1. NY Times Editorial: The War in Iraq
We were glad to see President Obama go to Fort Bliss on Tuesday before his Oval Office speech on Iraq, to thank those Americans who most shouldered the burdens of a tragic, pointless war. One of the few rays of light in the conflict has been the distance America has come since Vietnam, when blameless soldiers were scorned for decisions made by politicians.
President George W. Bush tried to make Iraq an invisible, seemingly cost-free war. He refused to attend soldiers’ funerals and hid their returning coffins from the public. So it was fitting that Mr. Obama, who has improved veterans’ health care and made the Pentagon budget more rational, paid tribute to them.
“At every turn, America’s men and women in uniform have served with courage and resolve,” he said on Tuesday night. He added: “There were patriots who supported this war, and patriots who opposed it. And all of us are united in appreciation for our servicemen and women, and our hope for Iraq’s future.”
The speech also made us reflect on how little Mr. Bush accomplished by needlessly invading Iraq in March 2003 — and then ludicrously declaring victory two months later.
Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction proved to be Bush administration propaganda. The war has not created a new era of democracy in the Middle East — or in Iraq for that matter. There are stirrings of democratic politics in Iraq that give us hope. But there is no government six months after national elections.
As we heard Mr. Obama speak from his desk with his usual calm clarity and eloquence, it made us wish we heard more from him on many issues. We are puzzled about why he talks to Americans directly so rarely and with seeming reluctance. This was only his second Oval Office address in more than 19 months of crisis upon crisis. The country particularly needs to hear more from Mr. Obama about what he rightly called the most urgent task — “to restore our economy and put the millions of Americans who have lost their jobs back to work.”
For this day, it was worth dwelling on this milestone in Iraq and on some grim numbers: more than 4,400 Americans dead and some 35,000 wounded, many with lost limbs. And on one number that American politicians are loath to mention: at least 100,000 Iraqis dead. 8.31.10 More at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/01/opinion/01wed1.html
2. Matthew Rothschild: Enough!!! Republicans, Have You No Shame?
For more than a month now, Republicans have been stoking the anti-Muslim fires in America. This shameful campaign has centered around plans for Park51, the Islamic community center two blocks from Ground Zero.
Sarah Palin was one of the first to ignite the controversy, calling it an “unnecessary provocation” and saying that it “stabs hearts.”
Newt Gingrich, also a GOP Presidential hopeful, blew hot air all over the flame by saying, "Nazis don't have the right to put up a sign next to the Holocaust museum in Washington."
Gingrich implies that the Muslim Americans at Park51 are disciples of Osama bin Laden, when nothing could be further from the truth. The Nazi analogy is a smear in and of itself. (And by the way, Nazis do have the right to put up a sign next to the Holocaust museum if they owned the property there or if they were carrying the sign on a public sidewalk. But Gingrich would love to have this argument, since every repetition of the word “Nazi” in conjunction with this controversy is a public relations victory for his side.)
This past weekend, protesters in New York City gathered to oppose the Islamic community center with such signs as “All I Need to Know About Islam I Learned on 9/11.”
Ignorance and intolerance and political opportunism make for a poisonous concoction.
And Republicans are serving it up neat and on ice.
By so doing Republican demagogues are, wittingly or unwittingly, preparing an invitation to fascism, which Noam Chomsky has been warning us about.
Republicans, have you no shame? 8.23.10 More at http://progressive.org/wx082310.html
3. TIMOTHY EGAN: Building a Nation of Know-Nothings
Having shed much of his dignity, core convictions and reputation for straight talk, Senator John McCain won his primary on Tuesday against the flat-earth wing of his party. Now McCain can go search for his lost character, which was last on display late in his 2008 campaign for president.
Remember the moment: a woman with matted hair and a shaky voice rose to express her doubts about Barack Obama. “I have read about him,” she said, “and he’s not — he’s an Arab.”
McCain was quick to knock down the lie. “No, ma’am,” he said, “he’s a decent family man, a citizen.”
That ill-informed woman — her head stuffed with fabrications that could be disproved by a pre-schooler — now makes up a representative third or more of the Republican party. It’s not just that 46 percent of Republicans believe the lie that Obama is a Muslim, or that 27 percent in the party doubt that the president of the United States is a citizen. But fully half of them believe falsely that the big bailout of banks and insurance companies under TARP was enacted by Obama, and not by President Bush.
Take a look at Tuesday night’s box score in the baseball game between New York and Toronto. The Yankees won, 11-5. Now look at the weather summary, showing a high of 71 for New York. The score and temperature are not subject to debate.
Yet a president’s birthday or whether he was even in the White House on the day TARP was passed are apparently open questions. A growing segment of the party poised to take control of Congress has bought into denial of the basic truths of Barack Obama’s life. What’s more, this astonishing level of willful ignorance has come about largely by design, and has been aided by a press afraid to call out the primary architects of the lies. 8.25.10 More at http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/25/building-a-nation-of-know-nothings/
4. E.J. Dionne Jr.: Tuesday's tutorial: a GOP too far right
Republicans are in the midst of an insurrection. Democrats are not. This vast gulf between the situations of the two parties -- not some grand revolt against "the establishment" or "incumbents" -- explains the year's primary results, including Tuesday's jarring outcomes in Florida and Alaska.
Liberals who saw Bush's presidency as a failed right-wing experiment thought Republicans would search for more moderate ground, much as Britain's Tories turned to the soothing leadership of David Cameron to organize their comeback. But this expectation overlooked the exodus of moderates over the past decade, which has shifted the balance of power in Republican primaries far to the right.
As a result, the main critique of Bush in Republican ranks casts him as insufficiently conservative -- too inclined to support federal action on education and in expanding prescription drug assistance to the elderly, and too ready to run up the deficit.
That the deficit increased primarily because of two tax cuts and two wars was not part of most conservatives' calculation because acknowledging this was ideologically inconvenient. In the meantime, the election of President Obama by a demographically diverse coalition anchored among younger voters helped unleash the furies inside an older, overwhelmingly white and Southern-leaning GOP coalition.
The paradox is that a Republican Party in the grips of ideology needs to shift the campaign in a less ideological direction, hoping that voters simply cast protest ballots against hard economic times. Democrats, who are more doctrinally diverse, have every interest in turning the election into a philosophical contest, arguing that even unhappy voters cannot trust their fate to a party in the grips of a right-wing revolt. Once again on Tuesday, Republican primary participants seemed determined to give Democrats that opportunity. 8.26.10 More at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/25/AR2010082504997.html
5. Tracy Clark-Flory: What Alan Simpson's apology misses
In response to calls for his head on a platter, Alan Simpson offered an apology today for that whole "a milk cow with 310 million tits" comment. "I certainly did not intend to diminish your hard work for the Older Women's League [OWL]," he wrote in an e-mail to Ashley Carson, executive director of the organization. "Over the last 40 years, I have had my size 15 feet in my mouth a time or two. To quote my old friend and colleague, Senator Lloyd Bentsen, when I make a mistake, 'It's a doozy!'" Aw shucks, how cute.
It's nice that Simpson has apologized for his uncouth, unprofessional and highly patronizing e-mail. But the real outrage isn't his use of the word "tit," nor is it his remark about how "people like you babble into the vapors about 'disgusting attempts at ageism and sexism' and all the rest of that crap" (a line far more offensive than the bovine reference, I'd say). No, the problem here is that the president appointed Simpson as co-chair to his Deficit Commission knowing full well that he has a political ax to grind against Social Security. Make no mistake, this is a feminist issue.
Women live longer than men and are less likely to have a family member to take care of them in old age. They are more likely than older men to be single or widowed, living in poverty and dependent on Social Security. Efforts to cut back, restrict and privatize Social Security disproportionately hurt women, lower-income men and minorities. As Carson wrote in the editorial that prompted Simpson to make an ass out of himself, "If he doesn't need his Social Security check, then perhaps he should donate the money to a homeless shelter, because that's where many older single women will live if he reduces their benefits." 8.26.10 More at http://www.salon.com/life/broadsheet/index.html?story=/mwt/broadsheet/2010/08/26/alan_simpson
6. John Nichols: No, Glenn Beck Is Not a Civil Rights Icon
My gripe with Glenn Beck has always been with his absurd attempt to claim a connection to Tom Paine.
The furiously self-promotional Fox personality wrote a book last year that he suggested was a contemporary update of Paine's pamphlet "Common Sense."
In fact, Glenn Beck's Common Sense was short on Paine and long on Beck. And it failed to note the founder's canon of criticism of organized religion, concentrated wealth and know-nothing opponents of government.
But, as silly as Beck's attempt to claim Paine might have been, his attempt to associate himself with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., a radical critic of not just racism but of an economic system left tens of millions in poverty, would be comic if it was not so sad.
Beck and his followers say they are out to "reclaim the civil rights movement."
Reclaim it from who? Presumably the people who were involved in the civil rights movement.
As Martin Luther King III notes: "My father championed free speech. He would be the first to say that those participating in Beck's rally have the right to express their views. But his dream rejected hateful rhetoric and all forms of bigotry or discrimination, whether directed at race, faith, nationality, sexual orientation or political beliefs. He envisioned a world where all people would recognize one another as sisters and brothers in the human family. Throughout his life he advocated compassion for the poor, nonviolence, respect for the dignity of all people and peace for humanity.8.27.10 More at http://www.thenation.com/blog/154200/no-glenn-beck-not-civil-rights-icon
7. Steve Benen: Limbaugh Aims At Wrong Foes
Yesterday, Rush Limbaugh condemned what he sees as President Obama's "arrogance," and said the president is like "some" African Americans who say the "Fourth of July ain't no big deal to me, yo."
I often feel like I need a decoder ring when translating Limbaugh's nonsense, but this one was especially odd. I've never heard anyone, of any race, say the "Fourth of July ain't no big deal to me, yo." I can only assume this is Limbaugh's way of saying African Americans aren't as patriotic as other Americans -- an argument that is as ugly as it is stupid.
Nearly as annoying as Limbaugh's racism is his ignorance. 8.27.10 More at http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2010_08/025414.php
8. BOB HERBERT: America Is Better Than This
America is better than Glenn Beck. For all of his celebrity, Mr. Beck is an ignorant, divisive, pathetic figure. On the anniversary of the great 1963 March on Washington he will stand in the shadows of giants — Abraham Lincoln and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Who do you think is more representative of this nation?
Consider a brief sampling of their rhetoric.
- Lincoln: “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”
King: “Never succumb to the temptation of becoming bitter.”
Beck: “I think the president is a racist.”
Beck is a provocateur who likes to play with matches in the tinderbox of racial and ethnic confrontation. He seems oblivious to the real danger of his execrable behavior. He famously described President Obama as a man “who has a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture.”
He is an integral part of the vicious effort by the Tea Party and other elements of the right wing to portray Mr. Obama as somehow alien, a strange figure who is separate and apart from — outside of — ordinary American life. As the watchdog group Media Matters for America has noted, Beck said of the president, “He chose to use the name, Barack, for a reason, to identify not with America — you don’t take the name Barack to identify with America. You take the name Barack to identify, with what? Your heritage? The heritage, maybe, of your father in Kenya, who is a radical?”
Facts and reality mean nothing to Beck. And there is no road too low for him to slither upon. The Southern Poverty Law Center tells us that in a twist on the civil rights movement, Beck said on the air that he “wouldn’t be surprised if in our lifetime dogs and fire hoses are released or opened on us. I wouldn’t be surprised if a few of us get a billy club to the head. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of us go to jail — just like Martin Luther King did — on trumped-up charges. Tough times are coming.”
He makes you want to take a shower. 8.27.10 More at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/28/opinion/28herbert.html
9. Robert Reich: Forget policy details: Obama needs a good story
In times of economic stress, Americans lose faith in the nation’s large institutions. They blame either government or its counterpart in the private sector: big business and Wall Street.
The underlying political debate in America is which of these is most responsible for the mess we’re in, and which can be most trusted to get us out of it, big business and Wall Street, or government.
It wouldn’t be hard for Democrats to make the case that big business and Wall Street blew it. The Street’s wild speculation took the economy off the cliff, caused the stock market to crash (and millions of 401Ks along with it), and created a housing bubble whose burst has hurt millions more.
Big business has used the Great Recession as an opportunity to slash payrolls and cut wages and is now sitting on a $1.8 trillion mountain of cash it refuses to use to create new jobs. Instead, it’s using the cash to build more factories abroad, buy back its own shares of stock, invest in more labor-replacing technologies at home, and do mergers that will lead to even fewer jobs.
Meanwhile, a parade of "public-be-damned" actions have threatened small investors (Goldman Sachs’ double dealing), individuals trying to buy health insurance (WellPoint’s double-digit premium increases), worker safety (the Massey mine disaster), the environment (BP), and even our food (Jack DeCoster’s commercial egg operations).
And a gusher of corporate and Wall Street money has flooded Washington, exemplified by Big Pharma and the health-insurance lobby fighting healthcare reform, and Wall Street’s minions fighting off stricter financial reform.
If Obama and the Democrats would connect these dots they’d have a story that would make Americans’ hair stand on end. We’re in this mess because of big business and Wall Street. Government is needed to get us out of it.
The story is clear, and it has the virtue of being the truth. Why won’t Obama and the Democrats tell it? Is it because big business and Wall Street have the money and political clout even to prevent the story from being told? 8.27.10 More at http://www.salon.com/news/great_recession/index.html?story=/opinion/feature/2010/08/27/obama_reich_story_economy
10. Eugene Robinson: Beck’s 15 Minutes of Fame
The majestic grounds of the Lincoln Memorial belong to all Americans—even to egomaniacal talk-show hosts who profit handsomely from stoking fear, resentment and anger. So let me state clearly that Glenn Beck has every right to hold his absurdly titled “Restoring Honor” rally on Saturday.
But the rest of us have every right to call the event what it is: an exercise in self-aggrandizement on a Napoleonic scale. I half expect Beck to appear before the crowd in a bicorn hat, with one hand tucked into the front of his jacket.
That Beck is staging his all-about-me event at the very spot where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his immortal “I Have a Dream” speech—and on the 47th anniversary of that historic address—is obviously intended to be a provocation. There’s no need to feel provoked, however; the appropriate response is to ignore him. No puffed-up huckster could ever diminish the importance of the 1963 March on Washington or the impact of King’s unforgettable words.
Lincoln and King will always have their places in American history. Beck’s 15 minutes of fame and influence are ticking by.
The most offensive thing about the rally is Beck’s in-your-face boast that the event will “reclaim the civil rights movement.” But this is just a bunch of nonsense—too incoherent to really offend. Beck makes the false assertion that the struggle for civil rights was about winning “equal justice,” not “social justice”—in other words, that there was no economic component to the movement. He claims that today’s liberals, through such initiatives as health care reform, are somehow “perverting” King’s dream. 8.27.10 More at http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/kings_dream_endures_20100827/
11. David Neiwert: Snoring Honor: Beck's big rally just a long-winded and boring sermon. And boy, was the crowd white.
Glenn Beck promised there wouldn't "be a dry eye in the house" after his big speech today at the Lincoln Memorial for his "Restoring Honor" rally -- because, you know, it was going to be "so stirring."
Riiiiight. Well, Glenn Beck's eyes certainly weren't dry. He started weeping while telling the crowd that somewhere out there was "the next George Washington".
Dunno about you, but when I saw pan shots of the crowd -- which was one of the whitest crowds in D.C. in recent memory -- I mostly thought I saw "the next Timothy McVeigh." But your mileage may vary.
As for the speech itself: Lunesta in verbal form. I'm having to pick my head up from my desk just to write something about it.
It was essentially Beck's call for a return to the religious life in America -- which was why he assembled 240 representatives of various churches in the crowd and dubbed them his "new Black Robe Regiment". This part was particularly creepy, since it came with an admonition that religious leaders needed to focus on "fundamental values" -- as defined by Glenn Beck, of course. 8.28.10 More at http://crooksandliars.com/david-neiwert/snoring-honor-becks-big-rally-just-l
12. Steve Benen: Movements Are About Something Real
I tried to keep up on today's festivities at the Lincoln Memorial, but as the dust settles, I find myself confused.
For a year and a half, we've seen rallies and town-hall shouting and attack ads and Fox News special reports. But I still haven't the foggiest idea what these folks actually want, other than to see like-minded Republicans winning elections. To be sure, I admire their passion, and I applaud their willingness to get involved in public affairs. If more Americans chose to take a more active role in the political process, the country would be better off and our democracy would be more vibrant.
But that doesn't actually tell us what these throngs of Americans are fighting for, exactly. I'm not oblivious to their cries; I'm at a loss to appreciate those cries on anything more than a superficial level.
Movements -- real movements that make a difference and stand the test of time -- are about more than buzz words, television personalities, and self-aggrandizement. Change -- transformational change that sets nations on new courses -- is more than vague, shallow promises about "freedom."
The folks who gathered in D.C. today were awfully excited about something. The fact that it's not altogether obvious what that might be probably isn't a good sign. 8.28.10 More at http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2010_08/025426.php
13. Steve Benen: FRC Has Is It All Figured Out
Interest in former RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman's announcement that he's gay seems to have come and gone fairly quickly, but the religious right isn't about to let this go.
Take the Family Research Council, for example. Yesterday, the D.C.-based religious right powerhouse made the bizarre case to its supporters that Republicans would have done better in the 2006 and 2008 elections if only Mehlman been straight. From its message to FRC backers:
- This unfortunate confirmation helps explain the scandalous failure of many in the Republican establishment to vigorously uphold the values and policy positions expressed in the party's platform in 2004 and 2008, particularly the need to protect the definition of marriage as the union of a man and a woman nationwide. While grassroots activists succeeded in passing marriage amendments in dozens of states across the country, they received little support and even outright resistance from Party officials at the national level, which contributed to the GOP's electoral failures in 2006 and 2008. Now we know one of the major reasons why.
Yes, if only Republican officials hated gay people just a little more, Democrats -- buoyed by unpopular wars, a failing economy, and GOP scandals -- wouldn't have done so well.
That support nationwide for gay rights is growing, not shrinking, is probably a minor detail that the FRC prefers to ignore. 8.29.10 More at http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2010_08/025423.php
14. Frank Rich: The Billionaires Bankrolling the Tea Party
ANOTHER weekend, another grass-roots demonstration starring Real Americans who are mad as hell and want to take back their country from you-know-who. Last Sunday the site was Lower Manhattan, where they jeered the “ground zero mosque.” This weekend, the scene shifted to Washington, where the avatars of oppressed white Tea Party America, Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin, were slated to “reclaim the civil rights movement” (Beck’s words) on the same spot where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. had his dream exactly 47 years earlier.
Vive la révolution!
There’s just one element missing from these snapshots of America’s ostensibly spontaneous and leaderless populist uprising: the sugar daddies who are bankrolling it, and have been doing so since well before the “death panel” warm-up acts of last summer. Three heavy hitters rule. You’ve heard of one of them, Rupert Murdoch. The other two, the brothers David and Charles Koch, are even richer, with a combined wealth exceeded only by that of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett among Americans. But even those carrying the Kochs’ banner may not know who these brothers are.
Their self-interested and at times radical agendas, like Murdoch’s, go well beyond, and sometimes counter to, the interests of those who serve as spear carriers in the political pageants hawked on Fox News. The country will be in for quite a ride should these potentates gain power, and given the recession-battered electorate’s unchecked anger and the Obama White House’s unfocused political strategy, they might.
All three tycoons are the latest incarnation of what the historian Kim Phillips-Fein labeled “Invisible Hands” in her prescient 2009 book of that title: those corporate players who have financed the far right ever since the du Pont brothers spawned the American Liberty League in 1934 to bring down F.D.R. You can draw a straight line from the Liberty League’s crusade against the New Deal “socialism” of Social Security, the Securities and Exchange Commission and child labor laws to the John Birch Society-Barry Goldwater assault on J.F.K. and Medicare to the Koch-Murdoch-backed juggernaut against our “socialist” president. 8.28.10 More at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/opinion/29rich.html
15. John Avlon: Glenn Beck's Hypocritical Revival
The Rev. Glenn Beck staged a religious revival on the National Mall in Washington yesterday.
His “Restoring Honor” rally sidestepped politics, instead offering a tribute to the troops and calls for a new Great Awakening, proclaiming “We’ve got to go to God Bootcamp,” to the applause of hundreds of thousand of followers.
But the most striking thing about Beck’s heartfelt evangelism was its hypocrisy.
“We’re dividing ourselves,” Beck lamented. “There is growing hatred in the country. We must be better than what we’ve allowed ourselves to become. We must get the poison of hatred out of us, no matter what smears or lies are thrown our way… we must look to God and look to love. We must defend those we disagree with.”
It made me wonder if Glenn Beck has ever watched the Glenn Beck show.
The man offers a daily drumbeat of division for a living, earning $32 million last year selling his paranoid snake oil. It’s almost impossible to keep up with Beck’s serial fearmongering, though a stroll through Media Matters will give an authoritative sampling. Just a few of his greatest hits include:
- • “We are a country that is headed toward socialism, totalitarianism, beyond your wildest imagination.”
• “There is a coup going on. There is a stealing of America… done through the guise of an election.”
• “The president is a Marxist... who is setting up a class system.”
• “The government is a heroin pusher using smiley-faced fascism to grow the nanny state."
• “The health-care bill is reparations. It's the beginning of reparations."
• And of course, speaking of President Obama, “I believe this guy is a racist” with “a deep-seated hatred of white people.”
You can’t profit from fear and division all week and then denounce them one Saturday on the National Mall in Washington and hope nobody notices. More at http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-08-29/glenn-beck-rally-reaction/
16. Arthur Blaustein: The Speech Glenn Beck Meant to Give
I was inspired by Glenn Beck’s speech at his “Restoring Honor” rally in Washington to write the speech he intended to make:
- I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all mega-corporations with legions of lobbyists are created more than equal to anybody.”
I have a dream that the Yalie son of a Houston oil magnate can walk hand in hand with the daughter of a Wall Street hedge fund operator on the white sands of Southampton while evading inheritance taxes.
I have a dream that from the glorious Pacific to the bountiful Atlantic the Castro will become gayless and Greenwich Village will become free of feminism.
I have a dream that the Republican Party will come up with one new idea, any new idea, even if it is a rerun of one of Rush’s or my ideas, just to show that it isn’t completely brain-dead.
I have a dream that the young white guys playing with rifles at survivalist retreats in northern Michigan, that the middle-aged white guys playing Minuteman with guns at the Arizona border, and the older white guys frolicking at the Bohemian Grove, playing with whatever they play with, will keep people of different races or religions in their place.
I have a dream that the Supreme Court will vote 5 to 4 to revoke the statehood of Hawaii—but not Alaska—vindicating you Birthers out there. 8.30.10 More at More at http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_speech_glenn_beck_meant_to_give_20100830/
17. PAUL KRUGMAN: It’s Witch-Hunt Season
The last time a Democrat sat in the White House, he faced a nonstop witch hunt by his political opponents. Prominent figures on the right accused Bill and Hillary Clinton of everything from drug smuggling to murder. And once Republicans took control of Congress, they subjected the Clinton administration to unrelenting harassment — at one point taking 140 hours of sworn testimony over accusations that the White House had misused its Christmas card list.
Now it’s happening again — except that this time it’s even worse. Let’s turn the floor over to Rush Limbaugh: “Imam Hussein Obama,” he recently declared, is “probably the best anti-American president we’ve ever had.”
To get a sense of how much it matters when people like Mr. Limbaugh talk like this, bear in mind that he’s an utterly mainstream figure within the Republican Party; bear in mind, too, that unless something changes the political dynamics, Republicans will soon control at least one house of Congress. This is going to be very, very ugly.
So where is this rage coming from? Why is it flourishing? What will it do to America?
Anyone who remembered the 1990s could have predicted something like the current political craziness. What we learned from the Clinton years is that a significant number of Americans just don’t consider government by liberals — even very moderate liberals — legitimate. Mr. Obama’s election would have enraged those people even if he were white. Of course, the fact that he isn’t, and has an alien-sounding name, adds to the rage. 8/30/10 More at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/30/opinion/30krugman.html
18. Andrew Leonard: Wall Street's ridiculous Obama problem
OK. We get it. Wall Street hates Obama.
As far back as last September, CNBCs Charlie Gasparino told us in the New York Post that "the top guys on Wall Street are feeling burned" by Obama's "wild-eyed redistribution of wealth and massive programs."
Just two weeks ago, one of Wall Street's richest private equity moguls, Steven Schwarzman, compared a plan to raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans to Hitler's invasion of Poland.
And now, today, the New York Times is prominently featuring a piece by Wall Street's most avid stenographer, Andrew Ross Sorkin, that purports to explain "Why Wall St. Is Deserting Obama." Once again, the problem is that Obama is trying to "regulate and redistribute our way back to prosperity" and this clearly, in the view of Wall Street's elite, is pure evil.
These jokers are annoyed at the prospect of wealth redistribution? What do they think they were doing over the last couple of decades, aside from sucking wealth out of the "real" economy and redistributing it to themselves. And now they are are upset about higher taxes? What they should really be nervous about is the prospect of 20 years in prison. 8.31.10 http://www.salon.com/news/wall_street/index.html?story=/tech/htww/2010/08/31/wall_street_is_the_villain
19. Steve Benen: Chutzpah Watch -- Koch Edition
There's been a fair amount of attention lately focused on David and Charles Koch, right-wing billionaires going to great lengths, mainly through their "Americans for Prosperity" outfit, to bolster Republicans in 2010.
With that in mind, this report from Igor Volsky is pretty striking.
- Today, the Department of Health and Human Services announced the "first round of applicants accepted into the Early Retiree Reinsurance Program," a $5 billion program established by the new health care law to help employers and states "maintain coverage for early retirees age 55 and older who are not yet eligible for Medicare." According to the agency, "nearly 2,000 employers, representing large and small businesses, State and local governments, educational institutions, non-profits, and unions" applied and have been accepted into the program and "will begin to receive reimbursements for employee claims this fall."
Ironically, one of those employers is the oil, chemicals, and manufacturing conglomerate Koch Industries, which as Lee Fang has reported, has also spent millions of dollars opposing reform.
Indeed, a year ago this month, Americans for Prosperity organized crazed rallies in opposition to health care reform, in one instance going so far as to compare the Democratic plan to the Nazi Holocaust.
This is the same group that invested $1.7 million in attack ads, blatantly lying to the American public about the reform proposal, falsely telling the country that Democrats were publishing a socialized, Canadian-style system.
And now the Koch Brothers want in on receiving grants through the same law they fought like crazy to kill.
The right's capacity for shamelessness continues to impress. 8.30.10 More at http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2010_08/025461.php
20. Michelle Goldberg: Beck Revives the Mormons
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the “Restoring Honor” rally is its establishment of Glenn Beck, a Mormon, as a major leader of the Christian right. After all, for most evangelicals, Mormonism remains a great heresy. Yet last weekend, Beck managed to surround himself with the leading lights of the Christian right, including the Texas-based Christian Zionist John Hagee and the Southern Baptist Convention’s Richard Land.
In some ways, Beck’s ability to foster a Mormon alliance with evangelicals is very good news for Mitt Romney. The more Mormons and evangelicals team up in the cause of Christian nationalism, the more their political agreements will trump their theological differences. “There are lots of evangelicals that have fallen into Glenn Beck’s camp,” said Shipps. “It’s important to think about it this way: Beck is a convert. He knows how to talk the language of the Christian right, unlike Romney, who has been a Mormon all his life.”
In this, as in so much else, Beck owes a debt to the John Birch Society. Mormons played a prominent role in the JBS, and it was, said Berlet, “one of the first avenues by which Mormons were accepted in the Christian right.” As Shipps pointed out, Ezra Taft Benson, the 13th president of LDS church, was “very much a John Birch Society person.” So was W. Cleon Skousen, a far-right Mormon conspiracy theorist whose work Beck champions. Few things bring people together like a common enemy. Before it was communism, now it’s Obama. In this way at least, our president has ushered in a new era of religious tolerance. 9..01.10 More at http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-08-31/glenn-becks-mormonism-can-help-mitt-romney/
21. Matt Finkelstein: Gov. Barbour Rewrites History: Republican Rise In The South Had Nothing To Do With Race
Today, Human Events posted a new interview with "the most powerful man in Republican politics," Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour. In the interview, Barbour bucked conventional wisdom and argued that the rise of the Republican Party in the south had nothing to do with race. The governor explained that he was raised as a Democrat before he dropped out of college to work on Richard Nixon's campaign in 1968, and said that his parents' generation, which was more concerned about race, "became Republicans after their children" did.
Asked directly about Nixon's "southern strategy," Barbour was cagey, saying, "There's no question that in the fifties and probably the sixties there was some of that." He claimed, however, that "the people who led the change of parties" were part of a younger generation who "went to integrated schools" and recognized that segregation was "indefensible." Additionally, he said that many older people wouldn't leave the Democratic Party because "it was the party of the Civil War."
- BARBOUR: There's no question that in the fifties and probably the sixties there was some of that. At the same time, the people who led the change of parties in the South, just as I mentioned earlier, was my generation. My generation who went to integrated schools — I went to integrated college, um, never thought twice about it. And it was the old Democrats who had fought for segregation so hard. By my time, people realized that was the past, it was indefensible, it wasn't gonna be that way any more. So the people who really changed the South from Democrat to Republican was a different generation from those who fought integration. In fact, I can never forget — I mentioned we elected these two young congressman. We were just itching to get a senator, and one of my friend said, "Haley, we're just a few funerals away." You had some of the old crowd that just wasn't going to give up on the Democratic Party because it was the party of the civil war, segregation.
Barbour's version of history is so grossly distorted that it's tough to decide where to start. Broadly speaking, Barbour's claim that Democrats are the ones who fought segregation is incredibly misleading. Although it's a popular argument among southern conservatives, particularly when they're feeling defensive about race, the fact remains that the Civil Rights Act was passed by Democratic majorities in Congress and signed by a Democratic president. The real division among lawmakers was geographic — it was southern conservatives who bitterly opposed the bill. 9.01.10 More at http://politicalcorrection.org/blog/201009010001
22. DAVID LEONHARDT: Tax Cuts That Make a Difference
It’s time to start talking about a tax cut.
The economy is struggling mightily. Some 15 million people remain unemployed. The Federal Reserve has been slow to act and still is not doing much. The Senate has been unable to find the 60 votes needed to pass anything but minor bills.
The best hope for a short-term economic plan that can win bipartisan support is a tax cut — and not the permanent extension of George W. Bush’s tax cuts, which have been dominating the debate lately. Such an extension is unlikely to win many Democratic votes. Republicans, meanwhile, are unlikely to support more spending, like the national infrastructure project President Obama has been mentioning.
One possibility is an expanded tax credit for new clean energy projects, which is favored by the White House and by at least two Republican senators, Orrin Hatch and Richard Lugar. Another is an expansion of the tax credit for businesses that increase their work force, like the one sponsored by Mr. Hatch and Charles Schumer, the New York Democrat. This time, though, it would not have to be restricted to companies hiring the long-term unemployed.
The disadvantage of these programs is that people have to figure out if they’re eligible and then fill out forms. A simpler approach — but a less targeted one — would temporarily cut the payroll tax, which finances Social Security and Medicare and is paid by both businesses and workers. By suspending the part that applies to businesses for a few months, Washington could lower the cost of keeping or hiring workers.
Either way, a couple of tax cuts along these lines could make good additions to a bill extending the Bush tax cuts for households making less than $250,000 a year. Economically, the extra cuts would have a bigger impact than an extension of all the Bush cuts. Politically, this kind of bill would force opponents to explain why they instead wanted smaller tax cuts for middle-class families and businesses and a bigger one for the affluent.
Of course, no temporary tax cut will solve the economy’s long-run problems. That’s a harder project, one that involves upgrading the skills of the work force, slowing the growth of health costs, reducing the deficit, lifting exports, restarting healthy wage growth and, yes, simplifying the tax code.
But we won’t make any of those tasks easier by falling into a double-dip recession or enduring months more of halting growth. The aftermath of a financial crisis is usually difficult. It’s not yet time to declare victory. 9.01.10 More at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/01/business/economy/01leonhardt.html
23. Kathleen Parker: My name is Glenn Beck, and I need help
Beck's "Restoring Honor" gathering on the Mall was right out of the Alcoholics Anonymous playbook. It was a 12-step program distilled to a few key words, all lifted from a prayer delivered from the Lincoln Memorial: healing, recovery and restoration.
Saturday's Beckapalooza was yet another step in Beck's own personal journey of recovery. He may as well have greeted the crowd of his fellow disaffected with:
"Hi. My name is Glenn, and I'm messed up."
Beck's history of alcoholism and addiction is familiar to any who follow him. He has made no secret of his past and is quick to make fun of himself. As he once said: "You can get rich making fun of me. I know. I've made a lot of money making fun of me."
Self-mockery -- and cash -- seems to come easily to him.
Any cursory search of Beck quotes also reveals the language of the addict:
-- "It is still morning in America. It just happens to be kind of a head-pounding, hung-over, vomiting-for-four-hours kind of morning in America."
-- "I have not heard people in the Republican Party yet admit that they have a problem."
-- "You know, we all have our inner demons. I, for one -- I can't speak for you, but I'm on the verge of moral collapse at any time. It can happen by the end of the show."
Indeed. After the hangover comes admission of the addiction, followed by surrender to a higher power and acknowledgment that one is always fallen.
These may be random quotes, but they can't be considered isolated or out of context. For Beck, addiction has been a defining part of his life, and recovery is a process inseparable from the Glenn Beck Program. His emotional, public breakdowns are replicated in AA meetings in towns and cities every day. 9.01.10 More at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/31/AR2010083104879.html
