"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross."
-- Sinclair Lewis
Tuesday, May 28, 2013
Saluting the president's "star litigatrix"
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White House counsel Kathryn Ruemmler -- Sorry, no shoe shots
"When you take a woman who has risen to a remarkable position, serving as the lawyer to the President of the United States of America, and you call her a “litigatrix” in “stunning 4-inch bright pink stiletto spikes,” you diminish her, her accomplishments, and all women."
But they sure did write one about White House counsel Kathryn Ruemmler’s Manolo Blahniks.
The White House counsel, for any who are unaware, is the President’s lawyer. It’s a huge job.
Particularly interesting about the Post story is first that it’s written by a woman – and yes, Virginia, women can write sexist articles too.
John Points out "that a lot of the sexist observations in the story are actually quotes from other papers," but not for the purpose of showing them up but of finding them "cute and punny."
Such as the one referring to Ruemmler as a ”star litigatrix”? Get it? Litigatrix, like dominatrix. Because she’s a female lawyer and good at her job, so she’s like a mean hooker who beats you with chains while having sex.
Oh the funny!
John has some thoughts about the role of sexism in the fact that "society is more interested in female than male fashion is sexism, and allows:
Now, you could argue that Ruemmler is daring to be her own woman. That she doesn’t feel the pressure to look and act like a man in order to succeed in a man’s world. It’s a point that former Planned Parenthood head Gloria Feldt made to me in reaction to this story this morning:
As a fan of red Stuart Weitzmans myself, I say good for Kathryn Reummler for demonstrating power, smarts, and leadership can come in hot pink stilettos. Just as Hillary proved beyond any doubt that power, smarts, and leadership can come in a turquoise pantsuit as surely as in navy pinstripes, women today are defining our own terms of professional engagement.
But while Ruemmler, like Hillary Clinton and Gloria Feldt, isn’t afraid to embrace her femininity, stories like this are not about embracing self-empowered women like Kathryn Ruemmler. They’re about belittling them.
And that, at its core, is my problem with articles like this. While it might be interesting what shoes someone is wearing, if you’re into that kind of thing, the article itself reinforces the larger problem of sexism women face in society.
And, John points out, "It’s the same with articles about gay people."
We’d complained for years about how newspapers, and TV news, always loved to show photos of drag queens or mostly-naked men in leather, when writing about gay rights. Now, from the newspaper’s perspective, some gays are drag queens, and some gays do paradearound mostly-naked in leather. But most don’t. And more importantly, the image reinforces a stereotype rather than adding nuance, or insight, to the actual story accompanying it. The photo was chosen to grab the reader, not to further the story.
By using a photo of a drag queen or a leather guy in every single gay-related story, reporters were using a kernel of truth to reinforce a larger prejudice. And that, I would argue – having a news story mis-educate a reader – is the very opposite of journalism.
John concludes with the observation I put at the top of this post:
When you take a woman who has risen to a remarkable position, serving as the lawyer to the President of the United States of America, and you call her a “litigatrix” in “stunning 4-inch bright pink stiletto spikes,” you diminish her, her accomplishments, and all women.
While congressional R's guffaw over the president's first "fiscal cliff" proposal, John Aravosis suggests: "Cut YOUR OWN benefits"
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"The idea that President Obama might actually want to enact his campaign promises – tax hikes on the rich, modest Medicare cuts, investments in infrastructure – is apparently considered a joke to the party that has shown virtually no flexibility in the last four years. . . .
"[O]nce the laughter dies down, they will have to come to the table with a responsible offer of their own, rather than simply declaring a stalemate, as Speaker John Boehner did today, because he didn’t like the president’s opening bid. If they continue to refuse to do so, the public won’t find it very funny."
Sick as I am about hearing, reading, and thinking about the "fiscal cliff" follies, where major decisions are apt to be made about our future with hardly any mechanisms for us having any input into them, I have to say I loved John Aravosis's Americablog post yesterday, "Let’s require a super-majority for future tax cuts & defense increases," which managed to be right not just on the substance of the fiscal issues (e.g., this subhead "Health Care Didn't Cause the Deficit, GOP Tax Cuts & Wars Did"), but right in tone -- on the attack. Here's the opening of the post:
You Caused the Fiscal Cliff, Cut Your Own Benefits
I’m really sick of being told by a bunch of guys who make nearly $200,000 a year that “I have to make sacrifices for the budget deficit.
“I”ve got news for them. ”I” didn’t create the budget deficit. ”They” did.
And they did it by repeatedly, and quite submissively, voting for round after round of tax cuts and defense increases, while the rest of us kept telling them, “we’re gonna pay for this some day.”
Another subhead reads: "We know what causes deficits: Republicans," which leadds John to the proposal of his post title.
If the Republicans and their Blue Dog allies are so concerned about the deficit, then let’s address the deficit by addressing the actual causes of the deficit. Here’s my proposal:
1. Pass whatever legislation or rule change is needed to require a super-majority in Congress for any future reduction in taxes or increase in defense spending.
2. And for good measure, require that any tax cut or defense increase be accompanied by a corresponding tax surcharge to pay for it.
We can make it a surcharge on folks’ annual tax returns, a big red sticker or something -- kind of like what Denny’s was talking about doing with Obamacare. This way people will know exactly what that tax cut, or defense increase, is going to cost us. And maybe we can list the members of Congress who voted for, kind of like those campaign ads: “I’m John Boehner and I approve this tax surcharge.”
Allowing for all appropriate wariness concerning the Democratic side in the ongoing "fiscal cliff" follies (see, for example, Howie's post earlier today "Grand Bargain -- Not All That Grand, Not For America's Working Families"), it's worth keeping in mind just who and what the administration and congressional Dems are dealing with.
Republicans reportedly laughed when they saw the Obama administration's initial offer in the fiscal negotiations yesterday. The idea that President Obama might actually want to enact his campaign promises -- tax hikes on the rich, modest Medicare cuts, investments in infrastructure -- is apparently considered a joke to the party that has shown virtually no flexibility in the last four years.
But some of that laughter may contain nervousness, because there is more going on here than just a pathway to splitting the difference. The White House made clear yesterday that it is approaching these talks from a position of responsibility, and that it actually takes seriously the notion of old-fashioned bargaining. That's something Republicans have refused to do — and now they realize they’ve been called out.
Firestone underscores the wholesale flight from responsibility of congressional Republicans in creating conditions that guaranteed the current stalemate.
It was never responsible for Republicans to spend years adamantly declaring total opposition to higher taxes as a back-door way of starving government. . . . It was never responsible to spend years on talk shows demanding "cuts in entitlements," while running a presidential campaign that attacked Mr. Obama for cutting Medicare. . . . It was, above all, profoundly irresponsible for Republicans to govern by threatening to send the Treasury into default if they did not get their way on spending, a wholly new and ugly phenomenon in American politics.
That last development -- yes, we're back to playing chicken with necessary increases in the debt ceiling! -- prompted a proposal from Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner to require a two-thirds congressional vote to block it. "This," Firestone reports, "was considered particularly uproarious in the offices of House and Senate Republican leaders."
I'd like to see the Dem leaders toss out John A's proposal to require that two-thirds vote for tax cuts and defense increases. Let's see how funny the R primitives find that.
Crazy like a fox: That Willard gins up an insanity defense! Plus hot graphics for the 2012 GOP campaign
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The style may be a trifle retro, but doesn't this cartoon by Syd Hoff capture the nuances of Republican thinking about unions -- and malcontents generally. (Hat tip to Mayor Mike and New York's Finest for their OWS work.)
by Ken
What happens when one candidate in a presidential campaign has to be locked up in the booby hatch? Do they call the election off, or what? Bear with me for a moment.
The idea that Mitt Romney is a "good manager" has now been proven false. The ongoing disaster that is his presidential campaign proves that Romney isn't Mr. Fix-it, he's Mr. Broke-it.
John summons examples that are hard to argue with:
* the way he"botched the religious right furor over his foreign policy spokesman being gay."
* the foreign trip during which "he offended the British, insulted both the Israelis and the Palestinians, and then desecrated a Polish holy site for good measure."
* the Republican convention, "which Romney was in charge of."
* "Romney's Al Haig moment during the Libya/Egypt crisis."
* Just this week, "Romney's "You're fired!" video to 47% of the American people."
* And "Mrs. Romney's ill-fated "Mitt doesn't disdain the poor" video last night."
Put it all together and John is prepared to go beyond the argument of AmericaBlog's Chris in Paris "that Mitt's much-famed CEO skills don't necessarily make him a good president:"
I'm wondering whether we've got the story wrong. Mitt Romney isn't a bad presidential candidate because he's a good CEO. Maybe he's a bad candidate because he's a bad CEO.
I'm going to take this one step further. I think Willard's cooking up an insanity defense. Maybe he's been thinking along the lines Howie pursued the other day: the directions in which fingers of blame may be pointed if his campaign winds up the way it's looking now. Or maybe all his working life he's had the sense that he's only one step ahead of the authorities ready to nab him for his life of economic raping, pillaging, and plundering -- and he's had it in the back of his head that one way out is (you guessed it) an insanity defense. Maybe he thinks it beats the alternatives: that he's either a criminal predator or a bumbling incompetent.
Something along these lines is the only explanation I can think of for our Willard's sudden disclosure that he thinks that he, unlike the Accursed American 47%, is a maker and not a taker. Whereas anyone who know about his "career" of sucking every bit of life he could out of the economy knows that the exact opposite is true. He's a taker and a destroyer.
Or . . . maybe he's just nuts! Can anyone prove otherwise?
John A, apparently, is going with the "bumbling incompetent" theory, and I can't quarrel with that one either. Doesn't it kind of put you in mind of our last CEO president? You know, the one who thought he was the mastermind of his succession of successively vaulting corporate triumphs?
MEANWHILE, BOB MANKOFF DUSTS OFF SOME SPLENDID
ART THAT THE REPUBLICANS COULD RECYCLE FOR 2012
It's in the New Yorker cartoon editor's new e-newsletter-slash-blogpost, "The Ruling Clawss," in which he takes advantage of the centenary to recall the work of longtime New Yorker cartoonist Syd Hoff (1912-2004), He shows us samples of the Depression-era down-classing in Hoff's work from the upper-class swells who had populated the cartoons of earlier cartoonists like Peter Arno.
More importantly, he introduces us to Hoff's alter-ego.
[I]f Hoff’s New Yorker pen left the very rich unscathed, a pen name, A. Redfield, let him express very different feelings in a very different New York publication, The Daily Worker.
In a series of single-panel gags called “The Ruling Clawss,” which ran from 1933 to 1935 in The Daily Worker, Redfield dealt with issues that Hoff could not.
A collection of these panels were published in a book of the same name, in 1935.
Here are some samples:
REPUBLICAN POLICY ON ILLEGAL ALIENS & IMMIGRATION ISN'T WILLARD HIMSELF "MR. FIRE 'EM"? WILLARD ON THE "DEPENDENT" 47%
I started writing a diatribe about the perversion of truth by the American Right, and especially the American Christian Right, and then abandoned it. I suppose I can always come back to it.
I'm concerned at the moment at the prospect that one of the nation's vilest hate-mongers, Tony Perkins, commandant of the Family "Research" Council (FRC), may succeed in damaging the reputation of one of the country's most indispensable forces for decency and humanity, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which has certified the FRC as a hate group based on careful research into a mountain of evidence that comes right out of the FRC.
And when I say "research," I mean actual research, where you go out and actively search for the truth, not the kind practiced by the lying phonies of the Right, like the FRC, which has the temerity to use the word "research" in its name when it has never for the tiniest microsecond engaged in any such activity. The FRC's "researchers" troll the swamps of their imaginations for any factoid that can be twisted into incendiary accusations against its enemies, which is to say people who are concerned with the truth. FRC hates the truth, and indeed there is by now a mountain of evidence that most of what it does is the knowing fabrication of lies to be used for hate-mongering propaganda purposes.
And when I say "lie," I don't mean the standard Washington, DC version of a "lie," which is basically calling a lie anything you disagree with (aka, your facts hurt me so I'm simply going to call you a liar). I mean, an organization that decided early on that "the gay menace" was such a threat to American life that if it had to deceive the American people in order to convince them that gays were the anti-Christ, then so be it.
John was driven into action by the assertion of the Washington Post's Dana Milbank, whom he insists he respects and likes, that the FRC is simply a "mainstream conservative" group. "I happen to like Dana Milbank," he says, "but I suspect he hasn't done what I've done," which is to say actual "research on the anti-gay literature that the Family Research Council publishes, and the anti-gay pseudo-science that FRC 'cites' on TV."
At one point, I had the Congressional Research Service send me a copy of every single document the Family Research Council had written about gays, and then I had CRS get me every single document listed in the FRC doc's footnotes. I.e., all the "original sources" for the Family Research Council's anti-gay claims.
And there were a lot of them. At the time, FRC's list of footnotes could be nearly as long as the written part of the document itself.
What did I find when I went through the original sources cited in the footnotes? I found that nearly every single footnote was a lie. Not a lie in the conventional sense - meaning, they didn't make up a source that didn't exist. Rather, they did things like quoting a damning opinion from a judge in a court case without mention that the judge was in the minority, that the gays had actually won the case they were citing.
Or they'd quote a study with a hideous conclusion about gays and lesbians, only for you to realize later that the actual quote in the study was rather benign - instead, FRC "forgot" to put and end-quotation mark on the quote, added an ellipse, and then put their own damning conclusion. Let me give you a made-up example of a quote about gays to who you how the family research council did this.
"This study looked at 45 gay men, and 35 lesbians. It was clear from the subjects that gay men and lesbians face greater societal pressures in their day to day lives... which makes gays and lesbians much more likely to rip the heads off small bunnies.
Wow, rip the heads off small bunnies - that's pretty bad. But hey, it's a real study in a real journal, so it has to be true. Except of course that the real quote from the actual study ends at the ellipse, while the FRC added its own opinion after the ellipse, while "forgetting" to put the end quote, so it looks like the FRC's opinion is part of the official quote from the reputable study.
Gosh, I wonder how that happened?
It went on and on like this, through hundreds of footnotes. I went through the original research of the various studies they cited and found that the study reached no such conclusion like the FRC claimed it did. And on and on and on.
These are not honest people simply expressing a contrarian view of politics, like Democrats and Republicans do every day in Washington.
I can't begin to do justice to John's post here, and won't even try. The quantity and range of damning information he has gathered is, well, damning. It spans the history of the FRC, and allows for no possibility that the history of incendiary falsification has been accidental. Its cadre of professional liars has had their lies pointed out to them repeatedly, with no effect, since after all they're the ones who made up the lies -- why would they have any problem with those lies' naked and vicious dishonesty.
Anyone who doesn't understand who and what the FRC is -- and apparently that number includes most of our infotainment noozers -- needs to read John's post and check out his links, which unlike FRC's patented reams of phony footnotes, actually bring you to information.
Contrary to what FRC likes to claim, we don't think they're a hate group because they're Christians. We think they're a hate group because of how un-Christian they really are.
Whaddaya know, liberals are back! (We're the PROBLEM, of course, but I guess it's better than being ignored)
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Yesterday this seemed like a pretty trenchant cartoon from the great Monte Wolverton. Now it turns out he's got it all wrong, the problem is us liberals -- for not doing a fervent enough selling job on the Obama administration's great accomplishments.
by Ken
As some readers will recall, I tend not so much to read as to osmose (I don't suppose there is such a word, but that's not my fault) stuff like the major newsletters' e-newsletter digests of their current Web content. So this afternoon my eyes like to popped out when I eyeballed washingtonpost.com's "Afternoon Edition" and saw the first two items were . . . well, look for yourself:
Well, no, I didn't actually read either story; I'm not that much of a masochist. (If you'd like to, here's a link to the real page with real links.) I kind of got the idea here, and while it seems clear that in both cases we're being treated as spoiled, crack-brained, troublemaking children, the amazing thing to me is that we normally invisible liberals are being talked about at all in such hotbeds of political "respectabity" as WaPo's PostPolitics. We're back, baby!
And not as preemptively euphemized "progressives" either. (Though it may be that the political geeks at the Post share that odd notion that slipped out the other day in an otherwise quite sensible column of Gene Robinson's, where it turned out that "progressives" = "Democrats.") No, suddenly PostPolitics has liberals on its mind.
AND IT TURNS OUT THAT IT REALLY IS OUR FAULT, AND THE WHITE HOUSE IS HERE TO TELL US
Really good, important column by our colleague John Arivosis at AmericaBlog, "White House blames lib groups for deficit deal debacle at secret meeting." John begins by quoting from a report by Politico's Ben Smith, usually to be trusted when it comes to enforcing political orthodoxy, "that at last night's "Common Purpose" meeting, a regular (supposed to be secret) get together between the White House and progressive advocacy groups (where the White House routinely yells at them, I hear), the groups got an earful about the President's new deficit deal."
Progressive consultant Mike Lux, the sources said, summed up the liberal concern, producing what a participant described as an "extremely defensive" response from Sperling.
Sperling, a person involved said, pointed his finger backed at liberal groups, which he said hadn't done enough to highlight what he saw as the positive side of the debt package -- a message that didn't go over well with participants.
Which, John says, "sounds oddly familiar," since he was on the receiving end of just such an admonishment as part of a group of liberal bloggers granted an audience in February 2010 with then vice presidential economic adviser Jared Bernstein, who berated liberal media for failing to persuade the nation of the wonders of the president's stimulus program.
I remember Bernstein specifically asking the Nation's Chris Hayes whether he and his paper had done enough to help promote the benefits of the stimulus over the proceeding year. Chris said that they had just done a podcast about it that day, but yes he probably could have done more. I recall jumping in and noting that Chris was the last person Berstein should criticize, as he's on Rachel Maddow every night defending the administration quite diligently.
In any case, this isn't a coincidence. They actually believe, inside the White House, that we're to blame for their problems. That they're doing a chipper job and the public would know it, but for the Netroots and the liberal advocacy groups doing such a lousy job selling the President's magnificent handiwork.
Things aren't getting better because the administration doesn't even recognize that they are -- that their boss is -- the problem.
IN CASE YOU WERE WONDERING WHAT THE NO. 3 STORY WAS THIS AFTERNOON IN POSTPOLITICSWORLD . . .
And it suddenly occurred to me, what about Bob? Ever since he was inaugurated as governor of Virginia last year -- as a leading indicator of the political ineptitude of the Obama administration, clueless about the effect offering "GOP lite" candidates would have on the new and liberal-base voters who had put him in the White House the year before -- he's probably been thinking of himself as the Leading Far-Right Crackpot Governor in the Land. And now here he is eclipsed by thugs and sociopaths like Scott Walker, Rick Scott, and John Kasich, with such attention as is paid to Virginia winguttery going to AG "Cuckoo" Cuccinelli, who can effortlessly deliver on the promise that nobody on the planet will be caught saying crazier stuff than him.
When I first went to work at Warner Bros I went from making around $5,000 a year running my own little indie record label in San Francisco to making the enormous-- even inconceivable-- salary of $90,000. I was feeling like the richest guy in the world. I was breathless. And that didn't count a generous expense account! My two best friends, Fric and Frac, had each been with the company for many years and made respectively, a million dollars a year and $250,000. Fric was-- and still is-- one of the most profoundly unhappy people I've ever known. The level of dissatisfaction in his life is incomprehensible. And the anger. He was mad because so and so made two million a year or five million a year. He always lived far above his means and often borrowed money from... me! Frac was like a junior version and I recall-- I'll never forget it-- him saying to me, with a straight face, that one day we'd break out of "these bonds of poverty."
In my life there was always someone smarter, better looking, stronger, funnier, more popular, wiser, more talented, richer, more evolved... you work with what you've got and do the best you can. I've been happy under just about every circumstance. Was it Sharron Angle who said something about turning lemons into lemonade the other day. Bad reference, but... well, you only live once so you might as well enjoy the trip.
I voted for Barack Obama for various reasons, none of which included that I thought there was much of a chance he would be an exceptionally good president-- let alone a truly excellent one. There haven't been any really good ones in my lifetime, just a bunch of grubby political hacks. [Ironically, Eisenhower comes closest to not fitting that dreadfully disparaging mold.] Like Eric Alterman said the other day at The Nation, there are an awful lot of structural impediments to being a good president.
I wish Obama could hit back at the Republicans like this: "You guys took millions from Big Oil because you're a bunch of corrupt scumbags who sold out the country. You allowed them to thwart even a minimally decent regulatory regime in exchange for a few bucks and it's cost the country incalculably. I hate to do this-- and history will judge me a bad man-- but I have no choice but to have you all shot today. Mr. Boehner, hand out a last cigarette to every one of your sleazy colleagues." And yes, we'd be finally rid of that stinking, pustulent walking corpse McCain (who took $2,677,524 from Big Oil) and Cornyn (who took $1,652,150) but even before we got to McConnell ($862,561) and Vitter ($791,335), guess which former Illinois junior senator took $973,551? And this isn't about Big Oil at all. This is about Obama being unable-- structurally, systemically-- to call out the Republicans on just about anything.
They're venal-- and Harry Reid was completely correct yesterday when he pointed out that they, as a party and a corporate entity, have gone around the bend entirely and are all now with Limbaugh and DeMint in wanting to see a Great Depression and wanting to see your children starve to death in the streets like dogs so they can seize power again. "They're betting on failure. They think that the worse the economy is come November, the better they are going to do election-wise." But people who live in glass houses can't cast stones-- at least not convincingly. And, sorry to ruffle feathers, fellas, but the Democrats' house is just as glass as the Republicans-- or at least close enough to as glassy as not to matter that they're a little better. Our Inside-The-Beltway scumbags suck as much as theirs do! And look at the ones in the leadership. Clyburn and Pelosi are miracles but look beyond them and there's no hope, not a ray-- just one corrupt sack of crap after another: Hoyer, Wasserman-Schultz, Crowley... that's the future? Or an ineffectual weasel like Van Hollen?
This morning, responding to the latest anti-Democratic Party propaganda in Politico, John Aravosis and I pointed out that as nefarious as Politico may be, it's hard to argue that the Democratic base isn't angry at Obama and the Democratic congressional leadership's tepid approach to the real problems they were supposed to fix. Aravosis:
As polls confirm, interest in the midterms is low everywhere among Democrats. And why shouldn't it be? When your current boyfriend beats you, albeit less than the previous boyfriend, it's difficult to get excited when his birthday rolls around. The White House shares a large chunk of the blame for this entire mess, from the tone they set from the beginning (no politics, just hugs for the bad guys), to their abysmal performance on the stimulus that has now plagued our country with 10% unemployment for the foreseeable future, to their refusal to push for much of what they promised during the campaign (not a refusal to GET what they promised, I'm talking about a refusal to even TRY to get what they promised-- a huge, and relevant, distinction).
A lot of Democrats, I think, rightfully feel like they've been lied to. Feel that the party doesn't much care for them, and even has contempt for them-- mocking their concerns about the party's indifference to its own promises as "naive." It's no surprise that most Democrats aren't excited about helping re-elect people who don't seem to like most Democrats. If the White House and the Congress want to turn things around, they need to stop bashing Democrats in the press, and start wooing them, just as they woo the people on the right who want to destroy them... Our leaders remind me of an old Shoe cartoon that showed a notice inan office stating "vacations have been temporarily suspended untilmorale improves."
Today Eric Lipton and Eric Lichblau reported on congressional ethics for the NY Times is a way that just underscores a deadly fatalism that I never experienced-- and hope to never experience-- in my personal life. It's a look at how money makes the world go round-- and how it makes the rest of us victims of our own democratic charade. If you didn't watch George Carlin's "rich cocksuckers" video we ran on the 4th of July, please do so before reading any further. (And if you did... well this is one you can never see too many times):
Now the two Erics, who are essentially saying the same thing Carlin is, if less poetically
Lawmakers take contributions every day from corporate executives and lobbyists hoping for their votes. The question of whether that represents business as usual in Washington or an ethics breach is at the heart of a far-reaching Congressional ethics investigation that is stirring concerns throughout Washington and Wall Street.
Of course they're missing the essence of the problem by a wide mark by using the word "or." How about calling bribery, bribery and just admitting it's both business as usual in Washington and an ethics breach-- or, better yet, a criminal breach. So there's a focus on two ultra-sleazy, uber-corrupt up-and-comers, GOP sociopath Tom Price and crooked New Dem leader Joseph Crowley.
The Office of Congressional Ethics has sent corporate donors and fundraising hosts more than three dozen requests for documents involving eight members who solicited and took large contributions from financial institutions even as they were debating the landmark regulatory bill, according to lawyers involved in the inquiry.
The requests are focusing on a series of fund-raisers last December, in the days immediately before the House’s initial adoption of the sweeping overhaul, which could win final approval this week. Some of the fund-raising events took place the same days as crucial votes.
For example, on Dec. 10, one of the lawmakers under investigation, Representative Joseph Crowley, a New York Democrat who sits on the Ways and Means Committee, left the Capitol during the House debate to attend a fund-raising event for him hosted by a lobbyist at her nearby Capitol Hill town house that featured financial firms, along with other donors. After collecting thousands of dollars in checks, Mr. Crowley returned to the floor of the House just in time to vote against a series of amendments that would have imposed tougher restrictions on Wall Street.
That same day, Representative Tom Price, a Georgia Republican on the Financial Services Committee, scheduled what he called a “Financial Services Luncheon” at the Capitol Hill Club, as part of a fund-raising push that netted him nearly $23,000 in contributions from the industry in a two-month period around the vote... [L]awyers knowledgeable about the investigation said those eight were picked in large part because in the 10 days immediately before the initial full House vote on the bill-- which took place Dec. 10-- they solicited and received an unusually high proportion of campaign dollars from the financial sector. They received $140,000 in all, and at least seven of the eight, like Mr. Crowley, had fund-raisers during this period.
Julie Domenick, the lobbyist who hosted a house party to raise money for Mr. Crowley on Dec. 10, has been asked to turn over “all files, correspondence, e-mails, receipts, notes and any other documents” related to the party, as well as any contact she has had with Mr. Crowley’s campaign since early 2009, according to a letter she received. Others have received similar requests.
Besides the Crowley and Price fund-raisers, questions are being asked about a fund-raising breakfast the day before the vote that honored Representative Earl Pomeroy, Democrat of North Dakota, and was sponsored by a Washington lobbying firm.
The other slimy operators caught up in this particular net are all notorious bribe takers who routinely sell their votes: John Campbell, (R-CA), Jeb Hensarling (R-TX), Christopher Lee (R-NY), and Frank Lucas (R-OK). Congress would be a better place if all 8 were rotting in prison with Duke Cunningham. But just tangentially better... because almost all of their colleagues are nearly as bad. Not all, almost all. and the White House? What can anyone even say beyond the fact that Obama's first appointment to his new Adminstration was the Democratic answer to the penultimate corruption of Tom DeLay: Rahm Emanuel?
"It's not about the votes, people. It's about leadership," says John Aravosis about the mess in D.C. on health care (and much else)
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Change we can believe in -- right!
"It's not about the votes, people. It's about leadership. . . . When you have a President who is constitutionally, or intellectually, unable to stand for anything, and a congressional leadership that, rather than disciplining its own members and forging ahead with its own agenda, cedes legislative authority to a president who refuses to lead, you have a recipe for exactly what happened last night. Weakness, chaos, and failure."
The mess that the health care reform has deteriorated into has left a lot of us in the position we least wanted to be in: trying to figure out whether the bad in the bill taking shape is really outweighed by the good. In other words, despite all the urgent reasons we got into this fight, is the kind of "reform" likely to be adopted worse than doing nothing?
I hear arguments both ways, now including Howard Dean's description of the gutting of the public option and Medicare buy-in from the Senate bill as "essentially the collapse of health care reform in the United States Senate," with the recommendation that the whole farrago be dropped and replaced with a simpler new bill designed for adoption via reconciliation. None of this leaves me feeling entitled to a shred of optimism -- and regular readers will know that I've entertained precious little optimism throughout the whole bill-forging process.
Assuming I can pick myself up off the mat, I'll talk about some of that later. Meanwhile, for the benefit of those who haven't seen it, under the heading of "How We Got into This Mess" I want to pass along a piece by our colleague John Aravosis of AmericaBlog which has deservedly gotten a lot of attention.
I've got some answers for John's argument, mostly having to do with Democrats still not being exactly the same as Republicans, thank goodness, but in the face of what has passed for "leadership" this year among Democrats on Capitol Hill and in the White House -- a veritable high-stakes game of "Go Fish"? -- I think most of John's finger-pointing aims at richly deserving targets.
I've heard people say that it's not fair to criticize the Democrats for botching health care reform because the Democrats never truly had a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. Sure, they have 60 votes in principle, the argument goes, but with Lieberman, Nelson, Landrieu, and Bayh counted as four of those votes, it's not really a solid 60.
Perhaps. But then how was George Bush so effective in passing legislation during his presidency when he never had more than 55 Republicans in the Senate? In fact, during Bush's most effective years, from 2001 to 2005, the GOP had a grand total of 50, and then 51, Senators. The slimmest margin possible.
And look at what George Bush was able to accomplish in the Congress with fewer Senators than the Democrats have today:
- John Ashcroft nomination - Iraq war resolution - Repeated Iraq funding resolutions - 2001 & 2003 tax cuts - Patriot Act - Alito - John Roberts - Medicare Part D
I'm sure some people will argue that Bush had September 11, and used it to pass lots of laws. Yes. But September 11 had nothing to do with the Ashcroft nomination, the 2001 tax cuts, with the Alito and Roberts nominations, nor with Medicare Part D. And in each case, Democrats rolled over and gave the Republicans the votes they needed to ensure there would be no effective filibuster. (And let's not forget, Obama had the economic meltdown and the recent memory of the failed Bush presidency to use as his rallying cry to smother opposition, and he didn't.)
So what's the difference? Why with 60 votes are Democrats so ineffective, but with 50 votes Republicans excel?
What the GOP lacked in numbers, they made up for in backbone, cunning and leadership. Say what you will about George Bush, he wasn't afraid of a fight. If anything, the Bush administration, and the Republicans in Congress, seemed to relish taking on Democrats, and seeing just how far they could get Democratic members of Congress to cave on their promises and their principles. Hell, even Senator Barack Obama, who once famously promised to lead a filibuster against the FISA domestic eavesdropping bill, suddenly changed his mind and actually voted for the legislation. Such is the power of a president and a congressional leadership with balls and smarts.
How did they do it? Bush was willing to use his bully pulpit to create an environment in which the opposition party feared taking him on, feared challenging his agenda, lest they be seen as unpatriotic and extreme. By going public, early and often, with his beliefs, Bush was able to fracture the Democratic opposition (and any potential dissent in his own party) and forestall any effort to mount a filibuster against the most important items in his agenda.
It's not about the votes, people. It's about leadership. The current occupant of the White House doesn't like to fight, and the leadership in Congress has never been as good at their jobs, at marshaling their own party, as the Republicans were when they were in the majority. The President is supposed to rally the country, effectively putting pressure on opposition members of Congress to sit down and shut up. And the congressional leadership is supposed to rally its members to hold the line, and get the 51 votes necessary for passing legislation in a climate where the minority is too afraid to use the filibuster. When you have a President who is constitutionally, or intellectually, unable to stand for anything, and a congressional leadership that, rather than disciplining its own members and forging ahead with its own agenda, cedes legislative authority to a president who refuses to lead, you have a recipe for exactly what happened last night. Weakness, chaos, and failure.
We lost real health care reform not because we don't have a "real" filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. We lost health care reform because we don't have a real leader anywhere in our party. It's not going to get better if we elect more Democrats to the Senate and it's not going to play out any differently should we try to revisit this issue in the future.
And one final point. What do you think is going to happen if, during the House-Senate conference, a combined bill is returned to the Senate that even vaguely improves upon the garbage they're currently debating? Joe Lieberman, Ben Nelson, Mary Landrieu and Evan Bayh will threaten the same filibuster. We're not getting anything better than the crap they just came up with last night. It's over. The next three years are going to be about mediocrity, broken promises, and striving for second best. That's not the America I grew up in. And it's not what I voted for, or was promised.
Note: The link in the second paragraph, which seems to link back to this very piece, in fact links back to a piece of John's from the day before, prompted by the latest round of late-night health care "compromises": "This isn't what we were promised." That piece, also very much worth reading, includes this:
It's an effective tactic to play on liberal guilt, arguing "don't you want to save all those poor people who are going to die?" But the fact remains that we the people handed this President and this Congress control of the White House, the US House of Representatives, and filibuster-proof control of the US Senate. We handed them a GOP that was in tatters, and a populace that desperately wanted change. And they blew it. They gave us weakness and cowardice and fear in return. The President went back on his promises from almost day one, and then stayed out of the entire debate until - well - he's still not really involved in the debate, other than to occasionally have his staff secretly try undercut his own campaign promises.
It's not a success when you could have had an A, and instead get a D+, strive for a D+, and then have the nerve to say "look mom!" It's really getting tiresome hearing Democrats suggest that because their bill does more than George Bush would have done, but otherwise they've gutted their most important campaign promises, we should suck it up and be happy. I voted for change, not pennies.
You had the best chance in decades to make a difference in all of our lives, and you chose to blow it. You don't deserve our praise. Or our votes.
In the traditional media it'll be open season on Dems (especially progressives) till we say we're mad as hell and we're not gonna take it anymore
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This insane CNN "poll" has John Aravosis seeing red.
"The media never dares to question the integrity, the sanity, the patriotism of Republicans. God forbid. Hell, if you're the NYT, you literally pull stories that might make voters not like Republicans as much. But if you're a Democrat, the NYT, CNN, and the AP have no such problem sliming our politicians and our party. . . .
[referring to an AP story by reporter Nina Pickler headlined "Conservatives say Obama lacks patriotism"] "How fucking dare you? Lack patriotism? What is this, the McCarthy era? AP is now willing to write any crap, so long as it's a Republican saying it about a Democrat? AP knows damn well that Obama doesn't hate America. This isn't a he-said-she-said. It's a case where AP is genuflecting to the Republicans and regurgitating their crap in a way Pickler and her fellow reporters wouldn't dare do if the victim were Republican. Has Pickler ever written a story about John McCain being insane? Being senile? Somehow I doubt it. . . .
"It's high time we declared war on the media and made it clear that this year if they decide to give coverage to the Republicans' swift-boating lies, then they are going to pay a huge price."
I hadn't heard the news Howie passed on earlier about CBS affiliate WHNT in Huntsville, Alabama, which services the northern part of the state, pulling the plug on last night's 60 Minutes report on the Republican frame job that, incredibly, put former Gov. Don Siegelman in prison (a story Noah wrote about for DWT in December).
Of course CBS itself had pretty much pulled the plug on the story, literally pulling the story at the last minute when it was originally scheduled to run some weeks ago and then dumping it into the ratings black hole of last night's Oscar show. Let's play another round of that old favorite game, If the Shoe Was on the Other Foot. Let's say there was strong evidence to indicate that a Republican former--and likely future--governor had been similarly railroaded by a cabal of Democrats, reaching into the highest reaches of government. Would that story be blacked out by the traditional media?
(My goodness, when one thinks of the rampant criminal behavior that has been standard operating pracice--"all in a day's work"--these seven years of the Bush regime . . . )
Which brings me to my subject of the moment: the media. As you may have noticed above, over at AMERICAblog, John Aravosis is venting a storm of righteous outrage over fresh reminders that the traditional media operate by a political double standard as a matter of policy: You can say anything about a Democrat, especially a progressive one, whereas you don't dare say anything hurtful about a Republican, especially an extremely conservative one--the more conservative, the more daintily the delicate soul must be handled.
This isn't news, of course. It's an all-too-familiar story. But with election season underway, we can't just stand by. Read the whole of John's rant, and see if it doesn't work you up into your own Network moment. I think John's conclusion is worth repeating:
"It's high time we declared war on the media and made it clear that this year if they decide to give coverage to the Republicans' swift-boating lies, then they are going to pay a huge price."
Now it will be interesting to see, for example, what kind of price WHNT pays for censoring the 60 Minutes report on the Siegelman frame-up, for which the station was at the very least an enthusiastic cheerleader. I'll bet the FCC has already scheduled hearings. (Ha ha.)
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UPDATE: DO SOMETHING
Jane's got an automated tool you can use over at FDL to write to local newspapers that serve your zip code about smearing Democratic candidates the way AP and CNN did.
