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GOP On Health Care: ‘Let Them Eat Cake’

Republican Senator Chuck Grassley (IA) had a bit of difficulty when asked about health care reform at a recent townhall meeting.

See for yourself:

To recap:

After sharing his family’s personal struggle with the burden of high health care costs, an audience member asked, “My question is… why is your insurance so much cheaper than my insurance and so better than my insurance?”

The question made Grassley cranky.

He responded, first, by suggesting the questioner “go work for John Deere,” since they “don’t pay anything” for their insurance plan.

When the questioner refused to let the senator wriggle out of answering the question, Grassley revealed how little he knew about his own insurance plan.

Another audience member had to help the senator out by describing the details of the plan. After she finished, the original questioner again asked, “Okay, so how come I can’t have the same thing you have?”

Grassley’s response: “You can. Just go work for the Federal government.”

[Emphasis added]

Well, that’s one way to cover the 45 million uninsured Americans–create 45 million new federal jobs with health benefits and then hire all of them to work for the government.

Of course, it would be quite expensive to pay 45 additional salaries plus health benefits.  If only someone had a plan that would provide those 45 million uninsured Americans with health coverage without having to hire them to work for the federal government…

In all seriousness, though, keep in mind that Sen. Grassley and every other Republican in Congress all get publicly-funded health care. So they have no problem accepting public health care for themselves and their families, yet they’ll fight tooth and nail to prevent those same benefits from being extended to all Americans.

The GOP has theirs, so why should they worry about the millions of Americans with no health insurance or not enough health insurance? While the Democrats try to reform health care, the GOP is content to sit back and yell ‘let them eat cake!’

No wonder these guys are the minority…

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The GOP’s Unhealthy Obsession: Lying About Health Care Reform (UPDATED)

DENY

There is a lot of misinformation and garbage talking points on health care reform being spread around by conservatives.  But, despite all the sound and the noise, there doesn’t seem to be a single worthwhile argument against health care reform buried anywhere in there.

Republicans claim–falsely–that a public option would result in the “rationing” of health care. But what is rationing?

ra⋅tion

1. a fixed allowance.

2. an allotted amount.

By that definition, isn’t health care already rationed? Health care isn’t unlimited–first, whether or not you even have health insurance depends on where you work and how much money you have. And both of those influence the quality of coverage you can get.

Second, even if you have the means to get health insurance, the insurance companies can still deny you coverage for a variety of reasons–a pre-existing condition, for instance.

Third, even if you have health insurance, insurance companies can deny your claim for a particular medical treatment for a variety of reasons.  So, even if you are covered you might not be able to get the treatment you need.

Health insurance companies make a profit by denying as much coverage as possible to as many people as possible; their entire business model is centered around rationing.

Conservatives also argue–falsely–that a public option would put “government bureaucrats” between citizens and their doctors in terms of making health care decisions.

Yet, bureaucrats are already between people and their doctors–instead of being government bureaucrats whose jobs are to serve the American people, it’s private health industry bureaucrats whose jobs are to try to deny you as much health care as they can. That is how they make money, after all.

Conservatives are also asking where the money for health care reform is going to come from, claiming a plan including a public option would cost somewhere between $1.5 and $2 trillion.

Of course, that crowd includes a fair number of newly-minted deficit hawks who didn’t seem to care very much when George Bush and the Republican Congress were spending huge amounts of money on utterly frivolous things.

Where were these guys when Bush was pushing his $1.6 trillion tax cut package through Congress? Why weren’t any of these conservatives complaining about the cost of the Iraq War, which will cost us nearly $3 trillion?

Of course health care reform will be expensive–it’s going to help insure tens of millions of Americans who are currently going without health care.  The question isn’t simply how much it will cost, but whether or not the benefit is worth it.  For instance, to an average middle-class family buying a house is incredibly expensive, but the benefit they receive from that purchase justifies the cost.

Plus, we already pay a significant portion of what health care reform would cost in other ways–our salaries are lower because our employers have to pay greater health care costs.  We pay more in taxes to help support overburdened hospitals that have to treat a large number of uninsured Americans.  We pay higher health insurance  costs and premiums to a veritable monopoly with no competition and massively-high prices, which would be challenged and kept honest by a public health insurance option.

I wonder just how much of that $1.5-$2 trillion would come from costs that the American people already pay in some form or another?

On one hand, conservatives–falsely–claim that a public health care plan would be massively inefficient, resulting in long waits for treatment,  reduced choice in doctors, limited treatment options, etc.

But on the other hand, they claim that  the public option will drive the private insurance industry out of business.  That’s right–they claim that public option will be terrible, but so many people will opt into it that the entire private health insurance industry will go bankrupt.

They also claim that private insurance will go out of business because it’s impossible for a private entity to compete with a government program.  Except:

I immediately thought of the U.S. Postal Service. Here’s a government-run service that can deliver a paper document to any remote location you choose for 42 cents.  They can also deliver packages quickly and at a very competitive rate. Impressive.

But even with this efficiency the “public option” for package delivery has a number of healthy competitors. There’s FedEx (started in 1971 as Federal Express), DHL (founded in 1969), UPS (founded in 1907) among others.

Somehow, despite the government-run program, these private delivery services have managed to survive by offering customers something they found worthy of their business.

Conservatives don’t want to admit it, but America is facing a health care crisis.  Costs are rising because there’s nobody to compete with the insurance industry. Tens of millions of Americans go without health insurance for themselves and their families, relying on overburdened, understaffed hospitals to be their first–and last–resort in the event of injury or illness.  The time for change has come, yet conservatives are content to simply drag their feet and say “No.”

UPDATE: And keep in mind that there is already a public option for health care–it’s just restricted to members of Congress. That’s right–every member of Congress currently receives taxpayer-funded, government-provided health insurance.

So any Senator or Representative who opposes a public health insurance option is a complete and utter hypocrite, unless they put their money where their mouth is and reject their free government health care in favor of buying private insurance out-of-pocket.

But I guess those are conservatives for you–they have no problem accepting free government handouts hand-over-fist when it benefits them and their families, but will fight tooth and nail to prevent those same benefits from being extended to regular, everyday Americans.

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Iran Isn’t About Us (UPDATE)

THEM

Conservatives are hitting President Obama over Iran, arguing that he should be doing more to support the opposition there. I bristle at the politicization of the situation in Iran because, ultimately, what the Iranian people are going through isn’t about us, it isn’t about American politics and we shouldn’t be making it about us.

First off, I find it pretty disingenuous for conservatives–who spent years calling for the United States to bomb Iran–to suddenly show so much concern for the Iranian people. As Glenn Greenwald pointed out a few days ago:

During the presidential campaign, John McCain infamously sang about Bomb, Bomb, Bomb-ing Iran. The Wall St. Journal published a war screed from Commentary’s Norman Podhoretz entitled “The Case for Bombing Iran,” and following that, Podhoretz said in an interview that he “hopes and prays” that the U.S. “bombs the Iranians.” John Bolton and Joe Lieberman advocated the same bombing campaign, while Bill Kristol — with typical prescience — hopefully suggested that Bush might bomb Iran if Obama were elected. Rudy Giuliani actually said he would be open to a first-strike nuclear attack on Iran in order to stop their nuclear program.

[…]

Advocating a so-called “attack on Iran” or “bombing Iran” in fact means slaughtering huge numbers of the very same people who are on the streets of Tehran inspiring so many — obliterating their homes and workplaces, destroying their communities, shattering the infrastructure of their society and their lives.

Second, like I said, this isn’t about us. It’s about Iran and the Iranian people. The uprising in Iran is really two simultaneous conflicts–the fist is pro-democracy demonstrators facing off against an oppressive government. To that extent, Obama has done what should be expected of a President of the United States—he spoke out in favor of democracy, in favor of free speech and free assembly, and denounced the Iranian government for their violent, brutal crackdown against their own people.

But there’s another conflict here that conservatives are not seeing or not acknowledging–the political conflict over the disputed election. The major players in Iran’s unrest are the ruling party and the opposition party. That’s partially why Obama hasn’t done what conservatives want and side with the demonstrators—that would, in effect, be telling the Iranian people who their next president should be.

One of the basic tenets of democracy is that sovereign states should be able to hold elections without interference. The Iranian people have a right to decide—as much as they are allowed to—who should govern them; it’s not the job of the United States (or anyone else) to declare winner.

Iran’s election occurred, was stolen, and resulted in violence. But, in the end, this is still an Iranian political dispute, though a decidedly violent one. Iran–and only Iran–should determine the course their country takes. They have that right, and Obama has said from the start he isn’t going to take that right away from them.

Honestly, if Iran’s conflict didn’t involve a disputed election, I too would be criticizing Obama for not doing more. But the fact that the core of this fight is about who will run Iran makes it infinitely more complex.

Third, if Iran’s opposition wanted America to get involved they would ask us to. Mousavi and his movement are the center of the world’s attention at the moment; they have a large microphone at their disposal. Yet, we’re not hearing the opposition call for the United States to get involved. As the National Iranian American Council says,

People in Iran have told NIAC’s Iranian-American membership that they don’t want the US to get itself involved in the conflict, but they do want to see the government’s use of violence condemned

[...]

If America’s posture returns to that of the Bush administration, these indigenous forces for change may be quelled by the forces of fear and ultranationalism

I trust the opposition to understand more than anyone how American involvement would affect their movement. The the fact that they haven’t called on Obama to do what conservatives say he should do is telling.

Fourth, it’s funny how conservatives–who like to dismiss Barack Obama as nothing but lofty rhetoric–are now suddenly believers in the power of a speech. But even if Obama did what conservatives wanted and spoke out in favor of the opposition, nothing would change. The opposition would still demonstrate; the government would still crack down; the situation would be as bloody and violent as it currently is if not moreso. As it is, the Iranian government is trying to portray the protesters as puppets for America and the West; if Obama came out fully on the side of the opposition, it would vindicate those paranoid, conspiratorial fantasies and justify even more violence and murder. Obama taking the opposition’s side would do little to help but a lot to hurt; the opposition knows this and that’s why they aren’t asking for Obama’s support.

As an additional note, conservatives are outraged that the administration is going ahead with a planned diplomatic meeting with Iranian representatives on July 4th. But that shouldn’t be surprising or controversial—Obama has always said that America shouldn’t talk only to its friends and that diplomacy shouldn’t be a reward for good behavior. And Obama’s foreign policy was the one chosen by the American people last November.

And how idiotic is it that conservatives are calling for Obama to make a speech, which would accomplish very little, yet they attack him for wanting to engage iwth Iranian diplomats, even though that would actually give us a chance to affect Iran’s polity. And for anyone who would claim that a despotic, terrorism-supporting nation cannot be changed through diplomacy, all I have to say is: Libya.

The arrogant conservatives who would have America further meddle in Iranian affairs don’t know what they’re talking about; they’re the same arrogant conservatives who engineered the Bush administration’s failed, disastrous foreign policy. Iran isn’t about us. It isn’t about Barack Obama or the Democrats or the Republicans; it’s about Iran and the Iranian people. If you truly believe in democracy, then you must believe that the Iranians should decide their own fate instead of having America decide it for them.

UPDATE: Super special note to Sen. John McCain: you lost the election. Get over it.

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BREAKING: Sen. Ensign Admits Affair (UPDATED)

See those Republican family values in action:

Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) has acknowledged an extramarital affair with a campaign staffer in a statement released by his office. “I deeply regret and am very sorry for my actions,” said Ensign.

[...]

The affair, which was with a woman who worked for both Ensign’s re-election campaign and his Battle Born leadership political action committee, began in December 2007 and ended in August 2008.

Of course, Ensign opposes same-sex marriage–in 2006, he voted for a constitutional amendment that would have banned it.  In 2004, Ensign took to the Senate floor and said:

Marriage recognizes the ideal of a father and mother living together to raise their children. Marriage is the cornerstone on which our society was founded.

[...]

I would simply point out that marriage, and the sanctity of that institution, predates the American Constitution and the founding of our nation. Marriage, as a social institution, predates every other institution on which ordered society in America has relied.

So John Ensign believes in the “sanctity of marriage” enough to want to deny same-sex couples the right to marry, but not so much that he won’t have an extramarital affair with a campaign staffer. Hypocrite, much?

And keep in mind that John Ensign isn’t just another Republican Senator–he’s the former Chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee and serves as the 4th highest-ranking Republican in the United States Senate.

I wonder what Ensign’s Republican colleagues think of his interpretation of the “sanctity of marriage”?

UPDATED: And the sanctimony and hypocrisy continue:

During the height of the scandal surrounding Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky, the Nevada Republican denounced the president’s conduct as “an embarrassing moment for the country.”

I think we have to feel very sad for the American people and Hillary and Chelsea,’ he said.

Weeks later, Ensign would call on Clinton to resign. “I came to that conclusion recently, and frankly it’s because of what he put his whole Cabinet through and what he has put the country through,” he was quoted saying at the time. “He has no credibility left,” he added.

[...]

In fact, not only did Ensign envision the Lewinksy affair as a political boon for Republicans, he actively made it an issue in his campaign against Reid. At one point during the campaign, Ensign accused his opponent of having a double standard when it came to politicians and sexual dalliances. Reid, he argued, had been much tougher on former Sen. Robert Packwood — who resigned from the Senate under allegations of sexual harassment — than he was with Clinton.

[Emphasis mine]

So, according to John Ensign himself:

  • This is an embarrassing moment for the country.
  • John Ensign has no credibility left.
  • John Ensign has to resign.

You heard it from the horse’s mouth, folks.

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Palinomics 101

Here’s a fun headline from The Huffington Post:

Palin: Obama Wants To “Control The People” With Bailout Money

According to the Governor of Alaska, the government is spending money on people in order to control them.

Of course, in Alaska every citizen gets an annual $1,000 check from the government courtesy of the Alaska Permanent Fund, which is fed by the state’s oil tax revenues.

So, according to Sarah Palin, it’s bad when the government spends money to create jobs, but it’s good when the government just cuts you a big fat check. And sending your citizens big fat checks courtesy of the government is somehow consistent with the Republican economic philosophy.

Sarah Palin 2012! Because consistency is for losers!

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BREAKING: Obama Picks Sotomayor For SCOTUS (UPDATED X6)

President Barack Obama has nominated Judge Sonia Sotomayor, of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, to replace David Souter as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court.

A few things to keep in mind:

  • Judge Sotomayor has a strong history of bipartisan support–she was nominated to her current position by President Bill Clinton; before that, she was nominated to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York by President George H. W. Bush.
  • This makes Sonia Sotomayor more bipartisan than John Roberts, who was nominated to the D.C. Circuit court by George W. Bush, who then nominated him to the Supreme Court.
  • This also makes Judge Sotomayor more bipartisan than Samuel Alito, who was nominated for the Third Circuit Court of Appeals by President George H. W. Bush and nominated to the Supreme Court by President George W. Bush.
  • When George W. Bush was making court appointments, conservatives claimed that the Senate’s constitutional duty to provide “advice and consent” on judicial nominees meant that they could only oppose a court nominee if he/she were unqualified, not due to ideological differences. Conservatives also claimed that filibustering judicial nominees was unconstitutional, demanding a definitive “up or down” vote on all nominees. When the possibility of a Democratic filibuster arose, Republicans threatened to eliminate the filibuster entirely for this very reason.
  • No matter who President Obama nominated–whether he chose a judge with broad bipartisan support like Sotomayor or someone more ideological–conservatives were going to call that nominee a “liberal” and an “activist judge.” Conservatives aren’t interested in determining whether or not Judge Sotomayor is fit to serve (since she undeniably is); they’re interested in smearing her for no other reason than the fact that she was appointed by a Democratic President.
  • UPDATE: Another important point: Judge Sotomayor has been a member of the federal judiciary longer than any other sitting Supreme Court Justice had at the time of their nomination.

UPDATE: The only solid criticism conservatives have been able to make about Sotomayor was her ruling that the City of New Haven could throw out its promotional test for firefighters and start over with a new test, since the city believed the test had a “disparate impact” on minority firefighters and they feared that those minority firefighters could sue.

That doesn’t exactly seem like a slam-dunk disqualifier to me or doctrinaire liberal ruling to me. Frankly, if that’s the most Republicans can criticize Sotomayor on then I don’t think she or President Obama have much to worry about.

UPDATE II: Here’s more proof that Judge Sotomayor, contrary to the right’s talking points, is not some kind of hard-line far left doctrinaire liberal:

  • In Center for Reproductive Law and Policy v. Bush, Judge Sotomayor voted to uphold the Bush administration Mexico City policy, which requires foreign organizations receiving U.S. funds to “neither perform nor actively promote abortion as a method of family planning in other nations,” as constitutional.
  • Judge Sotomayor dissented in Pappas v. Giuliani, claiming that the NYPD could not terminate an employee from his desk job for sending racist materials through the mail, since the First Amendment protects speech by the employee “away from the office, on [his] own time,” even if that speech was “offensive, hateful, and insulting.”

In other words, contrary to what the GOP would have you believe, Judge Sotomayor seems like a fair-minded legal scholar with significant respect for the Constitution and the rule of law.

UPDATE III: And let’s keep in mind some of John Roberts’ and Samuel Alito’s more controversial rulings before they were appointed to the Supreme Court:

  • In Hedgepeth v. Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, Roberts ruled that it was constitutional for police to strip-search a 12-year-old girl for violating the Washington Metro’s zero-tolerance policy toward eating food in subway stations.
  • In Doe v. Groody, Alito claimed that it was constitutional for police to strip-search a mother and her 10-year-old daughter while they were carrying out a search warrant for the house they lived in.
  • In Chadwick v. Janecka, Alito held that that there was “no federal constitutional bar” to the “indefinite confinement” of a man imprisoned for civil contempt because he claimed he could not pay his $2.5 million debt to his wife.

I doubt you could nominate someone to the Supreme Court who doesn’t have some kind of controversial opinion or ruling in their past.

Yet, Congress has confirmed nominees with some objectionable rulings/opinions to the Supreme Court. Just because Republicans can find one or two of Sotomayor’s opinions they disagree with doesn’t–and shouldn’t–disqualify her from serving on the Supreme Court.

UPDATE IV: The following eight Republican Senators voted to confirm Sotomayor for the Second Circuit Court of Appeals:

Bennett (Utah)
Cochran
Collins
Gregg
Hatch
Lugar
Snowe
Specter (has since switched to the Democrats)

In other words, the GOP won’t be able to defeat Sotomayor’s nomination without several instances of stunning legislative hypocrisy.

UPDATE V: MSNBC just talked to Senator Orrin Hatch, one of the eight Republicans who voted to confirm Judge Sotomayor in 1998. He brought up two points that I think need to be dealt with:

Sonia Sotomayor was only nominated to the federal bench by George H. W. Bush so that Senate Democrats would confirm one of Bush’s more conservative nominees.

Regardless, Sonia Sotomayor was nominated to the federal bench by a Republican President. Every judicial nomination is affected politics and political calculations, but George H. W. Bush still thought Sotomayor was accomplished, qualified, and had the appropriate temperament and respect for the rule of law to serve as a federal judge.

While some Republican Senators voted to confirm Judge Sotomayor to the Second District Court of Appeals, that court is far less important than the Supreme Court; thus, Sotomayor now should be held to different standards.

Actually, I’d argue that federal courts of appeal are extraordinarily important considering that the Supreme Court only accepts about 1% of the cases that are brought before it. In other words, federal courts of appeal are far more often the last resort for major constitutional cases than the Supreme Court.

I’m not claiming that every federal appeals court judge is automatically qualified to be a Supreme Court justice, but it’s pretty appalling for Republicans to claim they only voted to confirm Sonia Sotomayor because the Second Circuit Court of Appeal wasn’t worth their opposition.

UPDATE VI: And the RNC boneheadedly sent their Sotomayor talking points to the press, so feel free to take a gander at their playbook for sinking the Sotomayor nomination.

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Closing Guantanamo (UPDATED X2)

Once again, the GOP is engaging in blatant dishonesty–this time about the President’s plan to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center and relocate its inmates.

The Republicans pretend like the Obama administration is proposing to just dump these guys off on a corner in Duluth or something is some of the most idiotic, willfully dishonest garbage I’ve ever heard. We Democrats are proposing putting these guys in supermax prisons, which are the most secure prisons in the world designed to house the worst of the worst; anyone who talks about releasing Guantanamo detainees “on American soil” or “into our communities” is misleading the public.

One of Dick Cheney’s main points today was that Guantanamo detainees are nothing like anyone we’ve ever dealt with before–but that’s just not true. America has been imprisoning terrorists in supermax prisons for decades: domestic terrorists like Eric Rudolph, Timothy McVeigh, Terry Nichols and Ted Kaczynski have all been kept in supermax.

We’ve also been holding Islamic jihadists in supermax prisons–Ramzi Yousef and Omar Abdel-Ragman, the men behind the 1993 WTC bombing, are in supermax prisons. So is 9-11 plotter Zacarias Moussaoui and Abdul Hakim Murad, an Al-Qaeda terrorist who planned to shoot 12 airlines out of the sky within a 48-hour period. And in the decades those men have been in supermax prisons, none of them have escaped, organized another terrorist attack, etc.

Republicans also pretend like we’ve never released anyone from Guantanamo before. In fact, before leaving office the Bush administration released nearly 500 Guantanamo detainees. In other words, George W. Bush released more people from Guantanamo than are currently being kept there. So why is moving detainees out of Guantanamo suddenly so controversial?

And, arguably, the Bush administration was more reckless in removing detainees from Guantanamo than the Obama administration will be–take this article from mid-January:

Six detainees were released from the U.S. military’s detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the Department of Defense said Saturday.

Four of the men were transferred to Iraq, one to Algeria and one to Afghanistan, a military spokesman said.

[Emphasis mine]

So George W. Bush sent Guantanamo detainees back to the countries they came from, while Barack Obama wants to try them in American courts and put them in American prisons, which are the most secure in the world. You tell me–would you rather Guantanamo detainees be sent back to their home countries and have God knows what happen to them, or would you rather see them put on trial and incarcerated somewhere they will never leave?

The last stupid talking point I’ve heard is that, if you put Guantanamo detainees in American prisons, they’ll “radicalize” the prison population. But we’re talking about putting them in supermax prisons, which are nothing like the prisons you see on TV: supermax prisoners have very little contact with one another. They’re kept in tiny cells for 23 hours a day and are given only one hour of exercise in small, solitary exercise rooms.

Plus, jihadists are already kept in a separate area of the prison for just that reason:

A correctional officer at ADX told me that inmates are placed on the same range based on their compatibility. Another clue as to why jihadists are housed together comes from Bureau of Prisons director Harley Lappin’s 2003 testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee. He said that his department’s strategy was to ensure that “inmates with terrorist ties do not have the opportunity to radicalize or recruit other inmates.” They are kept at ADX because, he noted, it’s “our most secure facility.”

[Emphasis mine]

In other words, nothing has changed–the Republicans are still as misleading and dishonest as ever. Once again, Republicans are playing political games with America’s national security and–to use their phrasing–undermining the President during wartime. Nobody who was part of (or even supported) the Bush administration can be trusted on this issue–shuttering Guantanamo while preserving America’s national security would be a huge blow to Bushism as a national security strategy, which is why Republicans are fighting so hard to make sure that Guantanamo stays open. It’s classic, craven, conservative CYA.

UPDATE: As for the “nobody will take Guantanamo detainees” argument–well, like I said, the supermax facility in Florence, Colorado, already houses Islamic terrorists.

Plus, there’s the town of Hardin, Montana:

Economic development officials in Hardin are looking at the soon-to-close detention facility in Guantanamo Bay as a possible fix for the jail sitting empty in Hardin.

[...]

Meanwhile, a 460-bed detention facility sits empty in Hardin. Built by Two Rivers Authority, the city’s economic development arm, the facility was meant to bring economic development to Hardin by creating more than 100 high-paying jobs.

While leaders continue to look for contracts to open the jail, which was completed in 2007, people in Hardin have approached Two Rivers executive director Greg Smith saying they have the answer: Get the contract to hold those prisoners from Guantanamo.

[...]

The Hardin City Council voted Tuesday to support Two Rivers’ efforts.

The council resolution states that the city “fully supports the efforts of the Two Rivers Authority to contact State and Federal officials for the purpose of inquiring into the possibility of housing Guantanamo detainees at the Two Rivers Authority in Hardin, Montana, and to determine whether the Two Rivers Detention Center could provide a safe and secure environment for housing said detainees.”

UPDATE II: As most of you have probably heard, the FBI recently broke up a terror plot being assembled by a group of homegrown Muslim converts.

The FBI went undercover in order to bust the plot, successfully foiling it before any damage could be done or any harm brought upon American citizens.

The alleged perpetrators have been arrested and will be tried in American courts; if guilty, they will be put in high-security American jails.

Most importantly, nobody had to be tortured or waterboarded for this plot to be prevented.  Event though this plot involved an impending terrorist attack on American soil, it was the FBI, not the CIA or the Pentagon or anyone like that, who stepped in and kept America safe.

Even though these men are jihadists who wish to wage war against the United States, none of them will be thrown in Guantanamo Bay. They are going to be tried under American law and, when convicted, placed in America’s most secure jails; personally, I hope they end up in Florence’s supermax facility.

What this shows us is that both torture and Guantanamo Bay are unnecessary. We are fully capable of investigating and foiling terrorist attacks and incarcerating those responsible without having to break our laws or sacrifice our values.  Whenever the GOP drags out their talking points about torture or Guantanamo, keep this story in mind.

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GOP “Class” & “Dignity”

I almost missed this little gem from RNC Chair Michael Steele’s speech yesterday:

While promising a more aggressive approach, Steele also insisted that Republicans will show “class” in countering Obama.

“We are going to take this president on with dignity. This will be a very sharp and marked contrast to the shabby and classless way that the Democrats and the far left spoke of President Bush.”

Ladies and gentlemen, courtesy of last month’s tax day tea parties, here’s the GOP’s “class” and “dignity”:

CLASS1

CLASS2

CLASS4

CLASS7

CLASS8

CLASS9

CLASS3

CLASS5

CLASS6

I eagerly await either Michael Steele’s explanation of how this constitutes class and dignity, or his full-throated denunciation of the tea party protests in the name of class and dignity.

Of course, in the interest of living, I won’t hold my breath.

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On Corporate Tax Cheats (UPDATED)

So today the Obama administration revealed their plan to close corporate tax loopholes and shutter offshore tax shelters in order to make it harder for American corporations to avoid paying their fair share in taxes. If implemented, the administration’s plan would generate $210 billion in additional tax revenue.

Conservatives are, of course, up in arms about this. Many of them are claiming that American corporations pay enough in taxes as it is and that tightening up tax laws could lead to American companies moving overseas to take advantage of comparatively lower corporate tax rates. In fact, many conservatives point to Ireland as one such country with a low corporate tax rate.

Let’s deal with the Ireland fallacy first, just because that’s a talking point that comes up pretty often. Even though Ireland has a lower corporate tax rate than the U.S., corporate tax revenue makes up a larger share of their GDP than it does for us. How is this? Well, Ireland doesn’t have all the tax loopholes that the U.S. has, making it harder for their corporations to avoid paying their taxes. Remember, politics doesn’t happen in a vacuum–part of the reason why our corporate tax rate is so high because companies use loopholes to avoid paying their fair share in taxes. In order to recoup the revenue we lose to offshore tax shelters and the such, we have to raise the corporate tax rate. As a corollary, if we closed the loopholes that allow offshore tax shelters to exist, we would be collecting more corporate tax revenue and thus could afford to cut the corporate tax rate without losing any revenue.

But I digress. More importantly, conservatives are being massive hypocrites in opposing the Obama administration’s plan. First, they raise fears that American companies–if pressured to pay the money they owe–may relocate overseas to more corporate-friendly locales. Yet, these are the same conservatives who supported free trade economic policies that led to millions of American jobs being shipped overseas. So conservatives apparently have no problem with a corporation shipping millions of good middle-class jobs overseas as long as that company can rent a room in the Caymans and claim to be incorporated in the U.S.

Second, Republicans have been attacking the Obama administration’s spending almost since day 1, even holding (sparsely-attended) protests to criticize his spending policies. Yet they oppose a plan that would recoup $210 billion dollars in additional revenue; go figure.

Third, conservatives railed against several Obama administration appointees for failing to pay their taxes on time–Tim Geithner and Tom Daschle come to mind–yet they have no problem with American corporations ducking their taxes and bilking the American people out of hundreds of billions of dollars a year.

This is the problem with the conservative outrage-a-day machine, though–they find something new to be mad about every day at the cost of contradicting themselves time and time again. This is why nobody takes the GOP seriously anymore–when you spend day after day scrounging for assorted reasons to attack your political opponents, you eventually lose all credibility. Plus, I don’t think that many people have all that much sympathy for corporations at the moment, particularly ones that abuse the tax system to avoid paying their fair share.

So I say, go Obama. Close the loopholes and get us the money we’re owed. $210 billion is nothing to sneeze at, and according to the laws of this country that money is rightfully owed to the American people. If our corporations don’t like it, they’re free to set up shop in Ireland, where none of these tax loopholes exist anyway.

UPDATE: Hypocrisy #4– conservatives complain about how complex the tax code is, but then turn around and say things like this:

[CNBC's Erin Burnett]: That’s right. Isn’t it your obligation in this country – there is a tax code for a reason, to take advantage of every bit of it you can and pay as little as you can.

The truth is, conservatives love the complicated tax code because it gives wealthy corporations loopholes they can use to avoid paying the taxes they owe.

But, you know, conservatives are right–let’s be more like Ireland. We can start by following President Obama’s lead and eliminating all the loopholes corporations use to avoid paying their taxes.

And since we’ll be collecting more corporate tax revenue as a result of closing those loopholes we can afford to lower the corporate tax rate while pulling in the same revenue we do now.

Of course, I won’t hold my breath waiting for the GOP to get on board with that plan…



Paranoia Paranoia Everybody’s Coming To Get Me (UPDATED 2X)

[Don't call it a comeback.]

A funny thing happened just a few weeks into the Obama administration–conservatives seem to have gone a bit off their rockers, so to speak.

For instance, the Department of Homeland Security finished a report analyzing the growth of–and threat from–”rightwing extremism” within the United States. You think that examining various political movements to determining whether or not they’ve become radicalized and pose a threat to the United States would be a good use of DHS’ time; I seem to remember a radical political movement killing quite a large number of Americans just a few years ago.

Unsurprisingly, though, conservatives went apoplectic over the report–apparently they decided that “rightwing extremist” referred to them and concluded that this was part of a grand conspiracy by the Obama administration to silence them.

As usual, our conservative friends aren’t exactly in touch with reality. Reports like this aren’t unprecedented–they’re not even uncommon. In fact, DHS they released a similar report on “leftwing extremism” back in January, and that report was commissioned by President Bush back when he was in office. Oh, and Bush’s FBI investigated left-wing groups that were “active in causes as diverse as the environment, animal cruelty and poverty relief” back in 2005. And Bush’s Department of Energy released a report in 2001 called “Left-Wing Extremism: The Current Threat.”

Yes, sometimes the government investigates domestic political movements for signs of violence, radicalism and extremism. In fact, that’s part of the reason DHS was created in the first place–to protect America from threats within her borders. And, honestly, if you read a government report about political radicalism and extremism and see yourself in it, the problem isn’t the government–it’s you.

Just remember, DHS was created by a Republican administration with the consent of a Republican-controlled Congress; the power they wield stems directly from Republican governance. As Glenn Greenwald said,”When you cheer on a Surveillance State, you have no grounds to complain when it turns its eyes on you.”

UPDATE: Oh goody:

House Republicans are calling on Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to step down or be fired in the wake of a controversial department memo that has sparked indignant battle cries from conservatives and some veterans.

“Singling out political opponents for working against the ruling party is precisely the tactic of every tyrannical government from Red China to Venezuela,” said Texas Rep. John Carter, a member of the party’s elected leadership who has organized an hour of floor speeches Wednesday night to call for Napolitano’s ouster. “The first step in the process is creating unfounded public suspicion of political opponents, followed by arresting and jailing any who continue speaking against the regime.”

This is becoming comical–it seems like every day conservatives find some new reason to crank the outrage up to 11 and break off the knob.

Yes, we get it–you’re unhappy you lost the election and that there’s a Democrat in the White House. But hell, this is already a dog-bites-man story: “CONSERVATIVES DISLIKE DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENT; HIS POLICIES.” How long until everyone just starts tuning your constant poutrage out?

UPDATE II: Look at me, I’m a prophet–I wrote this in August of 2007:

In college, my favorite professor was a conservative, a fourteen-year veteran of the Air Force and a big George W. Bush supporter; he taught my favorite course in college, which was on military force and foreign policy.

Despite the fact that he was a pro-Bush conservative, he was extremely wary of all the new powers being given to–and taken by–the President. This puzzled some of the more conservative students in the class, who asked him why he felt that way.

His response? You could trust George W. Bush with extraordinary amounts of power–he certainly did–but that didn’t matter. What mattered was, will you be able to trust the next President, and the President after that, with the same powers? Because once you give more power to the executive branch, it’s notoriously hard to take away–you’ve set a precedent.

And he was absolutely right. I don’t think many conservatives understand exactly what they’re doing—they’re not giving power to George W. Bush, they’re giving power to the Presidency itself. So if we wake up on January 20th, 2009 to see the inauguration of President Hillary Clinton, she will have access to all the power, all the privilege, all the authority that George W. Bush has right now.

So, Republicans, next time you try to prop up your failing Presidency by throwing in a little more Executive power, ask yourself this question—would I trust Hillary with this? Or Barack? Or John Edwards?

Don’t say I didn’t warn you, conservatives.

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‘It’s All Barack Obama’s Fault!’

Back during the ‘90’s, when our economy was growing like never before, Republicans attributed that economic growth to Reagan, not Clinton–according to them, the performance of the economy had nothing to do with the occupant of the White House at the time, even several years into his administration.

Similarly, when George Bush took office and a recession began soon after, Republicans claimed the bad economy had nothing to do with Bush—they claimed that he had “inherited” the “Clinton recession” (even though the recession began months after Bush took office). Again, conservatives claimed that the economy had nothing to do with the guy in the White House, even a substantial amount of time into his Presidency.

But now, in the Grand Old Hypocrite fashion, less than two months into his presidency, conservatives are saying that Barack Obama owns the economy. According to them, every economic problem is Obama’s, George Bush had nothing to do with it, and Obama’s failure to fix in 8 weeks days what the Republicans took 8 years to destroy proves that Obama is a poor president.

(Hell, some conservatives are even looking at the decline of the economy since Election Day, as if Barack Obama was responsible for how the economy performed months before he even took office.)

I just don’t get how some on the right can be so shameless. To assert—contrary to reality itself—that good economies are always created by Republicans and bad economies are always created by Democrats, regardless of who is in the White House or what policies they have implemented, just doesn’t make any sense. Conservatives have elevated blame-shifting and buck-passing to an art form in their latest machinations to avoid taking blame for the ruinous economy they created.

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Stupid Republican Tricks: Stock Market Edition

Here are some rules from Conservativeland when it comes to economic policy and the stock market:

  • The stock market reacts to the news coming out of Washington and nothing else.  If the market is going down, it’s because the entire financial sector disapproves of Washington’s economic policies.
  • Subsequently, the President of the United States is singlehandedly responsible for the performance of the stock market. There is a direct correlation between the President’s speeches/actions on any given day and how the stock market performs on that day.
  • The stock market is the only worthwhile measure of economic success. No other factor (the unemployment rate, inflation, GDP growth/loss, etc.) is even worth measuring or considering.

Now that a Democrat is in the White House, those are the rules governing how Republicans talk about the economy.  Kinda ridiculous when you actually sit down and spell them out, aren’t they?

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On Deficits And Popularity

Lately, I’ve been thinking about the well-funded tea partay movement being set up on the right.  Republicans seem to believe that, by focusing on the deficit and the national debt, they’re going to be able to win back support and retake the majority.  Of course, that’s if you assume that we’re all going to forget that it was Republican policies and a Republican President who necessitated that we spend so much money to bail out economy out in the first place.

But, honestly, are debts and the deficit that big of an issue? I don’t think so. First, the last the America wasn’t in debt was during Andrew Jackson’s administration.  People are used to the nation being in some astronomical amount of debt measured in larger amounts of money than most people could even imagine.  And even though partisans love to talk about how every man, woman and child in America owes [insert huge amount of money here] to pay off the national debt (and that’s people on both sides–I’m sure I’ve made that argument at some point myself), it’s a very weak argument.  See, nobody ever shows up and demands you fork over that huge amount of money.  Even when we are paying off the debt, that money comes from the taxes we’re all paying anyway.

Plus, the debt doesn’t have an impact on our daily lives.  And usually the reason America gets into more debt is economic troubles–i.e., things such as unemployment, inflation, etc. that do affect people’s lives.  For most people, then, racking up a bigger deficit to fix the economy is creating a very, very distant problem in order to fix a very, very immediate problem, and most people probably don’t mind a larger debt if it means they can feel secure that they won’t lose their job/house/health care.

Heck, if you want an example of America’s political apathy toward the national debt, look no further than Ronald Reagan himself.  Remember, Reagan tripled the national deficit during his years in office, yet he has become (particularly by supposedly deficit-hating Republicans) one of America’s top-rated former Presidents ever.

Just for kicks, here’s a graph:

debtg1

Now who’s remembered for having a better economy, Carter or Reagan? Reagan, of course.  But in terms of the national debt, Carter was better.  Does that change his legacy? No, nor should it.  It just illustrates that the national debt is not really a means by which the people judge economic success or failure.

Of course, debts matter–that money has to be paid off sometime by someone.  But the question isn’t always just how much money we’re spending, but what we get in return for that spending.  If we put our country in more debt now in order to grow the economy out of further debts later, is that investment worth it? Reagan tripled the national debt and yet, a little more than 10 years after he took office, our economy was ruined once again.  In light of that, it’s hard to imagine that all the right-wing carping about our current debts is going to cause any harm at all to the Obama administration.

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GOP Math Fail

Conservatives have been circulating this graph recently in order to allege that President Obama is singularly responsible for racking up huge deficits, larger even than the record-breaking deficits America incurred under George W. Bush:

deficit-graph

Of course, there’s one sentence on that graph conservatives like to either ignore or cover up, and that’s the “Note: Fiscal year ends Sept. 30.”

See, debts aren’t measured by calendar years (which goes from January 1 to December 31); they’re measured by fiscal years, which go from October 1 to September 30.  So the 2009 fiscal year started on October 1, 2008–just two weeks after the economic collapse and long before the Bush-sponsored TARP program made it through Congress.

George W. Bush was in office for only 20 days of calendar year 2009, but he was in office for four months of fiscal year 2009; he bears a larger responsibility for that huge debt up there than most conservatives would have you believe.

And, of course, it’s ridiculous for conservatives to complain about deficits at all considering that George Bush spent years setting record-breaking deficits–after inheriting a rec0rd-breaking surplus–and managed to double the national debt during his 8 years in office.

But you know what they say, it’s okay if you’re a Republican.

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Voter Fraud

They told me that if I voted for Obama, conservatives would be investigated…and they were right!:

The New York Daily News reports that Ann Coulter is under investigation by the Connecticut Elections Enforcement Commission for allegedly voting in that state while registered to vote in New York City.

Of course, the same Republicans who spent the fall hysterically hyping ACORN’s non-existent “voter fraud” have responded to this story with deafening silence.

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Holding Up Holder

Think about how ridiculous this is for a minute:

Republicans have centered their opposition to Holder on the claim, without much evidence, that, in fact, he’s likely to be a second Gonzo. Earlier this month in a speech on the Senate floor, ranking GOPer Arlen Specter laid out the argument:

Mr. Gonzales left office accused of politicizing the Justice Department, failing to restrain Executive overreaching, and being less than forthcoming with Congress … I am convinced that many of Attorney General Gonzales’ missteps were caused by his eagerness to please the White House. Similarly, when Mr. Holder was serving as DAG to President Clinton, some of his actions raised concerns about his ability to maintain his independence from the president.

So Arlen Specter and his Roadblock Republican buddies are worried that, since Clinton’s DOJ (where Holder served as Deputy Attorney General) wasn’t independent enough, Eric Holder could turn out to be another Alberto Gonzales, who was also not independent enough.

But remember, in 2005 Arlen Specter was Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which has the power to approve or deny Presidential Attorney General appointments.  Since Alberto Gonzales was a longtime Bush loyalist–having served as Bush’s legal counsel going all the way back to when he was Governor of Texas–why didn’t Specter use the  alleged problems with the Clinton DOJ to block his appointment?  I mean, Specter is the one who first made the comparison between Holder and Gonzales; how come he wasn’t making that same analogy to argue against crony Gonzales’ nomination?

Why do Specter & co. only seem to care about judicial independence when there’s a Democrat in the White House but have no problem with nepotism and cronyism when it’s a Republican in office? Maybe someone should ask Arlen Specter that at today’s hearing.

No matter what I guarantee Holder will be confirmed; he already has plenty of Republican support anyway.  But the hypocrisy of Specter and the Roadblock Republicans is worth mentioning, if for no other reason than to prove that some Republicans will go to any length to torpedo the Obama administration on any grounds possible.

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Surprise!

When the 2008 election was looming in the distance–and there was a Republican in the White House–Congressional Republicans voted to hand $700 billion over to the White House for a Wall Street bailout.

But now that the election is over–and now that there will be a Democrat in the White House–suddenly Congressional Republicans don’t like the bailout and want to block disbursement of the remaining funds.

Has the GOP fallen so far they’re only willing to be responsible when an impending election forces them to be? Or are they only willing to shovel huge amounts of money over to a Republican president? And isn’t it hypocritical for Republicans to demand oversight and accountability for the incoming Democratic administration when it was the outgoing Republican administration who squandered the money?

And–more to the point–is the Republican Party ever going to grow up and be responsible, or are they content to play political calvinball as their minority shrinks election after election?

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Full Collapse

Karl Rove’s attempted roadblocking of Eric Holder is already falling apart:

The former Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee will support Eric Holder’s nomination for attorney general, giving him a major boost toward confirmation.

Sen. Orrin Hatch (Utah), who chaired the panel for a decade beginning in 1995, told The Hill that he will support Holder.

[...]

Hatch said that Republicans should try to strike a cooperative tone with President-elect Obama during the first days of his administration.

“I start with the premise that the president deserves the benefit of the doubt. I don’t think politics should be played with the attorney general,” he said.

I like Barack Obama and want to help him if I can.

[Emphasis mine]

You’d think that, with only 41 Republican Senators, it would be pretty easy for the GOP to maintain some semblance of party unity.

But there’s no need to fear, Republicans. I’m sure Senator Specter will continue his principled stand in favor of the thorough vetting of nominees–

Hey, what’s this?

On December 24, 2000, two days after then President-elect Bush announced that he had selected John Ashcroft for Attorney General and three weeks before Ashcroft’s confirmation hearings, Specter went on Face the Nation and confidently predicted that Ashcroft would be confirmed by the Senate:

SCHEIFFER: Senator Specter, you’re on the Judiciary Committee. Can John Ashcroft be confirmed?

SPECTER: Yes, I think he can be, and will be. I think the president is entitled to great latitude in the selection of his Cabinet officers. And I know John Ashcroft very well. He’s a first-rate lawyer. He was attorney general of Missouri.

Well, that could easily have been taken out of context–

A day before Ashcoft’s hearings began on January 16, 2001, Specter told a reporter for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, “I’ve said publicly that unless something comes up which is extraordinary, that I do intend to vote for him.

But maybe–

Similarly, on January 17, 2001, Wolf Blitzer asked Specter, “you have made up your mind, basically, already, haven’t you?” Specter responded, “I have said that unless something unusual happens, I will support John Ashcroft.”

[All emphasis mine]

And let’s not forget that–five years later–Specter, then Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, shepherded Alberto Gonzales though his nomination process despite the fact that Gonzales was a longtime Bush crony and had no independence whatsoever from the President.

Arlen Specter’s opposition to Eric Holder–and all of the GOP’s bluster on his nomination–are perfect examples of pure partisan hackery.  I’m glad at least some decent Republicans like Orrin Hatch can see it for what it is and won’t take part in it.

There is simply no way you can compare  the GOP’s behavior on Holder, Ashcroft and Gonzales and not see huge, glaring contradictions between how they treated Bush’s appointees and how they plan on treating Obama’s.

Something tells me that leveling naked partisanship and hypocrisy toward an extremely popular President-elect won’t help the Republicans find their way back to the majority anytime soon.

This isn’t GOP 2.0.  This isn’t even GOP 1.0.  This is GOP beta–sloppy, disorganized, hypocritical and completely out of touch.

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Joe The Bluster

Sam “Joe the Plumber” Wurzelbacher, commenting on war reporting from Israel:

“I’ll be honest with you. I don’t think journalists should be anywhere allowed war. I mean, you guys report where our troops are at. You report what’s happening day to day. You make a big deal out of it. I-I think it’s asinine. You know, I liked back in World War I and World War II when you’d go to the theater and you’d see your troops on, you know, the screen and everyone would be real excited and happy for’em. Now everyone’s got an opinion and wants to downer–and down soldiers. You know, American soldiers or Israeli soldiers. I think media should be abolished from, uh, you know, reporting. You know, war is hell. And if you’re gonna sit there and say, ‘Well look at this atrocity,’ well you don’t know the whole story behind it half the time, so I think the media should have no business in it.”

[Emphasis added]

Obviously Wurzelbacher doesn’t think nobody should be allowed to report on wars, otherwise he wouldn’t be  in Israel milking his fifteen minutes.  He just thinks  war reporting should be restricted to people with certain opinions–apparently he doesn’t understand the difference between journalism and propaganda. Hey, maybe that’s why they have journalism schools.

Of course, the most brilliant part of this is that he’s attacking media outlets for reporting from war zones…after being sent by a media outlet to report from a war zone.

Sadly, that’s modern conservative punditry for you, where “nobody else should be allowed to do what I’m allowed to do; only people with certain opinions should speak; reporters shouldn’t be allowed to report” is considered smart and insightful.

It’s going to be a long few years…

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Down The Memory Hole

Surprise surprise, all of a sudden Republicans are becoming deficit hawks:

Out of power, Republicans appear to be retreating to familiar old ground. They’re becoming deficit hawks again.

GOP lawmakers didn’t seem to mind enjoying the fruits of government largesse for the past eight years while one of their own was in the White House. Now they’re struggling to regain footing at a time of economic rout, a record $1.2 trillion budget deficit and an incoming Democratic president claiming a mandate for change.

It might not be the best time for running against more government spending. But that hasn’t stopped Republicans from casting themselves as protectors of the public purse, striving for relevancy as Congress tackles President-elect Barack Obama’s stimulus legislation.

[Emphasis mine]

George W. Bush almost never met a spending bill he didn’t like.  When he took office, we had a $236.2 billion surplus; now we have a $1.2 trillion deficit.  Under his watch, the national debt doubled.

Now that President-elect Obama and the Democrats are trying to fix this mess, suddenly Republicans care about deficits. It’s like the last eight years didn’t happen; like the plague of Republican incompetence, mismanagement and self-defeating economic policies was all just a terrible dream.  The same conservatives who championed Bush’s policies of tax cuts + spending are suddenly ripping into Obama’s policies of tax cuts + spending. It’s more than bizarre.

Just look at what Jonah Goldberg wrote in the spring of 2004:

In other words, when the economy hits a rocky patch, most experts agree that the government should either cut taxes, increase spending or both in order to stimulate the economy. A personal financial consultant wouldn’t object to a truck driver going into temporary debt to get his broken truck fixed, and pretty much all economists, liberals and conservatives alike, don’t object to borrowing in order to restart economic growth.

[Emphasis added]

Funny, I hear a lot of progressives having to make that very point to newly-minted conservative deficit hawks. But there’s a huge difference between Bush’s deficits and Obama’s–Bush racked up huge deficits because Republicans wanted to have their cake and eat it too; they wanted to have their tax cuts and their massive government spending all at the same time.  Obama, on the other hand, is going to rack up deficits in order to fix our economy and clean up the mess the Republicans made.

Of course, I wouldn’t expect anything different from Republicans, who seem intent on changing their political postitions more than they change their socks. But I can’t imagine they’re going to win over a lot of support by running against economic recovery.

And I’m not the only one:

“It’s hard to oppose fixing the economy right now,” said Stanley Collender, a former congressional budget analyst now with Qorvis Communications, a Washington consulting firm. Collender said the depth of the crisis makes it difficult for fiscal conservatives in either party “to say that deficits are something that should be addressed right now.”

“If you say that, you kind of lose credibility,” Collender said.

“Losing credibility” is what the GOP has been doing for years now; I guess they’ve at least been consistent on that front.

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Specter’s Game

Pennsylvania’s senior Senator has Attorney General-designate Eric Holder in his sights:

The senator, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, who is the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, said Mr. Holder’s support of the White House’s stance on three contentious issues when he was deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration suggested that he was too willing to do the president’s bidding.

[...]

Mr. Specter raised questions about Mr. Holder’s role as deputy attorney general on a range of issues that included an investigation into the 1993 federal siege in Waco, Tex., that left David Koresh and about 80 of his Branch Davidian followers dead, and an espionage investigation involving a nuclear scientist, Wen Ho Lee.

But he saved his sharpest criticism for Mr. Holder’s role as deputy attorney general in three controversies in Mr. Clinton’s second term: Mr. Clinton’s pardon of Mr. Rich in 2001, the president’s decision in 1999 to grant clemency to 16 members of a Puerto Rican militant nationalist group, and the Justice Department’s rejection in 1997 of an independent counsel to examine accusations of campaign finance abuse by Vice President Al Gore and the White House. In each case, Mr. Specter said, Mr. Holder appeared to go against the advice of career professionals at the Justice Department.

So the GOP is going to dust off a slew of decades-old trumped-up right-wing scandals in order to attack someone who was only marginally involved in each.

First, trying to use the above scandals to determine whether or not Holder can be “independent” from the President is pretty ridiculous, since Holder wasn’t Bill Clinton’s Attorney General; he was the Deputy Attorney General. Whether or not some of those incidents happened because the DoJ wasn’t independent enough from Clinton is a reflection on Attorney General Reno, not Eric Holder; all the GOP can really prove here is that Holder did his job, hardly a filibuster-worthy revelation

Second, Specter is trying to insist that the Attorney General have a certain level of independence from the President.  But, in 2005, Specter voted to confirm Alberto Gonzales as George W. Bush’s second Attorney General, even though Gonzales was a Bush loyalist who had served as Bush’s legal counsel ever since he was Governor of Texas. In fact, Specter was Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee during Gonzales confirmation; at the confirmation hearings, he raised exactly zero concerns about Gonzales’ independence.  The double standard here doesn’t speak particularly well toward Specter’s integrity.

Third, we all know why Specter is doing this–he’s desperate to burnish his conservative creds. Specter will be up for re-election in 2010 and is facing a primary challenge from Club for Growth President Pat Toomey, who nearly defeated Specter in 2004. Specter is trying to redeem himself among conservatives by leading the charge against Holder. Plus, since Holder will be confirmed no matter what, Specter can gain some points without having to actually accomplish anything.

Yeah, I know our politics is often functions as the incumbent protection racket, but I just wish guys like Specter wouldn’t put good public servants like Eric Holder and Barack Obama through the ringer just to save their own skins.

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Mr. Coleman Goes To Court

Surprising exactly nobody, Norm Coleman is challenging the results of the Minnesota recount in court:

Republican Norm Coleman, who received 225 fewer votes than DFLer Al Franken in the U.S. Senate recount, will challenge the result in court. He told reporters at a state Capitol news conference that a lawsuit, known as an election contest, would proceed.

[...]

Coleman, whose Senate term ended on Saturday, began the recount on Nov. 19 with a 215-vote lead. His attorneys have said they believe he would have prevailed if the board had reviewed 650 absentee ballots they say may have been wrongly rejected, along with up to 150 ballots they say were counted twice and 133 Minneapolis votes that were counted using election day machine results after the ballots couldn’t be found during the hand recount.

It’s funny that Coleman is going to fight this for as long as he can, considering:

I guess quitting in the name of healing and unity is only a good idea if you’re a Democrat, huh?

But Coleman won’t concede and we all know why: he has nothing to lose.  Even if he accomplishes nothing but ingratiating himself to the Republican establishment, it will have been worth it.  As Nate Silver said,

Norm Coleman doesn’t have much of a future in electoral politics. Defeated Presidential candidates sometimes have nine lives, but defeated Senatorial candidates rarely do, and in his career running for statewide office, Coleman has lost to a professional wrestler, beaten a dead guy, and then tied a comedian. He doesn’t have much to lose by fighting this to its bitter conclusion.

The longer Coleman fights, the longer the Senate Democratic caucus goes without their 59th member.  And the fiercer he fights, the more he delegitimizes Franken and undermines him as a United States Senator.

In the end, both of those are good for the Republican Party. So if Norm fights hard enough, he might get rewarded with a nice bit of right-wing welfare to help him round out his days in Washington.  Because if we’ve learned nothing else from all this, it’s that Norm Coleman is Norm Coleman’s favorite special interest group.

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The Panetta Precedent (UPDATED X3)

As is their style, conservatives are criticizing President-elect Obama’s choice of Leon Panetta as head of the CIA, citing his lack of intelligence and accusing him of being a “political hack.”

It’s true that Panetta doesn’t have intelligence experience. He served as a Congressman from California for 16 years, served as the White House Chief of Staff and went on to become Chancellor of the California State University system.

But there’s a precedent; there’s another instance when a political hack with no intelligence experience took the reigns of the CIA and did an outstanding job.

George H. W. Bush was appointed to head the CIA on January 30, 1976. He also had no intelligence experience to speak of, and—like Panetta—had only previously been a political hack: a Congressman for 4 years, a failed Senate candidate, UN Ambassador, RNC Chairman, etc.

In addition, Bush was appointed at a very difficult time in CIA history, right after the Church Committee’s revelations about illegal activities by the agency. But, in the end, Bush is widely credited with cleaning up the agency and boosting its morale.

In other words, you don’t necessarily need intelligence experience to be a good DCI. And, while people may argue that the world is more dangerous today than it was back then, I’d disagree: in 1976 we were in the midst of the Cold War, where the two most powerful nations in the world had massive nuclear arsenals aimed at one another at all times, where an intelligence failure–like what got us into the Iraq war–could have very well led to a global nuclear holocaust.

So, while conservatives might want to fight Panetta, they really don’t have a leg to stand on—unless they’re willing to completely rewrite history and throw George H. W. Bush under the bus.

UPDATE: Josh Marshall has more, including some skepticism of Sen. Feinstein’s and Sen. Rockefeller’s reluctance towards Panetta.

UPDATE II: Bayh’s on board with the Panetta pick.

UPDATE III: Feingold’s on board, too.

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180

John Yoo and John Bolton are strong believers in the “unitary executive” theory, which suggests that the President has the sole authority to interpret international law as he/she wishes, that the President can ignore the constitution if he/she deems it necessary to national security and that Congress has nearly no ability to limit the President’s powers, particularly during wartime.

Yoo and Bolton wrote an op-ed yesterday regarding Presidential powers.  In their op-ed, Yoo and Bolton call on President-elect Barack Obama to “restore the Senate’s treaty power.“  That’s right–these guys, who spent the past eight years arguing that the President has the authority to basically do whatever he damn well pleases, are now arguing that Congress needs greater authority over international affairs.

It’s classic IOKIYAR: when there’s a Republican in the White House, conservatives push the  “unitary executive” theory; when we have a Democratic President, they back checks and balances all the way.

We knew this would happen when a Democrat got elected–we knew the GOP would scramble to strip away all the authority they spent eight years shoveling onto George W. Bush.  I just didn’t expect it to be so soon, or so brazen–to go from “the President has nearly unlimited authority” to “the President needs to restore checks and balances” in a few short weeks is an ideological turnaround sharp enough to cause whiplash. The hypocrisy is astounding.

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Breaking The Roadblocks

President-elect Obama and Speaker Pelosi are meeting about passing an economic stimulus package through Congress:

President-elect Barack Obama will meet with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Monday as Congress prepares to reconvene and debate a massive recovery plan for the nation’s struggling economy, according to Democratic sources.

The face-to-face meeting between two of the nation’s top Democrats will be one of the president-elect’s first acts after relocating his family to a hotel in Washington over the weekend.

Sources said Obama and Pelosi will discuss the scope and timing of the economic recovery package, which Obama has said will be his first priority upon being sworn into office. Pelosi has said her goal is to have the legislation on the new president’s desk and ready to be signed on Jan. 20.

But that schedule appears increasingly likely to slip, as Republicans and conservative Democrats are raising concerns about the impact on the federal deficit of spending hundreds of billions on an array of projects with little vetting by Congress. Lawmakers now expect a spending package of between $675 billion and $775 billion.

Yeah, this will be deficit spending.  But according to basic Keynesian economics, deficit spending is necessary to help resolve recessions, particularly severe ones.  And once the economy is growing again and our government has a surplus we can afford to pay off the debt we incurred preventing greater economic catastrophe.  It’s like getting an emergency loan–you go into debt to stave off economic disaster, and once the crisis passes you can pay that debt off.

Of course, Mitch McConnell’s Roadblock Republicans–and, unfortunately, a few conservative Democrats–are trying to kill this stimulus package.  It’s funny how they had no problem forking over hundreds of billions to Wall Street bankers and CEOs, but when it comes to helping middle-class autoworkers or putting money back in the pockets of the American people they’re suddenly balking at the price tag.

It’s funny how they spent eight years supporting a President who almost never vetoed a single spending bill, a President who saw the national debt increase by nearly $5 trillion under his leadership, are now suddenly worried about the national debt just as a Democrat is about to move into the White House.

The Roadblock Republicans are willing to let our economy suffer for no other reason than they want to deny President Obama and the Democrats political success. The GOP’s obstruction for obstruction’s sake is absolutely dispicable. Our economy needs some serious help and tThe consequences of doing too little are far worse than the consequences of doing too much.  I hope President-elect Obama and Speaker Pelosi will succeed in breaking through Mitch McConnell’s roadblocks and getting our economy back on track.

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