Today I am thinking about Army Cpl. Andrew Wilfahrt who died on Feb. 27, 2011, in Kandahar, Afghanistan, when an improvised explosive device blew his 31-year-old body apart. Andrew was gay and DADT hadn't quite been repealed when he slipping the surly bonds of earth on that day. But it was soon after.
Andrew was from Minnesota and the election last Tuesday also saw a defeat the marriage amendment. I can't think of a better way to honor his memory than to have hundreds of thousands of Minnesotans stand up and say no to something that would have limited individual rights.
Rights that he died defending.
Though you have made me see troubles, many and bitter, you will restore my life again; from the depths of the earth you will again bring me up. You will increase my honor and comfort me once again. (Psalm 71:20-21)
Sunday, November 11, 2012
Saturday, November 10, 2012
Still Missing the Point
Tuesday's election results have conservative Christians wondering what went wrong, with Romney losing and so many states embracing gay marriage:
“Millions of American evangelicals are absolutely shocked by not just the presidential election, but by the entire avalanche of results that came in,” R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, in Louisville, Ky., said in an interview. “It’s not that our message — we think abortion is wrong, we think same-sex marriage is wrong — didn’t get out. It did get out.These guys are still missing the point. The problem is not that everyone who voted against them rejects their moral positions. We just believe it's wrong for religious groups to use the power of state and federal government to force their moral beliefs on the whole of society. That "we" includes atheists, agnostics, Catholics, Protestants, Muslims, Democrats and even libertarian Republicans.
“It’s that the entire moral landscape has changed,” he said. “An increasingly secularized America understands our positions, and has rejected them.”
Personally, I think it's best for kids to have a father and a mother who are married. Alcohol and marijuana are a stupid waste of money, time and brain cells. Anal sex can spread venereal disease, hepatitis and E. coli infections. Oral sex is unsanitary and disgusting. Cheating on your spouse is wrong. I would never encourage my wife or sister to have an abortion. But these things, done properly, are not automatically detrimental to society or the people who do them
Though the folks bemoaning their losses on Tuesday refuse to acknowledge it, their campaign to legislate their beliefs on abortion, gay marriage, contraception and other sexual practices is no different than the Taliban enforcing strict Sharia law in Afghanistan.
Once we go back down the road of legislating religious morality, eventually that power will be used to undermine other religions, even those that currently consider themselves to be allies in the fight against gay marriage. After all, just 50 years ago many believed John Kennedy's Catholicism disqualified him to be president.
People came to this country to escape the endless bloodshed that swept Europe in the pogroms of Christians against Jews, Catholic inquisitions against heretics, and wars between Protestants and Catholics.
And it's why the First Amendment was added first.
They Have Been Failing You
One of the main "story behind the story" bits of this election was how the conservative media completely failed. Dick Morris predicting a landslide? Karl Rove whining to the other Fox anchors about how we shouldn't rush to judgment on Ohio, even though their guys in the backroom just called it? It was really a sad thing to watch.
Conor Fridersdorf pretty much nailed it.
Before rank-and-file conservatives ask, "What went wrong?", they should ask themselves a question every bit as important: "Why were we the last to realize that things were going wrong for us?"
Because they live in a bubble.
It is easy to close oneself off inside a conservative echo chamber. And right-leaning outlets like Fox News and Rush Limbaugh's show are far more intellectually closed than CNN or public radio. If you're a rank-and-file conservative, you're probably ready to acknowledge that ideologically friendly media didn't accurately inform you about Election 2012. Some pundits engaged in wishful thinking; others feigned confidence in hopes that it would be a self-fulfilling prophecy; still others decided it was smart to keep telling right-leaning audiences what they wanted to hear.
But guess what? You haven't just been misinformed about the horse race. Since the very beginning of the election cycle, conservative media has been failing you. With a few exceptions, they haven't tried to rigorously tell you the truth, or even to bring you intellectually honest opinion. What they've done instead helps to explain why the right failed to triumph in a very winnable election.
So why do you keep putting up with them?
My only hope now is that readers of Kevin Baker's site (and other right wing blogs) will realize that all the talk of impending Armageddon is failing them as well.
Conor Fridersdorf pretty much nailed it.
Before rank-and-file conservatives ask, "What went wrong?", they should ask themselves a question every bit as important: "Why were we the last to realize that things were going wrong for us?"
Because they live in a bubble.
It is easy to close oneself off inside a conservative echo chamber. And right-leaning outlets like Fox News and Rush Limbaugh's show are far more intellectually closed than CNN or public radio. If you're a rank-and-file conservative, you're probably ready to acknowledge that ideologically friendly media didn't accurately inform you about Election 2012. Some pundits engaged in wishful thinking; others feigned confidence in hopes that it would be a self-fulfilling prophecy; still others decided it was smart to keep telling right-leaning audiences what they wanted to hear.
But guess what? You haven't just been misinformed about the horse race. Since the very beginning of the election cycle, conservative media has been failing you. With a few exceptions, they haven't tried to rigorously tell you the truth, or even to bring you intellectually honest opinion. What they've done instead helps to explain why the right failed to triumph in a very winnable election.
So why do you keep putting up with them?
My only hope now is that readers of Kevin Baker's site (and other right wing blogs) will realize that all the talk of impending Armageddon is failing them as well.
Friday, November 09, 2012
Amnesty Amnesia
The day after the election I opined that demographic shifts would require the Republicans to change their policies in order to remain politically viable. The shift took exactly one day, and on Thursday Republican pundits began to concur with my analysis in droves. Sean Hannity endorsed immigration amnesty. Charles Krauthammer, in a piece in the Washington Post, wrote:
For decades Republicans have depended on the Southern Strategy for victory. That strategy, often credited to Richard Nixon, involves stoking racial prejudice among certain southern whites. Prior to the 1960s the south was reliably Democratic (because Republicans were the party of Lincoln), but by using racist code words and "dog whistles" like "states rights" Nixon was able to end the Democratic Party's hold on the Solid South. Reagan did the same in the 1980s, when he talked about "welfare queens." Romney was still doing it when he said "Obama gutted welfare reform."
But over time, with increasingly positive images of blacks in popular culture (Denzel Washington, Morgan Freeman, Halle Berry, Will Smith, Ice Tea), and the total devotion to hip hop by white teens, African Americans were becoming more mainstream and non-threatening. Conservative blacks like Clarence Thomas, Herman Cain and Alan West further eroded the efficacy of the Southern Strategy.
So, in the 2000s Republicans morphed the Southern Strategy into anti-immigrant and anti-Latino sentiments. These foreign invaders who can't even speak English are stealing our jobs! Never mind that we would never consider doing those jobs ourselves because they are too dangerous, or back-breaking, or degrading and don't pay enough.
In states like Arizona, Georgia, and Mississippi, Republican state legislatures have enacted (or tried to enact) tough new immigration laws, intruding into questionable legal territory. The Republican Party embraced these attitudes nationally, leaving only a few outliers like Rick Perry. Mitt Romney, whose own Mormon church has a long history of racism, tore into Perry for breaking the party line on immigration.
Now, the people persuaded by the Southern Strategy are not some abstract them situated south of the Mason-Dixon line. They include my dad, who lives in Minnesota. When my sister M got engaged to a Hispanic American my dad disowned her. When my sister S went to M's wedding in Texas, he refused to speak to S for years. When my sister J's daughter, N, got pregnant by a Latino boyfriend, my father had a two-fer: he disowned them both.
I am therefore one of the millions of people who are directly affected by this stupid, senseless and divisive racism that the Republican Party has been perpetuating and exploiting to their political advantage for decades.
And the word that most disgusts my father, the word that caused him to despise John McCain as much as he loathed Ted Kennedy? Amnesty.
How are people like my dad going to react to a Republican Party that embraces amnesty for illegal immigrants, in what is undeniably an openly cynical political ploy just to gain more votes? Republicans like Mitt Romney and the Heritage Foundation invented the health care insurance mandate, but as soon as Obama accepted the compromise that included it, they decreed the mandate to be the end of freedom and democracy.
Will people like my father develop instant amnesty amnesia on command from the Republican Party, like they forgot that they supported the health care mandate? Or are their attitudes on race so deeply ingrained that they will stay home on election day? I'm sure Krauthammer thinks that since they have nowhere else to go, they'll just blindly continue voting Republican.
But is Krauthammer right in blithely assuming that my dad is a Republican patsy who will sit down, shut up and do what he's told? Or will people like my dad join third parties and vote for candidates like George Wallace, as my dad did in 1968?
In other words, is the Republican coalition of big business, stubborn tribal whites, NRA gun enthusiasts and anti-abortion and anti-gay crusaders about to come apart?
[Hispanics] should be a natural Republican constituency: striving immigrant community, religious, Catholic, family-oriented and socially conservative (on abortion, for example).This sounds reasonable enough. But it's going to be hard for the Republican Party to do a full 180 on amnesty, because it's more than just changing a bullet point in a party platform.
The principal reason they go Democratic is the issue of illegal immigrants. In securing the Republican nomination, Mitt Romney made the strategic error of (unnecessarily) going to the right of Rick Perry. Romney could never successfully tack back.
For the party in general, however, the problem is hardly structural. It requires but a single policy change: Border fence plus amnesty. Yes, amnesty. Use the word. Shock and awe — full legal normalization (just short of citizenship) in return for full border enforcement.
For decades Republicans have depended on the Southern Strategy for victory. That strategy, often credited to Richard Nixon, involves stoking racial prejudice among certain southern whites. Prior to the 1960s the south was reliably Democratic (because Republicans were the party of Lincoln), but by using racist code words and "dog whistles" like "states rights" Nixon was able to end the Democratic Party's hold on the Solid South. Reagan did the same in the 1980s, when he talked about "welfare queens." Romney was still doing it when he said "Obama gutted welfare reform."
But over time, with increasingly positive images of blacks in popular culture (Denzel Washington, Morgan Freeman, Halle Berry, Will Smith, Ice Tea), and the total devotion to hip hop by white teens, African Americans were becoming more mainstream and non-threatening. Conservative blacks like Clarence Thomas, Herman Cain and Alan West further eroded the efficacy of the Southern Strategy.
So, in the 2000s Republicans morphed the Southern Strategy into anti-immigrant and anti-Latino sentiments. These foreign invaders who can't even speak English are stealing our jobs! Never mind that we would never consider doing those jobs ourselves because they are too dangerous, or back-breaking, or degrading and don't pay enough.
In states like Arizona, Georgia, and Mississippi, Republican state legislatures have enacted (or tried to enact) tough new immigration laws, intruding into questionable legal territory. The Republican Party embraced these attitudes nationally, leaving only a few outliers like Rick Perry. Mitt Romney, whose own Mormon church has a long history of racism, tore into Perry for breaking the party line on immigration.
Now, the people persuaded by the Southern Strategy are not some abstract them situated south of the Mason-Dixon line. They include my dad, who lives in Minnesota. When my sister M got engaged to a Hispanic American my dad disowned her. When my sister S went to M's wedding in Texas, he refused to speak to S for years. When my sister J's daughter, N, got pregnant by a Latino boyfriend, my father had a two-fer: he disowned them both.
I am therefore one of the millions of people who are directly affected by this stupid, senseless and divisive racism that the Republican Party has been perpetuating and exploiting to their political advantage for decades.
And the word that most disgusts my father, the word that caused him to despise John McCain as much as he loathed Ted Kennedy? Amnesty.
How are people like my dad going to react to a Republican Party that embraces amnesty for illegal immigrants, in what is undeniably an openly cynical political ploy just to gain more votes? Republicans like Mitt Romney and the Heritage Foundation invented the health care insurance mandate, but as soon as Obama accepted the compromise that included it, they decreed the mandate to be the end of freedom and democracy.
Will people like my father develop instant amnesty amnesia on command from the Republican Party, like they forgot that they supported the health care mandate? Or are their attitudes on race so deeply ingrained that they will stay home on election day? I'm sure Krauthammer thinks that since they have nowhere else to go, they'll just blindly continue voting Republican.
But is Krauthammer right in blithely assuming that my dad is a Republican patsy who will sit down, shut up and do what he's told? Or will people like my dad join third parties and vote for candidates like George Wallace, as my dad did in 1968?
In other words, is the Republican coalition of big business, stubborn tribal whites, NRA gun enthusiasts and anti-abortion and anti-gay crusaders about to come apart?
Thursday, November 08, 2012
A Gerrymandered Mandate
Republicans love to talk up their "mandate" when Republicans win, and deny that Democrats have one when Democrats win.
So it is this year. Republicans say President Obama's victory is no mandate because he only won 50.4% to 48% of the popular vote. In the electoral college the difference is much more marked. If Florida is decided for Obama he'll win 332-206 (or 303-235 if Florida goes to Romney).
When George Bush "won" in 2000 he actually lost the popular vote 47.9% to Gore's 48.4%. Electorally he barely squeaked by, winning 271-266, and doing that only because the Supreme Court stepped in with a 5-4 decision to prevent Florida from conducting a recount. Yet Republicans claimed a huge mandate for their programs of military spending increases and tax cuts for the wealthy.
When George Bush won in 2004 he took the popular vote by 50.7% to Kerry's 48.3%, with a 286-251 electoral advantage, a lead that hinged on Ohio which had very serious irregularities in the computer voting system built by Diebold, a company with ties to the Republican Party. Republicans again claimed a huge mandate for Bush.
When Barack Obama won in 2008 he won the popular vote by 52.9% to McCain's 45.7%, with a 365-173 electoral shellacking. Yet Republicans claimed that Obama had no mandate whatsoever, that he was wrong to pursue the stimulus programs and the health care and financial reforms he promised during the election and that he was too "partisan."
Republicans say Obama's 2012 victory is not a mandate because it's the worst performance a sitting president ever had, because he "only" beat Romney 50.4% to 48%, or a margin of 2.4%. This is a lie of course: Bush beat Kerry by the identical 2.4% margin in 2004. And they somehow forget that George H. W. Bush lost his reelection bid in 1992 to Bill Clinton.
Now some Republicans are saying voters gave them a mandate for lower taxes by returning Republicans to the House. This is completely false.
Republicans kept the House because congressional districts across the country are gerrymandered so that incumbents retain their seats. The gerrymandering lock was strengthened in this cycle because Republicans held so many state legislatures after the 2010 census when the entire country was redistricted. That situation has already been reversed in Minnesota, which gave Democrats commanding majorities in both houses of the legislature on Tuesday. But redistricting allowed Michele Bachmann to keep her seat this year; she won by a mere 4,207 votes while outspending her Democratic challenger 12 to 1. Most of the $23 million she spent on the campaign was raised from contributors outside Minnesota.
Because of the way congressional districts are gerrymandered, a status quo House result doesn't tell us what "the people" really want. You have to look at the results a little more closely. The fact is, six Tea Party House freshmen in swing districts lost their bids for reelection. Tea Party rape fantasizers Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock lost their Senate bids in Indiana and Missouri, which should have been gimmes for Republicans. Barack Obama won the presidency. And Democrats held on to the Senate, even though 21 of the 33 Democratic seats were up for election.
The election definitely tilted in favor of the Democrats, but the only mandate they have from "the people" is that they do their jobs, come to a reasonable accommodation with the Republicans and get the economy moving again. The mandate for the Republicans is the same, with additional provisos that they stop sabotaging all legislation and appointments, and abandon their tactic of running out the political clock in the vain hope of some Rovian electoral magic in 2016.
Perhaps it will be easier for Republicans now that their number one priority is no longer making sure Barack Obama is a one-term president.
So it is this year. Republicans say President Obama's victory is no mandate because he only won 50.4% to 48% of the popular vote. In the electoral college the difference is much more marked. If Florida is decided for Obama he'll win 332-206 (or 303-235 if Florida goes to Romney).
When George Bush "won" in 2000 he actually lost the popular vote 47.9% to Gore's 48.4%. Electorally he barely squeaked by, winning 271-266, and doing that only because the Supreme Court stepped in with a 5-4 decision to prevent Florida from conducting a recount. Yet Republicans claimed a huge mandate for their programs of military spending increases and tax cuts for the wealthy.
When George Bush won in 2004 he took the popular vote by 50.7% to Kerry's 48.3%, with a 286-251 electoral advantage, a lead that hinged on Ohio which had very serious irregularities in the computer voting system built by Diebold, a company with ties to the Republican Party. Republicans again claimed a huge mandate for Bush.
When Barack Obama won in 2008 he won the popular vote by 52.9% to McCain's 45.7%, with a 365-173 electoral shellacking. Yet Republicans claimed that Obama had no mandate whatsoever, that he was wrong to pursue the stimulus programs and the health care and financial reforms he promised during the election and that he was too "partisan."
Republicans say Obama's 2012 victory is not a mandate because it's the worst performance a sitting president ever had, because he "only" beat Romney 50.4% to 48%, or a margin of 2.4%. This is a lie of course: Bush beat Kerry by the identical 2.4% margin in 2004. And they somehow forget that George H. W. Bush lost his reelection bid in 1992 to Bill Clinton.
Now some Republicans are saying voters gave them a mandate for lower taxes by returning Republicans to the House. This is completely false.
Republicans kept the House because congressional districts across the country are gerrymandered so that incumbents retain their seats. The gerrymandering lock was strengthened in this cycle because Republicans held so many state legislatures after the 2010 census when the entire country was redistricted. That situation has already been reversed in Minnesota, which gave Democrats commanding majorities in both houses of the legislature on Tuesday. But redistricting allowed Michele Bachmann to keep her seat this year; she won by a mere 4,207 votes while outspending her Democratic challenger 12 to 1. Most of the $23 million she spent on the campaign was raised from contributors outside Minnesota.
Because of the way congressional districts are gerrymandered, a status quo House result doesn't tell us what "the people" really want. You have to look at the results a little more closely. The fact is, six Tea Party House freshmen in swing districts lost their bids for reelection. Tea Party rape fantasizers Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock lost their Senate bids in Indiana and Missouri, which should have been gimmes for Republicans. Barack Obama won the presidency. And Democrats held on to the Senate, even though 21 of the 33 Democratic seats were up for election.
The election definitely tilted in favor of the Democrats, but the only mandate they have from "the people" is that they do their jobs, come to a reasonable accommodation with the Republicans and get the economy moving again. The mandate for the Republicans is the same, with additional provisos that they stop sabotaging all legislation and appointments, and abandon their tactic of running out the political clock in the vain hope of some Rovian electoral magic in 2016.
Perhaps it will be easier for Republicans now that their number one priority is no longer making sure Barack Obama is a one-term president.
What Needs To Done?
If there is one thing that has left a very bad taste in my mouth about the election this year, it's the low voter turnout. As of this post, we are over 10 million short of the last election. I realize that 2008 was an historic election but I feel an enormous amount of dismay at the fact that out of the 210 million or so people that are eligible to vote, only 120 million voted (130 in the last election).
Folks, this sucks. What needs to be done to get those extra 90 million people in the voting booth?
Folks, this sucks. What needs to be done to get those extra 90 million people in the voting booth?
Wednesday, November 07, 2012
Was Hurricane Sandy God's Vote for Obama?
Republicans love to invoke God's will at the slightest hint of meteorological catastrophe. For people like Pat Robertson, every flood, drought, hurricane and tornado is evidence of God's displeasure with a gay pride parade or an abortion clinic.
Karl Rove said that Hurricane Sandy was Obama's October Surprise, and Dick Morris blamed the hurricane and Chris Christie for Obama's victory.
But would God really hammer millions of people on the east coast, in mostly Democratic states, merely to drive home the point that the country would be better off with a Democrat running FEMA? Or was God punishing those Democrats with a hurricane, hoping that the infrastructure in the cities would be destroyed and urban dwellers wouldn't be able to cast their votes, allowing rural and suburban Republicans in those states to stage an electoral coup and win one for the Mitter?
If so, God would be guilty of the largest election tampering scheme in history, dwarfing the fevered Republican dreams of ACORN operatives running around impersonating dead people at the polls. Since natural disasters hurt everyone equally, perhaps the right will stop pretending that God actually has anything to do with them. After all, if God has been siccing earthquakes and hurricanes on us lo these many millennia, he's the largest mass murderer in the history of the world.
Now, I'd be the first to agree that Chris Christie threw Mitt Romney under the bus when Hurricane Sandy hit. Christie was never enthusiastic about Romney, whom he barely mentioned when he addressed the Republican national convention in August. But the truth is, no Republican wanted Romney: he was everyone's third or fourth choice, even among other money men like Sheldon Adelson. Most Republicans would have preferred someone like Rick Santorum or Newt Gingrich or Herman Cain, but they knew the rest of the electorate considers those guys to be incompetent or nuts. So they settled on the guy who likes like a generic Central Casting president.
Besides, what's good for Chris Christie is not what's good for Mitt Romney. First and foremost, Christie needs to make sure his state recovers from the hurricane. Second, Christie is governor of a mostly Democratic state, and he needs to work with Democrats (something Romney might appreciate). Third, Christie may have presidential aspirations, and a Romney presidency would effectively close him out of the running in 2016.
But despite any cynical speculation about Christie's motives for embracing Obama after the hurricane, putting our differences aside and working together to make this country better is the right thing to do. Partisans like Rove and Morris complain bitterly about Christie, but that's what the people of this country want to see. Even John Boehner is also making some encouraging statements, in his own gruff way.
If guys like Chris Christie can lead the Republican Party out of the wilderness and back into the light, more power to him.
Karl Rove said that Hurricane Sandy was Obama's October Surprise, and Dick Morris blamed the hurricane and Chris Christie for Obama's victory.
But would God really hammer millions of people on the east coast, in mostly Democratic states, merely to drive home the point that the country would be better off with a Democrat running FEMA? Or was God punishing those Democrats with a hurricane, hoping that the infrastructure in the cities would be destroyed and urban dwellers wouldn't be able to cast their votes, allowing rural and suburban Republicans in those states to stage an electoral coup and win one for the Mitter?
If so, God would be guilty of the largest election tampering scheme in history, dwarfing the fevered Republican dreams of ACORN operatives running around impersonating dead people at the polls. Since natural disasters hurt everyone equally, perhaps the right will stop pretending that God actually has anything to do with them. After all, if God has been siccing earthquakes and hurricanes on us lo these many millennia, he's the largest mass murderer in the history of the world.
Now, I'd be the first to agree that Chris Christie threw Mitt Romney under the bus when Hurricane Sandy hit. Christie was never enthusiastic about Romney, whom he barely mentioned when he addressed the Republican national convention in August. But the truth is, no Republican wanted Romney: he was everyone's third or fourth choice, even among other money men like Sheldon Adelson. Most Republicans would have preferred someone like Rick Santorum or Newt Gingrich or Herman Cain, but they knew the rest of the electorate considers those guys to be incompetent or nuts. So they settled on the guy who likes like a generic Central Casting president.
Besides, what's good for Chris Christie is not what's good for Mitt Romney. First and foremost, Christie needs to make sure his state recovers from the hurricane. Second, Christie is governor of a mostly Democratic state, and he needs to work with Democrats (something Romney might appreciate). Third, Christie may have presidential aspirations, and a Romney presidency would effectively close him out of the running in 2016.
But despite any cynical speculation about Christie's motives for embracing Obama after the hurricane, putting our differences aside and working together to make this country better is the right thing to do. Partisans like Rove and Morris complain bitterly about Christie, but that's what the people of this country want to see. Even John Boehner is also making some encouraging statements, in his own gruff way.
If guys like Chris Christie can lead the Republican Party out of the wilderness and back into the light, more power to him.
The Times, They Are a-Changin'
For years it's been obvious that long-term demographics predict the demise of the Republican Party as currently constituted. The question has been when that would kick in. Now we have the answer: 2012.
President Obama won reelection largely on the strength of support from women, minority and younger voters. Those voters turned out for him in droves in 2008, and the question was whether that could be sustained.
Many commentators talk about how Obama "lost" the white vote, implying that there was some kind of racial bias of whites against the president. I'm not so sure. The president won in "white" states like Minnesota and Wisconsin (Paul Ryan didn't even pull in his own state). Yes, some whites who voted for the president in 2008 didn't vote for him this time around. That would have happened to any president faced with an obstinate Congress and the lackluster recovery, regardless of race.
But racial (and sexual) politics does have a lot to do with why Romney, Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock lost. The Republican Party banked on conservative religious folks to win the election for them. But the social tide is turning: gay marriage was approved in three states, and Minnesota voted down a constitutional amendment to ban it.
In Minnesota Republicans controlling both houses of the legislature did an end-around the governor to put an anti-gay marriage amendment on the ballot, hoping that it would fire up turnout among Catholics and religious conservatives. That tactic backfired. Instead, young people came out in droves to vote against it and a voter suppression bill that would have disenfranchised both younger and elderly voters. And at the same time they elected significant Democratic majorities in both houses.
Now, I'll be the first to say that this demographic shift does not mean the Democratic Party has a permanent lock on the electorate. The Republican Party can stage a comeback if they drop racially motivated policies on immigration, stop opposing gay marriage and military service, and stop incessantly attacking the reproductive rights of women.
It's doubtful they'll do all these at once. Because they're so dependent on the the religious right for turnout they'll most likely stop opposing immigration reform first, hoping that they'll be able to peel off conservative Hispanic Catholics. This will alienate many of the racially motivated Southern whites, but since they have nowhere else to go it's a safe bet. Immigration reform will also please business-oriented Republicans who've been clamoring for more cheap foreign labor to help bust the unions.
It's hard to see how the Republicans can back down on abortion and gay marriage at this point; they've been dependent on conservative Catholics for the last several elections. But since Catholics generally are more sympathetic to Democratic policies of justice and social welfare, any Republican retreat on those issues will cede the field completely.
But continued opposition to gay rights will inevitably cost them the support of libertarians and younger generations. For that reason, Republicans will ultimately have to drop opposition to gay marriage and military service.
In the end the money men like Mitt Romney, Sheldon Adelson and the Koch brothers will decide the direction the Republican Party will take. Romney has shown he will take any position on social issues he needs to win. Adelson and the Kochs want results, and if that means jettisoning the conservative social agenda they'll do it.
Cynicism aside, I would love for the Republican Party to make these changes. I used to be a Republican myself. I want to again be able to vote for candidates based on their individual qualifications, rather than voting against them because of their lockstep devotion to their party's narrow self-serving agenda.
President Obama won reelection largely on the strength of support from women, minority and younger voters. Those voters turned out for him in droves in 2008, and the question was whether that could be sustained.
Many commentators talk about how Obama "lost" the white vote, implying that there was some kind of racial bias of whites against the president. I'm not so sure. The president won in "white" states like Minnesota and Wisconsin (Paul Ryan didn't even pull in his own state). Yes, some whites who voted for the president in 2008 didn't vote for him this time around. That would have happened to any president faced with an obstinate Congress and the lackluster recovery, regardless of race.
But racial (and sexual) politics does have a lot to do with why Romney, Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock lost. The Republican Party banked on conservative religious folks to win the election for them. But the social tide is turning: gay marriage was approved in three states, and Minnesota voted down a constitutional amendment to ban it.
In Minnesota Republicans controlling both houses of the legislature did an end-around the governor to put an anti-gay marriage amendment on the ballot, hoping that it would fire up turnout among Catholics and religious conservatives. That tactic backfired. Instead, young people came out in droves to vote against it and a voter suppression bill that would have disenfranchised both younger and elderly voters. And at the same time they elected significant Democratic majorities in both houses.
Now, I'll be the first to say that this demographic shift does not mean the Democratic Party has a permanent lock on the electorate. The Republican Party can stage a comeback if they drop racially motivated policies on immigration, stop opposing gay marriage and military service, and stop incessantly attacking the reproductive rights of women.
It's doubtful they'll do all these at once. Because they're so dependent on the the religious right for turnout they'll most likely stop opposing immigration reform first, hoping that they'll be able to peel off conservative Hispanic Catholics. This will alienate many of the racially motivated Southern whites, but since they have nowhere else to go it's a safe bet. Immigration reform will also please business-oriented Republicans who've been clamoring for more cheap foreign labor to help bust the unions.
It's hard to see how the Republicans can back down on abortion and gay marriage at this point; they've been dependent on conservative Catholics for the last several elections. But since Catholics generally are more sympathetic to Democratic policies of justice and social welfare, any Republican retreat on those issues will cede the field completely.
But continued opposition to gay rights will inevitably cost them the support of libertarians and younger generations. For that reason, Republicans will ultimately have to drop opposition to gay marriage and military service.
In the end the money men like Mitt Romney, Sheldon Adelson and the Koch brothers will decide the direction the Republican Party will take. Romney has shown he will take any position on social issues he needs to win. Adelson and the Kochs want results, and if that means jettisoning the conservative social agenda they'll do it.
Cynicism aside, I would love for the Republican Party to make these changes. I used to be a Republican myself. I want to again be able to vote for candidates based on their individual qualifications, rather than voting against them because of their lockstep devotion to their party's narrow self-serving agenda.
Six Billion Dollars Down the Drain
It looks like we spent at least $6 billion on this election, and nothing really changed. We've got the same president, the same House and the same Senate. And that $6 billion doesn't even count an unknowable amount of "dark money" spent to influence the election, but estimates are in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
Much of that money was spent on countless misleading TV ads. Shouldn't we be spending our money on something more constructive, instead of giving it to the lamestream media to harangue us with stuff no one wants to see?
The Supreme Court's Citizen's United decision may be catastrophically wrong, but because of that there's little to be done to directly limit the amount of money being spent. What we can do is require more openness in the process: all ad buys should be reported on the web within 24 hours and dark money "social welfare" groups should be required to disclose all large donors on the web.
ProPublica has been working on a series of stories about dark money organizations. The weirdest part of the story is that they found a bunch of financial documents for one of these "social welfare" organizations in a meth house in Colorado. The documents seem to show coordination between Montana political campaigns and Western Tradition Partners (WTP), a dark money organization. Such coordination is illegal even under Citizen's United.
Without full disclosure of donors to such organizations it has become obvious that we cannot meet the Citizen's United's low standard. WTP's shenanigans show how easily the current system could be corrupted, or at least present the appearance of corruption.
If we know who's behind these ads then we can make a better decision about the reliability of the message, and hold them responsible for their actions.
Much of that money was spent on countless misleading TV ads. Shouldn't we be spending our money on something more constructive, instead of giving it to the lamestream media to harangue us with stuff no one wants to see?
The Supreme Court's Citizen's United decision may be catastrophically wrong, but because of that there's little to be done to directly limit the amount of money being spent. What we can do is require more openness in the process: all ad buys should be reported on the web within 24 hours and dark money "social welfare" groups should be required to disclose all large donors on the web.
ProPublica has been working on a series of stories about dark money organizations. The weirdest part of the story is that they found a bunch of financial documents for one of these "social welfare" organizations in a meth house in Colorado. The documents seem to show coordination between Montana political campaigns and Western Tradition Partners (WTP), a dark money organization. Such coordination is illegal even under Citizen's United.
Without full disclosure of donors to such organizations it has become obvious that we cannot meet the Citizen's United's low standard. WTP's shenanigans show how easily the current system could be corrupted, or at least present the appearance of corruption.
If we know who's behind these ads then we can make a better decision about the reliability of the message, and hold them responsible for their actions.
The Day After
What a night.
To be honest, I was so overwhelmed by everything last evening that I just couldn't post anything. So, today, here are my thoughts.
The president's reelection is significant for several reasons. First, it essentially made Citizen's United irrelevant which is a good thing. Old, rich, white douches spent millions to get rid of him and it didn't work...which brings me to my second thing. Folks, the country has changed and the GOP better get with the program. They can start by chucking the American Taliban element of their party (which has now cost them the Senate...again!) and focus on the rising demographic of Latinos. The hard line on immigration won't cut it anymore and they are going to have to change. The Andy Griffith Show America (which never existed in the first place) is gone.
In fact, the hard line on many things are going to have to change...gay marriage (past in three states yesterday and a ban defeated in my home state), women's reproductive rights (no more old white men with two dollar haircuts talking about rape) and an acceptance that people do want some form of federal government. The most important thing of all they are going to have to realize is this country is diverse and, if they are going to survive as a party, they need to embrace this.
Mitt Romney lost because he was an Etch-A-Sketch candidate. He took these hard line positions, realized he would get walloped in the general if he didn't moderate and then proceeded to be on three sides of every policy point. I am very thankful we did not elect this man. He may have had principles at one time but not any longer. As Erick Erickson said, he would do or say anything to get elected.
Younger voters...the ones that supposedly weren't going to turn out...did so in greater numbers than in 2008 (by one percentage point). This brings up my message today to some of my posters and other friends: GET OUT OF THE FUCKING BUBBLE. Stop reading the Drudge report, watching Fox news, and frequenting right wing blogs. The things they say are happening simply don't exist in reality. No problem if you want to continue to play make believe but I would hope that this election has starkly illustrated that these folks are lying and the American people now know it.
This new certainty was a long haul. Most liberals and Democrats feel a profound sense of doubt and insecurity (preyed upon by the Right) after 2000 and 2004. Now that we will four Democratic won elections to the GOP's 2 in the last 20 years to the executive branch, that doubt BS is fucking over. The Democrats have built a powerful coalition that can continually get over 300 EVs with a good candidate. The GOP hasn't done that since 1988. Perhaps they need to finally realized that they can't be the party of old, white men any longer.
I was happy to see pot made legal in three states...fire up the bong!
Gay marriage was also made legal in three states (Maine, Maryland, and Washington). It's only a matter of time for the rest of the nation.
Looks like my predictions for the Senate were accurate. They haven't called it for Tester and Heitkamp yet but they are both ahead. 55-45, with the two I's caucusing with the Dems.
As I suspected in the House, the Dems will pick up a couple of seats but still stay under 200.
Elizabeth Warren takes back the Kennedy seat....hands down, one of the best moments of the night.
In my home state, Michele won again, just like I said she would. Oh well. It will be nice to have her around to say moonbat shit and win more elections for the Democrats. Both the gay marriage ban and the voter ID amendment were defeated. Better, the Democrats took back the State House and Senate and we have an all blue state for at least two years. This is another great example of how the Right fucks everything up in going to far over to their side of the field.
It looks like Tea Party favorites Joe Walsh and Allen West will be sent packing (the latter's race hasn't been called but Murphy is ahead). That, along with the loss of both of the Rape Boys (Todd Akin and Richard Murdock) begs the question: is the Tea Party dead? I think this election says that it is. They might still be able to win some House seats here and there but not the Senate nor the presidency. That's what happens when you are obsessed with ideological purity, see compromise as weakness, have a fundamental belief in scriptural literalism, deny science, are unmoved by facts, undeterred by new information, have a hostile fear of progress, demonize education, have a need to control women's bodies, have severe Xenophobia, have a tribal mentality, are intolerant of dissent, and have a pathological hatred of the US government.
You lose election after election.
So what will the president's second term look like? Well, if I were him, I'd play hardball. He was more weight in the Senate now and a few more seats in the House. I'd reach out to the moderate GOP folks in the House and get a grand bargain on our government's finances. Hopefully some of them have seen the writing the wall: moderate or else. I'd also look to move on immigration, climate change, and education. What's going to be fun about this second term is that now the president doesn't have to worry about reelection. He can get to work on those issues he really wanted to tackled from the first term but couldn't because of how long health care took.
We are going to get see what the president really wants now for the country, unfiltered and backed by political capital. I know this makes the Right shit themselves but when the economy starts to improve, they aren't going to be able to say much. Perhaps they'll admit they were wrong.
It sure would be nice.
To be honest, I was so overwhelmed by everything last evening that I just couldn't post anything. So, today, here are my thoughts.
The president's reelection is significant for several reasons. First, it essentially made Citizen's United irrelevant which is a good thing. Old, rich, white douches spent millions to get rid of him and it didn't work...which brings me to my second thing. Folks, the country has changed and the GOP better get with the program. They can start by chucking the American Taliban element of their party (which has now cost them the Senate...again!) and focus on the rising demographic of Latinos. The hard line on immigration won't cut it anymore and they are going to have to change. The Andy Griffith Show America (which never existed in the first place) is gone.
In fact, the hard line on many things are going to have to change...gay marriage (past in three states yesterday and a ban defeated in my home state), women's reproductive rights (no more old white men with two dollar haircuts talking about rape) and an acceptance that people do want some form of federal government. The most important thing of all they are going to have to realize is this country is diverse and, if they are going to survive as a party, they need to embrace this.
Mitt Romney lost because he was an Etch-A-Sketch candidate. He took these hard line positions, realized he would get walloped in the general if he didn't moderate and then proceeded to be on three sides of every policy point. I am very thankful we did not elect this man. He may have had principles at one time but not any longer. As Erick Erickson said, he would do or say anything to get elected.
Younger voters...the ones that supposedly weren't going to turn out...did so in greater numbers than in 2008 (by one percentage point). This brings up my message today to some of my posters and other friends: GET OUT OF THE FUCKING BUBBLE. Stop reading the Drudge report, watching Fox news, and frequenting right wing blogs. The things they say are happening simply don't exist in reality. No problem if you want to continue to play make believe but I would hope that this election has starkly illustrated that these folks are lying and the American people now know it.
This new certainty was a long haul. Most liberals and Democrats feel a profound sense of doubt and insecurity (preyed upon by the Right) after 2000 and 2004. Now that we will four Democratic won elections to the GOP's 2 in the last 20 years to the executive branch, that doubt BS is fucking over. The Democrats have built a powerful coalition that can continually get over 300 EVs with a good candidate. The GOP hasn't done that since 1988. Perhaps they need to finally realized that they can't be the party of old, white men any longer.
I was happy to see pot made legal in three states...fire up the bong!
Gay marriage was also made legal in three states (Maine, Maryland, and Washington). It's only a matter of time for the rest of the nation.
Looks like my predictions for the Senate were accurate. They haven't called it for Tester and Heitkamp yet but they are both ahead. 55-45, with the two I's caucusing with the Dems.
As I suspected in the House, the Dems will pick up a couple of seats but still stay under 200.
Elizabeth Warren takes back the Kennedy seat....hands down, one of the best moments of the night.
In my home state, Michele won again, just like I said she would. Oh well. It will be nice to have her around to say moonbat shit and win more elections for the Democrats. Both the gay marriage ban and the voter ID amendment were defeated. Better, the Democrats took back the State House and Senate and we have an all blue state for at least two years. This is another great example of how the Right fucks everything up in going to far over to their side of the field.
It looks like Tea Party favorites Joe Walsh and Allen West will be sent packing (the latter's race hasn't been called but Murphy is ahead). That, along with the loss of both of the Rape Boys (Todd Akin and Richard Murdock) begs the question: is the Tea Party dead? I think this election says that it is. They might still be able to win some House seats here and there but not the Senate nor the presidency. That's what happens when you are obsessed with ideological purity, see compromise as weakness, have a fundamental belief in scriptural literalism, deny science, are unmoved by facts, undeterred by new information, have a hostile fear of progress, demonize education, have a need to control women's bodies, have severe Xenophobia, have a tribal mentality, are intolerant of dissent, and have a pathological hatred of the US government.
You lose election after election.
So what will the president's second term look like? Well, if I were him, I'd play hardball. He was more weight in the Senate now and a few more seats in the House. I'd reach out to the moderate GOP folks in the House and get a grand bargain on our government's finances. Hopefully some of them have seen the writing the wall: moderate or else. I'd also look to move on immigration, climate change, and education. What's going to be fun about this second term is that now the president doesn't have to worry about reelection. He can get to work on those issues he really wanted to tackled from the first term but couldn't because of how long health care took.
We are going to get see what the president really wants now for the country, unfiltered and backed by political capital. I know this makes the Right shit themselves but when the economy starts to improve, they aren't going to be able to say much. Perhaps they'll admit they were wrong.
It sure would be nice.
Monday, November 05, 2012
2012 Election Predictions
Well, I suppose it's that time for me to make my final predictions for tomorrow. First up, the presidential election.
President Obama will win 303 electoral votes to Romney's 235 electoral votes. The states that Romney will take back from the Obama 2008 victory will be Indiana (obviously), North Carolina (very much more than likely) and Florida. With that last one, I'm going to have a caveat and that's this recent report from the Times.
The lawsuit was filed after a stream of complaints from voters who sometimes waited nearly seven hours to vote or who did not vote at all because they could not wait for so long to do so.
Seven hours? I thought turnout for the Obama side was going to be low. I can't quite bring myself to say that Florida will go for Obama, even though Nate Silver has it at 46% chance that we will win it, but the momentum there has shifted to the president over the last week and he might eke it out. With Silver showing the popular vote to be 49.9 Romney, Obama 46.9 anything is possible but I'm sticking with no Florida for the president. I just don't feel it.
The Senate will hold for the Democrats largely because of the Tea Party and their purity tests. It doesn't help that they seem to want to nominate old, white men with two dollar haircuts who like to talk about rape (and people wonder why we call them the American Taliban.) I think they Dems are actually going to gain two seats (on Obama's coattails in the deep blue states) and we will be at 55-45 (with Angus King caucusing with the Dems). Winners (from the Swing States): Tester, McCaskill, Donnelly, Heller, Fischer, Flake, Heitkamp, Warren, Murphy, Kaine, Baldwin and Brown. I'd say that's pretty great considering that they really had no chance earlier in the year. Carmona might have had a chance in Arizona but then he showed that he has the same attitude about women that Todd Akin and Richard Murock have.
The House will not be kind for the Democrats. Up until last week, I thought the would pick up around 12-15 seats. Now, I think it will be around 5. Guys like Joe Walsh in Illinois will go because Tammy Duckworth rocks the shizzle but many of the other candidates just don't have the power to upset guys like Steve King from Iowa. And, though I am loathe to admit it, Michele Bachmann will win her seat in MN-6 again. The media has said it's tight but it's not at all, folks. The people up there are hard right wing and will never vote for Democrat even if their lives depended on it (actually, they do, but we've been over this ground before:)) Final tally? 237 Rs, 198 Ds.
For my own home state, we have two ballot issues. The first is the Double Secret Anti-Fag Protection amendment that says that marriage should be only between one man and one woman. I think it will be defeated as I know many Republicans (including the ever venerable last in line) who will be voting NO. The second ballot issue is the Photo ID amendment and I think it will pass, although it will be struck down at the State Supreme Court as being in violation of the US Constitution.
As will likely be the case, feel free to ignore all of my accurate predictions and act like a 12 year old boy on the ones I get wrong:)
President Obama will win 303 electoral votes to Romney's 235 electoral votes. The states that Romney will take back from the Obama 2008 victory will be Indiana (obviously), North Carolina (very much more than likely) and Florida. With that last one, I'm going to have a caveat and that's this recent report from the Times.
The lawsuit was filed after a stream of complaints from voters who sometimes waited nearly seven hours to vote or who did not vote at all because they could not wait for so long to do so.
Seven hours? I thought turnout for the Obama side was going to be low. I can't quite bring myself to say that Florida will go for Obama, even though Nate Silver has it at 46% chance that we will win it, but the momentum there has shifted to the president over the last week and he might eke it out. With Silver showing the popular vote to be 49.9 Romney, Obama 46.9 anything is possible but I'm sticking with no Florida for the president. I just don't feel it.
The Senate will hold for the Democrats largely because of the Tea Party and their purity tests. It doesn't help that they seem to want to nominate old, white men with two dollar haircuts who like to talk about rape (and people wonder why we call them the American Taliban.) I think they Dems are actually going to gain two seats (on Obama's coattails in the deep blue states) and we will be at 55-45 (with Angus King caucusing with the Dems). Winners (from the Swing States): Tester, McCaskill, Donnelly, Heller, Fischer, Flake, Heitkamp, Warren, Murphy, Kaine, Baldwin and Brown. I'd say that's pretty great considering that they really had no chance earlier in the year. Carmona might have had a chance in Arizona but then he showed that he has the same attitude about women that Todd Akin and Richard Murock have.
The House will not be kind for the Democrats. Up until last week, I thought the would pick up around 12-15 seats. Now, I think it will be around 5. Guys like Joe Walsh in Illinois will go because Tammy Duckworth rocks the shizzle but many of the other candidates just don't have the power to upset guys like Steve King from Iowa. And, though I am loathe to admit it, Michele Bachmann will win her seat in MN-6 again. The media has said it's tight but it's not at all, folks. The people up there are hard right wing and will never vote for Democrat even if their lives depended on it (actually, they do, but we've been over this ground before:)) Final tally? 237 Rs, 198 Ds.
For my own home state, we have two ballot issues. The first is the Double Secret Anti-Fag Protection amendment that says that marriage should be only between one man and one woman. I think it will be defeated as I know many Republicans (including the ever venerable last in line) who will be voting NO. The second ballot issue is the Photo ID amendment and I think it will pass, although it will be struck down at the State Supreme Court as being in violation of the US Constitution.
As will likely be the case, feel free to ignore all of my accurate predictions and act like a 12 year old boy on the ones I get wrong:)
The Republican Mafia
Paul Ryan was in my state the other day, saying that a Romney administration will be bipartisan. The statement is preposterous on the face of it, given how inflexibly partisan and doctrinaire most of the Republicans in Congress have been for the last four years. Most of those who actually did have bipartisan tendencies have been summarily executed by Tea Party hacks during the 2012 primaries.
Congressional Republicans' only goal, stated by Jim DeMint, was to make sure that Obama was a one-term president. Under his leadership Republicans sabotaged nearly all action in the Senate by threatening filibusters on nearly every piece of legislation and appointment except for a brief seven-week period between the time that Al Franken was seated on July 7, 2009, and Ted Kennedy died on August 25.
The health care bill, which Obama compromised on in order to get Republican support, was passed in that brief window. It was based on Romney's Massachusetts health care plan, a plan the Republican Heritage Foundation put forth. Yet most Republicans obstinately refused even to negotiate and have been trying to destroy it ever since in order to peevishly deny Obama a victory. After vowing to party faithful for years to dismantle Obamacare in its entirety, "more-moderate-just-in-time-for-the-election" Romney is now saying that he would keep all the good stuff, but get rid of the mechanism that pays for it. Which Romney knows would gut it, leaving millions without health insurance.
Obama spent months and months trying to elicit Republican compromise. He was rejected on almost every point by Republicans like Ryan who insisted not only on keeping the Bush tax cuts--cuts that were intentionally made temporary to obscure their true long-term cost--but demanded even greater tax cuts for the wealthy. This despite a mammoth deficit caused by fighting in two wars on credit. The tax cuts and wars alone gave us the biggest deficit ever, and was made even worse when the economy collapsed after the banks screwed us over and Bush bailed them out. Obama compromised with the Republicans on the bailout while still a senator.
But when it came time to compromise with Obama over the debt ceiling, House Republicans instead chose to behave like Mexican and Colombian drug gangs who kidnap innocent victims for ransom, and held the country hostage with their demands for huge tax cuts for the wealthy. Their refusal resulted in a sequester agreement that was supposed to be too terrible for anyone to contemplate, yet Republicans continue to this day to demand more budget-busting tax cuts for their wealthy donors.
Obama wants to extend tax cuts everyone except those who make more than a quarter million bucks, which is compromise with the Republican position. Romney's and Ryan's no-compromises plan calls for cutting taxes by 20% for the richest and getting rid of some capital gains taxes, which will only make the deficit that much worse. Plus they want to drastically increase defense spending, which of course goes to giant defense companies whose lobbyists sit on Romney's campaign committee.
The fact is, the only sense in which a Romney administration would be "bipartisan" is that he would be able to count on some Democratic support on key issues. And that's only because Democrats are not madmen willing to bankrupt the entire country to get what they want.
With Romney in the White House, and the status quo of a Republican-controlled House and only a slight majority of Democrats in the Senate, House Republicans would never compromise on anything. Because all money bills must originate in the House, House Republicans would continue to hold the country hostage to their special interest groups, cutting taxes for the wealthy, gutting the health care law, eliminating insurance coverage for birth control and access to abortion, destroying unions and dramatically expanding the income gap.
If Obama wins and House Republicans continue their sabotage and let the country fall off the fiscal cliff, it will become obvious to all who's working for compromise and who's in the pockets of the special interests. It'll be a rough two years, but maybe some Republican representatives will change their tune before the 2014 election.
The Republican Party has stopped being a political party and has become a mafia, complete with offshore tax havens and money laundering, secret operatives scaring up money from billionaires for their PACs, dirty trick squads throwing out Democrats' voter registrations and calling people in hurricane ravaged areas and telling them the election has been delayed until Wednesday.
Ryan's claim of "bipartisanship" is actually an implicit threat, like a mafia protection racket. If Obama is reelected Ryan and the House Republicans are threatening to continue their economic sabotage, using extortion, kidnapping and blackmail to hold the country hostage for Sheldon Adelson's tax cuts.
Congressional Republicans' only goal, stated by Jim DeMint, was to make sure that Obama was a one-term president. Under his leadership Republicans sabotaged nearly all action in the Senate by threatening filibusters on nearly every piece of legislation and appointment except for a brief seven-week period between the time that Al Franken was seated on July 7, 2009, and Ted Kennedy died on August 25.
The health care bill, which Obama compromised on in order to get Republican support, was passed in that brief window. It was based on Romney's Massachusetts health care plan, a plan the Republican Heritage Foundation put forth. Yet most Republicans obstinately refused even to negotiate and have been trying to destroy it ever since in order to peevishly deny Obama a victory. After vowing to party faithful for years to dismantle Obamacare in its entirety, "more-moderate-just-in-time-for-the-election" Romney is now saying that he would keep all the good stuff, but get rid of the mechanism that pays for it. Which Romney knows would gut it, leaving millions without health insurance.
Obama spent months and months trying to elicit Republican compromise. He was rejected on almost every point by Republicans like Ryan who insisted not only on keeping the Bush tax cuts--cuts that were intentionally made temporary to obscure their true long-term cost--but demanded even greater tax cuts for the wealthy. This despite a mammoth deficit caused by fighting in two wars on credit. The tax cuts and wars alone gave us the biggest deficit ever, and was made even worse when the economy collapsed after the banks screwed us over and Bush bailed them out. Obama compromised with the Republicans on the bailout while still a senator.
But when it came time to compromise with Obama over the debt ceiling, House Republicans instead chose to behave like Mexican and Colombian drug gangs who kidnap innocent victims for ransom, and held the country hostage with their demands for huge tax cuts for the wealthy. Their refusal resulted in a sequester agreement that was supposed to be too terrible for anyone to contemplate, yet Republicans continue to this day to demand more budget-busting tax cuts for their wealthy donors.
Obama wants to extend tax cuts everyone except those who make more than a quarter million bucks, which is compromise with the Republican position. Romney's and Ryan's no-compromises plan calls for cutting taxes by 20% for the richest and getting rid of some capital gains taxes, which will only make the deficit that much worse. Plus they want to drastically increase defense spending, which of course goes to giant defense companies whose lobbyists sit on Romney's campaign committee.
The fact is, the only sense in which a Romney administration would be "bipartisan" is that he would be able to count on some Democratic support on key issues. And that's only because Democrats are not madmen willing to bankrupt the entire country to get what they want.
With Romney in the White House, and the status quo of a Republican-controlled House and only a slight majority of Democrats in the Senate, House Republicans would never compromise on anything. Because all money bills must originate in the House, House Republicans would continue to hold the country hostage to their special interest groups, cutting taxes for the wealthy, gutting the health care law, eliminating insurance coverage for birth control and access to abortion, destroying unions and dramatically expanding the income gap.
If Obama wins and House Republicans continue their sabotage and let the country fall off the fiscal cliff, it will become obvious to all who's working for compromise and who's in the pockets of the special interests. It'll be a rough two years, but maybe some Republican representatives will change their tune before the 2014 election.
The Republican Party has stopped being a political party and has become a mafia, complete with offshore tax havens and money laundering, secret operatives scaring up money from billionaires for their PACs, dirty trick squads throwing out Democrats' voter registrations and calling people in hurricane ravaged areas and telling them the election has been delayed until Wednesday.
Ryan's claim of "bipartisanship" is actually an implicit threat, like a mafia protection racket. If Obama is reelected Ryan and the House Republicans are threatening to continue their economic sabotage, using extortion, kidnapping and blackmail to hold the country hostage for Sheldon Adelson's tax cuts.
Now THAT is an endorsement!
God given right...no shit. That's EXACTLY why they hate the president as much as they do.
Ah, Now I Get It
At first I thought Mitt Romney's trip to Pennsylvania (billed as "expanding the map," according to his campaign) was a head fake to try to give off the perception of momentum. Now, I think that he knows that Ohio is unlikely and needs to make up those EVs another way. Obviously, Pennsylvania is a long shot for Romney but the last couple polls have been within the margin of error so perhaps he's hopeful that something can happen.
Remember, though, that a couple of polls don't tell the story. It's always the average of all of them.
Remember, though, that a couple of polls don't tell the story. It's always the average of all of them.
Sunday, November 04, 2012
Whither Erick Erickson
Erick Erickson is pretty much the polar opposite of myself but I couldn't agree more with him when he said, last year.
Mitt Romney, on the other hand, is a man devoid of any principles other than getting himself elected. As much as the American public does not like Barack Obama, they loath a man so fueled with ambition that he will say or do anything to get himself elected. Mitt Romney is that man.
I've been reading the 200 pages of single spaced opposition research from the John McCain campaign on Mitt Romney. There is no issue I can find on which Mitt Romney has not taken both sides. He is neither liberal nor conservative. He is simply unprincipled.
Wow. And people are voting for this guy? Their emotions about the president are obviously so irrational that an unprincipled man is preferred.
Interestingly, he wrote this yesterday...
When I wake up on Wednesday morning, I'm still going to have my wife. I'm still going to have my kids. I'm still going to have my family. And I'm still going to have my God. So will you. I'm not going to think the end of the world is upon us if my side loses.
Does he know something the rest of us don't? If he doesn't, Karl Rove surely does, as Andy Tannenbaum notes.
In a Washington Post interview, Republican strategist Karl Rove had his Mene mene tekel upharsin moment when he blamed Romney's loss on the storm, even before the results are known, when he said: "If you hadn't had the storm, there would have been more of a chance for the [Mitt] Romney campaign to talk about the deficit, the debt, the economy." He seems to have forgotten that Romney has been saying all those things for 2 years. Surely 3 more days didn't matter. What he meant was the storm gave Obama a Commander-in-Chief test and he passed.
Personally, I think people should ignore all this and continue to act as if it's razor thin. It would be bad if people think the president is going to win and then stay home.
Mitt Romney, on the other hand, is a man devoid of any principles other than getting himself elected. As much as the American public does not like Barack Obama, they loath a man so fueled with ambition that he will say or do anything to get himself elected. Mitt Romney is that man.
I've been reading the 200 pages of single spaced opposition research from the John McCain campaign on Mitt Romney. There is no issue I can find on which Mitt Romney has not taken both sides. He is neither liberal nor conservative. He is simply unprincipled.
Wow. And people are voting for this guy? Their emotions about the president are obviously so irrational that an unprincipled man is preferred.
Interestingly, he wrote this yesterday...
When I wake up on Wednesday morning, I'm still going to have my wife. I'm still going to have my kids. I'm still going to have my family. And I'm still going to have my God. So will you. I'm not going to think the end of the world is upon us if my side loses.
Does he know something the rest of us don't? If he doesn't, Karl Rove surely does, as Andy Tannenbaum notes.
In a Washington Post interview, Republican strategist Karl Rove had his Mene mene tekel upharsin moment when he blamed Romney's loss on the storm, even before the results are known, when he said: "If you hadn't had the storm, there would have been more of a chance for the [Mitt] Romney campaign to talk about the deficit, the debt, the economy." He seems to have forgotten that Romney has been saying all those things for 2 years. Surely 3 more days didn't matter. What he meant was the storm gave Obama a Commander-in-Chief test and he passed.
Personally, I think people should ignore all this and continue to act as if it's razor thin. It would be bad if people think the president is going to win and then stay home.
Now about that poll and the independents...
Any poll that show the president ahead in any of the swing states has to be wrong because the Democrats aren't going to turn out like they did in 2008 and Mitt has all the momentum. All the independents are flocking to Romney.
Oh, and there are more Republicans than Democrats so the polls are skewed.
That's the conventional wisdom coming from the Right going into the last two days before the election. The good news is that if they are wrong, they'll just stomp their feet, make something up, and act like adolescents. More good news: if they are right, every pollster is wrong, including NBC.
Let's take a look at that poll. First of all, it's not just NBC. The Wall Street Journal was also responsible for the poll and they aren't exactly a bastion of liberalism.The poll is of 971 likely voters more of whom identified as Democrats. This is why the poll is +9 identification in favor of the Democrats. What the Right fails to understand is that they aren't skewing the polls. This is how the people answered the question and, honestly, this is great example of how facts simply bounce off the bubble.
But Mark Murray, Senior Political Editor at NBC, decided to cut the Democratic sample in half just for shits and giggles. Guess what happened? Obama by three...which is the average of all the polls from Ohio and what I think will be right around the margin the president is going to win by on Tuesday. So, dudes on the Right, enough already.
Now as far as that independent claim goes...Newsmax-Zogby shows the president now up 2 points among independents, PPP shows the president up 49-44, ABC-WaPO and Politico show the two candidates tied. These numbers show a trend towards the president.
Overall, Rasmussen still has the race tied at 49-49. I consider that great news for the president.
Oh, and there are more Republicans than Democrats so the polls are skewed.
That's the conventional wisdom coming from the Right going into the last two days before the election. The good news is that if they are wrong, they'll just stomp their feet, make something up, and act like adolescents. More good news: if they are right, every pollster is wrong, including NBC.
Let's take a look at that poll. First of all, it's not just NBC. The Wall Street Journal was also responsible for the poll and they aren't exactly a bastion of liberalism.The poll is of 971 likely voters more of whom identified as Democrats. This is why the poll is +9 identification in favor of the Democrats. What the Right fails to understand is that they aren't skewing the polls. This is how the people answered the question and, honestly, this is great example of how facts simply bounce off the bubble.
But Mark Murray, Senior Political Editor at NBC, decided to cut the Democratic sample in half just for shits and giggles. Guess what happened? Obama by three...which is the average of all the polls from Ohio and what I think will be right around the margin the president is going to win by on Tuesday. So, dudes on the Right, enough already.
Now as far as that independent claim goes...Newsmax-Zogby shows the president now up 2 points among independents, PPP shows the president up 49-44, ABC-WaPO and Politico show the two candidates tied. These numbers show a trend towards the president.
Overall, Rasmussen still has the race tied at 49-49. I consider that great news for the president.
Saturday, November 03, 2012
Whither the Polls
It's interesting to hear conservatives whine about how the polls are all biased and figuring Republican turnout to be too low and, conversely, Democratic turnout to be too high. The Democrats are not enthusiastic, they say, and won't turn out like they did in 2008. One has to wonder if they are trying to prey upon Democratic nerves and psych them out...nah, can't be.
Of course, the other way to look at this is more positive. By continuing to say (as many in the media are) that voter turnout is going to be lower on the Democratic side, doesn't that motivate more people to vote? Even out of nerves? I think it will.
Personally, I'd much rather be Barack Obama right now, leading by an average of 2.9 percentage points in Ohio right now, than Mitt Romney and his supporters whining about polling bias. I am, however, willing to admit that there is a 16 percent chance that I am wrong about Ohio:)
Of course, the other way to look at this is more positive. By continuing to say (as many in the media are) that voter turnout is going to be lower on the Democratic side, doesn't that motivate more people to vote? Even out of nerves? I think it will.
Personally, I'd much rather be Barack Obama right now, leading by an average of 2.9 percentage points in Ohio right now, than Mitt Romney and his supporters whining about polling bias. I am, however, willing to admit that there is a 16 percent chance that I am wrong about Ohio:)
Either Way
Most of my regular readers know that I have been friends with the all too rare author on here, John Waxey. Many also know that Mr. Waxey is the owner of a manufacturing firm in Wisconsin that does between 20 and 30 million dollars a year in business. In a discussion regarding Tuesday's election, John said
"Well, either way I win so..."
When I questioned his perceived gusto for Mitt Romney, he chuckled.
"Obviously, I'd rather have the president win because that's better for everyone. But if Mitt happens to win, all of his policies will help rich people like me so my life is going to be better."
Yep.
"Well, either way I win so..."
When I questioned his perceived gusto for Mitt Romney, he chuckled.
"Obviously, I'd rather have the president win because that's better for everyone. But if Mitt happens to win, all of his policies will help rich people like me so my life is going to be better."
Yep.
Friday, November 02, 2012
Barack Obama, Job Creator
With the last jobs report released today, the evidence is quite clear: President Obama is a net job creator. From February 2009 through October 2012 4.62 million jobs were lost and 4.81 million jobs were gained, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That's a net gain of 190,000 jobs.
Of course, that's assuming that all those job losses for the first few months were the president's fault. Obviously, they weren't but I'm including them here so folks don't go into anaphylactic shock about "Blaming Bush."
So, the president has clearly done a good job. He has led the country out of the red, jobs wise, and back into the black. Many are saying that it's not enough but considering our economy was in the worst contraction since the Great Depression, I'd say it's great. That took us over a decade to get out of and that was largely because World War II began and the War Department needed...well...everything. I'd say that it's going to take another 2 years or so to get us back to a normal job market...normal for the new global economy, that is:)
Of course, that's assuming that all those job losses for the first few months were the president's fault. Obviously, they weren't but I'm including them here so folks don't go into anaphylactic shock about "Blaming Bush."
So, the president has clearly done a good job. He has led the country out of the red, jobs wise, and back into the black. Many are saying that it's not enough but considering our economy was in the worst contraction since the Great Depression, I'd say it's great. That took us over a decade to get out of and that was largely because World War II began and the War Department needed...well...everything. I'd say that it's going to take another 2 years or so to get us back to a normal job market...normal for the new global economy, that is:)
Thursday, November 01, 2012
Bloomberg Endorses Obama
Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York endorsed President Obama for reelection in a surprise announcement. This wasn't a sure thing: Bloomberg endorsed neither candidate in 2008, and he seriously considered Romney this time around:
At the same time, Mr. Bloomberg said he might have endorsed Mr. Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, except for the fact that the Republican had abandoned positions he once publicly held.The main impetus for Bloomberg's endorsement was Hurricane Sandy. The hurricane made clear the difference between Obama and Romney: Obama's stance on climate change and the size and role of the federal government makes it clear that Obama and the Democrats will do a better job running the government.
“In the past he has taken sensible positions on immigration, illegal guns, abortion rights and health care – but he has reversed course on all of them, and is even running against the very health care model he signed into law in Massachusetts,” the mayor said of Mr. Romney.
Bloomberg's critics will call him a RINO and a closet Democrat. But the truth is, the Republican Party has been hijacked by socially conservative demagogues like Richard Mourock and Todd Akin, wealthy casino magnates and oil barons like Sheldon Adelson and the Koch brothers, who don't think they owe anyone in this country a damned thing, and emotionally stunted political operatives like Karl Rove and Grover Norquist.
I, and probably a quarter to a half of the Democratic Party, would probably still be Republicans and independents to this day had the Republican Party not abandoned science, logic and reason. The Republican Party has forgotten that individual liberty consists of more than the right to shoot anyone you feel afraid of.
Thirty years ago Republicans pasted the label "conservative" on their party, and then constantly redefined rightward the meaning of the word. They have forced their candidates to adopt more and more radical positions or face execution by Tea Party death squads in Republican primaries, as Dick Lugar (Dick Lugar!) did. Republicans have in effect made their form of "conservatism" a matter of religious duty, and defined themselves the arbiters of the orthodoxy.
Consider what "Mr. Conservative" himself, Barry Goldwater, said upon his retirement in 1994:
When you say "radical right" today, I think of these moneymaking ventures by fellows like Pat Robertson and others who are trying to take the Republican party and make a religious organization out of it. If that ever happens, kiss politics goodbye.Goldwater, with his beliefs in personal privacy, support for abortion and gays in the military, would be called a RINO and summarily drummed out of the party if he were still alive today.
The State of the Race
The last couple of days have not been good for Mitt Romney. First we had the pants on fire car ad that has now been denounced by Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne. How anyone can think that this guy has a handle on business is beyond me. He looks like he knows what he is doing but then he says things are patently false.
Then Hurricane Sandy hit and Romney pretended to hand out canned goods, as Nikto noted yesterday. Worse, the Right looked like complete morons when the president demonstrated (yet again) that he is a capable leader in a crisis. Fictional Obama is just that.
And then there are all those new polls.
The president is now up by an average (according to the right leaning RCP) of over two points in Ohio, Iowa, and Nevada. The latter has been more or less ceded to the president by the Romney campaign. The president has made gains in Virginia, Florida and even North Carolina in the latest polls so that's where Romney has to go now if he wants to hold those states. For the most part, one can always tell where the polls really are by where the candidates go and Romney is in Virginia this morning.
If the president wins all the states that Democrats have won in the last five elections plus New Mexico (where he is way ahead now), Nevada, Iowa, and Ohio he has 277 electoral votes and he wins the election. All of the polls out of Ohio have the president ahead by 2-5 points except Rasmussen who doesn't poll cel phone users.
Nate Silver had an interesting piece up the other day about past elections and candidates that have been up (on average) by more than two percentage points. In short, they win. The only time that hasn't happened in the last 30 years is when George HW Bush beat Bill Clinton in 1992 in Texas. Even though the polls showed Clinton up by 3.5 points, Bush won. But we didn't a poll to tell us that Bush would win Texas.
Silver has another piece which shows all the state by state polls which all basically say the same thing: the president is going to win on Tuesday. What I found most interesting about this piece is the admission that if Silver and all the other pollsters are wrong, it's going to be a monumentally bizarre occurrence and they should all, perhaps, find a new line of work!
All these polls of likely voters are the basis for my prediction next week. The president will win 290 electoral votes and Mitt Romney will win 235 with Virginia being a giant WTF, although it has been trending the president's way in the last couple of days. Even Florida has been moving back towards the president and is essentially tied. I still think Romney will win North Carolina.
Five days until the election and things are looking great for the president!
Then Hurricane Sandy hit and Romney pretended to hand out canned goods, as Nikto noted yesterday. Worse, the Right looked like complete morons when the president demonstrated (yet again) that he is a capable leader in a crisis. Fictional Obama is just that.
And then there are all those new polls.
The president is now up by an average (according to the right leaning RCP) of over two points in Ohio, Iowa, and Nevada. The latter has been more or less ceded to the president by the Romney campaign. The president has made gains in Virginia, Florida and even North Carolina in the latest polls so that's where Romney has to go now if he wants to hold those states. For the most part, one can always tell where the polls really are by where the candidates go and Romney is in Virginia this morning.
If the president wins all the states that Democrats have won in the last five elections plus New Mexico (where he is way ahead now), Nevada, Iowa, and Ohio he has 277 electoral votes and he wins the election. All of the polls out of Ohio have the president ahead by 2-5 points except Rasmussen who doesn't poll cel phone users.
Nate Silver had an interesting piece up the other day about past elections and candidates that have been up (on average) by more than two percentage points. In short, they win. The only time that hasn't happened in the last 30 years is when George HW Bush beat Bill Clinton in 1992 in Texas. Even though the polls showed Clinton up by 3.5 points, Bush won. But we didn't a poll to tell us that Bush would win Texas.
Silver has another piece which shows all the state by state polls which all basically say the same thing: the president is going to win on Tuesday. What I found most interesting about this piece is the admission that if Silver and all the other pollsters are wrong, it's going to be a monumentally bizarre occurrence and they should all, perhaps, find a new line of work!
All these polls of likely voters are the basis for my prediction next week. The president will win 290 electoral votes and Mitt Romney will win 235 with Virginia being a giant WTF, although it has been trending the president's way in the last couple of days. Even Florida has been moving back towards the president and is essentially tied. I still think Romney will win North Carolina.
Five days until the election and things are looking great for the president!
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
Wrong Guys for the Job
Apparently Mitt Romney thinks that hurricane relief consists of sending canned goods to the victims. There's nothing wrong with canned goods, except that it takes a herculean effort to collect them, and repackage them, and put them on a truck or a plane, which then have to make their way across country over roads that have been inundated by heavy rains and storm surge, where they then need to be distributed. The amount of gas and effort required to move those canned goods dwarfs the actual value of the contributed items.
It turns out that relief organizations like the Red Cross would much rather we contribute blood and money, which can be used to pay for things like gas, vehicles, emergency equipment like generators and to resupply prepositioned relief depots around the country. Romney's campaign even bought $5,000 worth of stuff as props to prevent his relief truck from being empty. That's $5,000 the Red Cross could have used for real relief.
Romney's response to people dying, thousands losing their homes, and millions losing power was a cynical photo op at a repurposed campaign rally. It exemplifies why he's the wrong guy for the job.
Small-scale canned food drives are great for supplying food shelves for the homeless, but for a devastatingly huge catastrophe that spans almost the entire eastern seaboard, Romney's ideas are quaint, inadequate and quite wrong. Hurricane Sandy requires a nationwide response, coordinated by a federal agency that has expertise in dealing with such colossal emergencies. In other words, FEMA. An agency that Romney refuses to answer questions about these days, though he said he would cut its funding to it in 2011.
Romney isn't the only Republican to think small. Former FEMA director Michael "Heckuva job Brownie" Brown, had the gall to criticize President Obama for responding too quickly to the hurricane. This is the same guy who dragged his feet and totally botched the federal response to Katrina under Bush. The guy who wrote emails back to Washington pleading, "I'm trapped now, please rescue me." That anyone would ever hire this guy again boggles the mind, but that someone would actually give him a radio show is really incredible.
Republicans insist small government is better than big government. But the fact is, we need a government that is equal to the magnitude of the problems we have to deal with. New York is the financial capital of this country. If a hurricane wipes it out, we're dead in the water until it gets going again. A nationwide response is needed to restore the financial markets, and we need to get all the people that work in those markets back to work ASAP. That means helping New York and New Jersey (and Chris Christie) get the trains running again.
If massive hurricanes, tornadoes and droughts hit the Gulf Coast, Southeast, Midwest and Texas, threatening oil and gas and grain and livestock production, the rest of the country needs to help them get back on their feet as fast as possible. Because we need the food and energy they produce. If an earthquake hits California and disrupts Internet traffic—the central nervous system of this country—a nationwide response is necessary to get us back online as quickly as possible.
Every state in this country is dependent on other states for something. We're all in this together. The idea that everyone can be totally self-reliant and do everything by themselves is sentimental hankering for a time that never existed. The only truly self-sufficient humans were cavemen—the rest of us need other people to build our roads, grow our grain, bake our bread, butcher our meat, manufacture our tools and cars and computers, write our software. John Donne wrote "No man is an island" four hundred years ago.
Republicans express nothing but contempt for government. Does it make any sense to put people in charge of something they totally despise? For the same reason you don't make an Greenpeace activist CEO of Exxon, you don't put Grover Norquist and his Republican pawns in Congress in charge of the federal government.
Republicans make excellent mad dogs biting at the heals of government, calling attention to inefficiencies and problems that inevitably crop up. But putting Mitt Romney and the Republicans in charge of FEMA again would inevitably result in another Katrina-scale Brownie screwup.
Romney is running for president with the same policies and the same cast of characters from the Bush administration. With Katrina, Iraq, the financial meltdown, massive tax cuts during a massive wartime buildup that resulted in huge deficits, these folks have demonstrated that they are not competent to run this country.
It turns out that relief organizations like the Red Cross would much rather we contribute blood and money, which can be used to pay for things like gas, vehicles, emergency equipment like generators and to resupply prepositioned relief depots around the country. Romney's campaign even bought $5,000 worth of stuff as props to prevent his relief truck from being empty. That's $5,000 the Red Cross could have used for real relief.
Romney's response to people dying, thousands losing their homes, and millions losing power was a cynical photo op at a repurposed campaign rally. It exemplifies why he's the wrong guy for the job.
Small-scale canned food drives are great for supplying food shelves for the homeless, but for a devastatingly huge catastrophe that spans almost the entire eastern seaboard, Romney's ideas are quaint, inadequate and quite wrong. Hurricane Sandy requires a nationwide response, coordinated by a federal agency that has expertise in dealing with such colossal emergencies. In other words, FEMA. An agency that Romney refuses to answer questions about these days, though he said he would cut its funding to it in 2011.
Romney isn't the only Republican to think small. Former FEMA director Michael "Heckuva job Brownie" Brown, had the gall to criticize President Obama for responding too quickly to the hurricane. This is the same guy who dragged his feet and totally botched the federal response to Katrina under Bush. The guy who wrote emails back to Washington pleading, "I'm trapped now, please rescue me." That anyone would ever hire this guy again boggles the mind, but that someone would actually give him a radio show is really incredible.
Republicans insist small government is better than big government. But the fact is, we need a government that is equal to the magnitude of the problems we have to deal with. New York is the financial capital of this country. If a hurricane wipes it out, we're dead in the water until it gets going again. A nationwide response is needed to restore the financial markets, and we need to get all the people that work in those markets back to work ASAP. That means helping New York and New Jersey (and Chris Christie) get the trains running again.
If massive hurricanes, tornadoes and droughts hit the Gulf Coast, Southeast, Midwest and Texas, threatening oil and gas and grain and livestock production, the rest of the country needs to help them get back on their feet as fast as possible. Because we need the food and energy they produce. If an earthquake hits California and disrupts Internet traffic—the central nervous system of this country—a nationwide response is necessary to get us back online as quickly as possible.
Every state in this country is dependent on other states for something. We're all in this together. The idea that everyone can be totally self-reliant and do everything by themselves is sentimental hankering for a time that never existed. The only truly self-sufficient humans were cavemen—the rest of us need other people to build our roads, grow our grain, bake our bread, butcher our meat, manufacture our tools and cars and computers, write our software. John Donne wrote "No man is an island" four hundred years ago.
Republicans express nothing but contempt for government. Does it make any sense to put people in charge of something they totally despise? For the same reason you don't make an Greenpeace activist CEO of Exxon, you don't put Grover Norquist and his Republican pawns in Congress in charge of the federal government.
Republicans make excellent mad dogs biting at the heals of government, calling attention to inefficiencies and problems that inevitably crop up. But putting Mitt Romney and the Republicans in charge of FEMA again would inevitably result in another Katrina-scale Brownie screwup.
Romney is running for president with the same policies and the same cast of characters from the Bush administration. With Katrina, Iraq, the financial meltdown, massive tax cuts during a massive wartime buildup that resulted in huge deficits, these folks have demonstrated that they are not competent to run this country.
Speaking Your Mind
You really have to hand it to Chris Christie. The guy says what's on his mind and doesn't care who he offends. Either way, he's a straight shooter.
The president's done a great job, you say? Well, that's because he is a good president and has shown these last few days what kind of a leader he is in a crisis.
Who was it again that said they wanted to shut down FEMA?
<
And it's not just him. Imagine what would happen if we had another crisis like this and emergency management was done by states and private corporations. Part of me almost wishes we could try it out for just one disaster so the right wing blogsphere would be put down for rabies once and for all.
The president's done a great job, you say? Well, that's because he is a good president and has shown these last few days what kind of a leader he is in a crisis.
Who was it again that said they wanted to shut down FEMA?
<
And it's not just him. Imagine what would happen if we had another crisis like this and emergency management was done by states and private corporations. Part of me almost wishes we could try it out for just one disaster so the right wing blogsphere would be put down for rabies once and for all.
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
Insurance Company Takes Climate Change Seriously
As corporations go, insurance companies are some of the most conservative. So when a company like Munich Re, one of the world's biggest reinsurers, issues a press release that says climate change is real and is causing the droughts, massive hurricanes and snowstorms that have hit the United States in the last few years, it's not just some scientist scrounging for more grant money.
Munich Re's release, published two weeks ago, directly addresses the question of whether climate change is causing hurricanes like Sandy this year and Irene last year:
Sandy is almost a thousand miles wide, more than twice the size of Katrina and four hundred miles wider than Irene. The exact mechanism for why climate change is making Sandy so huge is well known: the jet stream is funneling air south as hot tropical air is coming north. The unprecedented melting of the arctic ice cap is the direct cause of that shift in the jet stream. A high pressure area over Greenland is also contributing to the problem.
Because climate change is making storms bigger, millions more people are being flooded out of their homes and losing electricity than would have been otherwise. Areas along the coast are densely populated and filled with lots of expensive infrastructure (ports, military bases, etc.) and critical services (like the stock market in New York). Storms that would have been relatively minor inconveniences will now kill dozens or hundreds of people and inflict tens of billions of dollars of damage.
And that's why insurance companies are taking climate change seriously.
Munich Re's release, published two weeks ago, directly addresses the question of whether climate change is causing hurricanes like Sandy this year and Irene last year:
Nowhere in the world is the rising number of natural catastrophes more evident than in North America. The study shows a nearly quintupled number of weather-related loss events in North America for the past three decades, compared with an increase factor of 4 in Asia, 2.5 in Africa, 2 in Europe and 1.5 in South America. Anthropogenic climate change is believed to contribute to this trend, though it influences various perils in different ways. Climate change particularly affects formation of heat-waves, droughts, intense precipitation events, and in the long run most probably also tropical cyclone intensity.A big insurance company is saying specifically that all the droughts, massive snowstorms, downpours, tornadoes and hurricanes we've been having the last few years are caused by us burning too many hydrocarbons.
Sandy is almost a thousand miles wide, more than twice the size of Katrina and four hundred miles wider than Irene. The exact mechanism for why climate change is making Sandy so huge is well known: the jet stream is funneling air south as hot tropical air is coming north. The unprecedented melting of the arctic ice cap is the direct cause of that shift in the jet stream. A high pressure area over Greenland is also contributing to the problem.
Because climate change is making storms bigger, millions more people are being flooded out of their homes and losing electricity than would have been otherwise. Areas along the coast are densely populated and filled with lots of expensive infrastructure (ports, military bases, etc.) and critical services (like the stock market in New York). Storms that would have been relatively minor inconveniences will now kill dozens or hundreds of people and inflict tens of billions of dollars of damage.
And that's why insurance companies are taking climate change seriously.
On Stiglitz, Part Four
Spend just a few minutes on the internet and you can see Joseph Stiglitz everywhere.
A recent article on how public sector belt tightening has made inequality worse.
These reductions, economists say, act as a drag on the economy. Former park employees, clerks, and firefighters such as Lykins are buying only the necessities. Cities are deferring road work, which means contractors aren't hiring people to pour concrete. By far, the largest impact is on school systems, which are laying off teachers, counselors, and janitors.
The latest BLS data on the working poor.
In 2010, there were 10.5 million individuals classified as "working poor" (persons who spent at least 27 weeks in the labor force—that is, working or looking for work—but whose incomes still fell below the official poverty level); the number of working poor was little changed from 2009.
Yet another report on the widening income disparity.
The divergent fortunes of Reyes and Hemsley show that the U.S. has gone through two recoveries. The 1.2 million households whose incomes put them in the top 1 percent of the U.S. saw their earnings increase 5.5 percent last year, according to estimates released last month by the U.S. Census Bureau. Earnings fell 1.7 percent for the 96 million households in the bottom 80 percent -- those that made less than $101,583.
So, Chapter 4 of The Price of Inequality by Joseph Stiglitz, aptly titled "Why It Matters" could never be more relevant.
Stiglitz begins by illustrating a very simple fact.
When the wealthiest use their political power to benefit excessively the corporations they control, much needed revenues are diverted into the pockets of a few instead of benefiting society at large. But the rich do not exist in a vacuum. They need a functioning society around them to sustain their position and to produce income from their assets. The rich resist taxes, but taxes allow society to make investments that sustain the country's growth.
This echoes Nick Hanuer and his pointing out of the obvious: he (and other wealthy people) don't buy 5,000 pairs of pants. They buy 5 pairs. If people are buying less pairs of pants, the economy doesn't grow and that's why it matters. But it gets worse.
As Stiglitz notes, moving money from the bottom to the top lower consumption because the wealthy save more of their money rather than spend it. In fact, they save 15 to 25 percent of their income whereas those at the bottom spend all of theirs. Why does this matter?
The result: until and unless something else happens, such as increase in investment or exports, total demand in the economy will be less than what the economy is capable of supplying-and that means there will be unemployment.
So, what can be done? Well, the wealthy are going to have to give up some of the money they are saving if they want to continue to have a society in which to enjoy their wealth. Stiglitz thinks that this should be done through taxes and government spending. Certainly, that's going to happen in some form or another but I question to what degree and, I have to admit, I question the mechanism. Relying completely on government is not the answer. As Stiglitz himself admits, they are running the government with their money and it's going to be enormously difficult to break out of that cycle, if not impossible. I think the president is trying to do this and having a tough time of it. Mitt Romney will make it worse.
That doesn't change the fact that the wealthy of this country are going to have to ALL do what Bill Gates does in Africa but do it here. It can't just be a few of them and the sooner they realize the necessity of this to their own livelihoods, the better. Stiglitz has a simple way to solve it.
The top 1 percent of this country earns 20 percent of the income. If they shifted just 5 percent of that income to the poor or middle class who do not save (through a combination of taxes, private charities, grants, and higher wages a la Henry Ford), this would increase aggregate demand by 1 percentage point and still leave them obviously quite wealthy with 15 percent of the nation's income. This is what we saw from post WWII to about 1980 and it wasn't socialism, folks, there was still inequality...just not enough to inhibit growth in our economy like there is right now.
This increase of one point would have a cascading effect. As the money recirculates, output would actually increase by 1.5 to 2 percentage points. Unemployment would go down considerably, likely around 6 percent. Stiglitz notes that a broader redistribution (from the top 20 percent, as opposed to the top 1 percent) would lower this unemployment even further.
Right around now is when the mouth foamers blow a bowel and starting screaming about socialism and/or communism. Paying higher taxes, as Stiglitz is suggesting, isn't socialism. Morever, I'd be more than happy if the wealthy of this country saw the need to do this voluntarily and simply did it for their own sake's. If we continue down this path of increased inequality and stagnation (likely worse, eventually), they will not have a choice. I think things are moving in the right direction, though, and we are already seeing some signs of this possibly happening and I am certainly optimistic.
Stiglitz goes on to discuss how the government's response to weak demand from inequality led to a bubble and even more inequality. He cites inadequate regulation and dishonest/incompetent banking as large contributors to this problem but this has been gone over many times.
He then lays out exactly how inequality makes for a less efficient and productive economy by looking at lowering public investment (as we see in the CSM link above), underinvestiment in the common good like education that directly leads to economic mobility, rent seeking and the financialization of our economy (the oil market is a great example of this...filled with people that don't actually buy oil but speculate on it), and the issue of consumerism.I'm going to turn this final point of consumerism into a stand alone post at some point as it is worthy of special attention.
The rest of Chapter 4 is devoted to the alleged inequality efficiency trade off which, again, deserves its own post and honestly is separate from the issue of why inequality matters. Suffice to say, Stiglitz has shown thus far that not only are we failing in equality of outcome but we are failing in equality of opportunity. People simply don't have the income mobility that leads to greater opportunity and our society is sorely lacking in closing this gap and increasing these types of opportunities.
Worse, as Stiglitz previews for the next chapter, this inequality is imperiling our democracy.
A recent article on how public sector belt tightening has made inequality worse.
These reductions, economists say, act as a drag on the economy. Former park employees, clerks, and firefighters such as Lykins are buying only the necessities. Cities are deferring road work, which means contractors aren't hiring people to pour concrete. By far, the largest impact is on school systems, which are laying off teachers, counselors, and janitors.
The latest BLS data on the working poor.
In 2010, there were 10.5 million individuals classified as "working poor" (persons who spent at least 27 weeks in the labor force—that is, working or looking for work—but whose incomes still fell below the official poverty level); the number of working poor was little changed from 2009.
Yet another report on the widening income disparity.
The divergent fortunes of Reyes and Hemsley show that the U.S. has gone through two recoveries. The 1.2 million households whose incomes put them in the top 1 percent of the U.S. saw their earnings increase 5.5 percent last year, according to estimates released last month by the U.S. Census Bureau. Earnings fell 1.7 percent for the 96 million households in the bottom 80 percent -- those that made less than $101,583.
So, Chapter 4 of The Price of Inequality by Joseph Stiglitz, aptly titled "Why It Matters" could never be more relevant.
Stiglitz begins by illustrating a very simple fact.
When the wealthiest use their political power to benefit excessively the corporations they control, much needed revenues are diverted into the pockets of a few instead of benefiting society at large. But the rich do not exist in a vacuum. They need a functioning society around them to sustain their position and to produce income from their assets. The rich resist taxes, but taxes allow society to make investments that sustain the country's growth.
This echoes Nick Hanuer and his pointing out of the obvious: he (and other wealthy people) don't buy 5,000 pairs of pants. They buy 5 pairs. If people are buying less pairs of pants, the economy doesn't grow and that's why it matters. But it gets worse.
As Stiglitz notes, moving money from the bottom to the top lower consumption because the wealthy save more of their money rather than spend it. In fact, they save 15 to 25 percent of their income whereas those at the bottom spend all of theirs. Why does this matter?
The result: until and unless something else happens, such as increase in investment or exports, total demand in the economy will be less than what the economy is capable of supplying-and that means there will be unemployment.
So, what can be done? Well, the wealthy are going to have to give up some of the money they are saving if they want to continue to have a society in which to enjoy their wealth. Stiglitz thinks that this should be done through taxes and government spending. Certainly, that's going to happen in some form or another but I question to what degree and, I have to admit, I question the mechanism. Relying completely on government is not the answer. As Stiglitz himself admits, they are running the government with their money and it's going to be enormously difficult to break out of that cycle, if not impossible. I think the president is trying to do this and having a tough time of it. Mitt Romney will make it worse.
That doesn't change the fact that the wealthy of this country are going to have to ALL do what Bill Gates does in Africa but do it here. It can't just be a few of them and the sooner they realize the necessity of this to their own livelihoods, the better. Stiglitz has a simple way to solve it.
The top 1 percent of this country earns 20 percent of the income. If they shifted just 5 percent of that income to the poor or middle class who do not save (through a combination of taxes, private charities, grants, and higher wages a la Henry Ford), this would increase aggregate demand by 1 percentage point and still leave them obviously quite wealthy with 15 percent of the nation's income. This is what we saw from post WWII to about 1980 and it wasn't socialism, folks, there was still inequality...just not enough to inhibit growth in our economy like there is right now.
This increase of one point would have a cascading effect. As the money recirculates, output would actually increase by 1.5 to 2 percentage points. Unemployment would go down considerably, likely around 6 percent. Stiglitz notes that a broader redistribution (from the top 20 percent, as opposed to the top 1 percent) would lower this unemployment even further.
Right around now is when the mouth foamers blow a bowel and starting screaming about socialism and/or communism. Paying higher taxes, as Stiglitz is suggesting, isn't socialism. Morever, I'd be more than happy if the wealthy of this country saw the need to do this voluntarily and simply did it for their own sake's. If we continue down this path of increased inequality and stagnation (likely worse, eventually), they will not have a choice. I think things are moving in the right direction, though, and we are already seeing some signs of this possibly happening and I am certainly optimistic.
Stiglitz goes on to discuss how the government's response to weak demand from inequality led to a bubble and even more inequality. He cites inadequate regulation and dishonest/incompetent banking as large contributors to this problem but this has been gone over many times.
He then lays out exactly how inequality makes for a less efficient and productive economy by looking at lowering public investment (as we see in the CSM link above), underinvestiment in the common good like education that directly leads to economic mobility, rent seeking and the financialization of our economy (the oil market is a great example of this...filled with people that don't actually buy oil but speculate on it), and the issue of consumerism.I'm going to turn this final point of consumerism into a stand alone post at some point as it is worthy of special attention.
The rest of Chapter 4 is devoted to the alleged inequality efficiency trade off which, again, deserves its own post and honestly is separate from the issue of why inequality matters. Suffice to say, Stiglitz has shown thus far that not only are we failing in equality of outcome but we are failing in equality of opportunity. People simply don't have the income mobility that leads to greater opportunity and our society is sorely lacking in closing this gap and increasing these types of opportunities.
Worse, as Stiglitz previews for the next chapter, this inequality is imperiling our democracy.
Monday, October 29, 2012
Sunday, October 28, 2012
Picking Health Care Winners and Losers
When my wife and I quit our corporate jobs we had to go out and buy our health insurance directly. We called Blue Cross Blue Shield, but were told that you can't buy insurance directly, you have to go through an agent. They gave us a list of agents, we called one and signed up.
Now, what does that agent do for us? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. He collects a percentage of the health insurance premium we pay each month, but when we see doctors or get statements or put money in the health savings account we have nothing at all to do with the agent. The agent is a worthless leech on the system.
If this were the end of the story, it would be just another typical instance of the bloated health care system where dozens of useless middlemen sucking on the health care teat. But there's more.
I live in Minnesota, and my state senator is David Hann. He serves on the Health and Human Services committee. In that position he has been working hard to prevent Democratic Governor Mark Dayton from implementing the health insurance exchanges required under the new health care law. The exchanges would allow health care to enter the 21st century and let you sign up for health insurance directly instead of having to deal with worthless middlemen, providing for easier comparison of benefits, more competition and elimination of overhead.
What's Hann's main concern about exchanges?
Now, there's nothing wrong with legislators serving on committees where they have expertise (Hann was an exec at Deli Express before joining the legislature). It only makes sense for doctors and nurses to serve on health care committees, teachers on education and farmers on agriculture. If everyone knows what you do and you don't stand to profit directly from legislation, there's no conflict of interest.
But Hann has been pushing legislation that would replace Minnesota's Medicaid system with a voucher program that would require recipients to buy health insurance through insurance agents like he is now.
This raises a lot of questions. Why is he more concerned about the jobs of few insurance salesman than cheaper and more efficient health care for all? Is his employment by this company a quid pro quo for his actions in the legislature? And why did Hann keep his new employer secret until the media revealed it?
And finally: why would a Republican who always rails against big government and excessive regulation sponsor legislation that would lock us into an archaic and bureaucratic system of health care that mandates guaranteed income to insurance agents who provide no useful function?
In short, why is David Hann using his position in government to pick winners (insurance salesmen like himself) and loser (health care customers like me)?
Now, what does that agent do for us? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. He collects a percentage of the health insurance premium we pay each month, but when we see doctors or get statements or put money in the health savings account we have nothing at all to do with the agent. The agent is a worthless leech on the system.
If this were the end of the story, it would be just another typical instance of the bloated health care system where dozens of useless middlemen sucking on the health care teat. But there's more.
I live in Minnesota, and my state senator is David Hann. He serves on the Health and Human Services committee. In that position he has been working hard to prevent Democratic Governor Mark Dayton from implementing the health insurance exchanges required under the new health care law. The exchanges would allow health care to enter the 21st century and let you sign up for health insurance directly instead of having to deal with worthless middlemen, providing for easier comparison of benefits, more competition and elimination of overhead.
What's Hann's main concern about exchanges?
In recent discussion about the health insurance exchange, he said, "The people I hear mostly from are people who are selling insurance and insurance agents who are very concerned about this because they see it as a direct threat to their business."What does David Hann do for a living? Until recently, his web site said he was a "business process consultant." According to that article on the Fox affiliate website, Hann now works for Boys and Tyler Financial Group, which sells health insurance. It turns out that Hann's Republican counterpart in the House committee also started working the same company just after the session ended this past year.
Now, there's nothing wrong with legislators serving on committees where they have expertise (Hann was an exec at Deli Express before joining the legislature). It only makes sense for doctors and nurses to serve on health care committees, teachers on education and farmers on agriculture. If everyone knows what you do and you don't stand to profit directly from legislation, there's no conflict of interest.
But Hann has been pushing legislation that would replace Minnesota's Medicaid system with a voucher program that would require recipients to buy health insurance through insurance agents like he is now.
This raises a lot of questions. Why is he more concerned about the jobs of few insurance salesman than cheaper and more efficient health care for all? Is his employment by this company a quid pro quo for his actions in the legislature? And why did Hann keep his new employer secret until the media revealed it?
And finally: why would a Republican who always rails against big government and excessive regulation sponsor legislation that would lock us into an archaic and bureaucratic system of health care that mandates guaranteed income to insurance agents who provide no useful function?
In short, why is David Hann using his position in government to pick winners (insurance salesmen like himself) and loser (health care customers like me)?
Can You Spot the Difference?
Since it's Sunday, it's only fitting that we turn to spiritual matters and this recent piece by Slate is..well...just what I have been saying all along.
A sample question.
Women cannot handle power. It is not within them to handle power. ... The real and true power comes from God and God is the one that gave man the power and the authority over the wife.
Was this an Islamic fundamentalist or a social conservative?
Click on the link above to find out!
A sample question.
Women cannot handle power. It is not within them to handle power. ... The real and true power comes from God and God is the one that gave man the power and the authority over the wife.
Was this an Islamic fundamentalist or a social conservative?
Click on the link above to find out!
Saturday, October 27, 2012
Uncertainty Preferred
For those of you out there who are voting for Mitt Romney, I have a simple question for you: what does he stand for?
We've seen him change his mind on every conceivable issue and it's obviously beyond my comprehension why anyone would vote for him. This rings ironic when you consider that many of these same folks that are voting for Mitt Romney aren't voting for Barack Obama because they are afraid of what he might do (and what he may do has no bearing on reality, considering how he has governed and actions he has taken in the last four years).
In the final stretch of the campaign, Mitt Romney has no planned interviews and refuses to answer reporters questions about things like Richard Murdock (the only Senate candidate he has endorsed) and abortion. He simply has his staged campaign appearances and reads from his pre-ordained talking about points which seem to revolved around three things: momentum, Obama sucks, and momentum. Am I the only one that see this as a losing strategy?
If I'm wrong (and there is about a one in four chance that I am wrong), politics in this country will have taken such an ugly turn that I'm not entirely certain things would ever be the same. We'd have, as president, Mr. Etch-A-Sketch...someone willing to do or say whatever it take to get elected, including saying things that are diametrically to something he said even a few days previously. Many of you may chuckle and say, "Ah, but Mark, this is what politicians always do."
Stop and think about this for a minute. This is different. This is worse.
Now, I'm not saying that you have to love and adore President Obama and think he's a savior but you do know what you are getting with him. He's been a moderate president...cutting taxes in many ways for the middle class (the payroll tax, the stimulus), robust national security (drone attacks, getting bin Laden), passing health care (the GOP idea for an exchange with mandate, modeled after Romney's plan for MA) and expanded local oil and gas drilling. That's going to continue if he is re-elected. Anyone thinking otherwise, isn't thinking rationally.
So, if there are still any fence sitters out there or people leaning Romney, I'd like an answer of what exactly he is going to do (based on what he has said) if he is elected and why this (ahem) uncertainty is preferred.
We've seen him change his mind on every conceivable issue and it's obviously beyond my comprehension why anyone would vote for him. This rings ironic when you consider that many of these same folks that are voting for Mitt Romney aren't voting for Barack Obama because they are afraid of what he might do (and what he may do has no bearing on reality, considering how he has governed and actions he has taken in the last four years).
In the final stretch of the campaign, Mitt Romney has no planned interviews and refuses to answer reporters questions about things like Richard Murdock (the only Senate candidate he has endorsed) and abortion. He simply has his staged campaign appearances and reads from his pre-ordained talking about points which seem to revolved around three things: momentum, Obama sucks, and momentum. Am I the only one that see this as a losing strategy?
If I'm wrong (and there is about a one in four chance that I am wrong), politics in this country will have taken such an ugly turn that I'm not entirely certain things would ever be the same. We'd have, as president, Mr. Etch-A-Sketch...someone willing to do or say whatever it take to get elected, including saying things that are diametrically to something he said even a few days previously. Many of you may chuckle and say, "Ah, but Mark, this is what politicians always do."
Stop and think about this for a minute. This is different. This is worse.
Now, I'm not saying that you have to love and adore President Obama and think he's a savior but you do know what you are getting with him. He's been a moderate president...cutting taxes in many ways for the middle class (the payroll tax, the stimulus), robust national security (drone attacks, getting bin Laden), passing health care (the GOP idea for an exchange with mandate, modeled after Romney's plan for MA) and expanded local oil and gas drilling. That's going to continue if he is re-elected. Anyone thinking otherwise, isn't thinking rationally.
So, if there are still any fence sitters out there or people leaning Romney, I'd like an answer of what exactly he is going to do (based on what he has said) if he is elected and why this (ahem) uncertainty is preferred.
Friday, October 26, 2012
Thursday, October 25, 2012
Yep, That's Why
I love the last line...I'm not quite sure which Governor Romney we would be getting, either, General Powell.
The Perennial Question
The question always asked when an incumbent president is running for a second term is, "Are we better off than we were four years ago?" Though the economic numbers are up and down week to week, but they've been on a pretty steady upward trajectory for a long time now.
For example, Amazon is planning to hire 50,000 workers for the Christmas season, and will keep thousands of those workers permanently. Macy's, Walmart, Target, Kohl's and other big retailers are also expected to hire hundreds of thousands of workers. The Fox Business News report says that hiring during the 2012 season is expected to reach the highest level in at least five years. Which means that demand, consumer expectations, disposable income are all up, and that increased activity may well snowball.
Real estate closures have continued a steady downward pace; we're now at the lowest rate since Q4 2007. Housing starts are up and the real estate market is starting to come back. Housing values are starting to come back, with the Q3 2012 posting the largest increase since 2006.
The stock market has been hovering near record high territory for a while now, nearly double what it was at the start of Obama's first term.
Unemployment is coming down steadily. Romney claims he'll reduce unemployment to 6.1% by 2016, but that's the number that the CBO says will happen given Obama's policies.
Britain's GDP is up, as the UK exits a double-dip recession. This should help the US economy as well, because when our trading partners do well we American exports also improve.
The British double dip is especially instructive. It was caused by budgetary belt-tightening, the exact course Republicans recommended the United States follow. President Obama was able to stave off the worst, but if Republicans hadn't stymied his programs the economy would have improved even more.
Since Romney's and Ryan's economic plan is a rehash of Bush's failed policies of lower taxes on the rich, eliminating regulations on businesses that are already playing fast and loose with the rules, and more spending on defense, with a dash of heartless "let Detroit fail" and insane "let's bomb Iran and Syria," it's clear that another four years of Obama would mean steady growth, while Romney would simply dig another deep hole and bury us in it.
For example, Amazon is planning to hire 50,000 workers for the Christmas season, and will keep thousands of those workers permanently. Macy's, Walmart, Target, Kohl's and other big retailers are also expected to hire hundreds of thousands of workers. The Fox Business News report says that hiring during the 2012 season is expected to reach the highest level in at least five years. Which means that demand, consumer expectations, disposable income are all up, and that increased activity may well snowball.
Real estate closures have continued a steady downward pace; we're now at the lowest rate since Q4 2007. Housing starts are up and the real estate market is starting to come back. Housing values are starting to come back, with the Q3 2012 posting the largest increase since 2006.
The stock market has been hovering near record high territory for a while now, nearly double what it was at the start of Obama's first term.
Unemployment is coming down steadily. Romney claims he'll reduce unemployment to 6.1% by 2016, but that's the number that the CBO says will happen given Obama's policies.
Britain's GDP is up, as the UK exits a double-dip recession. This should help the US economy as well, because when our trading partners do well we American exports also improve.
The British double dip is especially instructive. It was caused by budgetary belt-tightening, the exact course Republicans recommended the United States follow. President Obama was able to stave off the worst, but if Republicans hadn't stymied his programs the economy would have improved even more.
Since Romney's and Ryan's economic plan is a rehash of Bush's failed policies of lower taxes on the rich, eliminating regulations on businesses that are already playing fast and loose with the rules, and more spending on defense, with a dash of heartless "let Detroit fail" and insane "let's bomb Iran and Syria," it's clear that another four years of Obama would mean steady growth, while Romney would simply dig another deep hole and bury us in it.
Geography 101
As a social studies teacher, I'm frustrated and perplexed that people haven't wondered if Mitt Romney is qualified to be president having such a poor understanding of Middle Eastern geography.
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
They Just Can't Control Themselves
Just when Mitt Romney was putting the campaign on cruise control for the last two weeks, another crazy Tea Party guy lost control and opened his yap about rape again. Richard Mourdock, the Republican candidate for Senate in Indiana, has out-Akined Todd Akin by saying that God intends rape victims to become pregnant:
This kind of thinking is incoherent, considering that conservatives so commonly believe that predisposition to certain behavior is genetic and/or racial. Why do they want to force women to bear the spawn of men so evil they should be put to death? Can't they understand why some women wouldn't want to bear the child of the monster that violated them? Would these conservatives want their daughters to raise such a child as their own? Would they trust the safety of their childen with the spawn of a rapist?
I don't believe for a moment that all children of rape are doomed to become monsters, but it's a fact that predisposition to mental illness can be inherited. Shouldn't a woman be allowed to protect herself and her other children against that possibility if she so chooses, in exactly the same way she should be able to choose to purchase a handgun to protect herself against future rapists?
Mourdock is the Tea Party guy who beat out Dick Lugar (Dick Lugar!) because Lugar wasn't conservative enough. Men like Akin and and Mourdock are becoming the rank and file of the Republican Party, and the ouster of conservative-but-not-crazy men like Lugar has put all other Republicans on notice that they had better toe the line or they'll be next.
These men and the other Republicans already in Congress are the best argument yet for voting for Barack Obama. There's no way in hell Romney would veto the kind of legislation that Akin and Mourdock will push through Congress. If Romney doesn't do as he's told, he'll suffer the same fate as Dick Lugar.
Conservatives have grudgingly acquiesced to voting for Romney, but only because they have Paul Ryan skulking around with a dagger in his hand, like Brutus shadowing Caesar on the Ides of March.
[...] Mourdock said Wednesday that he is standing by his statement that when a woman becomes pregnant during a rape "that's something God intended." He says some people have twisted the meaning of his comment.Here's Mourdock trying to "untwist" the meaning of his comment:
"I struggled with it myself for a long time, but I came to realize that life is that gift from God. And, I think, even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen," Mourdock said.I'm not sure how anyone can interpret this in any way other than, "God wanted that woman pregnant so he sent a rapist after her."
"I think that God can see beauty in every life," Mourdock said. "Certainly, I did not intend to suggest that God wants rape, that God pushes people to rape, that God wants to support or condone evil in any way."If Mourdock and other conservatives who oppose abortion in cases of rape and incest truly believe that God sees beauty in every life, then why do they support expanding the death penalty? In particular, one wonders whether Mourdock favors the death penalty in cases of rape, which was the norm decades ago. Several states, including Louisiana, South Carolina, Texas and Oklahoma, had or were considering the death penalty in cases of child rape, but the Supreme Court outlawed the death penalty for child rape (absent murder) in 2008, over the objections of conservative justices Alito, Roberts, Scalia and Thomas.
This kind of thinking is incoherent, considering that conservatives so commonly believe that predisposition to certain behavior is genetic and/or racial. Why do they want to force women to bear the spawn of men so evil they should be put to death? Can't they understand why some women wouldn't want to bear the child of the monster that violated them? Would these conservatives want their daughters to raise such a child as their own? Would they trust the safety of their childen with the spawn of a rapist?
I don't believe for a moment that all children of rape are doomed to become monsters, but it's a fact that predisposition to mental illness can be inherited. Shouldn't a woman be allowed to protect herself and her other children against that possibility if she so chooses, in exactly the same way she should be able to choose to purchase a handgun to protect herself against future rapists?
Mourdock is the Tea Party guy who beat out Dick Lugar (Dick Lugar!) because Lugar wasn't conservative enough. Men like Akin and and Mourdock are becoming the rank and file of the Republican Party, and the ouster of conservative-but-not-crazy men like Lugar has put all other Republicans on notice that they had better toe the line or they'll be next.
These men and the other Republicans already in Congress are the best argument yet for voting for Barack Obama. There's no way in hell Romney would veto the kind of legislation that Akin and Mourdock will push through Congress. If Romney doesn't do as he's told, he'll suffer the same fate as Dick Lugar.
Conservatives have grudgingly acquiesced to voting for Romney, but only because they have Paul Ryan skulking around with a dagger in his hand, like Brutus shadowing Caesar on the Ides of March.
We Are Drilling, Baby, Drilling
From AP News yesterday...
US may soon become world's top oil producer.
Driven by high prices and new drilling methods, U.S. production of crude and other liquid hydrocarbons is on track to rise 7 percent this year to an average of 10.9 million barrels per day. This will be the fourth straight year of crude increases and the biggest single-year gain since 1951.
Fourth straight year...wait a minute! I thought the president was blocking oil drilling. Well, there goes another lie. Speaking of BS...
The increase in production hasn't translated to cheaper gasoline at the pump, and prices are expected to stay high relatively high for the next few years because of growing demand for oil in developing nations and political instability in the Middle East and North Africa. Still, producing more oil domestically, and importing less, gives the economy a significant boost.
That's right. And how is it helping the economy again?
Businesses that serve the oil industry, such as steel companies that supply drilling pipe and railroads that transport oil, aren't the only ones benefiting. Homebuilders, auto dealers and retailers in energy-producing states are also getting a lift.
But I thought the president was destroying our economy. It's getting better?
Hmm....
US may soon become world's top oil producer.
Driven by high prices and new drilling methods, U.S. production of crude and other liquid hydrocarbons is on track to rise 7 percent this year to an average of 10.9 million barrels per day. This will be the fourth straight year of crude increases and the biggest single-year gain since 1951.
Fourth straight year...wait a minute! I thought the president was blocking oil drilling. Well, there goes another lie. Speaking of BS...
The increase in production hasn't translated to cheaper gasoline at the pump, and prices are expected to stay high relatively high for the next few years because of growing demand for oil in developing nations and political instability in the Middle East and North Africa. Still, producing more oil domestically, and importing less, gives the economy a significant boost.
That's right. And how is it helping the economy again?
Businesses that serve the oil industry, such as steel companies that supply drilling pipe and railroads that transport oil, aren't the only ones benefiting. Homebuilders, auto dealers and retailers in energy-producing states are also getting a lift.
But I thought the president was destroying our economy. It's getting better?
Hmm....
And There Goes The Senate
If there was any whiff at all that the GOP had a chance for the Senate, it is now completely gone.
What's the deal these guys and rape? Sheesh...
And will this hurt Mitt Romney considering this?....
What's the deal these guys and rape? Sheesh...
And will this hurt Mitt Romney considering this?....
Religious Correctness
Conservatives moan and groan about political correctness all the time, but "religious correctness" is far more endemic in this country
It's often stated that the United States is the most religious nation in the developed world. That is, we have more religious people, and we attend church in droves: typically 45% of Americans say they attend church weekly. However, as a story by Shankar Vedantam on NPR reports, if we really were that religious, the pews would be packed. And that's just not so.
Philip Brenner, a University of Massachusetts Boston professor, published a study on this two years ago. Instead of asking people whether they went to church, Brenner got a detailed time diary from participants. Because they weren't being directly asked, they forgot to lie about going to church.
The study found that only 23% of Americans attend church regularly, which is defined as two or three times a month. That's completely in line with other advanced countries like Europe. But the studies found that Europeans don't lie about it: 10% of Swedes and 45% of Irish say they attend church, and 10% of Swedes and 45% of Irish indicate that time spent in their time diaries.
What does this say about Americans? Are we hypocrites and liars? Why would we lie about going to church if we really believed that God was watching our every move? Brenner says that Americans answer falsely not because they're lying, but because they perceive the question to be about what kind of person they are: they are essentially saying, "I'm a good person and good people go to church." Vendantam equates this to lying about whether you exercise or floss your teeth.
I'm not so charitable. There's something wrong with a country when people feel forced to lie about church attendance. Perhaps it's a holdover from the McCarthy era, when conservatives portrayed atheists as evil agents of the Soviet Union. It's ironic that people in bad, old Europe are freer than Americans to tell the truth.
Conservatives bitch about political correctness because they feel it restrains their freedom to perpetuate racist and sexist stereotypes, and in general say bad things about other people. But religious correctness is the other side of the same sword: many Americans feel forced to lie for fear of being attacked by the very same people who complain so loudly and bitterly about political correctness.
It's often stated that the United States is the most religious nation in the developed world. That is, we have more religious people, and we attend church in droves: typically 45% of Americans say they attend church weekly. However, as a story by Shankar Vedantam on NPR reports, if we really were that religious, the pews would be packed. And that's just not so.
Philip Brenner, a University of Massachusetts Boston professor, published a study on this two years ago. Instead of asking people whether they went to church, Brenner got a detailed time diary from participants. Because they weren't being directly asked, they forgot to lie about going to church.
The study found that only 23% of Americans attend church regularly, which is defined as two or three times a month. That's completely in line with other advanced countries like Europe. But the studies found that Europeans don't lie about it: 10% of Swedes and 45% of Irish say they attend church, and 10% of Swedes and 45% of Irish indicate that time spent in their time diaries.
What does this say about Americans? Are we hypocrites and liars? Why would we lie about going to church if we really believed that God was watching our every move? Brenner says that Americans answer falsely not because they're lying, but because they perceive the question to be about what kind of person they are: they are essentially saying, "I'm a good person and good people go to church." Vendantam equates this to lying about whether you exercise or floss your teeth.
I'm not so charitable. There's something wrong with a country when people feel forced to lie about church attendance. Perhaps it's a holdover from the McCarthy era, when conservatives portrayed atheists as evil agents of the Soviet Union. It's ironic that people in bad, old Europe are freer than Americans to tell the truth.
Conservatives bitch about political correctness because they feel it restrains their freedom to perpetuate racist and sexist stereotypes, and in general say bad things about other people. But religious correctness is the other side of the same sword: many Americans feel forced to lie for fear of being attacked by the very same people who complain so loudly and bitterly about political correctness.
Campaign Speak
Jonathan Chait has another great take on the momentum bluff coming from the Romney campaign.
Obama’s lead is narrow — narrow enough that the polling might well be wrong and Romney could win. But he is leading, his lead is not declining, and the widespread perception that Romney is pulling ahead is Romney’s campaign suckering the press corps with a confidence game.
A confidence game...that's right. In fact, they now say they are going to win handily! Why?
This is a bluff. Romney is carefully attempting to project an atmosphere of momentum, in the hopes of winning positive media coverage and, thus, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.
If there's one thing that the Right have in abundance, it's hubris...and it's often very unwarranted hubris. You can always see this if one looks more closely.
If you look closely at the boasts emanating from Romney’s allies, you can detect a lot of hedging and weasel-words. Rob Portman calls Ohio a “dead heat,” which is a way of calling a race close without saying it’s tied. A Romney source tells Mike Allen that Wisconsin leans their way owing to Governor Scott Walker’s “turnout operation.” That is campaign speak for “we’re not winning, but we hope to make it up through turnout.”
Over the last week, Romney’s campaign has orchestrated a series of high-profile gambits in order to feed its momentum narrative. Last week, for instance, Romney’s campaign blared out the news that it was pulling resources out of North Carolina. The battleground was shifting! Romney on the offensive! On closer inspection, it turned out that Romney was shifting exactly one staffer. It is true that Romney leads in North Carolina, and it is probably his most favorable battleground state. But the decision to have a staffer move out of state, with a marching band and sound trucks in tow to spread the news far and wide, signals a deliberate strategy to create a narrative.
If this is all his campaign is going to be for the next two weeks, I have to say that I'm relieved. Momentum? That's it?
One other thing to note...when a campaign starts talking about another campaign "resorting to blah blah blah" because they are in trouble, it's the opposite that is actually true.
Obama’s lead is narrow — narrow enough that the polling might well be wrong and Romney could win. But he is leading, his lead is not declining, and the widespread perception that Romney is pulling ahead is Romney’s campaign suckering the press corps with a confidence game.
A confidence game...that's right. In fact, they now say they are going to win handily! Why?
This is a bluff. Romney is carefully attempting to project an atmosphere of momentum, in the hopes of winning positive media coverage and, thus, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.
If there's one thing that the Right have in abundance, it's hubris...and it's often very unwarranted hubris. You can always see this if one looks more closely.
If you look closely at the boasts emanating from Romney’s allies, you can detect a lot of hedging and weasel-words. Rob Portman calls Ohio a “dead heat,” which is a way of calling a race close without saying it’s tied. A Romney source tells Mike Allen that Wisconsin leans their way owing to Governor Scott Walker’s “turnout operation.” That is campaign speak for “we’re not winning, but we hope to make it up through turnout.”
Over the last week, Romney’s campaign has orchestrated a series of high-profile gambits in order to feed its momentum narrative. Last week, for instance, Romney’s campaign blared out the news that it was pulling resources out of North Carolina. The battleground was shifting! Romney on the offensive! On closer inspection, it turned out that Romney was shifting exactly one staffer. It is true that Romney leads in North Carolina, and it is probably his most favorable battleground state. But the decision to have a staffer move out of state, with a marching band and sound trucks in tow to spread the news far and wide, signals a deliberate strategy to create a narrative.
If this is all his campaign is going to be for the next two weeks, I have to say that I'm relieved. Momentum? That's it?
One other thing to note...when a campaign starts talking about another campaign "resorting to blah blah blah" because they are in trouble, it's the opposite that is actually true.
An Opposite Reality
Things are always interesting behind the scenes here at Markadelphia. Take, for instance, a discussion Nikto and I had the other day about what he called my hand wringing and doubt about the election a couple of weeks back after the first debate. He reminded me that the Right laps up shit like this like a toothless old man slurping his soup. It didn't quite hit me right away what he was talking about. until I read this piece and then thought about the quote I put up here recently from Charles Bukowski
The problem with the world is the intelligent people are full of doubts while the stupid ones are full of confidence.
You'd think after all this time of me talking about "Managing Fantasies," I wouldn't fall for their line of BS in my attempts to be thoughtful and fair. But I did. The fact is, folks, the president is the favorite in this election and this whole idea that Mitt Romney has momentum going into the last two weeks is completely false. Tomasky explains.
And yet the conventional wisdom is congealing right now—it is hardening this morning, minute by minute—that Romney is going to win the election. From Playbook, which distills the c.w.: President Obama won last night’s foreign-policy debate on substance, in snap polls and with the pundits, but Mitt Romney did well enough that for the first time in six years, Romney folks emailed, “We’re going to win.”
In reality, Obama is the favorite. The state maps still make him so. Nate Silver, the only person who takes every single poll into account (plus loads of other indicators), still has him so. This emerging c.w. is built more on spin and smell, which the media are starting to buy.
Ah, yes. The "liberal media." These are the same ones that love high ratings so, of course, the race has to be close and the "Mittmentum" meme plays into this quite well. Amusing, considering this concept is all about feelings, things that my friends on the right assure me have no bearing in their thought process.
One piece that Mike Allen bought this morning in that Playbook item: A Romney aide told him New Hampshire leans their way. Ridiculous. Even RCP has Obama +3 in New Hampshire. A poll yesterday had him up nine. He’s never trailed there. It’s been a fight, true, but he is clearly on course to win it. But the Romney aide just threw it out there. Not blaming him or her—it’s the kind of thing you throw out when you want to start giving an impression of inevitability. But that is what the Romney team is trying now to do. (It’s up to journalism, of course, to say when something doesn’t seem true.)
Right. So they have to start saying that it isn't true if they want to be honest.
And so, after their side’s third consecutive debate loss, conservatives are the ones feeling confident. They are creating a reality. They’re talking up Romney’s supposedly unstoppable momentum now that he’s survived the debates without making one of those Gerry Ford-style goofs (that’s the bar now for the presidency?). They’re tweeting things about Silver, sharpening their knives, contemplating his November 7 takedown. They’re not quite measuring the drapes, but they’re getting their rulers out of storage.
Creating a reality...that's just what they do. They sense doubt or worry in liberals and then they pounce. The hand wringing begins and then "not reality" becomes reality. Of course, if they end up being wrong, so what? Remember, there is no "being wrong" in their world. That whole being wrong thing is for liberals. When they are wrong, the simply harumph, make up a load of bullshit, and pretend that they were actually right...sort of like Mitt Romney has been doing since Debate #1.
The undecided voter (and even the conservative one) has to ask themselves...is this really the guy you want to vote for? At least you know what you would be getting with the president...more economic recovery, a plan to actually reduce the debt and manage the deficit, robust national security, and firm solutions to health care, education, energy, and immigration. Mitt Romney offers none of these things because he's changed his position so many times on all of them. Tomasky concurs.
Conservatives know all this. But they’re constructing an opposite reality. This is at the heart of everything going on right now, I think. It’s what they can do that liberals can’t really do. They've always done it. “Romney is going to win” in 2012 isn’t so different from “We’ll be hailed as liberators” in 2003. They say something and try to make it so, and the media go for it time and time again.
This is what’s maddening to liberals about what Romney has done since the first debate. He’s constructed a new reality about himself and he’s gotten away with it, mostly. Specifically, it’s that he’s flip-flopped on all these things without the remotest hint of acknowledgement that the old positions even existed.
So, for the next two weeks, people (and especially the media) have to stop falling for it. Democrats have to stop the needless worrying and get to work to get out the vote. The electoral math says the president is the favorite to win this election with feelings not entering into the equation at all. Let's make sure he does and then some. In addition...
What should Obama do? Well, Republicans want to make Democrats fearful and jittery and reactive—appear to be accepting the Republican premise. So basically, anything but that. These next two or three days will be crucial, and if the Democrats do seem fearful and reactive, they’ll help the new c.w. congeal and maybe help seal a fate that the facts don’t yet come close to foreordaining.
Recognize their BS for what it is: the last gasp of a shrinking voting bloc.
The problem with the world is the intelligent people are full of doubts while the stupid ones are full of confidence.
You'd think after all this time of me talking about "Managing Fantasies," I wouldn't fall for their line of BS in my attempts to be thoughtful and fair. But I did. The fact is, folks, the president is the favorite in this election and this whole idea that Mitt Romney has momentum going into the last two weeks is completely false. Tomasky explains.
And yet the conventional wisdom is congealing right now—it is hardening this morning, minute by minute—that Romney is going to win the election. From Playbook, which distills the c.w.: President Obama won last night’s foreign-policy debate on substance, in snap polls and with the pundits, but Mitt Romney did well enough that for the first time in six years, Romney folks emailed, “We’re going to win.”
In reality, Obama is the favorite. The state maps still make him so. Nate Silver, the only person who takes every single poll into account (plus loads of other indicators), still has him so. This emerging c.w. is built more on spin and smell, which the media are starting to buy.
Ah, yes. The "liberal media." These are the same ones that love high ratings so, of course, the race has to be close and the "Mittmentum" meme plays into this quite well. Amusing, considering this concept is all about feelings, things that my friends on the right assure me have no bearing in their thought process.
One piece that Mike Allen bought this morning in that Playbook item: A Romney aide told him New Hampshire leans their way. Ridiculous. Even RCP has Obama +3 in New Hampshire. A poll yesterday had him up nine. He’s never trailed there. It’s been a fight, true, but he is clearly on course to win it. But the Romney aide just threw it out there. Not blaming him or her—it’s the kind of thing you throw out when you want to start giving an impression of inevitability. But that is what the Romney team is trying now to do. (It’s up to journalism, of course, to say when something doesn’t seem true.)
Right. So they have to start saying that it isn't true if they want to be honest.
And so, after their side’s third consecutive debate loss, conservatives are the ones feeling confident. They are creating a reality. They’re talking up Romney’s supposedly unstoppable momentum now that he’s survived the debates without making one of those Gerry Ford-style goofs (that’s the bar now for the presidency?). They’re tweeting things about Silver, sharpening their knives, contemplating his November 7 takedown. They’re not quite measuring the drapes, but they’re getting their rulers out of storage.
Creating a reality...that's just what they do. They sense doubt or worry in liberals and then they pounce. The hand wringing begins and then "not reality" becomes reality. Of course, if they end up being wrong, so what? Remember, there is no "being wrong" in their world. That whole being wrong thing is for liberals. When they are wrong, the simply harumph, make up a load of bullshit, and pretend that they were actually right...sort of like Mitt Romney has been doing since Debate #1.
The undecided voter (and even the conservative one) has to ask themselves...is this really the guy you want to vote for? At least you know what you would be getting with the president...more economic recovery, a plan to actually reduce the debt and manage the deficit, robust national security, and firm solutions to health care, education, energy, and immigration. Mitt Romney offers none of these things because he's changed his position so many times on all of them. Tomasky concurs.
Conservatives know all this. But they’re constructing an opposite reality. This is at the heart of everything going on right now, I think. It’s what they can do that liberals can’t really do. They've always done it. “Romney is going to win” in 2012 isn’t so different from “We’ll be hailed as liberators” in 2003. They say something and try to make it so, and the media go for it time and time again.
This is what’s maddening to liberals about what Romney has done since the first debate. He’s constructed a new reality about himself and he’s gotten away with it, mostly. Specifically, it’s that he’s flip-flopped on all these things without the remotest hint of acknowledgement that the old positions even existed.
So, for the next two weeks, people (and especially the media) have to stop falling for it. Democrats have to stop the needless worrying and get to work to get out the vote. The electoral math says the president is the favorite to win this election with feelings not entering into the equation at all. Let's make sure he does and then some. In addition...
What should Obama do? Well, Republicans want to make Democrats fearful and jittery and reactive—appear to be accepting the Republican premise. So basically, anything but that. These next two or three days will be crucial, and if the Democrats do seem fearful and reactive, they’ll help the new c.w. congeal and maybe help seal a fate that the facts don’t yet come close to foreordaining.
Recognize their BS for what it is: the last gasp of a shrinking voting bloc.
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