1 is paying Ms. Palin $1,000,000 an episode for some Alaskan reality-esque show. Nice work if you can get it, no? But will it be worth it to the network? Will the controversy keep blue chip advertisers from sponsoring the show, ala the highly successful boycott of Glenn Beck’s show?

Wrong Bus
[Wrong bus, Juneau, Alaska]

Sarah Palin used to say the only difference between a pit bull and a hockey mom was lipstick, but now she might hope that advertisers didn’t take that line too seriously.

It’s the hockey mom, after all, that would attract more marketers to “Sarah Palin’s Alaska,” the eight-part documentary series that Discovery Communications has acquired for its TLC channel.

The show will be supervised by Mark Burnett, the force behind such TV hits as CBS’s “Survivor” and NBC’s “The Apprentice,” and will strive to “reveal Alaska’s powerful beauty as it has never been filmed,” as Discovery’s chief operating officer, Peter Liguori, said in a statement today. “The deal was just concluded this week and now we begin the development and production,” a Discovery spokesperson added. “TLC is about strong characters and compelling narratives, and there is absolutely no intention of making a political program whatsoever.”

But Ms. Palin, a figure as polarizing as she is charming, will be the star attraction. Even though the show won’t be political, her central role will have an effect on its audience and ad support.

Ad buyers are already suggesting that the show may not attract advertising from big marketers that need to appeal to the broadest possible audience. Smaller players, on the other hand, may see opportunity.

[Click to continue reading Will Marketers Buy Into ‘Sarah Palin’s Alaska’? – Advertising Age – MediaWorks]

Testimonial Kodachrome

And as many others have pointed out, Sarah Palin on a science channel? Sarah Palin who doesn’t believe in evolution, as if evolution is just an opinion to agree or disagree with; Sarah Palin who thinks man and dinosaurs walked the earth together, slightly over 6,000 years ago? Sarah Palin the avowed hater of secular liberalism, and presumedly anti-science? She’s the one getting multiple millions of dollars to appear on TLC? Why not just piss your corporate dollars in the ear of a dead moose and film that?

In tough economic times, “a lot of cable networks are walking away from their brands and trying to get ratings,” said Mr. Berger2. “They’ll do anything they can do to get ratings and it’s a short-term fix, but I think it’s really hurting many networks in the long term,” because such stunts often draw broader audiences that don’t stick with the channel.

Critics have already pointed out that Ms. Palin’s track record on the environment doesn’t necessarily pair up with that of Discovery Communications, TLC’s parent. In 2008, the company launched Planet Green, a cable channel devoted to sustainability, and a companion website, TreeHugger.com. Ms. Palin, on the other hand, has come to be associated with the chant “Drill, baby, drill,” for advocating the drilling of natural gas and oil in her home state.

Footnotes:
  1. corporate parent of TLC [↩]
  2. Ira Berger, director-national broadcast, at Dallas independent Richards Group [↩]

Extremists in the GOP

Seth Anderson0 comment

Harmony in Blue White and Red

Paul Krugman:

To be sure, it was enjoyable watching Representative Devin Nunes, a Republican of California, warn that by passing health reform, Democrats “will finally lay the cornerstone of their socialist utopia on the backs of the American people.” Gosh, that sounds uncomfortable. And it’s been a hoot watching Mitt Romney squirm as he tries to distance himself from a plan that, as he knows full well, is nearly identical to the reform he himself pushed through as governor of Massachusetts. His best shot was declaring that enacting reform was an “unconscionable abuse of power,” a “historic usurpation of the legislative process” — presumably because the legislative process isn’t supposed to include things like “votes” in which the majority prevails.

A side observation: one Republican talking point has been that Democrats had no right to pass a bill facing overwhelming public disapproval. As it happens, the Constitution says nothing about opinion polls trumping the right and duty of elected officials to make decisions based on what they perceive as the merits. But in any case, the message from the polls is much more ambiguous than opponents of reform claim: While many Americans disapprove of Obamacare, a significant number do so because they feel that it doesn’t go far enough. And a Gallup poll taken after health reform’s enactment showed the public, by a modest but significant margin, seeming pleased that it passed.

[Click to continue reading Paul Krugman – Going to Extreme – NYTimes.com]

I do hope nobody actually gets hurt in this days of pseudo-rage, and Rethuglican threats. Other than that, I’ve enjoyed the spectacle as well. Fun when the GOP doesn’t get its way, elections matter, remember?

When do we get to do pointed sticks?

From the Kansas City Star Editorial Board:

Even some elected officials have stepped over the line of reasonable debate. GOP Rep. Devin Nunes, of California, noted: “When you use totalitarian tactics, people, you know, begin to act crazy…I think that people have every right to say what they want. If they want to smear someone, they can do it.”

[Click to continue reading Tea party’s lunatic fringe is alarming | Midwest Voices]

Greg Sargent on Mitt Romney supporting what he now opposes:

Here’s the key exchange:

MODERATOR: “You seem to have backed away from mandates on a national basis.”

ROMNEY: “No, no, I like mandates. The mandates work.”

To be clear, the individual mandate wasn’t the lightening rod for the right back then that it is these days. Romney appears to have merely been trying to appear consistent on the issue. But now that Obamacare has elevated the issue into an important one on the right, Romney is depicting the Federal mandate as a frightening abuse of power.

All this said, in a way the details of Romney’s position, or positions, aren’t really the point. Rather, the real problem for Romney here is that every time he goes on TV to bash Obamacare, he’s going to be asked to explain why he’s slamming a provision he signed into law himself.

[Click to continue reading Did Romney Endorse Federal Mandate? | The Plum Line]

The Gallup poll mentioned:

Nearly half of Americans give a thumbs-up to Congress’ passage of a healthcare reform bill last weekend, with 49% calling it “a good thing.” Republicans and Democrats have polar opposite reactions, with independents evenly split.

[Click to continue reading By Slim Margin, Americans Support Healthcare Bill’s Passage ]

George Washington was a socialist

Seth Anderson0 comment

If you use the same reasoning the Rethuglicans are using against implementing the individual insurance mandate, then George Washington was a socialist too

South branch of the river

Joe Conason writes:

One of the favorite complaints against the healthcare reform bill is that the founding document doesn’t permit the federal government to order anyone to buy a product or service. That supposedly renders illegitimate the individual insurance mandate that is part of the bill.

As every fervent advocate of gun rights ought to know, however, that argument suffers from a glaring historical flaw. Only a few years after the nation’s Founding Fathers ratified the Constitution, Congress approved the Militia Act of 1792, which was duly signed by George Washington, then the president and commander in chief.

Establishing state militias and a national standard for their operation, the Militia Act explicitly required every “free able-bodied white male citizen” between the ages of 18 and 45, with a few occupational exceptions, to “provide himself with a good musket or firelock, a sufficient bayonet and belt, two spare flints, and a knapsack, a pouch with a box therein to contain not less than twenty-four cartridges, suited to the bore of his musket or firelock, each cartridge to contain a proper quantity of powder and ball; or with a good rifle, knapsack, shot-pouch and powder horn, twenty balls suited to the bore of his rifle, and a quarter of a pound of powder..”

Within six months, every citizen enrolled and notified of his required militia service had to equip himself as specified above. There was spirited debate in Congress as to whether the state ought to subsidize the purchase of arms for men too poor to afford their own, so that everyone could serve his country. Subsidized or not, however, the founders saw no constitutional barrier to a law ordering every citizen to buy a gun and ammo.

[Click to continue reading So George Washington was a socialist, too! – Joe Conason – Salon.com]

Ru-oh! Better warn the Texas Board of Education so they can scrub mention of George Washington from any textbooks…

Health Care will Save Republicans Too

Seth Anderson3 Comments

Michael Moore writes:

Eat me

To My Fellow Citizens, the Republicans:
Thanks to last night’s vote, that child of yours who has had asthma since birth will now be covered after suffering for her first nine years as an American child with a pre-existing condition.

Thanks to last night’s vote, that 23-year-old of yours who will be hit one day by a drunk driver and spend six months recovering in the hospital will now not go bankrupt because you will be able to keep him on your insurance policy.

Thanks to last night’s vote, after your cancer returns for the third time — racking up another $200,000 in costs to keep you alive — your insurance company will have to commit a criminal act if they even think of dropping you from their rolls.

Yes, my Republican friends, even though you have opposed this health care bill, we’ve made sure it is going to cover you, too, in your time of need. I know you’re upset right now. I know you probably think that if you did get wiped out by an illness, or thrown out of your home because of a medical bankruptcy, that you would somehow pull yourself up by your bootstraps and survive. I know that’s a comforting story to tell yourself, and if John Wayne were still alive I’m sure he could make that into a movie for you.

But the reality is that these health insurance companies have only one mission: To take as much money from you as they can — and then work like demons to deny you whatever coverage and help they can should you get sick.
So, when you find yourself suddenly broadsided by a life-threatening illness someday, perhaps you’ll thank those pinko-socialist, Canadian-loving Democrats and independents for what they did Sunday evening.

[Click to continue reading The Great Thing About the Health Care Law That Has Passed? It Will Save Republican Lives, Too (An Open Letter to Republicans from Michael Moore) | MichaelMoore.com]

Can’t we opt the Republicans out instead? or opt out those districts that voted against the bill?

A curious whitewashing history of the CIA

Seth Anderson0 comment


“Courting Disaster: How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack” (Marc A. Thiessen)

Marc Thiessen, a liar? Really? Would have never guessed that someone as obnoxiously a Bush sycophant and bully as Marc Thiessen would also have trouble with truth1

Jane Mayer reads Thiessen’s “book” so we don’t have to bother

Thiessen’s book, whose subtitle is “How the C.I.A. Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack,” offers a relentless defense of the Bush Administration’s interrogation policies, which, according to many critics, sanctioned torture and yielded no appreciable intelligence benefit. In addition, Thiessen attacks the Obama Administration for having banned techniques such as waterboarding. “Americans could die as a result,” he writes.

Yet Thiessen is better at conveying fear than at relaying the facts. His account of the foiled Heathrow plot, for example, is “completely and utterly wrong,” according to Peter Clarke, who was the head of Scotland Yard’s anti-terrorism branch in 2006. “The deduction that what was being planned was an attack against airliners was entirely based upon intelligence gathered in the U.K.,” Clarke said, adding that Thiessen’s “version of events is simply not recognized by those who were intimately involved in the airlines investigation in 2006.” Nor did Scotland Yard need to be told about the perils of terrorists using liquid explosives. The bombers who attacked London’s public-transportation system in 2005, Clarke pointed out, “used exactly the same materials.”

Thiessen’s claim about Khalid Sheikh Mohammed looks equally shaky. The Bush interrogation program hardly discovered the Philippine airlines plot: in 1995, police in Manila stopped it from proceeding and, later, confiscated a computer filled with incriminating details. By 2003, when Mohammed was detained, hundreds of news reports about the plot had been published. If Mohammed provided the C.I.A. with critical new clues—details unknown to the Philippine police, or anyone else—Thiessen doesn’t supply the evidence.

Peter Bergen, a terrorism expert who is writing a history of the Bush Administration’s “war on terror,” told me that the Heathrow plot “was disrupted by a combination of British intelligence, Pakistani intelligence, and Scotland Yard.” He noted that authorities in London had “literally wired the suspects’ bomb factory for sound and video.” It was “a classic law-enforcement and intelligence success,” Bergen said, and “had nothing to do with waterboarding or with Guantánamo detainees.”

[Click to continue reading A curious history of the C.I.A. : The New Yorker]

Torture doesn’t work, in other words, despite what such Republican propaganda as the Fox television drama 24 would have you believe. Smart people in the intelligence community already know this, only sadists like Dick Cheney and Marc Thiessen cling to their guns and iron maidens.

Entrance optional

Well worth reading the entire book report, you’ll probably learn a thing or two that Mr. Thiessen would rather you not know.

Footnotes:
  1. sarcasm, if you can’t hear my tone of voice over the internet tubes [↩]

Health Care Reform and November 2010

Seth Anderson0 comment

What will happen in the ensuing months now that Health Care Reform has actually become law of the land, and not a socialist bogeyman? Will the Republican shouters control the message? Or will the issue fade due to the short attention span of the American public?

Last minute lobbying blitz for spring

David Corn writes, in part:

In a column written hours before the House passed the bill, neoconservative David Frum referred to health care reform as the GOP’s “Waterloo.” He noted that “it’s a good bet that conservatives are over-optimistic about November” because “by then the economy will have improved and the immediate goodies in the healthcare bill will be reaching key voting blocs.” Frum’s j’accuse! blamed “conservatives and Republican ourselves” for making a poor strategic decision: “We would make no deal with the administration. No negotiations, no compromise, nothing…We followed the most radical voices in the party and the movement, and they led us to abject and irreversible defeat.” Republican legislators who wanted to cut a deal, he notes, were trapped and pinned down by “conservative talkers on Fox and talk radio.”

Frum speaks for no one but himself. Like the Pope, he has no troops of his own. But if his comments reflect a wider sentiment within Republican circles, it’s possible the GOP could be struck by an internal division over the health care reform fight: Do Republicans move on, or do they act like those fabled Japanese soldiers stranded on deserted islands at the end of World War II who never realized the war was over and that they had lost?

And then there is the other end of the Republican political spectrum: Sarah Palin. The day before the vote, the woman who decried the non-existent “death panels” began tweeting that the health care bill would undercut medical plans for military personnel. Representative Ike Skelton, the Democratic chairman of the House armed services committee, says this is not true and would introduce legislation to guarantee this. But it appeared as if Palin was looking for another killer talking point. Other strategists and leaders on the right will be doing the same.

And think of all the anecdotes-as-ammo to come. Both sides in the months—and probably years—ahead will be trolling for stories that will bolster their positions. A government bureaucrat makes a wrong call about anything related to the health care overhaul, and Republicans and their talk show allies will go to town. Democrats, for their part, will embrace any testimonials from Americans whose lives were saved due to changes brought about by this bill.

[Click to continue reading Health Care Reform: All Over… But the Shouting | Mother Jones]

Too early to tell, but worth paying attention to

Health Care Vote Finally

Seth Anderson2 Comments

Let the finger-pointing begin, looks as if Congress has the necessary votes to pass the long argued Health Care Reform bill, or whatever it’s called1.

¡Viva Obama! 2008

The House on Sunday took the most critical step yet toward adoption of legislation to overhaul the nation’s health care system and guarantee access to medical insurance for tens of millions of Americans, all but assuring a hard-fought but politically risky victory for President Obama and his party.

By a vote of 224-206, the House approved the key procedural measure necessary to pass the legislation, showing that Democrats and Mr. Obama had succeeded in cobbling together the votes they need to achieve a goal sought by presidents and progressives for more than a half-century.

[Click to continue reading Democrats Predict Slim Margin in Health Vote Sunday – NYTimes.com]

Don’t see how it can be halted now.

The main bill before the House was passed by the Senate on a party-line vote, and if the House approves it Sunday, it would go to Mr. Obama for his signature. Assuming the Senate passes the separate package of changes, possibly as soon as this week, that measure would then also go to Mr. Obama, whose signature would bring the process to an end.

Obama 2008 - Pilsen Paletero

What will it actually mean to you and me? Only the Noodly Appendage knows. I haven’t read the damn thing, have you?

The bill would require most Americans to have health insurance, would add 16 million people to the Medicaid rolls and would subsidize private coverage for low- and middle-income people, at a cost to the government of $938 billion over 10 years, the Congressional Budget Office says.

The bill would require many employers to offer coverage to their employees or pay a penalty. Each state would set up a marketplace, or exchange, where consumers without such coverage could shop for insurance meeting federal standards.

The budget office estimates that the bill would provide coverage to 32 million uninsured people, but still leave 23 million uninsured in 2019. One-third of those remaining uninsured would be illegal immigrants.

The new costs, according to the budget office, would be more than offset by savings in Medicare and by new taxes and fees, including a tax on high-cost employer-sponsored health plans and a tax on the investment income of the most affluent Americans.

Footnotes:
  1. H.R.3590 – Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act
    An act entitled The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act [↩]

Hypocrisy: A Parliamentary Procedure Oft Used

Seth Anderson0 comment

When even Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute is calling out Republican bs for the hypocrisy it is…

Our Lady of the Green

Any veteran observer of Congress is used to the rampant hypocrisy over the use of parliamentary procedures that shifts totally from one side to the other as a majority moves to minority status, and vice versa. But I can’t recall a level of feigned indignation nearly as great as what we are seeing now from congressional Republicans and their acolytes at the Wall Street Journal, and on blogs, talk radio, and cable news. It reached a ridiculous level of misinformation and disinformation over the use of reconciliation, and now threatens to top that level over the projected use of a self-executing rule by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

In the last Congress that Republicans controlled, from 2005 to 2006, Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier used the self-executing rule more than 35 times, and was no stranger to the concept of “deem and pass.” That strategy, then decried by the House Democrats who are now using it, and now being called unconstitutional by WSJ editorialists, was defended by House Republicans in court (and upheld). Dreier used it for a $40 billion deficit reduction package so that his fellow GOPers could avoid an embarrassing vote on immigration. I don’t like self-executing rules by either party—I prefer the “regular order”—so I am not going to say this is a great idea by the Democrats. But even so—is there no shame anymore?

[Click to continue reading Hypocrisy: A Parliamentary Procedure « The Enterprise Blog]

Amazing really, and if you have the stomach, see how often the Republican talking point is repeated in the next few weeks. I’d wager it will be repeated numerous times, even by the so-called “straight” media organizations1.

Footnotes:
  1. not Fox News, in other words [↩]

Torture supporters at The Washington Post

Seth Anderson0 comment

Marc Thiessen, remember him, has leveraged his pro-torture policy positions into quite the secondary career

By publishing a book that clearly and unapologetically defends the Bush torture regime, Marc Thiessen catapulted himself from obscure, low-level Bush speechwriter into regular Washington Post columnist, joining fellow torture defenders Charles Krauthammer and Bill Kristol. Today, Thiessen’s column defends the Liz-Cheney/Kristol smear campaign against DOJ lawyers and says this:

Yet Attorney General Eric Holder hired former al-Qaeda lawyers to serve in the Justice Department and resisted providing Congress this basic information. . . . Some defenders say al-Qaeda lawyers are simply following a great American tradition, in which everyone gets a lawyer and their day in court. Not so, says Andy McCarthy . . . . The habeas lawyers were not doing their constitutional duty to defend unpopular criminal defendants. They were using the federal courts as a tool to undermine our military’s ability to keep dangerous enemy combatants off the battlefield in a time of war.

So any lawyer who represents accused Terrorists and argues that the Government is violating constitutional limitations in its Terrorism policies is — all together now — an “al Qaeda lawyer” (even if those detainees were innocent, as most were). Worse, these “al Qaeda lawyers” — which includes large numbers of long-time members of the U.S. military — are “undermining our military’s” efforts to keep us safe.  That sounds like treason to me. It’s great to see the leading newspaper in the nation’s capital serving as the primary amplifying force for this McCarthyite smear campaign.  Does it get any more reckless and repugnant — or primitive and stunted — than that? Does The Post have any standards at all?

[Click to continue reading High standards at The Washington Post – Glenn Greenwald – Salon.com]

Umm, rhetorical question, of course.

Rove-Cheney Assault on Reality

Seth Anderson0 comment

Frank Rich on the topic of our national memory, and memory hole. Karl Rove and his band of merry thugs are repeatedly attempting to wriggle out of blame for their deeds. Let’s not let them.

Peace in the Valley

The most devastating terrorist attack on American soil did happen during Bush’s term, after the White House repeatedly ignored what the former C.I.A. director, George Tenet, called the “blinking red” alarms before 9/11. It was the Bush defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, who lost bin Laden in Tora Bora, not the Obama Justice Department appointees vilified by Keep America Safe. It was Bush and Cheney, with the aid of Rove’s propaganda campaign, who promoted sketchy and often suspect intelligence about Saddam’s imminent “mushroom clouds.” The ensuing Iraq war allowed those who did attack us on 9/11 to regroup in Afghanistan and beyond — and emboldened Iran, an adversary with an actual nuclear program.

The Iran piece of the back story doesn’t end there. As The Times reported last weekend, Dick Cheney’s former company, Halliburton, kept doing business with Tehran through foreign subsidiaries until 2007, even as the Bush administration showered it with $27 billion in federal contracts, including a no-bid contract to restore oil production in Iraq. It was also the Bush administration that courted, lionized and catered to Ahmed Chalabi, the Machiavellian Iraqi who lobbied for the Iraq war, supplied some of the more egregious “intelligence” on Saddam’s W.M.D. used to sell it, and has ever since flaunted his dual loyalty to Iran.

Last month, no less reliable a source than Gen. Ray Odierno, the senior American commander in Iraq, warned that Chalabi was essentially functioning as an open Iranian agent on the eve of Iraq’s election, meeting with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and other Iranian officials to facilitate Iran’s influence over Iraq after the voting. (Dexter Filkins of The Times reported on Chalabi’s ties to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2006.) As the vote counting began last week, fears grew that he could be the monkey wrench who corrupts the entire process. It’s no surprise that Chalabi, so beloved by Bush that he appeared as an honored guest at the 2004 State of the Union, receives not a single mention in Rove’s memoir.

If we are really to keep America safe, it’s essential we remember exactly which American politicians empowered Iran, Al Qaeda and the Taliban from 2001 to 2008, and why. History will be repeated not only if we forget it, but also if we let it be rewritten by those whose ideological zealotry and boneheaded decisions have made America less safe to this day.

[Click to continue reading Frank Rich – The New Rove-Cheney Assault on Reality – NYTimes.com]

Tar and feather is too good a solution for the Rove-Cheney thugs.

One Track Senate

Seth Anderson0 comment

Obvious to most observers, the current Senate rule is obstructing the business of the people1 and needs to be changed.

A Last Cup of Wine

Barry Friedman and Andrew Martin have a suggestion:

During the 1960s, the Senate was frozen by lengthy filibusters over civil rights legislation. When, in the mid-’70s, that tactic once again threatened to bring the Senate to a standstill, Robert Byrd, the West Virginia Democrat who was the majority whip, invented a dual-track system. This change in practice allowed the majority leader — with the unanimous consent of the Senate or the approval of the minority leader — to set aside whatever was being debated on the Senate floor and move immediately to another item on the agenda.

The result of tracking? No more marathon debate sessions that shut down the Senate. While one bill is being “filibustered,” business can continue on others.

Today a “filibuster” consists of merely telling the leadership that 41 senators won’t vote for a bill. Worse, any single senator can put a “hold” on anything, indefinitely, for any reason. Not only has it become easier to “filibuster,” but tracking means there are far fewer consequences when the minority party or even one willful member of Congress does so, because the Senate can carry on with other things.

[Click to continue reading Op-Ed Contributors – A One-Track Senate – NYTimes.com]

Harry Reid could end this ridiculous practice this afternoon if he wanted to.

Because dual-tracking is a Senate practice, not a formal rule, the majority leader, Harry Reid, could end tracking at any time. By doing so, the Democrats would transform the filibuster and recover their opportunity to govern effectively.

And the reason the Democratic Senators have not taken this step already is? I have no idea why not, what’s the downside? If changing the rules makes Harry Reid quake in his boots, perhaps he can try it out for a few months, with the option to bring back the dual-track rules…

The new-school filibuster would preserve minority rights in the Senate, while imposing significant costs on obstructionist members, changing the calculus that causes today’s logjam. Stuck on the Senate floor, filibustering senators couldn’t meet with lobbyists or attend campaign fund-raising events; they couldn’t do much of anything, really, until their filibuster ended.

Footnotes:
  1. or whoever the Senators purport to being representatives for. Lobbyists? Chamber of Commerce? Special interest groups? Whatever [↩]

Saving Ryan Privatization

Seth Anderson0 comment

Paul Krugman laughs at Rep. Paul Ryan’s Social Security Privatization shenanigans:

Forget-me-not Social Security

So, for a few weeks Rep. Paul Ryan was the toast of the punditocracy; his Roadmap was hailed as the serious Republican response to America’s fiscal problems. But it turns out, predictably, to have been a Potemkin plan: it wouldn’t balance the budget, even after two generations. What it would do is massively redistribute income upward, raising taxes and slashing benefits for most Americans, while providing huge tax breaks for the top 0.1 percent of the population.

Naturally, Ryan’s response to these revelations has been a hissy fit. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities — which has always, in my experience, been impeccably honest and careful in its work — does the point by point rebuttal.

But I’d like to follow up on small but revealing point: Ryan’s claim that diverting a substantial share of payroll taxes receipts into individual accounts does not constitute partial privatization of Social Security

[Click to continue reading Saving Ryan’s Privatization – Paul Krugman Blog – NYTimes.com]

But it does mean privatizing Social Security, just that particular phrase does not poll well, so the Republicans are careful not to use the phrase, and complain vigorously whenever the truth is pointed out.

Keep Grant on the 50 Dollar Bill

Seth Anderson0 comment

Benjamins

Some idiot1 is proposing that Ronald Reagan’s smirking visage replace Ulysses Grant’s face, currently on the fifty dollar bill2. Isn’t it enough of a travesty that the criminal Ronnie Reagan has an airport named after him? No Reagan, no George Bush3, enough said.

As president, Grant was determined to achieve national reconciliation, but on the terms of the victorious North, not the defeated Confederates. He fought hard and successfully for ratification of the 15th Amendment, banning disenfranchisement on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude. When recalcitrant Southern whites fought back under the white hoods and robes of the Ku Klux Klan, murdering and terrorizing blacks and their political supporters, Grant secured legislation that empowered him to unleash federal force. By 1872, the Klan was effectively dead.

For Grant, Reconstruction always remained of paramount importance, and he remained steadfast, even when members of his own party turned their backs on the former slaves. After white supremacists slaughtered blacks and Republicans in Louisiana in 1873 and attempted a coup the following year, Grant took swift and forceful action to restore order and legitimate government. With the political tide running heavily against him, Grant still managed to see through to enactment the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which prohibited discrimination according to race in all public accommodations.

Grant did not confine his reformism to expanding and protecting the rights of the freed slaves. Disgusted at the inhumanity of the nation’s Indian policies, he called for “the proper treatment of the original occupants of this land,” and directed efforts to provide federal aid for food, clothing and schooling for the Indians as well as protection from violence. He also took strong and principled stands in favor of education reform and the separation of church and state.

[Click to continue reading Sean Wilentz- Who’s Buried in the History Books? – NYTimes.com]

Rabbit in a box 1996

Compared to Reagan, I chose Grant.

Born to humble circumstances, Grant endured personal setbacks and terrible poverty to become the indispensable general of the Union Army. Although not himself an abolitionist, he recognized from the very start that the Civil War would cause, as he wrote, “the doom of slavery.” Above all, he despised the Southern secessionists as traitors who would destroy democratic republican government, of which, Lincoln said in his first inaugural, there was no “better or equal hope in the world.”

Reagan on the other hand, was responsible, directly or indirectly, for massive deficit spending, increasing military budgets, Iran-Contra, the Savings and Loan debacle, Antonin Scalia, escalating the Drug War, demonizing liberals, demonizing gays, demonizing the poor, and a thousand more crimes against man and state.

Grant undoubtedly had flaws, but nobody who voted for or against him is still alive. Why throw him in the dustbin of history?

Footnotes:
  1. a Congressman, but I repeat myself [↩]
  2. not pictured above, duh [↩]
  3. either one, but especially the second edition [↩]

Tea Party at the Supreme Court

swanksalot1 Comment

Virginia Thomas has proudly lent her name to the anti-patriotic, anti-American, anti-progressive Tea Party movement.

Rites of a Spring

As Virginia Thomas tells it in her soft-spoken, Midwestern cadence, the story of her involvement in the “tea party” movement is the tale of an average citizen in action.

“I am an ordinary citizen from Omaha, Neb., who just may have the chance to preserve liberty along with you and other people like you,” she said at a recent panel discussion with tea party leaders in Washington. Thomas went on to count herself among those energized into action by President Obama’s “hard-left agenda.”

But Thomas is no ordinary activist.

She is the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and she has launched a tea-party-linked group that could test the traditional notions of political impartiality for the court.

In January, Virginia Thomas created Liberty Central Inc., a nonprofit lobbying group whose website will organize activism around a set of conservative “core principles,” she said.

The group plans to issue score cards for Congress members and be involved in the November election, although Thomas would not specify how. She said it would accept donations from various sources — including corporations — as allowed under campaign finance rules recently loosened by the Supreme Court.

[From Justice’s wife launches ‘tea party’ group – latimes.com]

I cannot recall a similar public declaration of intent from the spouse of any Supreme Court Justice in our nation’s history. Can you? The equivalent would be if the wife of Justice Thurgood Marshall joined the John Birchers, or William Rehnquist’s wife started a local chapter of Sandinista National Liberation Front, or Justice John Marshall’s wife decided to hold a Friends of French Liberty soirée in her salon. None of these other things happened, but rules are always different for Rovian Republicans, aren’t they?

Under judicial rules, judges must curb political activity, but a spouse is free to engage.

Really, this could be grounds for impeachment – Clarence Thomas is no friend to liberty, no friend to America, no friend to the Constitution if you want to get down to it. Justice Thomas has often skirted close to the edge of impropriety, and doesn’t believe in the concept of conflict of interest, or recusal. Recusal wasn’t mentioned in the 4,543 words1 comprising the Constitution of the United States after all, so why would a strict constitutionalist like Justice Thomas believe in it?

Virginia Thomas has long been a passionate voice for conservative views. She has worked for former Republican Rep. Dick Armey of Texas and for the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank with strong ties to the GOP.

In 2000, while at the Heritage Foundation, she was recruiting staff for a possible George W. Bush administration as her husband was hearing the case that would decide the election. When journalists reported her work, Thomas said she saw no conflict of interest and that she rarely discussed court matters with her husband.

Transcended by Tea

and of course, the rules of political engagement have recently changed:

As a 501(c)(4) nonprofit, Liberty Central can raise unlimited amounts of corporate money and largely avoid disclosing its donors.

Because of a recent Supreme Court decision, Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission, the group may also spend corporate money freely to advocate for or against candidates for office.

Justice Thomas was part of the 5-4 majority in that case.

Footnotes:
  1. including signatures, which is a stupid way to count, if you ask me [↩]

Texas Conservatives Vote To Join Taliban

Seth Anderson2 Comments

The Christian Taliban, that is.

Garfield Dino Dali

AUSTIN, Tex. — After three days of turbulent meetings, the Texas Board of Education on Friday approved a social studies curriculum that will put a conservative stamp on history and economics textbooks, stressing the superiority of American capitalism, questioning the Founding Fathers’ commitment to a purely secular government and presenting Republican political philosophies in a more positive light.

The vote was 10 to 5 along party lines, with all the Republicans on the board voting for it.

The board, whose members are elected, has influence beyond Texas because the state is one of the largest buyers of textbooks. In the digital age, however, that influence has diminished as technological advances have made it possible for publishers to tailor books to individual states.

In recent years, board members have been locked in an ideological battle between a bloc of conservatives who question Darwin’s theory of evolution and believe the Founding Fathers were guided by Christian principles, and a handful of Democrats and moderate Republicans who have fought to preserve the teaching of Darwinism and the separation of church and state.

Since January, Republicans on the board have passed more than 100 amendments to the 120-page curriculum standards affecting history, sociology and economics courses from elementary to high school. The standards were proposed by a panel of teachers.

[Click to continue reading Texas Conservatives Win Vote on Textbook Standards – NYTimes.com]

For all of the charms of Texas1, the power of the Christian Taliban over Texas politics is certainly in my top five reasons for moving away. There are just too many of these anti-21st century, anti-intellectual, anti-free thinking radicals in positions of authority. The Texas Board of Education is an elected position, and the Texas Board of Education believes in a 6,000 year old Earth, hence the majority of voters in Texas also believe2 that humans rode around on dinosaurs. Scary, scary people.

George W. Bush was an honorary member, at the least, but the current Governor of Texas is a founding member of the Texas Flat Earth Party of the Christian Taliban. And Governor Good Hair is about to be elected for a third term. The will of the people indeed, just not people I wish to affiliate with.

Dinosaur Invasion

“I reject the notion by the left of a constitutional separation of church and state,” said David Bradley, a conservative from Beaumont who works in real estate. “I have $1,000 for the charity of your choice if you can find it in the Constitution.”3

They also included a plank to ensure that students learn about “the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s, including Phyllis Schlafly, the Contract With America, the Heritage Foundation, the Moral Majority and the National Rifle Association.”

…

Even the course on world history did not escape the board’s scalpel.Cynthia Dunbar, a lawyer from Richmond who is a strict constitutionalist and thinks the nation was founded on Christian beliefs, managed to cut Thomas Jefferson from a list of figures whose writings inspired revolutions in the late 18th century and 19th century, replacing him with St. Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin and William Blackstone. (Jefferson is not well liked among conservatives on the board because he coined the term “separation between church and state.”)

Evolutionary Moment

I wouldn’t be sad if Texas actually did secede, as long as there is a bullet train that goes to Austin so I can visit family.

Footnotes:
  1. and there are quite a few [↩]
  2. or don’t care [↩]
  3. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. [↩]