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“The fact is, 10 years ago, we had a budget surplus of more than $200 billion, with projected surpluses stretching out toward the horizon. Yet over the course of the past 10 years, the previous administration and previous Congresses created an expensive new drug program, passed massive tax cuts for the wealthy, and funded two wars without paying for any of it -- all of which was compounded by recession and by rising healthcare costs. As a result, when I first walked through the door, the deficit stood at $1.3 trillion, with projected deficits of $8 trillion over the next decade." -- President Obama, introducing the 2011 budget. 2.01.10 "No matter how I look at the issue, I cannot escape being troubled by the fact that we have in place a policy which forces young men and women to lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens." -- Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on the need to repeal "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." 2.02.10 "You can't have a situation where we're governing and they're simply running an election campaign. Everybody's got to pick up an oar here and row, if we're going to get to where we need to go. Those guys were kind of free riders in the first year. The boat's got a lot of freight." -- WH political adviser David Axelrod on looking for more opportunities to involve Republicans in the tough choices necessary in governing. 2.02.10 “The only public option available now is the choice of traveling to Canada by bus or by train. Daily Dose of Durst 1.28.10 "Barack Obama, for an hour and a half, was able to refute every single Republican talking point used against him on the major issues of the day. In essence, it was almost like a debate where he was front and center for the majority of it. … One Republican said to me, off the record, behind closed doors: “It was a mistake that we allowed the cameras to roll like that. We should not have done that.”" -- Luke Russert on President Obama’s conversation with House Republicans at their annual retreat (video) 1.29.10 "A month before the war, I told Tony Blair it would be absurd if 250,000 troops were to invade Iraq and find no WMD. So it was." Hans Blix 1.28.10 "Defining "bipartisanship." WH believes it's about legislation with something for BOTH parties; GOP argues for passage of JUST what THEY agree with." -- Chuck Todd on Twitter 1.31.10
“While climate change alone does not cause conflict, it may act as an accelerant of instability or conflict, placing a burden on civilian institutions and militaries around the world," -- The Pentagon’s Quadrennial Defense Review. 1.31.10 Rather than fight the same tired battles that have dominated Washington for decades, it’s time to try something new. Let’s invest in our people without leaving them a mountain of debt. Let’s meet our responsibility to the citizens who sent us here. Let’s try common sense. – President Barack Obama. |
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IN THIS ISSUE
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1. Few Know Health Care Bill Got No Republican Support A new Pew Research poll found that just 32% of Americans know the health care reform bill before Congress received no support from Republican Senators. In addition, just 26% know that 60 votes are needed to break a filibuster in the Senate. 1.28.10 http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1478/political-iq-quiz-knowledge-filibuster-debt-colbert-steele 2. President Obama Largely Inherited Today’s Huge Deficits Some critics charge that the new policies pursued by President Obama and the 111th Congress generated the huge federal budget deficits that the nation now faces. In fact, the tax cuts enacted under President George W. Bush, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the economic downturn together explain virtually the entire deficit over the next ten years. Kathy Ruffing and James R. Horney 12.16.09 http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3036
3. Poll: Most Republicans Think Obama is a Socialist
Ultimately, these results explain why it is impossible for elected Republicans to work with Democrats to improve our country. Their base are conspiracy mongers who don't believe Obama was born in the United States, that he is the second coming of Lenin, and that he is racist against white people. They already want to impeach him despite the glaringly obvious lack of high crimes or misdemeanors. If any Republican strays and decides to do the right thing and try to work in a bipartisan fashion, they suffer primaries and attacks. Even the Maine twins have quit cooperating out of fear of their homegrown teabaggers. As this poll illustrates perfectly, it's no wonder the GOP is the party of no. http://www.dailykos.com/ 4. From the DAILY GRILL
5. President Obama Takes Questions at GOP House Issues Conference (videos) Republican asks an obnoxious question rooted in Glenn Beck-ian talking points; Obama swats it away, makes the questioner look silly, and then smiles at the end. Watch it at http://www.whitehouse.gov/photos-and-video/video/president-obama-takes-questions-gop-house-issues-conference It got so bad that Fox News cut away from the event when there was 20 minutes to go - and then brought on Rep. Peter King (R-NY). (Fox video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yJorq5mBVs) Clips:
Transcript: http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-gop-house-issues-conference 6. Cold Weather Crock (It’s so cold it can’t be global warming!) (video) http://onegoodmove.org/1gm/1gmarchive/2010/01/cold_weather_cr.html 7. From MEDIA MATTERS
8. Luntz Finds the Words to Kill Financial Reform Republican strategist Frank Luntz issued a 17-page memo titled, "The Language of Financial Reform," in which he urges opponents of bank regulatory reform to frame the effort as filled with more bank bailouts, lobbyist loopholes and additional layers of government bureaucracy. Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire 2.01.10 http://politicalwire.com/archives/2010/02/01/luntz_finds_the_words_to_kill_financial_reform.html 9. McCain Running Out of Excuses? Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) told Air America last summer he supported the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy because General Colin Powell strongly recommended it during the Clinton administration. Today, Powell said he supported ending the law, the New York Times reports. Said Powell: "In the almost 17 years since the 'don't ask, don't tell' legislation was passed, attitudes and circumstances have changed. I fully support the new approach presented to the Senate Armed Services Committee this week by Secretary of Defense Gates and Admiral Mullen." 2.03.10 http://politicalwire.com/archives/2010/02/03/mccain_running_out_of_excuses.html To tell your members of Congress and tell them it's time to repeal "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," go to http://ga4.org/campaign/end_dadt 10. Late Night Jokes for Dems
11. Corporations Already Outspend The Parties For the first time in recent history, the lobbying, grassroots and advertising budget of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has surpassed the spending of BOTH the Republican National Committee and Democratic National Committee. This is significant. It means that the Great Transition has already begun. In the days following the decision in Citizens United, campaign finance experts predicted that the decision would open the floodgates of money for trade associations like the Chamber of Commerce. The influx of corporate money, according to some, would weaken the power of the political parties and candidates and lead the political parties to become less important. Republican lawyer Ben Ginsberg went so far as to say that the parties would be "threatened by extinction." And Ginsberg supports the CU decision! As it turns out, the surge of contributions into the U.S. Chamber has already caused its budget on lobbying, grassroots and advertising to surpass that of both the Republican National Committee and the Democratic National Committee for the first time in recent memory. According to The Center for Responsive Politics, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and its national subsidiaries spent $144.5 million in 2009, far more than the RNC and more than double the expenditures by the DNC. 2.01.10 Marc Ambinder http://politics.theatlantic.com/2010/02/the_corporations_already_outspend_the_parties.php
12. The Colbert Report (videos)
13. Senate passes pay-go rule on party-line vote The Senate voted along party lines on Thursday to adopt statutory pay-go rules in a party-lines vote. 60 Democratic senators voted to adopt the pay-go measure (short for "pay-as-you-go"), which would require that new spending measures be offset in the budget by other funds, typically raised through tax increases or cuts to spending. Michael O'Brien 01/28/10 http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/78533-senate-passes-paygo-rule-in-party-lines-vote NOTE: The Democratic National Committee (DNC) points to no fewer than five instances in which some of the GOP senators who opposed PAYGO today had voted in favor of its restoration in the past. 14. Republicans Sit on Hands as POTUS Calls for Banks to Pay Back Bailout Funds (video) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCcMBT0bg7w 15. Harsh winter a sign of disruptive climate change, report says This winter's extreme weather -- with heavy snowfall in some places and unusually low temperatures -- is in fact a sign of how climate change disrupts long-standing patterns, according to a new report by the National Wildlife Federation. Juliet Eilperin and David A. Fahrenthold, 1.28.10 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/28/AR2010012800041.html 16. Raging Grannies Rip CBS Anti-Choice Super Bowl Ad (video) In the build up to the Super Bowl, CBS is playing defense, under pressure from liberal groups accusing the network of bias in its advertising selections. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oNWi8fXOfg 17. U.S. examines whether Blackwater tried bribery The Justice Department is investigating whether officials of Blackwater Worldwide tried to bribe Iraqi government officials in hopes of retaining the firm’s security work in Iraq after a deadly shooting episode in 2007, according to current and former government officials. The officials said that the Justice Department’s fraud section opened the inquiry late last year to determine whether Blackwater employees violated a federal law banning American corporations from paying bribes to foreign officials. The inquiry is the latest fallout from the shooting in Nisour Square in Baghdad, which left 17 Iraqis dead and stoked bitter resentment against the United States. MARK MAZZETTI and JAMES RISEN 1.31.10 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/01/world/middleeast/01blackwater.html 18. Jon Stewart (videos)
19. Oil Industry: We Like Our Handouts! One of the more aggressive elements of Obama's 2011 budget is the proposal to eliminate 12 tax breaks for oil, gas and coal companies, which the administration estimates will raise up to $39 billion in the next 10 years. Unsurprisingly, the industry is balking at the possible revocation of government handouts. The Independent Petroleum Association of America said in a statement that the budget request would "strip billions of investment dollars from US natural gas and oil production" and "could cripple the American producers that are pivotal in developing US natural gas and oil." They might have a point. The outcry about revoking Big Oil's tax breaks came on the same day as ExxonMobil reported the lowest earnings in 7 years -- to just $19.4 billion dollars. Kate Sheppard 2.02.10 http://motherjones.com/mojo/2010/02/oil-industry-we-our-handouts 20. Gallup Poll: Despite GOP Gains, Most States Remain Blue Nationwide, party support shifted in a slightly more Republican direction in 2009 after a historically strong Democratic year in 2008. Overall, 49% of Americans in 2009 identified as Democrats or said they were independent but leaned to the Democratic Party, while 41% identified as Republicans or were Republican-leaning independents. That 8-point Democratic advantage compares to a 12-point, 52% to 40%, Democratic advantage in 2008. Thus, even with the reduction in Democratic strength, the party still maintained a solid advantage over the Republicans nationally last year. It follows, then, that most states continued to be Democratic in their political orientation. Jeffrey M. Jones 2.01.10 http://www.gallup.com/poll/125450/Party-Affiliation-Despite-GOP-Gains-States-Remain-Blue.aspx 21. A Corporation is Running for Congress (video) The PR firm Murray Hill Inc. has announced that it plans to satirically run for Congress in the Republican primary in Maryland’s 8th congressional district to protest the Supreme Court’s disastrous decision. A press release on its website says that the company wants to “eliminate the middle man” and run for Congress directly, rather than influencing it with corporate dollars: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHRKkXtxDRA 22. Krugman confronts Ailes with Fox News' "deliberate" misinformation on health care (video) |
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1. Michelle Goldberg: Obama Does It Again Backed into a corner, the president used a speech to rally despairing supporters and put jeering opponents to shame. It’s amazing that he can still pull it off. Whenever Obama seems to be in peril, whenever his supporters are panicked and despondent and approaching outright disillusionment, he gives a speech that suddenly makes things seem hopeful. He did it with the famous race speech during the campaign and with the health-care speech last September, and now somehow he’s done it again. At times, as with his sarcastic reference to climate-change deniers, he seemed almost to be taunting Republicans. He could have been clearer about the need for the House to pass the Senate health-care bill, but he nevertheless recommitted to getting reform finished. Last week it seemed doomed. Now it once again seems possible. Then there were Obama’s heartening words about Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. “This year, I will work with Congress and our military to finally repeal the law that denies gay Americans the right to serve the country they love because of who they are,” he promised. There’s almost nothing else Obama could have done that would so thoroughly thrill his supporters while highlighting his opponents’ shameful bigotry. It’s as if the president finally understands that fierce political polarization is here to stay, and it’s his job to figure out how to use it. 1.28.10 http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-01-28/obama-does-it-again/
2. Democracy Inc. The Citizens United campaign finance decision by Chief Justice John Roberts and a Supreme Court majority of conservative judicial activists is a dramatic assault on American democracy, overturning more than a century of precedent in order to give corporations the ultimate authority over elections and governing. This decision tips the balance against active citizenship and the rule of law by making it possible for the nation's most powerful economic interests to manipulate not just individual politicians and electoral contests but political discourse itself. As such, it demands a vigorous response, uniting progressive activists and good-government reformers of every stripe along with those conservatives who are also troubled by the decision. We must now fight for legislative and constitutional remedies to this threat to the American experiment. The Citizens United campaign finance decision makes it possible for the nation's most powerful economic interests to manipulate not just individual electoral contests but political discourse itself. By awarding to corporations the rights of citizens when it comes to electioneering, the Court's decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission goes against the intent and understanding of founders like Chief Justice John Marshall, who referred to the corporation as an "artificial being, invisible, intangible"; and Thomas Jefferson, who warned almost two centuries ago that America must "crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country." 1.28.10 http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100215/editors 3. Melissa Harris-Lacewell: The Obama I Remember Today, as I watched President Obama interact with Republicans during the televised Q&A I saw another Obama that I remember: the law professor. During the years that I was on faculty at the University of Chicago, my graduate students in political science often took courses with Professor Obama. They universally reported that he was a fair, but exceedingly tough practitioner of the Socratic method. He was willing to entertain any idea, question or observation, no matter how outrageous. But he always subjected the students to a series of logical interventions and arguments that often left students exhausted and sometimes a bit embarrassed. They quickly learned to challenge Professor Obama only if they had fully considered the implications of their arguments and prepared significant evidence in support of their case. That Barack Obama showed up today. The President put on a clinic in public discourse, political argument, intellectual dexterity and moral courage. It was a reminder of what democracy could be if we engaged our opponents with substance, patience and civility rather than invectives, gamesmanship and boorishness. I keep hearing from Democrats who say the President lacks courage, who ask why he bothers to speak to Republicans, and who cry out for him to wield his majority as a weapon against the GOP. Apparently he should march to Capital Hill, armed with tens of thousands of progressive blogs and tweets and demand a single payer health care system. President Obama is modeling a different kind of democratic engagement. It is a model he adhered to during the election and he continues to follow it now. President Obama refuses to believe that we can have a functioning democracy if the majority refuses to speak to the minority. He takes seriously his responsibility to govern in the interest of both his supporters and his opponents. He remains committed to the possibility that he and his Party may not always be in sole possession of good ideas. Over the past year it has been frustrating to watch this model of governance meet with such obstinate opposition. But the opposition is not a reason to abandon the tactic. It is a reason to redouble the efforts to change the course of our democratic discourse. 1/29/10 http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion/523870/the_obama_i_remember 4. Joe Conason: Obama is right on the (foreign) money From Glenn Beck to Joe Scarborough, right-wing voices are loudly complaining that President Obama’s remarks about the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United were false and insulting to the court. They’ve picked up on Justice Samuel Alito’s muttered "not true" as somehow proving that the president was wrong to complain that the decision will permit foreign special interests to influence American elections. Although the scope of the latest problem created by the court may be a matter of speculation, there is no doubt that unbridled corporate contributions will open the way for foreign interests and individuals to intervene in U.S. politics -- so long as their money is laundered through a company incorporated in this country. So warned Justice John Paul Stevens in his partial dissent from the majority decision, saying that the decision by the court’s Republican majority "would appear to afford the same protection to multinational corporations controlled by foreigners as to individual Americans" -- and the other three justices, appointed by Democrats, noted their agreement. Why does Stevens think so? Perhaps because he and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg raised that issue with Theodore Olson, the lead counsel for Citizens United (his disreputable comrades from the Clinton wars). When Olson argued that under prior Supreme Court decisions, corporations "are persons entitled to protection under the First Amendment," Ginsburg asked whether that "includes today’s mega-corporations, where many of the investors may be foreign individuals or entities." Olson replied that the court had made no distinction "based on the nature of the entity that might own a share of a corporation." Ginsburg pressed further. "Nowadays there are foreign interests, even foreign governments, that own not one share but a goodly number of shares." To which Olson answered, "I submit that the Court’s decisions in connection with the First Amendment and corporations have in the past made no such distinction.” None other than Alito himself piped up to affirm the same point moments later. 1/28/10 http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2010/01/28/foreignbucks/index.html 5. Matthew Rothschild: Thank You, Howard Zinn Thank You, Howard Zinn, for being there during the civil rights movement, for teaching at Spelman, for walking the picket lines, and for inspiring such students as Alice Walker and Marian Wright Edelman. Thank you, Howard Zinn, for being there during the Vietnam War, for writing “The Logic of Withdrawal,” and for going to Hanoi. Thank you, Howard Zinn, for being a man who supported the women’s liberation movement, early on. Thank you, Howard Zinn, for being a straight who supported the gay and lesbian rights movement, early on. Thank you, Howard Zinn, for taking the time to write your landmark work, “A People’s History of the United States,” and for educating two generations now in the radical history of this country, a history, as you stressed, of class conflict. 1/28/10 More at http://www.progressive.org/wx012810.html 6. Garrison Keillor: Note to Tea Partiers: Wake up and Smell the Coffee The tea partiers are enjoying their day in the sun, but coffee is the beverage preferred by most Americans, and we don't have time to gang up and holler and wave our arms — we prefer to sit quietly with coffee in hand and read a reliable newspaper and try to figure out what's going on in the world. Great heaps of dead bodies are moved by front-loaders and dumped, uncounted, unidentified, into open pits in a stricken country while people feast and walk treadmills on enormous cruise ships sailing a hundred miles off the coast en route to the Bahamas and Jamaica. That's the real world, not the paranoid hallucinations of the right. The problem for Democrats right now is that nobody can explain health-care reform in plain English, 50 words or less. It's all too murky. The price of constructing this intricate web of compromises for the benefit of Republican senators (who then decided to quit the game and sit on their thumbs) is a bill with strange hair and ill-fitting clothes that you hesitate to bring home to Mother. Like all murky stuff, it is liable to strike people as dangerous or unreliable. And demagogues thrive in dim light. The basic question is simple: Should health care be a basic right or is it a privilege for those who can afford it? Rush says it's a privilege — pay or die — and for his colonoscopy, they use a golden probe with a diamond tip, but most Americans agree that health care is basic, like education or decent roads or clean water. Holy Scripture would seem to point us in that direction. And yet the churches, so far as I can see, have chosen to stay aloof from this issue. Churches that feed the hungry and house the homeless dare not offend the conservatives in their midst by suggesting that we also tend the sick. And the opposition has beaten on garbage cans and whooped and yelled and alarmed the populace, which they're quite good at. These people look at a clear blue sky and see a conspiracy. And your high school civics teacher would not have given you a high mark for saying, as the Rev. Robertson did, that the earthquake in Haiti was God's judgment on voodoo. God has tolerated voodoo in Washington for years and not seen fit to shake the city yet. Priests and mojo men dance around the Capitol every day, waving skulls on sticks, scattering their magic powders, trying to stop progress with a hex, and God is content to observe them. So do we coffee drinkers. Government is in the hands of realists and in the end we shall prevail. 1.19.10 7. Dr David Runciman: Why do people often vote against their own interests? Last year, in a series of "town-hall meetings" across the country, Americans got the chance to debate President Obama's proposed healthcare reforms. What happened was an explosion of rage and barely suppressed violence. Polling evidence suggests that the numbers who think the reforms go too far are nearly matched by those who think they do not go far enough. But it is striking that the people who most dislike the whole idea of healthcare reform - the ones who think it is socialist, godless, a step on the road to a police state - are often the ones it seems designed to help. In Texas, where barely two-thirds of the population have full health insurance and over a fifth of all children have no cover at all, opposition to the legislation is currently running at 87%. More at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8474611.stm
8. Richard Wolffe: Obama's Plan to Split the GOP They're calling it Question Time, after the raucous weekly grilling of the British prime minister. But in truth, President Obama's televised back-and-forth with the House Republicans in Baltimore on Friday was even tougher than a Westminster brawl. At least Gordon Brown can alternate between questions from the opposition parties and softballs from his own MPs. Obama had no safe place to go in what was a mostly unscripted exchange. After his prepared remarks, the president riffed his way through a question and answer session in the lion's den. The White House strategy was to show that he was opening up the conversation, inviting ideas from all sides, and ready to reach across the aisle. After months of being caricatured as a radical socialist doing secret backroom deals, this was his moment to puncture the bubble. It was a return to the renegade character of his presidential campaign, ready to take a televised gamble unlike any other president before him. President Bush had visited with Democrats in 2007, but the unpredictable questions were not on camera or transcribed for the press. Under fire, the public having decidedly cooled on him, his agenda stalled on Capitol Hill, Obama has returned to what’s worked for him in the past: He’s gone on the offensive, in a return to the dynamics of the campaign trail. It began with the State of the Union address, and continued with a boisterous event in Tampa on Thursday. The session with House Republicans conjured the familiar dynamics of the 2008 debates. "The calm and level-headed responses, the back and forth with attendees, was actually him enjoying the back and forth," said one senior White House official. "We're all pretty sure he had a good time." But the shift signaled more than a desire to loosen up and have fun. He’s also more actively engaging the opposition, determined to draw them off the sidelines—the GOP’s “party of no” strategy has clearly been working—and back into the game. Liberals may have faulted him for offering some Republican-friendly ideas in his State of the Union address. But those initiatives will also force the GOP to make choices—choices that will shift the narrative from the president’s troubles in keeping his majority together onto the fissures in Republican ranks. 1.29.10 http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-01-29/obamas-plan-to-split-the-gop/
9. Jonathan Chait: The Impossibility Of Fiscal Responsibility Yesterday's Senate vote, in which all forty Republican Senators rejected pay as you go financing, illustrates a couple impediments to reducing the long-term deficit. The first is that it's very hard for one party to reduce the deficit by itself. I wouldn't say that the entire Democratic Party is committed to serious deficit reduction. But major elements are, and nearly the whole party is committed to at least not making the problem worse. But a unilateral commitment to fiscal responsibility is a huge political handicap. Democrats made a push to reduce the deficit in 1993 with zero GOP support, and paid a price for it in 1994. A major reason President Obama has had such a hard slog enacting health care reform is that he has to come up with offsets for every new dollar he spends, and those offsets -- reductions in Medicare, capping the tax deduction for expensive health insurance plans -- are politically unpopular. Meanwhile, George W. Bush had a much easier time enacting his agenda because he simply decided to finance the entire thing with borrowing and got his party to go along. The second problem is that, even if Democrats could reduce the deficit on their own and somehow could be insulated from the political harm, they have no incentive to do it. Why should they, when the Republicans don't share the goal? The Clinton administration's push to save the budget surplus in the late 1990s rather than spend it. In retrospect, that was a mistake. It just made it easier for Republicans to pass big, budget-wrecking tax cuts when they took office. There's no set of fiscal circumstances under which Republicans would not enact large tax cuts if given the votes to do so. When you combine these two dynamics, the effect is truly toxic. The more Democrats do to reduce the deficit, the easier they make it politically for Republicans to retake power, and the easier they make it fiscally for Republicans to wreck the budget when they do. So, why try? The biggest change in American politics over the past three decades is that the Republican Party has embraced, with the fervor of religion, the conviction that that tax rates need only be high enough to fund their desired level of government spending, rather than the actual level of spending. There really no solution to the problem of American fiscal policy until the GOP can reform itself. 1.29.10 http://www.tnr.com/blog/jonathan-chait/the-impossibility-fiscal-responsibility 10. Robert Parry: The Supreme Court's Partisanship Over the past several decades, the American Right has assembled such an array of political weaponry – ranging from a vast propaganda apparatus that defines “reality” for tens of millions of Americans to specialized attack groups that can target troublesome figures in the press or academia – that it’s hard to envision how this powerful grip on U.S. democracy can now be broken. The Right's influence is so wide and so deep that it can front for wealthy special interests under the guise of “populism” and persuade many Americans that their real enemy is not Big Corporations, but Big Government. Guided by Fox News and other well-financed parts of the right-wing media, the Tea Partiers apparently believe they are engaged in a movement to free the Republic from the tyranny of the federal government, when they’re actually helping consolidate the power of corporations against the only force that can possibly check corporate domination, a democratized federal government. The five Republican-appointed justices left little doubt that they will be very active when partisan questions come before the court, despite their prior assurances that they detest “activist judges” and despite their promises to show great respect for legal precedents. The campaign-finance decision shattered decades of precedents and tilts the political playing field even more in the Republican direction. 1.27.10 http://www.consortiumnews.com/2010/012610.html
11. Bruce Bartlett: Tim Pawlenty: Not Ready for Prime Time In The Politico this morning, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who apparently aspires to be the Republican presidential nominee in 2012, has a grossly ill-informed article in which he rants about the deficit without proposing any spending cuts and insisting on still more tax cuts. Tim Pawlenty is not ready for prime time. He may think he has found a clever way of appealing to the right wing tea party/Fox News crowd without having to propose any actual cuts in spending, but it isn’t going to work. It’s too transparently phony even for them. 2.01.10 http://capitalgainsandgames.com/blog/bruce-bartlett/1462/tim-pawlenty-not-ready-prime-time 12. Peter Beinart: The Republicans' Reagan Amnesia Republicans love hallowing Ronald Reagan’s name. Too bad they know so little about the guy. Last week in Hawaii, the Republican National Committee almost passed a resolution named after the Gipper. “Whereas President Ronald Reagan believed that the Republican Party should support and espouse conservative principles and public policies,” it declared, only candidates who complied with eight of 10 “Reaganite” principles would be eligible for party funds. And what were those principles, exactly? No. 1—according to the resolution—was “smaller government, smaller national debt, lower deficits and lower taxes.” Let’s take those from the top. Smaller government: Federal employment grew by 61,000 during Reagan’s presidency—in part because Reagan created a whole new cabinet department, the department of veterans affairs. (Under Bill Clinton, by contrast, federal employment dropped by 373,000). Smaller deficits and debt: Both nearly tripled on Reagan’s watch. Lower taxes: Although Reagan muscled through a major tax cut in 1981, he followed up by raising taxes in 1982, 1983, 1984 and 1986. In 1983, in fact, he not only raised payroll taxes; he raised them to pay for Social Security and Medicare. Let’s put this in language today’s tea-baggers can understand: Reagan raised taxes to pay for government-run health care. 2.02.10 http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-02-01/the-republicans-reagan-amnesia/?cid=hp:mainpromo3 13. Fred Branfman: Rotten Minds, Shriveled Hearts and Human Souls Some two-thirds of the comments to my recent Sacramento News and Review piece calling for a new human movement to avert the climate crisis informed me that “bought off” climate scientists and those of us who believe them are “scumbags,” “cockroaches,” “assholes,” “leeches,” “lunatics,” “fanatics,” “stupid,” “liars,” “dorks,” “treasonous,” “the enemy,” “socialistic,” “elitist scared wimps,” “foolish,” “hacks,” “jokers,” “frauds,” “criminal frauds,” “zealots” and “mindless followers” who “despise America (sic)” and “want to steal U.S. wealth” and “we really do not need ya.” Al Gore, I learned, is an “ignorant moron” who deserves to die, and I am “a propagandist of the worst kind” whose “mind is rotted from the inside out,” and that “deep down, you know that you are a small man … with a shriveled heart.” “No, there is NO GLOBAL WARMING,” I was instructed, and the real issue is “does this author [me] deserve to live.” My first response was a mix of wonder, sadness and anger. How could people who have not studied the complexities of climate science work themselves into such a frenzy against those who have? Why were they uninterested in communicating, or even swaying the undecided, but only focused on degrading and dehumanizing? Were they seeking relief from self-hatred and unhappy lives by projecting their despair outwards? Could people with loving relationships and meaningful work behave like this? I also felt the same rush of righteous anger as I suppose they did, and found myself thinking of how I could respond in kind. And then my adult, rational, human brain took over from my reptile one. While America has always experienced angry debate, today’s intellectual violence—featuring people anonymously spewing vicious personal Internet attacks rather than debating ideas—feels different. It is part of a general coarsening and dehumanization of the culture, as previously responsible media members seek to boost profits by provoking anger and bile, humiliating the well-known and setting talking heads screaming at each other. Facts, evidence and reason are irrelevant. Billionaire media moguls shamelessly and cynically provide a platform to broadcasters claiming without any evidence whatsoever that a U.S. president favors killing seniors or is creating his own private police force. Many folks, it seems, experience their deepest feelings in front of a TV set or computer screen rather than interacting with actual human beings. Those who dehumanize political opponents are the moral equivalents of those in 1920s Germany who broke up meetings rather than engage in debate. They are primarily a danger to themselves at this point. But if, as I believe, we face years of joblessness and falling incomes, political unrest, class warfare and a growing threat of domestic terrorism due to our failed international policies, this kind of dehumanization could destroy what remains of our democracy. The rise of authoritarianism has always been preceded by this kind of objectifying of “the other.” 2.02.10 http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/rotten_minds_shriveled_hearts_and_human_souls_20100201/ |
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