Iowa Liberal

But this is essential reading for any person who likes the Tea Party rhetoric who isn’t just a party-line Republican:

So please, for your own sake, for your family’s sake and the sake of your children, stop. Stop demanding that problems not get fixed. Stop demanding that you keep getting screwed. Stay angry — you should be angry — but start directing that anger toward the system that’s screwing you over and taking money out of your pocket. Start directing that anger toward fixing problems instead of toward making sure they never get fixed. Instead of demanding that Congress oppose health care reform so that you never, ever, get another pay raise, start demanding that they pass health care reform, as soon as possible. Because until they do, you’re just going to keep on getting screwed.

And it’s going to be that much worse knowing that you brought this on yourself — that you demanded it.

It never ceases to amaze me how absurd and irrational life can be. The recession is making people angry, but the loudest segment has no understanding of what caused it, and no desire to do anything to make it better. Bush and Republican de-regulation theology led to a financial Hiroshima, but they’re angry at Obama. The stimulus was one-third tax cuts and was responsible for putting American growth back in the positive, but the teabaggers have convinced themselves that it mostly went to waste. American taxpayers were asked to pay a lot less during the Bush years, while Bush put everything on the credit card. Meanwhile the cost of everything else, from college to health care, skyrocketed, but we’re told that we’re, “Taxed Enough Already!!!”

Meanwhile, Republicans and “centrist” Dems in D.C. are busy making sure that Wall Street is protected and that no serious job bill gets off the ground. The cost controls in the HCR bill are seed programs that will take years to significantly germinate, appeasing entrenched interests (they may agree that change needs to happen, but making them seed programs slows the process and allows for adaptation). Mortgage readjustments have been squashed and withered. Bonuses continue to flow unabated among those who got us in this mess in the first place. At every juncture, it seems that lobbyists end up dictating what happens.

And who’s there to get their backs? Republicans. Who are the angry people yammering about deficits and unemployment telling us to vote for? Republicans.

The two things just don’t fit together. Never have, but this is the ultimate refutation.

As I mentioned before, there isn’t a populist or problem-solving bone in the Tea Party. Sarah Palin gives a $100K speech filled with empty platitudes while the Tea Party Convention ended up being about the cultural stuff. Sullivan:

They want their country back. That’s what they tell us. I watched a CNN segment where one woman explicitly described Obama as Satan’s agent. And the biggest applause of the Palin speech was her reference to children with special needs, her brilliant way of telling the base that she is a real pro-lifer and not a fake one. That’s why she hauls little Trig everywhere she goes. He’s a pro-life prop. A special needs child would be kept at home, cared for intently, and out of the limelight.

This is about Christianism, permanent war against Islam, rounding up illegals (did you hear Tancredo?) and a culture war against the cities and “unreal Americans”. Unreal means not Christianist.

It’s the GOP base, period. Bush’s credit card presidency didn’t bother them at all. There are no policy proposals that will satisfy them. They just want Sarah Palin signing the bills, someone they personally identify with more.

Here’s a hint though, folks: People like Obama more than Palin. And always will. Republicans can keep liking her harder to piss off the liberal commie homos, but it’s not going to make her more likable or impressive to those of us who aren’t expecting the Rapture in the next twenty years. She’s a celebrity, fine, but whose fault is it that she thinks she can be President someday? Who has got the brass gonads to break it to her gently? Just say, “Oh, you’d make a good governor, Sarah! Oops, I mean, Fox News personality…” Everybody else looks at her and sees a bumbling fool. Oh, yeah, she’s common American for you: She’s that nice lady mayor who ran up a bunch of city debt and then had to quit being Governor because it was too boring.

Those of us who are actually concerned about getting something real done in D.C. have one real option: keep voting for solid mainstream Democrats who are supporting reform. The Republicans haven’t changed and never will. They’re a 41% block of permanent corporate power over how our country operates. The “centrist” Dems are just craven politicians who cave the instant Republicans raise their hackles. If you’ve got a filibustering Republican in office, you had best think about getting him/her out as soon as possible. The old policies are still hampering us because the old policymakers are still holding the reins.

And you, our everyday normal American, are the last one they give a damn about. You’ll be unemployed and foreclosed, and you’ll get a nuggest of wisdom about the “invisible hand of the free market” when you’re on your last dollar. Then where will you go?

-jb

If Reagan were alive today, would he serve as a moderating influence on the GOP, or would he be singing with the choir while ignoring his record? Whatever the case, his actual governing record wouldn’t pass the Republican purity test:

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.

Then there’s plank number five: Reaganite candidates must “oppos[e] amnesty for illegal immigrants.” Really? Because if you look up the word “amnesty” in Black’s Law Dictionary, you’ll find a reference to the 1986 bill that Reagan signed, which ended up granting amnesty to 2.7 million illegal immigrants.

Then there’s foreign policy. Plank number six demands that candidates back the surges in Iraq and Afghanistan. But what did Reagan do in his biggest confrontation with jihadist terror? When Hezbollah murdered 241 U.S. servicemen in Beirut in 1983, the Gipper didn’t surge; he withdrew the remaining American troops, and fast. Plank number 7 calls for “effective [read military] action to eliminate” Iran and North Korea’s nuclear programs. But Reagan condemned Israel’s 1981 preventive strike against an Iraqi nuclear reactor. And plank number nine requires steadfast opposition to abortion. Yet two of Reagan’s three Supreme Court nominees voted to uphold Roe v. Wade. Turns out this Reagan guy wasn’t really that Reaganite after all.

Serves as a fairly useful reminder while Republicans are busy screeching about how radical and leftist Obama is. What they end up doing is making being a radical leftist sound like a pretty good thing.

-jb

I’m not reflexively opposed to pork. It’s a tiny, tiny slice of the pie, and John McCain’s campaign promise to balance the deficit by slashing pork was simply sad and funny. One state’s pork is another state’s well-targeted economic stimulus, so it’s hardly evident that eliminating pork would have a net positive effect.

That said, Richard Shelby, Republican of Alabama, is holding the Senate hostage on (yes, I’m going to join the bandwagon and add some emphasis here) all, all, ALL of Obama’s nominees, totaling seventy, until he gets two pork projects for Alabama. Yep, one Senator can do this. Yes, all standards have flown out the window.

This comes after Obama pointed out to the House Republicans in last week’s historic public trouncing that cutting spending can be difficult when every representative has their pet projects.

I’m pretty sure this wins the Blagojevich/Duke Cunningham award for 2010. So far, anyway. There’s an election approaching…but how can Republicans reconcile this kind of behavior with asking voters to believe a word they say about fiscal responsibility?

I think it’s simply become irrefutable that Republicans aren’t ready to govern nowadays. We’ve been stonewalled enough by the Republican minority as it is, but if they signal that they’re going to make every single Republican Senator a one-person blockade, electing any Republican who’s betrothed to the tea partiers is unsafe.

-jb

Palin reads the answers to questions off of her hand:

Now we know how she made it through college.

It does sum up rather nicely the depth of conservative thought; one word bullet points written on your hand.

-mg

This is one of my favorite demonstrations of what Gerard Alexander would refer to as “liberal condescension”. Daniel Ellsberg eviscerating the Very Serious ideas of great conservative thinker William Kristol.

Isn’t it a tragedy that liberals like Ellsberg arrogantly brushed aside the sage advice of this wise and humble man? Perhaps someday in a more civilized and intellectually honest future, conservative greats like Kristol, Krauthammer, Broder, Kaplan, Kagan, Vandehei, Barnes and Hanson can have a platform from which to speak freely.

-mg

Ah, those arrogant liberals are at it again! Looking down their noses at real Americans and trying to force their political correctness on all of us. It’s as if they think we’re fucking retards!

Gerard Alexander affirms what all conservatives have internalized in their heart of hearts already: that conservatives and their ideas are reflexively maligned because elitism and condescention are innate, unique qualities possessed by liberals. You’ll never go broke if you’re getting paid to tell right-wingers that they’re being victimized and imposed upon by Volvo drivers who think that they’re smarter than them. It’s their bread and butter.

This condescension is part of a liberal tradition that for generations has impoverished American debates over the economy, society and the functions of government — and threatens to do so again today, when dialogue would be more valuable than ever.

Because, you see, conservative ideas weren’t able to make it to the surface over the past eight years because they were drowned in a sea of domineering liberal discourse.

These four liberal narratives not only justify the dismissal of conservative thinking as biased or irrelevant — they insist on it. By no means do all liberals adhere to them, but they are mainstream in left-of-center thinking. Indeed, when the president met with House Republicans in Baltimore recently, he assured them that he considers their ideas, but he then rejected their motives in virtually the same breath.

This works if you ignore the fact that Obama responded to their proposed ideas using logic and reason. The president didn’t stand up in front of them at the House Issues Conference for an hour and a half and merely reject their motives. During that time Republicans got exactly what Alexander is suggesting they didn’t receive; a reasoned debate over their suggestions for fixing a broken economy. Not only that but it was face to face on live television on their own turf. I don’t know how much more open and accommodating to Republican suggestions the president could have been.

Like a lot of right-wing think tank groomed intellectuals, it doesn’t matter to Alexander whether “conservative” ideas can be refuted by sound reasoning or logic. We need to implement them anyway because they’re “conservative” and if we don’t we’re condescending ideologues who refuse to take them seriously. Here’s a fresh, new idea; instead of spending your time whining about how arrogant liberals don’t respect you why don’t you concentrate on developing more cohesive arguments.

-mg

This is one of my favorite demonstrations of what Gerard Alexander would refer to as “liberal condescension”. Daniel Ellsberg eviscerating the Very Serious ideas of great conservative thinker William Kristol.

Isn’t it a tragedy that liberals routinely brush aside the sage advice of this wise and humble man? Perhaps someday in a more civilized future, conservative greats like Kristol, Krauthammer, Broder, Kaplan and Hanson can have a platform from which to speak freely and have their ideas heard.

Wes Anderson’s Spider-Man:

See Fantastic Mr. Fox if you get the chance…

-jb

Support the right of Iowa brewers to make something peppier than that 5% shit.

-jb

Limbaugh tries to claim Obama was an affirmative action case at Harvard Law. Does he have any evidence? Of course not, but Obama is black and Limbaugh is a racist asshole. Think Progress has the complete smackdown, including a testament from other members of the Harvard Law Review and an article from 1990. It shouldn’t exactly blow anybody’s mind that being elected president of the Review is the highest honor at Harvard Law, but like I said, Obama’s black, and Rush Limbaugh, one of the GOP’s most powerful leaders, is a racist asshole.

-jb

Five pages of horror, the winner gets produced. See my submission here. They’re charging a dollar to vote, so I don’t expect any, but I’d appreciate any page views and constructive criticism.

Warning: Adult, graphic content. And yes, I’m very strange.

-jb

Many have apparently forgotten but risk is a major component of what pointy headed academic types refer to as “capitalism”. Lenders took risks by issuing loans to people who had lower likelihoods of repaying their debts. When these people fail to make their payments and hit the road it’s time to rethink your lending strategies instead of looking for a government handout or ways to lay a guilt trip on those who stopped paying . I’m sure some of you think that throwing the keys on the table and walking away is an irresponsible thing to do but I don’t see the point in not admitting your mistakes, taking your lumps and moving on. Bad credit? Meh. It beats paying a $250K note on a $100K condo in Escondido for twenty plus years.

-mg

It’s difficult to reason with someone who doesn’t want to be a part of the United States, thinks homosexuals should be barred from teaching in public schools, and that contraceptives should be outlawed. Marcos makes the observation that 42 percent of the Republicans polled aren’t really patriotic and that they pretend to love America only when they approve of the president. It’s hard to dispute that assessment when you have evidence like the 39 percent that think that Obama deserves impeachment regardless of whether or not he has committed any crimes or the majorities who not surprisingly think he was born outside of the United States. And why not? If you believe that Obama is a Kenyan who won the election because of ACORN chicanery then it’s not too much of a stretch. How many elected officials actually believe such nonsense I don’t know. What is certain though is that if they don’t at least pay a little lip-service to the electoral fringe they’ll be excoriated for their lack of ideological purity by at least one of the Tea Party factions that are currently competing for the most appealing balance of paranoia, belligerence and self righteousness. But as long as they’re beholden to Tea Partiers and their symbolic interests the GOP will be hopelessly tethered to the same epithets and slogans that lost them that last few elections and they wont understand why because they honestly believe that thinking Obama is a socialist, stealth Muslim is a mainstream position.

-mg

But you should have seen me. You should have seen how wisely I proceeded — with what caution — with what foresight, with what dissimulation, I went to work! – Edgar Allen Poe, The Tell-Tale Heart

The past year has been disheartening for those who expected the big changes we voted for, but this article by John B. Judis reminds us that just as the Bush administration constantly, day after day, chipped away at the foundations of good government-

Many of the last century’s presidents–from Theodore Roosevelt to Jimmy Carter to Bill Clinton–subscribed to this progressive ideal of regulation based on expertise. But, beginning in the 1980s and culminating in the presidency of George W. Bush, the notion of scientific administration came under attack from Republicans and their allies. They began to subvert the agencies by bringing in business executives, corporate lawyers, and lobbyists–the very opposite of the impartial experts envisioned by Brandeis and Croly.

Reagan chose Thorne Auchter, the vice president of a construction firm, to head OSHA. Bush appointed a mining company executive to head the Mine Safety and Health Administration and a trucking company executive to head the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. To lead OSHA, he named Edwin G. Foulke Jr., a longtime foe of the agency who had advised companies on how to block union organization.

Some of the Republican appointees weren’t business types, but ideologues or hacks who were utterly unqualified for their positions. Anne Gorsuch, whom Reagan nominated to head the EPA, was a rising member of the Colorado House of Representatives, where she was part of a conservative group known as the “House crazies.” Michael Brown, whom Bush appointed to run the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), had previously been commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association.

-the Obama administration has been working just as hard at restoring and buffing up the same institutions.

For instance, as a replacement for Foulke at OSHA, Obama chose David Michaels, a professor of occupational and environmental health at George Washington University. In 2008, Michaels published a book, Doubt is Their Product: How Industry’s Assault on Science Threatens Your Health, detailing how businesses had delayed regulations by “manufacturing uncertainty” about scientific findings.

To manage the EPA, Obama appointed a slew of highly experienced state environmental officials. (As Bill Becker of the National Association of Clean Air Agencies explains, state officials are ideally suited for the EPA because they have firsthand experience in how regulations are enforced and how they work.) Obama’s choice to run the agency was Lisa Jackson, a chemical engineer who led the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. Her deputies include the former secretary of the environment in Maryland, as well as the former heads of the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection, the Massachusetts Bureau of Resource Protection, and the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality.

Meanwhile, Obama chose as his Food and Drug Administration (FDA) chief Margaret Hamburg, who achieved renown during the 1990s as health commissioner of New York City, where she developed a program for controlling tuberculosis that led to a sharp decline in the disease. Her number two is a former Baltimore health commissioner who, in 2008, was named a public official of the year by Governing magazine. Obama’s director of the National Park Service is a 30-year veteran of the agency–and the first biologist to lead it. And his new director of FEMA is W. Craig Fugate, who performed outstandingly as Jeb Bush and Charlie Crist’s head of emergency management in Florida. Fugate may not know anything about Arabian stallions–but he does know a thing or two about hurricanes.

Who got hired is just one part of the story- read the whole article to see the stealthy goods that Obama has delivered. It’s not a replacement for the things we await (*cough* health care reform *cough*) but it’s evidence of the difference between a Republican and a Democratic administration. The Republican tendency for cronyistic corruption aligns with their philosophical (I’m being generous) desire to see government discredited. Democrats believe that the government can be a force for good, but that you have to hire competent individuals who actually want to do their job well. It isn’t some damn plot to expand the government to gain more power, as listening to the deranged idiot Rush Limbaugh every day will have you believe. It’s because there are real problems out there that can be fixed or alleviated by quality people doing quality work.

-jb

Wall Street needs your anti-government rhetoric, and Frank Luntz is here to tell you how to apply your newfound populism to protecting big banks and the inscrutable financial apparatuses that got us in this mess:

If there is one thing we can all agree on, it’s that the bad decisions and harmful policies by Washington bureaucrats that in many ways led to the economic crash must never be repeated,” Luntz wrote. “This is your critical advantage. Washington’s incompetence is the common ground on which you can build support.”

Luntz continued: “Ordinarily, calling for a new government program ‘to protect consumers’ would be extraordinary popular. But these are not ordinary times. The American people are not just saying ‘no.’ They are saying ‘hell no’ to more government agencies, more bureaucrats, and more legislation crafted by special interests.”

The thing is, the teabaggers never were populists at all. They’re nothing more than angry Republicans who went apoplectic the day a man named Barack Hussein Obama was sworn into office, and the eight years of George W. Bush’s presidency were utterly rebuked.

A group adrift, ideologically bankrupt, unrepentant, they seized on the emergency measures drafted to fight the economic collapse that nearly a decade of Republican deregulation had merited. In 1999, the Glass-Steagal Act crafted after the Great Depression was revoked, a move championed by Republicans and signed by go-along-to-get-along President Clinton, and in 2008, unleashed financial chaos led to entirely predictable results. Being Republicans, they couldn’t fight that. In reality, they could do nothing more than wait to see what President Obama would do to correct the situation, and then attack every inch of it. While they were at it, they tacked TARP onto Obama as well, since Great Leader Dubya must be excused from responsibility for his eight year tenure.

So the Tea Party activists claimed to develop “principles,” but it was new and unsteady for them. The best they could come up with was that they were against, surprisingly after eight years of massive deficit spending by Dubya, deficit spending. And after Bush’s massive tax cuts which contributed to our massive debt, they concluded that they were “taxed enough already.”

Of course, they have no clear proposals on how to reduce any spending or fix the deficit at all. They’re against ending the tax cuts, they’re against requiring bills to pay for themselves, they’re largely against toning down our overseas adventures, they’re against the cost-cutting reforms of the health care bill.

But Frank Luntz knows who the Republican party is, and he’s geared up the propaganda to make sure Tea Party buffoons are properly educated to understand that they must never truly turn their rage against the real elites who are robbing them blind. Wall Street must remain deregulated. There’s been some loss of message control over TARP, but pinning it on Obama was a fair enough compromise (if you don’t believe me, scan the comments threads on any rightwing blog, including Common Sense Political Thought…there’s a bevy of revisionists there). Sure, it’s likely to result in another collapse in a few years, and Wall St. will proceed as if expecting to be bailed out again, but since the president is a Democrat, Republicans can block whatever he tries doing to fix the problem and then blame him for anything that goes wrong.

All that’s really important is that Republicans get back in office. And if they don’t stop reinstating regulation to keep Wall Street safe, what use will Republicans be to those who regularly fill their campaign coffers?

-jb

They let themselves get locked in a room with Obama and the camera rolling.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Yet a good day for them and all Americans. This was an intervention. As I said before the election, people love to say all sorts of crazy things about Obama but that he has realized a brilliant counter-tactic: Make everybody sit down and hash it out with him. Let them ask questions until they’re blue in the face. When asked if he’d stay longer, Obama said, “I’m having fun!” He could have gone all day, and the prospect of doing this once every month or so as some like Mark Ambinder have suggested is something you can rest assured Republicans will resist. GOP aides have already said letting cameras in the room “was a mistake.”

This is exactly what it takes to deflate the rhetoric coming from the Earl Grey aficionados since Obama was sworn in, the accumulated nonsense they believe will grant them huge victories in November.

But the “optics,” as they say, are stupendous. (TEH!) One versus a roomful, relaxed, confident, informed, mature and collected. A gaggle of politicians suddenly unwilling to repeat the vilest slanders they’ve freely engaged in and encouraged with their base. Suddenly, a government that teases the public: We might be able to work together afterall.

How do the Republicans pivot from this into a string of 41 vote filibusters until November? Is there an opening now, as the Tea Party shenanigans unravel and Sarah Palin is off hunting big paychecks for her celebrity appearances, for Republicans to actually behave like a party of grown-ups and accept that most of what gets thrown their way is already heavily compromised and that most liberals are sitting around glum-faced and dissatisfied because Obama has been stubbornly centrist?

-jb

p.s. Fox News couldn’t take it and cut the talk short, while the other cable networks let it play. Letting you decide!

Republican = fiscally reckless, danger to our country’s future financial health:

One day after the president upbraided Congress in his State of the Union address for excessive partisanship, Senate Republicans voted en masse against a plan to require that new spending not add to the deficit (it passed anyway as all 60 members of the Democratic caucus hung together).

Any Democrat who can’t annihilate a Republican in November after this isn’t worth a bucket of rabbit piss. Any many of them aren’t.

-jb

Andrew Breitbart, symbol of honesty and sincerity, gets a dose of real journalism.