The Nihilism Of The GOP
Joe Klein tells the truth:
The Daily Beast
I thought the phrase "for such a time as this" was somewhat elegant for the Wasilla wackjob. My mind strayed to The Merchant Of Venice and Jessica and Lorenzo. But a reader notes another reference:
For if you remain completely silent at this time, relief and deliverance will arise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish. Yet who knows whether you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” – Esther 4.14
Does the Tea Party want to disappoint their Queen in exile?
This really is an astonishing moment. They've ruled out sunsetting the ruinous Bush tax cuts; they've balked at a Grand Bargain; they've pushed the Democrats to produce a debt-ceiling plan that relies entirely on spending cuts ... and they still think they haven't won and haven't made their point.
And the fracas is only getting worse. Think Progress finds that 25 Republicans have publicly committed to voting no on Boehner's plan - but he can't win with more than 23 defections. Rand Paul is calling John McCain a "troll," after McCain called the Tea Partiers hobbitses; the two stars of the GOP candidates' field, Palin and Bachmann, have urged a defeat for Boehner, backed by Rush Limbaugh; CATO is adamant:
The “cuts” in the Boehner plan are only cuts from the CBO baseline, which is an assumed path of constantly rising spending. If Congress wanted to, it could require CBO to increase its “baseline” spending by, say, $5 trillion over the next decade. Then Boehner could claim that he was “cutting” spending by $5.9 trillion, even though his plan hadn’t changed. You can see that discretionary “cuts” against baselines don’t mean anything.
Michelle Malkin is whipping up hysteria in her trade-marked way:
Remember: When Democrats say “balanced approach,” they mean it’s up to the GOP to perform the downward dog yoga pose.
Meanwhile, the establishment is threatening to throw one Tea Party member, Jim Jordan, out of his safe seat. No they just mean what the British Tories mean: some revenue increases are essential for the debt to be tackled seriously, alongside big spending cuts. Some Republicans are balking at continued funding for, yes, Pell grants in the Boehner bill. These elephants are stampeding in different directions at once. Maybe Boehner has a few poisoned darts to shoot. But maybe he doesn't.
Well: they asked for it, didn't they? Meep meep ...
Michael Tomasky encourages Obama to raise the debt ceiling unilaterally:
[T]here are some legitimate legal questions surrounding the use of the 14th Amendment that could lead to political nightmares down the road, like an adverse decision from the Supreme Court. And after all, as long as the GOP controls the House, the odds would be at least decent that they actually would drum up some phony charges and impeach him, leading to a trial in the Senate. But in fact, this would in many ways be a gift to Obama. Calls for impeachment would likely perform the nifty trick of getting both left and center on his side, galvanizing his enervated left flank for battle heading toward reelection and persuading independents that the Republican Party needs to start holding its caucus meetings in rubber rooms (what, impeaching a president for ensuring the good credit rating of the United States?).
Ezra Klein, on the other hand, imagines a final compromise bill.
She waited till this afternoon to chime in, but she's as hostile to the establishment as Bachmann. The passive aggression is also super-Sarah:
“I respectfully ask these GOP Freshman to re-read this letter and remember us “little people” who believed in them, donated to their campaigns, spent hours tirelessly volunteering for them, and trusted them with our votes. This new wave of public servants may recall that they were sent to D.C. for such a time as this.”
And, as of the moment, the Speaker has had to delay the vote because he cannot control his own party. We will soon see who runs the GOP. I suspect it's less Boehner than Limbaugh.
From a new Neilsen report on Netflix and Hulu users:
Christina Warren checks in on the web-streaming wars:
Consumers often ask why they can’t just subscribe to HBO online. The answer is that the price that the market would bear for an online stand alone subscription, is in all likelihood less than what HBO is getting from cable and satellite companies in carriage and subscriber fees.
Nate Silver isn't sure. But he issues a warning to the GOP:
The risk for Republicans is that they exert so much influence on policy that the usual polarity of divided-government elections is reversed, and voters are as concerned about checking their influence as they are Mr. Obama’s.
Seth Masket says "no one knows who is winning or losing this thing":
Khitam Hamad, 12, whose face and body was burned after a car bomb, stands in a hallway during a class with other young victims of Iraq violence at a program operated by Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) on July 28, 2011 in Amman, Jordan. Khitam, who is from the Iraqi city of Fallujah was injured following a car bomb as she was walking with her sister. MSF has been running a reconstructive-surgery program for war-wounded Iraqis since August 2006. The program, which helps Iraqis irrespective of age or ethnic/religious background, has thus far attended to roughly 1,500 cases. MSF was forced to pull out of Iraq in 2004 due to the escalating violence in the country. Following the years of violence in the country, the state of medical care in Iraq is poor. There is a chronic shortage of doctors and nurses and much of the country's hospitals are using outdated and damaged equipment. By Spencer Platt/Getty Images.
Michael Grunwald wishes the press would include more background in their reports:
If the debt-limit debate had anything to do with reality, every story about it would include a few basic facts. Starting with: President Obama inherited a $1.2 trillion budget deficit. And: Republican leaders supported the tax cuts and wars that (along with the recession, another pre-Obama phenomenon) created that deficit. Also: Republicans engineered this crisis by attaching unprecedented ideological demands to a routine measure allowing the U.S. to pay its bills. Finally, Obama and the Democrats keep meeting those demands—for spending cuts, then for more spending cuts, and even for nothing but spending cuts—but Republicans keep holding out for more.
These are verifiable facts, not opinions. But since they aren’t new facts, and re-reporting them would make “GOP claims” about the crisis look, um, non-factual, they’re rarely mentioned, except as “Democratic claims.”
Rick Warren tweeted earlier this week that "HALF of America pays NO taxes. ZERO. So they're happy for tax rates to be raised on the other half that DOES." Joan Walsh fisks him. Kevin Drum dug up this chart from a Tax Foundation report (pdf), which reveals the truth:
The blue bars don't cherry pick just the federal income tax to make a dumb partisan talking point, they show how much each group actually pays in total taxes. Bottom line: Poor people pay less in taxes than rich people, as they should, but it's very far from zero. The midpoint of that first quintile is about $11,000, and even a household earning that little pays about $1,400 in taxes. The household in the second quintile, earning a munificent $30,000 per year, pays $7,000 in taxes. I know we live in a post-fact environment, but those are the facts.
46% of Americans pay (pdf) no federal income taxes, which is where this talking point comes from. Donald Marron breaks this down:
A reader writes:
Electronic Health Records (EHR) have been touted as part of the solution to our expensive and inefficient system, but we shouldn't expect too much from it. I am a nurse practitioner, and at my current job (in a large private internal medicine practice) we have used EHR for about seven years.
John Sides asks why Americans have become less accepting of adultery. One theory:
Even though the divorce rate has decreased since 1980, divorce itself has arguably become more normal and acceptable. It’s hard to get comparable question wordings over a long time span, but these two polls seem suggestive. In a 1954 Gallup poll, respondents were asked “Do you believe in divorce?” 53% said yes and 43% said no. In 2008, 70% of Gallup respondents said that divorce was “morally acceptable”—and that represents an increase even over the 59% figure in 2001. If divorce has become more acceptable, this could lead people to be less favorable to adultery. The logic goes something like this: “If you’re in an unhappy marriage, don’t cheat. Just get divorced.”
Yglesias thinks feminism plays a role.
Guy Taylor says yes:
"China is not going to be the biggest loser here," [Daniel] McDowell told Trend Lines this morning. "The U.S. is supposed to be the world's leading economy. It's supposed to lead, and this looks very irresponsible," said McDowell. He noted that the ongoing failure by Washington to resolve the current impasse provides China with the opportunity to remind the world, "'We are the victims because we hold a huge portion of U.S. debt, and we're behaving responsibly.'"
Walter Russell Mead thinks China is still constrained by American economic might.
Ackerman discovers a training powerpoint (pdf) that informs new recruits that Islam “transforms [a] country’s culture into 7th Century Arabian ways:"
Among the most provocative aspects of the presentation is its recommended reading list. One book offered is The Truth About Mohammed: Founder of the World’s Most Intolerant Religion, by Robert Spencer. Spencer is one of the ringleaders of the protest against the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque” and the co-founder of Stop the Islamicization of America, which “promotes a conspiratorial anti-Muslim agenda,” in the view of the Anti-Defamation League. A manifesto written by the Norwegian terror suspect Anders Behring Breivik cited Spencer 64 times.
While Marcotte and Dweck debate the market demand for male contraception, Tracy Clark-Flory talks to a variety of experts about its potential cultural impact:
Carol Queen, a Good Vibrations staff sexologist, told me that it might allow men to "aspire" to have more sex, perhaps with more partners. She says this "may free up women to further explore sexual possibilities" as well as "further challenge monogamy and hasten the open discussion of positive alternatives to monogamy." Most experts expect it would decrease the rate of unplanned pregnancies, but Queen suggests that comes with the risk that "contraception will feel more immediate and necessary than safer sex prophylaxis." The result could be "that pill-popping males may be even less inclined to use condoms," she says, "maybe especially when they're out on the town, not at home with partners where they'll have to wonder what room to put the bassinet in if sperm should meet egg."
The latest from OK Go, this time with dance troupe Pilobolus:
Brenna Ehrlich has background on the video:
Users can visit a dedicated site (use Google Chrome), enter in a message of their choice, and watch the band and troupe dance out that message via a series of browsers. You can watch the non-interactive version above.
Theodore Dalrymple believes the U.K.'s austerity measures were unavoidable. He largely blames the "impossible political promises" of government:
Another reader joins the discussion:
The biggest obstacle to paying college athletes is U.S. tax law and a century-old designation. As your earlier reader noted, American universities are non-profits. This does not mean they pay no taxes, just that they avoid taxes on any income related to their charitable mission. So, for instance, they pay Unrelated Business Income Tax on the sale of t-shirts in their student stores. College athletics is a multi-billion dollar industry, and universities avoid taxation on that income by a long-held designation of athletics as part of the educational experience given to their students.
She knows how to win over the base.
"I know it is incredibly unpopular to say this, but the debt ceiling has to be raised. The question is are we getting the best deal possible, given the current environment, in exchange for raising it? Reasonable people can disagree on the latter, but not the former, unless I’m missing something," - Daniel Foster, NRO.
The purity of the partisanship is breath-taking. If there were any breath left to take.
An idea this president is too cautious to advance. But in his second term? We can hope, can't we?
Laura Nahmias files an entertaining dispatch from the virtual world of a troubled pol:
Arch-Tory Charles Moore begins to wonder after the 2008 crash and the recent revelations about Rupert Murdoch's media-political complex in Britain and America:
He's for the tenth amendment but he'd also like a constitutional amendment to supercede the tenth on marriage laws. Because he believes in states' rights. Or something like that.
He couldn't be less coherent or more obviously pandering to the Christianists.
Yesterday, pollsters for both Bush and Obama laid out the data (pdf) showing a fast accelerating increase in support for marriage equality over the past two years. The key finding:
ABC/WaPo reports that “strong” support for legalizing marriage for gay and lesbian couples increased by 12 points since 2004 while “strong” opposition dropped 13 points – leaving the two poles at relatively equal levels as of today. Similarly, Pew’s “strongly” favor numbers are up 12 points while “strongly” oppose is down 10 points since mid 2004.
The one advantage the anti-equality forces had, passionate intensity, is now equaled by their opponents. No wonder even Rick Perry is going federalist on the question.
Fareed Zakaria thinks the polarization is out of control:
Representative Darrell Issa, Republican of California, gave an interview to the Wall Street Journal in which he suggested that he might further the conservative agenda through an occasional compromise. That provoked a tirade from Rush Limbaugh, which then produced a torrent of angry e-mails and phone calls to Issa's office. Issa quickly and publicly apologized to Limbaugh and promised only opposition to Obama. Multiply that example a thousandfold, and you have the daily dynamic of Congress.
Along similar lines, Mickey Edwards believes the system we have in place today goes against what the Founders intended:
Rothkopf reports that Hillary continues to do her job:
A new report (pdf) indicates that the poorest Americans spend 42% of their annual income on transportation. Jason Kambitsis reviews the case being made for transportation equity:
The report [by the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights] argues that inadequate mass transit creates barriers to employment. It notes that three out of five jobs that are suitable for welfare-to-work participants are not accessible by public transportation. It also cites a Brookings Institute study that found 45 percent of jobs in the nation’s 98 largest metro areas lie 10 miles or more beyond the urban core.
Many readers are objecting to my characterization of the Utøya camp as "creepy". The best response comes from a native Scandinavian:
First, I think you, and certainly Beck, fail to realize that this isn't that different from College Republicans or College Democrats in the US. These people are generally between the ages of 15 and 25. In other words, not much different in age to American college students (though because of the difference in school systems many of the kids up to age 19 would still be in high school).
Fair warning:
And Santorum's original Google problem has only gotten worse.
Hussein Ibish recounts his debate with David Ha'ivri, a far-right settler:
My main point was that this was not so much a debate between an Arab and a Jew, as one between a modern mentality and a medieval one. Modern thinking, I explained, recognizes both the inherent rights of individuals as human beings and the rights of self-defined peoples to national self-determination. Medieval thinking, on the other hand, relies on holy texts and symbols, and conceives of people not as individuals and groups of individuals, but as fixed categories in a divinely ordained hierarchy. Though he was born in New York, Ha’ivri really believes that he possesses many rights in Palestine that Palestinians do not.
I see little difference between the fanatical religious Zionism of the settler movement and Anders Breivik's desire to keep Europe free of Muslims. Except in Israel, the far right has essentially a veto over an elected government's policies, something that cannot be said of any of the far right parties in Europe. Video of the debate here (starts around 8:30), though the quality is not ideal.
Fred Bauer points out that the ratings agencies are assuming the Bush cuts will expire in 2012:
Though this [S&P report] report does suggest that $4 trillion in cuts/increased revenue over the next ten years would be enough to keep an AAA rating, it also says that its baseline for savings assumes the expiration of the Bush tax cuts in 2012. Will many of these “deficit hawks” abandon those tax cuts in order to appease S&P and keep an AAA rating?
Tyler Cowen ponders a downgrade and exclaims that, contrary to what you might hear, "the nation’s long-run fiscal outlook matters now." Ryan Avent, on the other hand, remains calm. Massimo Calabresi likewise isn't fretting downgrade:
One thing worth noting: views of Obama variate but seem remarkably stable over the last year.
Andrew Marantz reports on Dinesh D'Souza's new role as president of King's College, a small evangelical school located in the Empire State Building. Money quote:
"We are living, for perhaps the first time in history, in a society whose basic assumptions are secular," D'Souza told the 36 members of the King's class of 2011. "Some Christians
hope to change this through bottom-up, grassroots techniques. But I'm skeptical about that approach. Consider minority groups like Jews and gays, groups whose influence far outweighs their relatively small numbers. How do they do it?
By focusing on strategic institutions—finance, media, law. At the King's College, our mission is to prepare you to go into that world. It's, frankly, an elitist mission, which says that culture is formed from the top down. I can only hope we have given you the tools to complete that mission, the tools to be dangerous Christians."
Sounds like Opus Dei's pitch to me. But there is dissension in the ranks:
Roughly like this.
"Stories soon emerged that the marriage was in trouble – at one stage I was played a tape of a message Paul had left for Heather on her mobile phone. It was heartbreaking. The couple had clearly had a tiff, Heather had fled to India, and Paul was pleading with her to come back. He sounded lonely, miserable and desperate, and even sang ‘We Can Work It Out’…" - Piers Morgan, writing about how he listened to the private messages on Paul McCartney's wife's voicemail from 2006.
TPM and National Journal point out similarities between the Reid and Boehner bills. The difference Steven Taylor sees:
While I may well be missing something, it seems that the main reasons Republicans don’t like the Reid plan is because it has a Democrats name on it and, likewise the Democrats don’t like the Boehner plan because an R’s name is on it.
Jonathan Bernstein says Reid's is better:
Both plans keep open, through the creation of a new joint committee, the hope of a Grand Bargain that would make all of this essentially a moot point. With Reid, however, if a Grand Bargain isn’t reached then that’s the end of it; with Boehner, Democrats would be back to needing to find a dollar of spending cuts for every dollar of debt limit extension.
Jonathan Chait agrees:
Conservatives have been pointing out that debt ceiling hikes are historically short term. That's true! But they're also historically routine votes, rather than high stakes hostage crises.
Keith Hennessey argues in favor of the Boehner plan:
The Boehner bill cuts spending and doesn’t raise taxes. I hope House Republicans decide to support the Boehner bill, lock in those spending cuts, and then go for more in the next round.
My main issue with both plans is that they punt on the Grand Bargain option, and I cannot see that that is going to be easier to achieve in an election year. The Reid plan gets us past the next election without the kind of uncertainty that could rattle markets and depress growth and investment. But the Boehner plan is more credible with short term cuts. It's a wash, I'd say.
If I were the president, I would keep my options open on Boehner's plan. If it really does produce solid cuts in spending, even in two parts that don't reach a grand bargain, the president just has to run for re-election on a platform to balance out the debt-reduction package, by asking the rich to share in the sacrifice already made by the poor. With major spending cuts under his belt, in other words, Obama can say that the time is now ripe to share some of the sacrifice, by letting the Bush tax cuts expire, and replacing them with a reformed tax code that keeps rates low but increases revenue.
The fatwa against any new revenues is the GOP's weakest point. Run on it.
The old-fashioned way. But the funding for turning a short (which includes this scene) into a feature is being done the untraditional way: by crowd-sourcing. You can become a micro-donor (or more) here.
A Christian nationalist.
The NYT does a trend piece, which probably guarantees it's over now. I've never experienced being carded with my Romanov, but this dude has:
The beard, once a symbol of age, had suddenly become a sexy symbol of youth for the first time since the Allman Brothers ruled FM.
"While I stand by my opposition to the interference of sharia law into the American legal system, I remain humble and contrite for any statements I have made that might have caused offense to Muslim Americans and their friends. I am truly sorry for any comments that may have betrayed my commitment to the U.S. Constitution and the freedom of religion guaranteed by it," - Herman Cain.
Sophia Jones explores the bizarre fundamentalism of al-Shabab, a Somali-based terrorist group. al-Shabab now has banned Samosas, a form of pastry:
How can a seemingly harmless pastry be un-Islamic? Apparently, it's the shape. Samosas are fried in a triangular shape, which al-Shabab finds to be strikingly similar to the Christian Holy Trinity. ... As Somalia starves to death, the militant group bans a staple food in East African culture as it is too "Christian." Humanitarian aid from Western organizations has been mostly outlawed, with UN famine reports called "sheer propaganda". Al-Shabab's outlandish rulings may cost millions of lives.
Christopher Anzalones gives a useful primer on the terrorist organization.
(Photo: A Somalian refugee girl queues in the registration area of the IFO refugee camp in Dadaab, Kenya. The ongoing civil war in Somalia and the worst drought to affect the Horn of Africa in six decades has resulted in an estimated 12 million people whose lives are threatened. By Oli Scarff/Getty Images)
The latest far right term for a lonely conservative Palin critic, i.e. the Dish's own Conor Friedersdorf.
"We’re basically debating who gets the last bit of egg on his face — Mr. Boehner or Mr. Obama. (At this point, each already has more than enough to make a soufflé)," - Nate Silver.
A brilliant demolition of one far right Fox trope:
McArdle reflects on Saturday’s high-speed rail crash in China:
We don't know that this accident was caused by China's autocratic political system; even the best-run systems do occasionally have accidents. But what's emerging from behind the shiny pictures of whizzy trains and smiling engineers is a story of overreach, corruption, and possibly disastrous construction shortcuts. We should not lament the fact that we couldn't do anything like this here.
Austin Ramzy reports that official explanations of the crash and subsequent rescue efforts have been met with "widespread anger and doubt":
