(The Koch family ... the money behind the make the rich richer movement that owns the GOP. - promoted by mooncat)
The following is an excerpt from a recent article in The New Yorker titled "Covert Operations." You simply must read the entire article.
"The Republican campaign consultant said of the family’s political activities, “To call them under the radar is an understatement. They are underground!” Another former Koch adviser said, “They’re smart. This right-wing, redneck stuff works for them. They see this as a way to get things done without getting dirty themselves.” Rob Stein, a Democratic political strategist who has studied the conservative movement’s finances, said that the Kochs are “at the epicenter of the anti-Obama movement. But it’s not just about Obama. They would have done the same to Hillary Clinton. They did the same with Bill Clinton. They are out to destroy progressivism.”
I am the Afghanistan Blogging Fellow for The Seminal and Brave New Foundation. You can read my work on The Seminal or at Rethink Afghanistan. The views expressed below are my own.
I've always considered myself lucky to have good friends. I’m not sure what I’d do without the friends I’ve got, but lately, with some of those friends, things have gotten a little tense.
As I pick up the pace of work again, coming into the midterms, I have to get some stories cleared off the desk in order to make room for some others, and that's what we're about today.
We'll be talking about saving more than 300,000 of this country's most important jobs, and paying for it in a way that is not only good policy, but is a real problem for Republicans who are yelling "no new taxes!" once again while pretending they care about actually paying for actual spending and actually want to cut actual unemployment.
We have a bit of work to do today, but we want to keep it somewhat short...so let's get going.
I clarify my position and criticism of the President.
I foolishly believe that as a Democrat that I don’t have to walk a straight and narrow party line. I believe that Democrats, unlike the other party, is still diverse, some left, some right, some wrong, some strung out on word play deployed to bamboozle, sometimes just to fun you.
One thing though, if I support someone other than President Obama in the next race for the Democratic nomination, that one will probably walk farther left than President Obama.
Hell, this country should be a slightly leftist country; it should be leftist and capitalist; it should use the economic engine of capitalism to “...promote the general Welfare, ...”
Maybe I don’t understand “promote the general welfare.” Does it mean don’t just promote the specific group’s welfare, such as large corporations, and to promote the welfare of all?
I am here unhealthy drunk on, a bottle of Vitiano 2008, a wine peppery and bawdy, while I watch Netroots on C-span, and really glad to hear Senator Al Franken. He may occupy the seat of smartest, humane senator in the senate. I liked him on Saturday Night Live, but I like him more in the senate.
My progression to progressive so subtle that I didn’t notice. There are still a few good ideas from the right, except no one on the right says them in public. In fact, some folk on the left state them, which proves them more thoughtful than most folk on the right. The right will not accept any ideas expressed on the left even if the original source is on the right.
I grade President Obama low, perhaps a C plus, but must confess that what he got us is better than before. Much better, I confess. Republicans’ grade, F minus. Their grade is that high, and not lower, because of Senators Collins, Snowe, Brown, and Graham. Yes, Lindsey.
I’m drunk so my brain wanders.
“ * This year, children with pre-existing conditions can no longer be denied health insurance coverage. “ * This year, health care plans will allow young people to remain on their parents' insurance policy up until their 26th birthday. “ * This year, insurance companies will be banned from dropping people from coverage when they get sick, and they will be banned from implementing lifetime caps on coverage. “ * This year, adults who are uninsured because of pre-existing conditions will have access to affordable insurance through a temporary subsidized high-risk pool. “ * This year, small businesses that choose to offer coverage will begin to receive tax credits of up to 35 percent of premiums to help make employee coverage more affordable. “ * This year, new private plans will be required to provide free preventive care: no co-payments and no deductibles for preventive services. “ * This year, early retirees will have help in the form of a temporary re-insurance program to help offset the costs of expensive premiums for employers and retirees age 55-64. “ * This year, seniors who fall into the Medicare Part D 'donut hole' coverage gap will receive a $250 rebate to help pay for prescription drugs.“
Now this last is stupid. $250.00 dollars does not really fix the problem; the remedy is to change the law so that the donut hole does not exist.
Alabamans I am drunk but you may be stupid!
I will awake tomorrow with a hangover.
You will not awake from your atavistic stupor, unless you decide to vote for folk who advocate for you, for your self interest.
Your hangover is that you live in the daily stupor that you have lived in for decades, and you will be poorer, your children poorer, and the country declines a little bit more.
Simple honest speech, courteous and kind has not worked. I call you stupid. You vote against your interest.
Go to the links above and read the actual features of the health care bill. Use the intelligence that a long line of hominids evolved, died, extincted themselves, to produce you.
I usually limit myself to one shot of Knob Creek or Booker’s, one glass of wine, one glass of Takara Plum wine, one bottle of Guinness Stout or Pilsner, or one shot of Laphroaig 25 year old. Tonight I get really drunk for the first time in two decades because I am confused by the acts of Alabamans.
Why do you vote against your self interest?
Why do you vote for Alabama Republicans?
If you lived in Maine, I could understand a vote for Senator Collins or Senator Snowe, but you live in Alabama and you vote for Alabama Republicans.
There has been some progress, Alabamans are the second fattest, second to Mississippi.
Total Itemized Contributions † $10,404,293 25 Total to Democrats $3,347,264 27 Percent to Democrats 32.2% 42 Total to Republicans $6,969,362 20 Percent to Republicans 67.0% 10
I am too drunk to go fetch for you the donors to the Democrats and Republicans. I amaze myself that I can still type.
There is some ferment in me besides wine.
Why do you vote for Senator Sessions and Shelby; they vote in the senate to starve and impoverish you.
Why do you vote for Republicans?
I am drunk and my hangover will last an hour or so next morn.
Your hangover will last for decades.
“Qui bibit, dormit; qui dormit, non peccat; qui non peccat, sanctus est; ergo qui bibit sanctus est.” I guess I’m a progressive saint now.
******************************************* Next morn. I’m sober. No hangover, perhaps because I hydrate. I should edit what I wrote last night. Naahhh.
Sarah Palin, Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson, and others have used bloggers and the GOP's in-house propaganda arm - Fox News - to assert that President Obama has rejected foreign aid to help with the Gulf Oil spill. Make no mistake: this is a LIE.
Like so many other GOP lies, they take half the story and spin it into a right wing fairy tale where evil Democratic-leaning unions, on-the-take politicians, and welfare cheats deprive hardworking citizens of money and protection from malfeasance. Hey, if anybody would recognize on-the-take politicians, corporate welfare cheats, and deprivation of citizens, it's the GOP, right?
So here's their narrative.... our allies are offering help, but can't even get a call back! According to the fact-challenged Sarah Palin:
"They can't even get a phone call returned, Bill. ... The Dutch, they are known, and the Norwegians they are known for, um, for dikes and for cleanup water and for dealing with spills. They offered to help and yet no, they too, with the proverbial can't even get a phone call back, that is what the Norwegians are telling us and the Dutch are telling us...."
A compelling narrative, sure. But there's one problem. Like so many other Lies of Sarah Palin, it's well... a LIE.
When a left-leaning Facebook friend asked people to vote on a poll about whether Obama was correct in refusing aid, I was shocked and asked her for documentation for that claim. She didn't have anything other than "I heard it from people I work with." Ok... so I go to Google and the first three pages of results were all right wing blogs that linked to each other.
Well, the hell with that... I wanted real information. And I found it. Follow me on the flip as we refute the lies...
It's been a while since we had to have a real heart-to-heart, the Obama Administration and I, and last time it was because Rahm Emanuel had been a bit snippy toward those of us who are carrying the water for this Administration.
We need to have another one of those conversations today; this time the circumstances are a lot more positive-in fact, if the Administration follows my suggestions here, we have a real chance to put the Democrats on the road to victory, not just this November, but also in 2012.
What I'm proposing will create hundreds of thousands, if not millions of jobs, and it will stimulate millions more as we create a national source of discount electrical power that can be used by business and consumers alike.
Here's the best part: it's no "pie in the sky" promotion I'm offering here; we've already done the same thing before, it's been working out well for almost three quarters of a century...and even better than all that...my idea first pays for itself, and then...it actually makes the Federal Government a profit, forever after.
I was shaky on the war in Iraq when it started, but I was in college at the time-- and in AF-ROTC-- and I was given no right to speak my mind about it. I knew what could go right and I knew what could go horribly wrong.
I really don't understand why people are so up in arms over the economy. They keep saying "this is the worst the economy has been since the Great Depression."
It wasn't but a couple of days ago that we had a conversation about The Fear and the emails that are used to spread it, and I figured with that out of the way we had dealt with the topic, and that we'd move on to new things.
Well, we would be moving on, Gentle Reader, if it wasn't for the fact that an email came in today that was so ugly, so disturbing, and so indicative of what we are about to see as the battle over the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) begins to heat up (ENDA being possibly the next "big contentious thing" that this Administration hopes to accomplish), that I had to interrupt my story schedule to bring it to your attention.
It seems like everywhere you look these days, someone’s trying to spread...The Fear.
All around us...in every town...on every corner...a massive Army Of Fear is standing by, according to the Messengers, ready at a moment’s notice to obey the dictates of some unappointed Czar or another.
Just ask Glenn Beck: concentration camps for the white people, jackbooted stormtroopers ready to snatch the guns from your cold dead fingers...Socialist Government-Controlled Healthcare That Threatens Your Not Socialist Medicare...it’s all coming, my friends—and unless we organize, as a community, to return to the values of the Founding Fathers, The Government, meaning that awful Obama and Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid and George Soros and all the other Evil Community Organizers, will win.
There’s no government, we’re told, like no government.
You know who would find all of this fear of self-government just entirely bizarre?
The Founding Fathers.
In today’s conversation we’ll consider the fundamentals of American patriotism, we’ll ask one of those Founding Fathers how he saw the role of Government—and we’ll toss in a few words from Abraham Lincoln, just for good measure.
LANGUAGE WARNING: Today’s story is uncharacteristically blunt, and from this moment forward we will be using lots of inappropriate language in making our points.
It is by now fairly well known that Rahm Emanuel, President Obama’s White House Chief of Staff, had a bit of a blow-up with liberals who were ready to start running ads against “blue dog” Democrats who were working very hard to shut down the health care reform effort.
Now we’re not gonna get in the middle of that argument today; instead, since we’re finally getting a chance to talk, I figured me and Rahm could get a few other things out of the way that have been on everyone’s mind for the past year or so.
From the article: "Franklin Roosevelt, the president we hoped that Obama would be like, had a huge advantage over our new president. At FDR's disposal were powerful mass movements – Huey Long's "Share the Wealth", Father Coughlin's radical racist anti-capitalist broadcasts, the elderly Townsend Clubs, the veterans' bonus marchers and militant labour unions with their sit-down strikes – that were an effective threat, a countervailing force to rich rightwingers eager to destroy the New Deal. FDR's good angel, his wife Eleanor, constantly reported to him about just how bad it was in the real world of the Great Depression. But Roosevelt told Eleanor and anyone else who came to him with demands for progressive change: "OK, you've convinced me. Now go out and put pressure on me."
The Republicans don’t want the President Obama administration to get credit for anything. They are at the core a southern and racist party. The idea of a black president causes their brains to gag. The presidency was one position that they felt would remain a white man’s position for a few generations more.
My test is two questions?
Were the protestors against the Vietnam war who carried Viet Cong flags traitors?
Were the supporters of the Confederacy traitors?
We are either Americans, act as Americans are Constitutionally supposed to act, or we are traitors.
If there could be any doubt, a recent vote in the US Senate is proof positive that Republicans in DC are not negotiating in good faith and not interested in acting in a bipartisan manner -- instead, the are just the "party of no." In the vote, seven GOP co-sponsors of legislation for a fiscal responsibility panel withdrew their support after word leaked that Obama supported the proposal. How can you withdraw support of a bill when you are a co-sponsor? To put it one way, they were for it before they were against it.
As Wonkette put it, "It became a problem when Barack Obama endorsed it and Republicans had to find a way to (a) make sure it didn’t pass ever and (b) blame Obama for not passing it from his legislative chair in the executive branch."
The bill was officially described as a bill to take "responsible fiscal action, to assure the long-term fiscal stability and economic security of the federal government of the United States, and to expand future prosperity and growth for all Americans." The vote in the Senate was actually 53 in favor to 46 oppossed, but these days it takes 60 votes to pass any bill. After the vote failed, Obama has signaled in his State of the Union address that he will create the commission by Executive Order sometime this week. Unlike the Senate bill's commission, there can be no requirement that Congress vote on the recommendations of the President's commission.
What deeply bothers me about all this is that Republicans have made an issue of the escalating national debt -- it is even the chief issue of the Teabaggers, but when they finally have a chance to do something about it -- they back out. Put simply, it shows they are phonies: they are acting in bad faith. Instead of taking action that could the problem, they will likely complain of a lack of bipartisanship and complain that the President has no concern for the issue. That is Republican dishonesty, that is what Chris Matthews while on the Rachel Maddow show aptly called "treachery". It shows that Republicans are not patriots; indeed, they would rather see the Country fail than our President succeed. I am disheartened.
Republican hyberbole and distortion won't solve any problems. So, when the Repubs start along these phony complaints of partisanship by the President and Democratic leaders, I, for one, will remember this vote and I will throw it back in their face.
No-Drama Obama--remember him? Remember that admirable temperament, that ability to peer over the horizon, that poker player's cool? That chess player's sense of where the game will be several moves ahead? That matter-of-fact, unsentimental empathy? That serene immunity to the 24/7 cable/talk-radio/Internet hysteria machine? These qualities of mind and character, which I admired in candidate Obama, I still admire in President Obama. Perhaps that's why I don't see his first year in terms of high points and sharp disappointments. There have been some of each, of course, but he's still up on the bridge, holding a steady course in a violent storm, even as many of the rest of us are clutching the railings and puking over the side.
I seldom miss a chance to bitch and moan about the flaws of our wheezing, rusted-out, barely functioning electoral and governmental machinery. So I haven't been terribly surprised at how difficult it has proved for Obama to get his modest, moderately liberal program through Congress, especially the Senate. These difficulties are not his fault. Blaming him--accusing him of cowardice, of not having "balls," of being a corporate shill, etc.--is infantile.
To the extent that the left component of the center-left is indulging in that sort of self-destructive, misdirected petulance--well, I guess that's my "sharpest disappointment" of this president's first year.
It's easy to write him off as a east coast liberal or establishment figure, etc. etc. But we heard much the same argument at the Morgan County Democratic Executive Committee meeting in Decatur on Tuesday.
Union member (not sure which one), Rodney Gladden, provided a retrospetive of the last decade or so. He began by discussing how the economy has affected his family, reminded everyone of the "clean plate" that Bush II inherited from Clinton and scoffed at bit at those who expected Obama to clean up the huge mess he inherited from Bush in only a year: (the video is on the flip)
"It don't work like that."
No it doesn't. It's disturbing to me to watch this playing out because it's just too reminiscent of 1993-1994. After 12 years of Republican presidents, Clinton swept into office with a bold, popular agenda that Congress basically chewed up and spit back at him. And this was a Democratic Congress.
The weeping and wailing and endless "self-destructive, misdirected petulance" from many Democrats began almost immediately. I subscribed to a magazine called "The Progressive" at the time. By the end of Clinton's first year, you'd have thought from their articles and editorials that we'd elected a cross between Herbert Hoover and Hitler. By the end of that year, I had cancelled my subscription.
As there were no blogs at the time, CNN was filled with disappointed commentary about what a "failure" the administration had been. Now, this wasn't only right-wingers: there were many liberal leaders saything it too. Clinton hadn't changed things enough quickly enough. He was to willing to listen to other sides and compromise. He was weak. He couldn't control Congress (newsflash: only Lyndon Johnson had that particular superpower).
The drumbeat went on and on and on. The base was depressed. The opposition was energized. Congress was beset with scandal. And the Democrats lost control of both houses of Congress.
There was plenty of blame to go around:
Entrenched Congressional "leaders" more interested in personal power and perks killed legislation, porked it up, and disgusted the electorate with their banking scandal.
President Clinton totally underestimated the difficulty of dealing with Congress and foolishly expected cooperation from members of his own damn party.
But I was most disappointed in those on the left who were just too darn impatient and negative. Change takes time. You have to slow an aircraft carrier before you can stop it and the US government is much, much harder to steer.
Obama isn't perfect and I haven't been thrilled by much of what he's done. But consider the alternative: McCain/Palin. God help us all.
And consider the ramifications of endless negativity, allegations that Obama is a "useless president," and threats to stay home on election day.
Just remember how well that strategy worked in 1994 and that other president who was forced sharply to the right after his first midterm elections.
If history repeats itself, Obama shouldn't be the only one who gets the blame.
In the wake of the devastating Haitian earthquake, nations around the world are racing against time to provide lifesaving rescue equipment, food, and medicine. Few have stopped to wonder why a tragedy of this magnitude has been visited on the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere.
That's why we have Pat Robertson, who blames the quake on Haitians "deal with the devil."
"They said, 'We will serve you if you get us free from the French.' True story." That's right: Robertson seems to suggest the Haitians brought the earthquake on themselves, in a deal with Satan.
"And so, the Devil said, 'OK, it's a deal.' And they kicked the French out," he went on. "You know, the Haitians revolted and got themselves free. But ever since, they have been cursed by one thing after another."
Why was he discussing this? Oh, it's because he was asking viewers to contribute to relief efforts! Hey, Pat, maybe you should work on your technique a little bit, buddy.
He agreed with Jerry Falwell's statement that the 9/11 attacks were a punishment for America's "secularization."
Israeli Prime Minister Arial Sharon suffered a stroke, according to Robertson, as punishment for cedeing land to Palestinians.
Hurrican Katrina was a result of legal abortion and gay pride parades in the city.
"We have killed over 40 million unborn babies in America. … Some of the attacks that are coming against us either by terrorists or now by natural disaster, could they be connected in some way?" he said.
If you'd like to donate to earthquake relief, I suggest not doing it through any organization with ties to Robertson and instead using this post from the Atlanta Journal Constitution as a starting point.
I encourage you to read the whole thing, but here are a few of my favorite lines:
Where is the complete ideological overhaul of the entire federal government? Where is the Gandhi-like pacifism? Why are we sending 30K more troops to Afghanistan? What about my new job, my single-payer health care and my tiny car that runs on sunflowers and hemp popsicles? Indeed, rabid impatience has combined with impossible expectation to give many liberals a free ticket to the land of nonstop bitching. Alas.
Conversely, there is all manner of incoherent noise spewing like radioactive urine from the far right, a nonstop wail of childlike panic claiming that, because Obama behaves with unnerving calm, shakes hands with foreign dignitaries and doesn't seem interested in bombing everyone in a turban, he must be a socialist Muslim Nazi hell-bent on banning machine guns and killing all old Republicans in their sleep and replacing them with French-speaking hip-hop jazz musicians.
The good news is, both sides are wildly, fantastically, delightfully wrong. As Slate's Jacob Weisberg rightly points out, Obama has had a very first good year indeed, spectacular even, far better than most in major media acknowledge (but they will, they will).
[...]
Nearly everything Bush tore down and decimated and humiliated to its very core, Obama has either restored, is in the process of restoring, or is set to restore. Even Afghanistan appears to have a coherent framework now (we shall see). And that's just the beginning.
[...]
But somehow, as I delved in a bit more deeply, as I scanned those lists and noted all the changes in a single year, I found myself reenergized, invigorated, slapped awake at the new tone and direction, the sheer scale of all the changes, and how we are no longer the rogue macho cowboy laughingstock jackass of the world.
We strive to be, if anything, a participatory space around here, and I’ve had a question come to my inbox that is very much deserving of our attention.
To make a long story short, our questioner wants to know why, on the one hand, despite the passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA, also known as the “stimulus”), unemployment in the construction industry continues to increase, and, on the other hand, why there is such a giant disparity, on a state-by-state basis, in the cost of saving a job?
They’re great questions, and, having done a bit of research, I think I have some cogent answers.
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