Politics News

Equal Polarization, My Ass

11:38 am EST January 27th, 2012 | Politics | 213 Comments

One of my new favorite phrases is “not tethered to facts.” That comes from ABC reporter Jake Tapper doing a write-up of a new ad campaign from the conservative Americans For Prosperity targeting President Obama. It’s a nice way of saying “you lying ass.”

The phrase “not tethered to facts” came to mind when reading this Rick Moran piece lamenting the supposed equal polarization of the two major political parties in America. Bonus points to Moran for writing this post at PJ Media (aka Pajamas Media aka Open Source Media), which is a cesspool of conservative nonsense.

The idea that both parties/movements in America are equally extreme is a well-worn media meme and one that the right often rides. It also happens to be quite untrue. In reality, we have a right dominated by the hard right and a left created out of a coalition of the hard left, center-left, and centrists (who often echo the center-right). Look at the standard-bearers for both parties. Republicans picked George W. Bush, an evangelical conservative who appeared to honestly believe all the trickle down and privatization nonsense he was peddling. Democrats picked Barack Obama, who pushed a pay freeze of federal salaries while passing an economic stimulus bill that contained a considerable amount of tax cuts.

You don’t even have to go to the presidential level. In congress, Republicans have a Kentucky conservative leading them in the Senate along with John Boehner in the House, who thunderously opposed health care and subjected the traditional raising of the debt ceiling to an exercise in tea party hostage-taking. Go back further and you’ve got Sen. Bill Frist diagnosing Terry Schiavo over video tape and Tom DeLay jamming right-leaning legislation through the House.

On the Democratic side, while Pelosi is a “San Francisco liberal,” her top lieutenant has been Steny Hoyer — a moderate Democrat. When Democrats ran the House, contrary to conservative rhetoric they didn’t pass socialism. Since they’ve taken back the House, Boehner and Co. have passed far more legislation governing women’s bodies than there was equally socially liberal legislation passed under Pelosi’s leadership.

Senate Democrats are led by Harry Reid, a moderate on most issues who appointed conservative-leaning Democrats like Kent Conrad and Max Baucus to lead important committees. This led, in the case of health care reform, to a lot of the progressive-leaning legislation being ripped out in the final bill.

The two parties and movements are not equally extreme. The right is rhetorically led by Rush Limbaugh, a minority bashing advocate of the harshest brand of conservative economic and security policy. Even the top liberal voices in the media — people like Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, Jon Stewart, etc. — practice at best FDR-style liberalism which isn’t nearly as radical as what Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck and company say on a day-to-day basis.

The thesis is simply untrue. We have a center-left movement/party on one side and a right-wing party/movement on the other.

Conservatives Try To Work The Refs, Even For Herman Cain

12:22 am EST October 17th, 2011 | Media, Politics | 40 Comments

Herman Cain is neither going to be the Republican nominee for President or the next President of the United States. His is a bubble campaign of the Donald Trump variety, someone who can wave away conservative guilt for their racial past, but not a serious contender in any way.

That said, they’re still going to try and work the media refs in his favor. Case in point: Conservative blogger/writer (and Confederate apologist) Robert Stacy McCain reaching for the fainting couch because David Gregory asked Cain a few basic questions that he flubbed (in the post-Palin lexicon this is described as some sort of grilling).

Specifically McCain whines “When Democrats go on Meet the Press, it’s like Justin Bieber sitting down for a hard-hitting interview with Tiger Beat.”

So I decided to do what conservatives hope liberals never do, and they doubly hope the mainstream media doesnt: I checked.

I went back to May of 2008, and then-candidate Barack Obama’s appearance on Meet The Press with the late Tim Russert. What did I find? Did Russert annoint Obama the next President? Did he crown him? Did he ask him about puppies, or even kittens?

No, Russert did what Russert often did: He asked Obama a bunch of questions that sounded as if they were hot off the presses from the RNC. Specifically, Russert asked Obama about that most relevant of issues, Jeremiah Wright. A sampling:

* What has the controversy over Reverend Jeremiah Wright done to your campaign?

* You’re still a member of the church?

* Why do you think he re-emerged?

* What happened in those five weeks? Because you already knew, prior to the March speech, that he had suggested the U.S. government created the AIDS virus; you knew he went to Libya with Louis Farrakhan; you knew about his hate speech on September 11th, about the chickens coming home to roost and other things. What did you learn in those five weeks that you didn’t know in March?

* The critics have said he can attack the United States of America, he can do all sorts of things that divide the country, but only when he made it politically uncomfortable for you did you finally separate himself from him.

* Why didn’t you just say then, “You know, Reverend, we’re going on different paths because this country does not believe in white supremacy and black inferiority.”

* He said in a letter to The New York Times, he suggested that you apologized for not letting him do the invocation. Is that true?

* Is it fair for people to raise questions about your judgment for misjudging Reverend Wright?

* You’re done with him? If you’re elected president, you won’t seek his counsel?

* Could you have handled this better, differently, by severing your ties earlier? And what’s the most important thing you’ve learned from this?

These were the first questions Russert asked Obama on the supposedly softball Meet The Press: A litany of right-wing fed scarebait directly out of the school of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Glen Beck. It doesn’t matter how far to the right the questions tilt, conservatives will be wailing about liberal media bias until the sun swallows the entire solar system.

Now, look, Herman Cain is a joke. He can’t answer basic 101 level questions, his economic plan is dumb — even for a conservative. But even for a Trivial Pursuit-bound candidate like Cain, conservatives are willing to pervert, twist, and distort history and act under the pretense that the big bad mean liberal media beat up on their poor widdle candidate.

It’s what they do, it’s how they operate. It’s dishonest, pathetic, moronic, and sadly it works.

Rick Perry Better Cowboy Up

2:25 pm EST October 14th, 2011 | Politics | 14 Comments

Rick Perry says he agrees with his wife in her belief that he’s been “brutalized” on the campaign trail so far. Are you kidding me?

So far Perry’s been treated with mostly kid gloves, particularly from his fellow Republican candidates. Compare the fighting so far between Romney and Perry to Obama vs. Hillary, or Obama vs. McCain.

Rick Perry’s barely gotten his cowboy boots dirty, let alone “brutalized” so far. He’s been dancing with people who believe in his trickle down, dirty energy, crony capitalism shuck and jive. He hasn’t been challenged at all.

If he’s the GOP nominee and this is how tough he is, you can expect him to be on his heels from the get-go. This whining is practically Palinesque in how it telegraphs a glass jaw.

Topic: Rick Perry

Obama Vs. Paralysis

10:38 am EST September 9th, 2011 | Politics | 19 Comments

President Obama gave one of the better speeches of his political career last night. It hit the right notes, pre-countered a lot of the predictable GOP objections, and gave a strong defense of a progressive agenda. I wish we had seen more of this in the last two years. But that’s the past and we can only fight future battles.

The biggest problem is, of course, that the GOP is unlikely to pass much of this bill. It really doesn’t matter to them that it consists of ideas that they supported in the past, or that it could help America. Their priority is party, not country. The right figures if something is a “loss” for Obama and Democrats, who cares if it hurts the country?

So we will have paralysis. But this President needs to keep fighting even in the face of GOP obstruction. You don’t beat cancer by making accommodations for it. You fight it, and you hope to win.

Topic: President Obama

Why I Criticize Obama

3:42 pm EST September 7th, 2011 | Politics | 47 Comments

To read some folks on Twitter and elsewhere, I’m simply an Obama-hater, someone who thinks because Obama hasn’t delivered a winged unicorn that poops rainbows I’m just stamping my feet in frustration. Why? Because I criticize actions by the Obama administration. I refer to actions as “weak” or call them a “cave-in.”

Balderdash.

I criticize President Obama because I think he and his team can do better. I critique them because we are in a world filled with gigantic problems and only a Democratic president is going to seriously address them. In addition to years of praise of Obama, I also verbally rap them on the knuckles when they screw up. And they have.

The stimulus should have been larger, and even within its limited size it should have been less about tax cuts and more about directly stimulative spending that had more of an effect on the employment figures.

On health care reform, Obama and the Democrats should have fought harder for a public option. I understand the votes weren’t there, but there is value both movement-wide and electorally in making the Republican party the one who killed the option, rather than have the Democrats take it off the table pre-emptively. As I’ve written before, there is value in inching the ball ahead for an initiative that you are destined to lose in the short run.

The inability to articulate a simple message around health care reform, and allowing congress to take the lead role on it past the point of absurdity were key factors in Republicans winning the House in 2010. It energized the conservative vote without a counterpart on the Democratic side. Had the fight for a public option gone on to the point where Republicans were the bulk of the vote sticking a knife in its belly, Obama and the Democrats would have had a stronger rallying cry going into the 2010 election.

On the tax cuts, while I understand the bargain that was struck at the end of last year was for the greater good – even though Obama got more out of it than I thought at the time – I still think it was wrong to extend this indecent give away to the uber-rich that was initially condemned by even John McCain.

In the most recent argument about the debt ceiling, Obama never seriously put raising revenue on the table. That is key to both our credit-worthiness and the fiscal balance of the country. Obama never seriously presented it as a factor in the debt negotiation.

These are all serious, important issues where I feel the administration’s desire to come up with a bipartisan solution defies common sense and reality. While I think it is important for a President to extend a hand out to the political opposition, the current GOP is not even as interested in working together on solutions as the hyper-partisan crazy Clinton-era entity. They’ve pushed back on Obama overtures since before he was even inaugurated, and they got worse after the Tea Party types won in 2010. So while I still want and expect for Obama to ask the GOP for help in running the country, he’s got to quit mortgaging everything on bipartisan support that isn’t coming. If even Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe aren’t going to be onboard, nobody is and the White House needs to act as if they’re in an ideological fight of some sort.

That said, I still support Obama and the broad outlines of his agenda. I think that Democratic leadership is far better for America than the Republican alternative. I think even the Democrats that are to the right of me are a better alternative than the Republican that could inhabit their seat.

But, I don’t do my sort of punditry in order to elect Democrats or to protect the Democratic party. While I was once satisfied to just have a (D) in a seat , that is no longer the case. When a problem comes up, I think we need to take the progressive solution and have the progressive politician with a forward-looking take on the issues on hand to solve it. I think America at its best has been progressive (worker’s rights, civil rights, scientific advancement, defending freedom).

If a Democrat is promoting a regressive, counterproductive solution, he or she ought to be called on it. Even if it’s a local representative all the way up to a President.

As I have for almost 10 years now, I will write online what I believe. I’m not angling for anything but an America that is more prosperous, forward-looking, and free.

Topic: President Obama

Mitt Romney’s Amazingly Deceptive Chart

4:27 pm EST September 6th, 2011 | Politics | 48 Comments

This is a chart showing job growth, or lack thereof from Mitt Romney’s jobs presentation (page 16).

Except Romney counts negative job growth while Bush was president 2007- Jan 2009 as part of the “Obama Recovery.” Talk about creating your own reality that has no resemblance to the truth.

Topic: Mitt Romney

Steve Jobs: Arab-American Hippie Liberal Master Of Capitalism

2:59 pm EST August 19th, 2011 | Politics | 80 Comments

A great post from Anil Dash here.

So, who is this man? He’s the anchor baby of an activist Arab muslim who came to the U.S. on a student visa and had a child out of wedlock. He’s a non-Christian, arugula-eating, drug-using follower of unabashedly old-fashioned liberal teachings from the hippies and folk music stars of the 60s. And he believes in science, in things that science can demonstrate like climate change and Pi having a value more specific than “3″, and in extending responsible benefits to his employees while encouraging his company to lead by being environmentally responsible.

Every single person who’d attack Steve Jobs on any of these grounds is, demonstrably, worse at business than Jobs. They’re unqualified to assert that liberal values are bad for business, when the demonstrable, factual, obvious evidence contradicts those assertions.

Ick, Heaven Forbid Anyone Call Romney Weird

4:20 pm EST August 16th, 2011 | Politics | 35 Comments

Ugh.

As Romney began to leave the company after his hourlong visit, he looked at the owner’s girlfriend, Ellen Boss. “Nice,” Romney said as she blushed. “Nice choice. Just like me.”

(via)

Topic: Mitt Romney

August Of DOOOOOM

5:34 pm EST August 15th, 2011 | Politics | 38 Comments

Michael Barone, August 2008:

Realclearpolitics.com yesterday had John McCain ahead of Barack Obama by 274 to 264 electoral votes, counting leaners. RCP has Obama carrying just two Bush ’04 states, Iowa and New Mexico, with 12 electoral votes. McCain’s lead in two other Bush ’04 states, Virginia and Colorado, with 20 electoral votes is microscopic, but then so is Obama’s lead in New Hampshire, with four electoral votes. And when RCP takes tossup states, with 132 electoral votes, out of the totals, Obama is ahead 228 to 178. Still…

CNN, August 2008:

On the eve of the Republican convention, a new national poll suggests the race for the White House remains dead even.

A CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll released Sunday night shows the Obama-Biden ticket leading the McCain-Palin ticket by one point, 49 percent to 48 percent, a statistical dead heat.

Guardian, August 2008

What is worrying the Democrats, in spite of all these pluses, is that Obama’s poll lead has remained stubbornly small. A tracking poll by RealClearPolitics published yesterday has Obama on 46.9% compared with John McCain’s 43.3%.

“I think there are a lot of Democrats who are nervous,” said Tad Devine, chief strategist for the Kerry White House bid in 2004. “I think they thought this election would fall into their laps.”

Devine stressed that he was not among the pessimists and cautioned against what he described as “an artificial expectation that he needs to be way ahead at this time”.

But the concern among Democrats is not just over the size of the poll lead but over the impact of negative ads from McCain over the last two weeks that have reawakened bitter memories of Republican tactics in 2000 and 2004.

MSNBC, August 2008

With just days before the vice-presidential announcements, the political conventions and the final sprint to Election Day, Republican Sen. John McCain has cut Democrat Sen. Barack Obama’s national lead in half, according to the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.

“Whatever momentum that Obama took into the summer, he really appears to have lost it,” says Republican pollster Neil Newhouse, who conducted the survey with Democratic pollster Peter D. Hart. “It is not a dead heat, but it is close.”

I’m sure I’ll be writing this come August 2012 as well, but the sense of panic among Democrats is the same old same old August slump we’ve seen before as far as I can see.

I take my life advice from Douglas Adams’ epic, The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy: DON’T PANIC.

Rick “Bush” Perry

3:52 pm EST August 13th, 2011 | Politics, Republicans | 60 Comments

Yawn. I’ve seen this show before. The media swoons over a cliche-ridden Texas twang. They take his proclamations as if they’re something serious, etc. I think Perry matches up versus Obama worse than Romney, and I don’t think America is yet ready to give a chance to someone who is not only a Bush clone ideologically (most of the GOP field is that) but also physically.

He’s also a terrible judge of character.

Topic: 2012 Election, Rick Perry