The Great War of Yankee Aggression

"The Great War of Yankee Aggression."

How, exactly, is someone supposed to interpret this. The congressmen let slip a slight smirk, so perhaps he was making a joke -- but it really makes you wonder what sort of philosophy is behind this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXT9ZDAbK_o

GOP complains Obama is ignoring them

Jesus. What a bunch of wankers.

They give Obama not just the middle finger, but every single one of them and don't give him a single frackin vote and then they complain he's not continuing to make nice.

They are incredibly stupid and out of their depth. AT THE TIME it was pretty clear that Obama was giving them a chance to be team players. They blew him off like snot onto a rag. It was also clear that e was giving them enough rope to hang themselves.

Well, now they are hung out to dry. With Franken coming in the only people Obama needs to placate are some Blue Dog Dems and I think they're going to be a lot easier to satisfy than hey-we-got-100% GOP fools.

Here's the link: http://theplumline.whorunsgov.com/torture/gop-leadership-to-obama-you-never-call-you-never-write/

GOP can't decide if it wants to look stupid, petty or silly, so it goes for all three

I really don't know what to make of the Republican Party's need to continually top itself withs stupid, petty and silly antics.

It's bad enough that their in-house racists like take-the-bone-from-your-nose Limbaugh and Miamia-is-a-third-world-city Tancredo are calling Sotomayor "racist."

But no, the president takes his wife out for a date on Broadway and they feel the need to criticize it as supposedly insensitive while GM prepares to file bankruptcy. What? The Obamas are supposed to be in mourning, or something?

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0509/23122.html

My God, get a grip, you guys!

Chief Justice Roberts

An interesting point by Jeffrey Toobin in Slate: In every major case since he became the nation’s seventeenth Chief Justice, Roberts has sided with the prosecution over the defendant, the state over the condemned, the executive branch over the legislative, and the corporate defendant over the individual plaintiff.

This is, in a nutshell, my primary discomfort with the modern GOP. Surely there are some times when the powerless deserve some help against the powerful?

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/05/25/090525fa_fact_toobin?currentPage=all

Petreaus

Over at Obsidian Wings they commented about Gen. Petreaus' political savvy, ending with the comment that they hope he doesn't run for political office as a Republican someday.

I think that's short-sighted. I do hope he considers running, if he thinks he has something to contribute.

Currently I'm wishing Obama well. I think he's being a necessary corrective to Bush-era disasters. I said during the campaign and believe still that Bush represented such an epic failure of values and competence that we needed a complete "anti-Bush" as the next president and Obama is about as un-Bush as you can get.

That said, I think Obama is a singular individual and I see very little evidence that Democrats, generally, have improved at all over the feckless, short-sighted, morally cowardly bunch of hacks they've been. While the Bush-era disaster is, rightly, laid at the feet of the GOP, Democrats did not cover themselves in glory as the opposition, either.

Once Obama's 8 years are over (and I do assume he will be re-elected) the country may well be ready for a swing closer to the middle and someone like Petreaus may be a good choice. Generals tend to be pragmatic individuals, especially the good ones, and not particularly ideological. Given that the Republicans seems determined to go through at least one more round of drubbings in 2012, someone like Petreaus (or maybe a Huntsman-Petreaus ticket) could lead them back from the wilderness. A Huntsman-Petreaus ticket might win the White House, but it's highly likely they would start out with the Congress still controlled by the Democrats, which creates some interesting potential political dynamics as well. It may be that most of the legistlation that gets passed by a H-P administration would be Democrat originated but with signifcant concessions to the middle ground of a moderate GOP. Hard-core left Dems and the Rightist GOp rump might both find themselves left out in the cold -- which would be the best possible outcome.

Rush lets caller call him a "brainwashed Nazi"

Frankly, I'm surprised Rush Limbaugh lets this guy go for so long. http://mediamatters.org/countyfair/200904070031?show=1

The caller really lets him have it for Rush's support for torture, which really seems to be the caller's biggest beef about the Republicans.

There's a lot about the Bush GOP's regime that I didn't like, but a lot of it I could have forgiven (it's not like the Democrats are any better on a lot of things) but the torture issue is the one I know I can't get over. The Republican Party will not be worthy fo support until the day it purges itself of the torture supporters.

Sense at Slate

Slate critiques the "War on the Rich" claim going around (with emphasis added my me:

It's hard to overstate how absurd these claims are. First, let's talk about the "massive increase in progressivity" that Gerson deplores. It consists largely (but not exclusively) of returning marginal tax rates to their levels of 2001, before Gerson and the epically incompetent Bush administration of which he was a part got their hands on the reins of power. Obama wants to let marginal rates for families with taxable income (not total income, but taxable income) of more than $250,000 revert from 33 percent to 36 percent, and to let the top rate—currently 35 percent on family income above $357,000—revert to 39 percent. (Here are the current tax tables.) There's also talk of capping—not eliminating, but capping—deductions on charitable giving and mortgage interest.
Obama's proposals don't mean the government would steal every penny you make above the $250,000 threshold, or that making more than $250,000 would somehow subject all of your income to higher taxes. Rather, you'd pay 36 cents to the government in income taxes on every dollar over the threshold, rather than 33 cents.
Second, this return to 2001's tax rates was actually part of the Bush tax plan. The Republicans who controlled the White House and the Republicans who controlled the Congress earlier this decade decreed that all the tax cuts they passed would sunset in 2010. They put in this sunset provision to hide the long-term fiscal costs of the cuts. The Bush team and congressional supporters had seven years to manage fiscal affairs in such a way that they would be able to extend the tax cuts in 2010. But they screwed it up. Instead of controlling spending and aligning tax revenues with outlays, the Bush administration and its congressional allies ramped up spending massively—on two wars, on a prescription drug benefit for Medicare, on earmarks, etc. Oh, and along the way, they so miserably mismanaged oversight of Wall Street and the financial sector that it required the passage of a hugely expensive bailout. Even before the passage of the TARP, the prospect of extending all the Bush tax cuts was a nonstarter. Once Bush signed the $700 billion bailout measure into law, extending tax cuts was really a nonstarter. The national debt nearly doubled during the Bush years. So if you want to blame someone for raising taxes back to where they were in 2001, don't blame Obama. Blame Bush, his feckless Office of Management and Budget directors, his economic advisers, and congressional appropriators like Trent Lott and Tom DeLay.
Third, we know from recent experience that marginal tax rates of 36 percent and 39 percent aren't wealth killers. I was around in the 1990s, when tax rates were at that level, and when capital gains and dividend taxes were significantly higher than they are today. And I seem to remember that we had a stock market boom, a broad rise in incomes (with the wealthy benefitting handily), and strong economic growth.
Fourth, we also know from recent experience that lower marginal rates on income taxes, and lower rates on capital gains and dividends, aren't necessarily wealth producers. The Bush years, which had lower marginal rates and capital gains taxes, were a fiasco. In fact, if you tally up the vast destruction of wealth in the late Bush years—caused by foolish hedge funds, investment banks, and other financial services companies, it seems like the wealthy have in fact been waging war on one another.
Finally, there has been a near total absence of discussion of what higher rates will mean in the real world. Say you're a CNBC anchor, or a Washington Post columnist with a seat at the Council on Foreign Relations, or a dentist, and you managed to cobble together $350,000 a year in income. You're doing quite well. If you subtract deductions for state and property taxes, mortgage interest and charitable deductions, and other deductions, the amount on which tax rates are calculated might total $300,000. What would happen if the marginal rate on the portion of your income above $250,000 were to rise from 33 percent to 36 percent? Under the old regime, you'd pay $16,500 in federal taxes on that amount. Under the new one, you'd pay $18,000. The difference is $1,500 per year, or $4.10 per day. Obviously, the numbers rise as you make more. But is $4.10 a day bleeding the rich, a war on the wealthy, a killer of innovation and enterprise? That dentist eager to slash her income from $320,000 to $250,000 would avoid the pain of paying an extra $2,100 in federal taxes. But she'd also deprive herself of an additional $70,000 in income!

John Cole's challenge

On claims that wanting the president to fail was just as common back when. Bring it on, he says:

And just so we are clear, until shown otherwise, what I remember is the following:
2001, time of mild economic downturn but with a large budget surplus projected as far as the eyes can see, and Democrats stated the tax cuts are bad policy and should not be adopted.
2009, during two wars, a financial disaster, an economic crisis and massive unemployment and trillion dollar deficits as far as the eye can see, and the Republicans and Limbaugh are rooting for Obama to fail so they can regain some political power.
Until I am shown otherwise, that is how I see things. What is happening right now is nuts, and there simply is no comparison. Show me the tapes. Show me the transcripts. Show me Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid standing in front of a camera saying “I want President Bush to fail” just like we have seen Mike Pence and the parade of other Republican leaders do in the past few days. Bring it on, and I don’t mean some random jackass on the internet or some crazy tenured prof at a community college somewhere. I will admit my memory was wrong, but I want to see it, because I don’t remember it. And then when you are done, you can show me the video tapes or transcripts of all the Democrats groveling and begging for forgiveness at the feet of Michael Moore (who, by the way, is fat) after dissing him.

Sullivan makes more good points on the implications of the torture memos

Just to recap: the last president believed that he had the inherent power to suspend both the First and the Fourth amendments, he had the power to seize anyone in the US or world, disappear and torture them, and ordered his legal goons to come up with patently absurd legal rationales for all of it. And much of official Washington carried on as normal - and those of us who actually stood up and opposed this were regarded as "hysterics".
Something is rotten in a country where this can happen with such impunity - and when, even now, highly regarded and respected journalists and commentators simply move on or roll their eyes or sigh world-weary sighs.
What we just lived through was an attack on the Constitution of the United States, conducted by the president and vice-president and an array of apparatchiks.The theory undergirding it renders the entire constitution subject to one man's prerogative. The conservative blogosphere - who resolutely ignored this in deference to their Caesar - now bleats about Obama's alleged threat to the constitution!

Whole thing here: http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/03/criminals-in-th.html

The Rushpublican Party

When the head of the RNC feels it necessary to apologize to a talk-radio host you know that there's no self-respect left.

Folks, it's officially the Rushpublican Party now.

Good luck with that

Frum:

But what about the rest of the party? Here’s the duel that Obama and Limbaugh are jointly arranging:
On the one side, the president of the United States: soft-spoken and conciliatory, never angry, always invoking the recession and its victims. This president invokes the language of “responsibility,” and in his own life seems to epitomize that ideal: He is physically honed and disciplined, his worst vice an occasional cigarette. He is at the same time an apparently devoted husband and father. Unsurprisingly, women voters trust and admire him.
And for the leader of the Republicans? A man who is aggressive and bombastic, cutting and sarcastic, who dismisses the concerned citizens in network news focus groups as “losers.” With his private plane and his cigars, his history of drug dependency and his personal bulk, not to mention his tangled marital history, Rush is a walking stereotype of self-indulgence – exactly the image that Barack Obama most wants to affix to our philosophy and our party. And we’re cooperating! Those images of crowds of CPACers cheering Rush’s every rancorous word – we’ll be seeing them rebroadcast for a long time.

But do the rest of us understand what we are doing to ourselves by accepting this leadership? Rush is to the Republicanism of the 2000s what Jesse Jackson was to the Democratic party in the 1980s. He plays an important role in our coalition, and of course he and his supporters have to be treated with respect. But he cannot be allowed to be the public face of the enterprise – and we have to find ways of assuring the public that he is just one Republican voice among many, and very far from the most important.

Update: Steele grovels to Rush: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0309/19517.html

Mocked by a Nobel prize winner

Krugman notes that conservatives used to agree with liberals that there are some things that governments properly do, such as defense and provide for public safety.

Hence his surprise that Jindal criticized funding for monitoring volcanos that could erupt, obviously a public good that no private interest could undertake.

Basically, the political philosophy of the GOP right now seems to consist of snickering at stuff that they think sounds funny. The party of ideas has become the party of Beavis and Butthead.

GOP too stupid to earn votes of the college-educated

Scott Horton's long post has plenty of example, but this one stands out for the profound ignorance it reveals:

And of course there was the recent historical excursion of Ohio Republican Congressman Steve Austria:
“When (President Franklin) Roosevelt did this, he put our country into a Great Depression,” Austria said. “He tried to borrow and spend, he tried to use the Keynesian approach, and our country ended up in a Great Depression. That’s just history.”
Except of course that Roosevelt became president in 1933 and the Great Depression started in 1929 in the presidency of Republican Herbert Hoover.

He goes on: How does this play to the voters? In an intriguing article in the current National Journal, Ronald Brownstein and David Wasserman take a look at how Republicans are doing with educated voters. Their view: Democrats are scoring “dramatic gains” among better educated voters, namely those who hold college diplomas. They bore into a number of sample counties, like Oakland County, Michigan, which was once reliably Republican—and where well-educated voters now feel the G.O.P. is just too stupid to earn their vote.

The whole post is here: http://www.harpers.org/subjects/NoComment

Rush Limbaugh is a dumb fuck

He evidently said this:

Obama’s plan would buy votes for the Democrat Party, in the same way FDR’s New Deal established majority power for 50 years of Democrat rule.....

Let me emphasize the key part: Obama’s plan would buy votes for the Democrat Party, in the same way FDR’s New Deal established majority power for 50 years of Democrat rule.....

How stupid can you be to utter this and not understand the implications of what you are saying?

Yes, Rush, if the GOP doesn't wise up it could be another 50 years before they recover ... if ever. Or maybe they'll be the Whigs and get replaced by an genuine conservative party instead of the right-wing knucklehead semi-fascist anti-science racist kooks completely in the pocket of corporate interests that passes for a Conservative party now.

Gut feeling -- it won't be enough

I think the stimulus package, regardless of what exact form it takes, is not a bad thing. It's at the least, politically necessary that the government appear to be doing something.

But at the end of the day I don't think it will prove to be enough.

I don't have any deep economic data to back this up. I don't have a crystal ball or a degree in economics, although I don't think there's any evidence either one would be useful in making a forecast.

No, I base my opinion on the simple observation that at every single stage of this unfolding crisis the "experts" have severely underestimated the nature, scope and duration of the problem.

Looking at Congress members, particularly the GOP, yammering about tax cuts and spending (which they suddenly hate), shows that they really don't get it.

The speed and scale of the crisis has stunned the general public, so the coming reaction has been delayed, but it will come. Dick Cheney, of all people, warned the Republicans about a "Hoover moment." They aren't listening.

The class warfare that the wealthy have waged for the last couple of decades (note the disconnect between earning power and productivity) is very dangerous. Historical precedent suggest that it could end rather badly for the let-them-eat-cake crowd. While U.S. political structures are probably robust enough to prevent the worst kinds of reaction, that's not true elsewhere and I'd be especially watchful about how things play out in more volatile places such as China, India, Brazil, Russia and, closer to home, Mexico.

GOP lifts off from any connection with reality or principles

There are a few things evident from the last few weeks:

Republicans are opposed to deficit spending By Democrats -- but not Republicans.

Republicans are happy to setting strict rules on how much taxpayer money you can receive if you are on welfare or a union auto worker -- but not if you're a Wall Street CEO.

Republicans are happy to cut taxes -- so long as most of the tax cut benefits the wealthy.

Republicans are against class warfare so long as it's waged against the rich -- but it's OK against the middle class, working class and poor.

Republicans are all for bipartisan compromise -- so long as they get what they want but don't have to actually vote for it.

Democrats are invertebrates.

Remember, the GOP is the party of fiscal discipline

Heckuva Job, Bushie

Gallup's poll of 350,000 people to determine self-identification by party.

Reagan wouldn't recognize this GOP

Mickey Edwards, former Republican congressman explains why the Republicans are so lost:

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-edwards24-2009jan24,0,3344794.story

Key point:

The Republican Party that is in such disrepute today is not the party of Reagan. It is the party of Rush Limbaugh, of Ann Coulter, of Newt Gingrich, of George W. Bush, of Karl Rove. It is not a conservative party, it is a party built on the blind and narrow pursuit of power.Not too long ago, conservatives were thought of as the locus of creative thought. Conservative think tanks (full disclosure: I was one of the three founding trustees of the Heritage Foundation) were thought of as cutting-edge, offering conservative solutions to national problems. By the 2008 elections, the very idea of ideas had been rejected. One who listened to Barry Goldwater's speeches in the mid-'60s, or to Reagan's in the '80s, might have been struck by their philosophical tone, their proposed (even if hotly contested) reformulation of the proper relationship between state and citizen. Last year's presidential campaign, on the other hand, saw the emergence of a Republican Party that was anti-intellectual, nativist, populist (in populism's worst sense) and prepared to send Joe the Plumber to Washington to manage the nation's public affairs

Party of Putz

Now just to be clear, the modern Republican Party has disgraced itself by embracing torture, aggressive war and executive branch lawlessness. It's abandoned fiscal restraint (unless the program is proposed by Democrats), limited government (Terry S.) and science. It's signature issues are hostility to gays, people of color, immigrants, regulations and, especially, taxes of any sort. In short they are a mess.

On the other hand, should they straighten themselves out they will have a clear path to power because the opposition party is afflicted with terminal putzness. The latest example is the sorry saga of Blagojevich and Burris. It simply proves that it's not only Republicans that can outmaneuver Democrats. It simply requires that someone be smart and a little ruthless. That can be a force for good (Obama) or bad (Blago) but the bottom line is that the Democrats, being unable to stand up for any real principles, are hopelessly unable to stand their ground against determined opposition.

In some ways this is a hopeful thing, as I think people who expect Obama to have a lot of trouble with his own side of the aisle are mistaken and are, once again, underestimating him. I think he'll get his way on a surprising amount of his agenda in the end.

But this may not lead to the lasting Democratic party successes that it should because I think Obama is a singular fellow and I doubt he'll be bale to institutionalize the changes in the Democratic Party needed to overcome putzness.

Reid and company made a grave error by laying down a marker on Blagojevich's pick for a senator. Having very thin legal grounds for blocking any pick, they made a vow they couldn't keep. Having no real legitimate grounds for excluding Burris they simply invited Blago to humiliate them by picking someone like Burris that they couldn't really say "no" to. The right response would have been to simply promise to evaluate any pick and make it clear that anyone tainted by a credible report of corruption would face scrutiny. Instead, like the putzheads they are, they rashly demanded that Blago appoint no one and vowed not to seat anyone he appointed.

Unless the Democrats actually produce some real legislative leadership (Reid and Pelosi not being it) I predict the Republicans will come roaring back before the end of Obama's second term.