Month: December 2011

With a two year-old child born on New Year’s Day, and Christmas coming up, gifts have been on my mind. I’m trying to remember what gifts gave me the biggest thrill as a little tot. I remember getting an eighteen-wheel Shop-Rite truck with doors that opened up. I remember getting one of those hand-held electronic football games. I remember my first stereo (an all-in-one turntable and radio). I still remember my older brother showing me how to find WYSP (94.1) and WMMR (93.3) out of Philadelphia so I could listen to some rock and roll with good reception. It’s hard for me to remember any gifts from when I was really young. Finn is obsessed with Thomas the Tank Engine, so that makes it easy to know what will make him smile. What were the coolest gifts you received as a child?

Sean Hannity calling President Obama on Fox News Channel a “socialist” every night in prime time on the Fox News Chanel is only the visible tip of the conservative propaganda iceberg. The Right’s real power lies in its ability to shape the narrative and define what is fair and out of bounds for the rest of the media.

Last week MSNBC reported the following:

“So you may not hear Mitt Romney say `Keep America American’ anymore, because it was a rallying cry for the KKK group, intimidation against blacks, gays and Jews, and the progressive AMERICAblog was the first to catch on to that.”

Within hours, so-called liberals at MSNBC like Chris Matthews and Al Sharpton were falling over themselves to see who could offer the most debasing, abject apology to Mitt Romney.

Predictably, the rest of the so-called mainstream media and more of the “Liberal Media Establishment” weighed in on the issue, all to denounce MSNBC and to portray Romney as an innocent victim.

As recent as last night, Bill O’Reilly and fellow right-wing media ideologist Bernard Goldberg hashed over the affair in Prime Time. The focus of their debate was whether NBC did enough in their apologizing or whether they were still evil because of their so-called liberal bias.

The otherwise normally sensible Mediaite.com describes the story this way:

“It turns out, the (MSNBC’s) story was not exactly true. …”

There is only one little problem with all of this hysteria. MSNBC’s story that Romney said “keep America American” and that this was a phrase used by the Klan appears to be 100% factual and truthful!

The Romney campaign initially refused to respond to this story for two days. Finally, they claimed that Romney never said “Keep America, American.” They claim he said “Keep America, America.” The central point of evidence is a video you can see here. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=26AMgycOWoU.

When I play the video to various people, most claim they hear Romney saying “Keep America American” (I definitely do). But to be fair, a few do hear Romney saying “Keep America America.” But here’s what isn’t a close call. The Los Angeles Times reporter on December 9, 2011 reported that Romney said this: “We have on one side a president who wants to transform America into a European-style nation, and you have on the other hand someone like myself that wants to turn around America and keep America American with the principals that made us the greatest nation on Earth. And I will do that with your help.”

Was the reporter ever contacted by the Romney campaign demanding a retraction? Are there comments on the LATimes website at the time of the story (this was before the controversy broke out)?

No and no.

So now we are supposed to believe that The Los Angeles Times reporter just makes up stuff and that most people who hear Romney on this video with their own ears saying “Keep America American” should disbelieve their own ears and instead put their trust in the Romney campaign’s press release.

This stretches credulity.

Another school of thought in most of the media reporters is that MSNBC was horribly irresponsible for not providing more context to the story, presumably to cast Romney in a more favorable light.

Fair enough; let’s parse the phrase “Keep America American.” After all, it truly would be unfair to pick a random phrase like “I love America” or “I am a vegetarian” and show that the Klan or a Nazi had once used the phrase. But “Keep America American” is not that general. It’s not a phrase that easily floats from everyone’s mouth. The phrase had a specific meaning in the 1920s and it has one today. The similarity is that in both cases, what it means is this “My ideas and principles are good and the ideals and values of people who oppose us are bad. And these ideas are bad because they got their ideas from other countries and other parts of the world. We should reject their ideas and values not just because they are bad but specifically because their ideas originated from other parts of the world.”

It doesn’t matter how you slice or dice it, the phrase “Keep America American” is a rhetorical cheap shot used by demagogues in the act of committing demagoguery. No, it doesn’t mean Romney is a closet Klansman, but it does mean he uses rhetorical cheap shots that have a long tradition and it’s fair game to point out their tradition.

So are we being unfair to Romney for looking at the phrase he used and inferring one set of ideas when he was really implying something else? NO. Just look at the full quote above. Romney is rejecting Obama and his ideas, specifically because Obama’s ideas are European. That’s what makes them bad, they aren’t from America–get it?

What O’Reilly and all of the right wing echo chamber have been doing for the last week is tending to the media landscape. And what they have done, to a remarkable degree of success, is to say that any suggestion of racism among prominent republicans is out of bounds. In the conservative media establishment’s worldview, there is no such thing as racism among conservatives. Only liberals can be racist. Therefore any story that hints at or suggests that a conservative is racist is inherently wrong and demands an immediate denunciation and retraction.

This bit of zeitgeist shaping was done with such efficiency and collaboration that it left the other side helpless.

In the conservative world view, it is quite Ok to brand Obama a “socialist” or even a “communist” if he does something so radical as suggesting Richard Nixon’s healthcare plan. Never mind that socialism and communism are hated ideologies by most Americans and is represented by regimes such as Cambodia’s where 7 million people were slaughtered by a genocidal communist. No, that’s considered completely fair, and normal because, well, because that’s what every conservative gets away with in the media every day.

But no one is ever allowed to compare any extreme Republican rhetoric with, say, fascists or racists. That’s considered automatically beyond the pale. There is an un-written rule imposed by the conservative media establishment and accepted by even liberal mainstream media:

“Thou shalt not accuse any Republican of doing anything even mildly racist or even racist-friendly unless you can capture video tape of the republican saying `I hate all black people and want to string them all up and kill them!'”

The result is a media climate where any ambitious, smart reporter pulls his/her punches when reporting on Republicans. Don’t report anything that can tie a Republican to an extremist cause or organization, even if the facts bear it out. Instead, use that time to report that Obama isn’t a citizen or that Bill Clinton made a fortune on Whitewater or that House Democrats want to wage “class warfare” because they want to raises taxes to the same rates they were in 1994.

The strongest form of power is away the subtlest and Conservatives have both overt and subtle power to get the media, all the media, to sell their propaganda.

more info at www,DailyNational.com

Do you know who creates ninety percent (that’s 90% if you prefer numerals) of the net new jobs in America? Small businesses, and by small businesses I mean businesses with less than 100 employees. These small businesses represent 98% of all employers, and provide roughly one half of all the jobs in America. They also provide 90% of all of exports by the United States.

I’ll bet a lot of small businesses are owned by people who vote for Republicans. Well, folks I have some news for you. Republicans are not your friends.

In 2008, the last year of the Bush Presidency the budget for the Small Business Administration (SBA) was $569 MILLION. That was a decline from the high water mark of the Clinton years when the SBA’s budget was 1.1 BILLION. Bush spent his eight years in office cutting the SBA’s budget by more than half, and running off its most best and most experienced employees. Bush even told his first SBA administrator that he intended to eliminate the SBA entirely by the end of his first term. Even though he wasn’t able to accomplish that goal, he did plenty of damage to the SBA during his two terms in office. Under his “leadership” the SBA was involved in numerous instances of “waste, fraud and abuse” (sound familiar?). For example, investigations by the General Accounting Office (GAO) discovered one scandal where over $300 million in funds supposed to be allocated to legitimate small businesses were funneled illegally to large corporations:

GAO identified $325 million in set-aside and sole-source contracts given to firms not eligible for the 8(a) program. Most were obtained through fraudulent schemes. In the 14 cases GAO investigated, numerous instances were found where 8(a) firm presidents made false statements, such as underreporting income or assets, to either qualify for the program or retain certification.

This is what the leader of one small business advocacy and watchdog group had to say about what President Bush and Republicans in Congress did to the SBA (via Mother Jones report, dated March 27, 2009):

Chris Gunn, a spokesman for the American Small Business League, has been bird-dogging the SBA for years. He says that since the underfunded and overwhelmed agency was gutted by the Bush administration, “it’s not necessarily surprising that we see this amount of fraud and abuse.”

When the Obama administration took office it found the SBA in shambles. However, by 2010, with the help of Democratic control of both house of Congress, it raised the budget 31% to $824 million and also provided a one time increase of $962 Million in supplemental stimulus funding for a total of 1.79 Billion dollars. Not surprisingly loans to small businesses increased dramatically in 2010 across the United States, even in Red States:

Loans in Georgia made through a U.S. Small Business Administration program offering 90 percent loan guarantees to lenders and eliminating fees for borrowing companies increased by nearly 52 percent. […]

The higher loan percentage guarantees and fee elimination were continued for the last three months of 2010 after President Barack Obama signed the Small Business Jobs Act, which extended those incentives. […]

The loans made under the SBA’s programs from February 2009, when the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was signed, through the end of 2010 carried 90 percent loan guarantees, up from 75 to 85 percent guarantees, and no borrower fees, instead of 2 to 3 percent fees on the loan amount. […]

Nationally, the SBA said it approved more than $10.3 billion in loan guarantees in the last three months of 2010, which supported more than $12 billion in loans. The guarantees were funded by $505 million in subsidy funds provided during the period.

Total business loans in 2010 to all companies regardless of size was $32.47 Billion. Thanks to Democrats and President Obama, a significant amount of those loans went to small businesses, with no fees and guaranteed up to 90% by the Federal Government. Even after the Republican sweep of the 2010 mid-term election, President Obama proposed an increase of 19.5% to the SBA’s budget to $985 MILLION. Unfortunately, with Republicans in control of the House of Representatives and ever ready to filibuster in the Senate, the hope of more stimulus funding for small business is now dead.

In fact, Republicans still want to kill off the SBA and harm our nation;s true “Job Creators,” small businesses. Need an example? How about the bill sponsored by North Carolina’s Republican Senator, Senator Richard Burr and seven other of his Republican colleagues, the “Department of Commerce and Workforce Consolidation Act,” which was proposed this summer:

The motivation behind this latest bill is to redirect the 23 percent of all federal contracts that should be going to small businesses into the hands of the nation’s largest corporations. Furthermore, if the SBA is merged with the Commerce Department, the door will be shut on the decade long scandal of diverting small business contracts to Fortune 500 firms through “false” and “improper” certifications and “vendor deception”.

Now, as a small business owner, you should be very concerned about a Republican takeover of the Presidency and the Congress? Why? Because the last time the controlled both Congress and the Presidency, government funds flowed like Canadian tar sands through existing pipelines to the largest corporations in America, and small businesses were shut out of most government assistance. That’s what I like to refer to to as Fortune 500 Socialism. These firms are laying off American workers (i.e., your customers) and outsourcing their jobs overseas. In the meantime, as more of your customers will slip into poverty, the government will provide less and less services and assistance for your businesses. Services such as these:

If you’re looking for a way to finance your growth, an SBA loan might be what you need. The SBA doesn’t actually make the loans. Instead, we guarantee a percentage of each loan made by lenders who partner with us. Our guarantee reduces the risk, which means these SBA lending partners are more likely to help small businesses that can’t get access to conventional loans.

… The federal government spends $500 billion a year in contracts. We work with all federal agencies to put at least 23 percent of that money in the hands of small businesses. We also work with small business directly, through training and business development programs, to help them compete for and win contracts. […]

[SBA] business experts offer counseling and training (nearly always free) to over 1 million small business owners each year. If you don’t have a counselor or mentor, you should. Our data shows that businesses that spend three hours or more with an SBA counselor have higher revenue and more employees as a result.

Of course, there’s a lot more to the SBA. From disaster assistance to surety bonds, we’re there with the tools you need.

You think Republicans want to help you when they get most of their bribes funding from the largest corporations in the world? If you do, you’ve been played my friends. The Republican party cares enough about your votes to keep lying to you about the evil socialistic plots of Democrats to destroy your livelihoods, but the truth is that Democrats have been far more reliable friends of small businesses than the Republicans. Just look at what happened the last tome the republicans were in complete control of our government. Mega-corporations made out like bandits, our deficit skyrocketed (deficits didn’t matter to Republicans back then, remember?), and no one paid any attention to Wall Street as it ran the global economy off the cliff and then, with the million dollar lobbyists convince Congress ans the Fed to bail them out with unknown and unaccounted for TRILLIONS of dollars.

Whereupon, those Too Big to Fail Banks stopped lending to you. That sure helped out your small business a bunch, didn’t it?

How is John Boehner doing since he took over as Speaker of the House?

Or, in words:

A new record-low 11% of Americans approve of the job Congress is doing, the lowest single rating in Gallup’s history of asking this question since 1974. This earns Congress a 17% yearly average for 2011, the lowest annual congressional approval rating in Gallup history.

My friend Josh Holland reminded me that Rasmussen found that 11% of the public thinks communism is a morally superior system to our own. I think if you boil down a pot of Stupid until it’s dry, you are left with 11% of the public.

Boehner may discover that it is impossible to refine the Stupid any more than this.

I hadn’t anticipated this line of attack. How do you convince people who are inclined to vote for Ron Paul in the Iowa Caucuses to change their mind? You can try to discuss issues and policies, but if they are already leaning towards Rep. Paul, that may not be too effective. How about telling people that if Rep. Paul wins the caucuses, the Republicans will stop letting Iowa be the first state in the nation to hold a nominating contest? In other words, if you vote for Rep. Paul, it may be the last time you get to vote in an important caucus. All the money that Iowa sees every four years may simply dry up.

With his left-of-Obama foreign policy views, libertarian outlook on social issues and paper trail of controversial statements, a Paul victory could represent a potentially devastating blow to the tradition of Republicans starting their White House campaigns in Iowa.

“Mortal,” said Doug Gross, a leading Republican lawyer and Branstad adviser, when asked how severe the wound of a Paul win would be.

“I think a Paul win would be devastating for the state of Iowa and the caucus process,” added Sam Clovis, an influential talk radio host in Northwest Iowa who endorsed Rick Santorum Monday.

The back up plan is to pretend that Ron Paul doesn’t exist. Here’s the Republican governor of Iowa speaking:

“People are going to look at who comes in second and who comes in third,” said Gov. Terry Branstad. “If [Mitt] Romney comes in a strong second, it definitely helps him going into New Hampshire and the other states.”

Now, what’s interesting is that the Republicans are also voicing concern about how they believe Rep. Paul will win the caucuses. They think he will attract a bunch if independents and some Democrats who will show up and register as Republicans on January 3rd. It’s similar to how Barack Obama succeeded in beating John Edwards and Hillary Clinton in the caucuses four years ago. The problem, from the Republicans’ point of view, is that they do not believe these voters will vote for the Republican nominee if it isn’t Ron Paul. All they’ll do is help select a candidate in Iowa who holds some very unorthodox and heretical views. It’s a rather self-limiting way of looking at things. Ordinarily, you’d welcome a candidate who was adding droves of new voters to your party list.

I’m not suggesting that the Iowa Caucuses are representative of the country as a whole, or even of Iowa as a whole, but it will still be meaningful if Ron Paul is more popular there than any of the orthodox candidates the Republicans could produce. It could be a canary in a coal mine, suggesting something fundamental is broken in the GOP’s coalition. New Hampshire allows independents to vote, and Ron Paul could surprise some people there as well.

Maybe Iowa has reason to be concerned about a Ron Paul victory in the caucuses, but the Establishment would let out a sigh of relief. It would allow them to sell Romney on national security grounds to a base that has so far resisted all sales efforts for the Mittster.

I don’t like to get my hopes up too much, but even a thirty percent chance of a political settlement with the Taliban sounds well worth pursuing. If Obama can end both stupid wars, in addition to passing the most sweeping health care reform in history and the strongest Wall Street reforms and consumer protections in over half a century, all in one term in office, then we won’t even have to mention the elimination of bin-Laden and Gaddafi or the stabilization of the financial system or the saving of the auto industry or the end of DADT or the non-enforcement of DOMA or the hate crimes bill or the many other worthy achievements he’s already notched on his belt. If he can end both wars without further humiliation, and without endangering our national security, then he deserves a special place in the pantheon of American presidents.

He’s at least 50% of the way there. As for cleaning up Bush’s mess, he’s doing an outstanding job with less than no cooperation from the Republicans and often not enough help from the Democrats.

We still have a Congress full of cowards who don’t believe in the American justice system. And the administration is guilty of playing too much defense to protect itself from criticism. It’s hard for any administration to reject powers that Congress, through its predilection for bedwetting and fear mongering, throws at it with threats that they better accept them or they’ll be attacked for endangering national security. The Obama administration has done too much to protect the prior administration and has accepted too much power into its own hands. If not for that, they’d be getting an A-plus in my grading system.

I’d like to see them do more in a second term to roll back these excesses. I’m not optimistic about it, but the luxury of not needing to worry about reelection should give them more confidence to do the right thing without it handing power to a bunch of would-be war criminals and Tea Partiers.

In any case, I fervently hope that the talks with the Taliban bear fruit.

.

Arrest warrant out for Iraqi Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi

An arrest warrant for Iraq’s vice president, Tariq al-Hashimi, was issued today by Iraq’s Judicial Committee, according to CNN. Under “Article 4” of the warrant, Al-Hashimi is cited for terrorism, and is accused of planning bomb attacks against Iraqi government and security officials.

At a news conference held by the Interior Ministry, recorded videos of al-Hashimi’s alleged bodyguards confessed to carrying out these attacks under the vice president’s orders.

“One man said he carried out assassination attempts using roadside bombs and guns with silencers. He said the orders came from the vice president and at times through the director of his office.”

According to Reuters, Major General Adel Daham, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry, said that the warrant was signed by five judges, and that it “should be executed.”

Sectarian tension may lead to violence and fracture political stability

USA Today reported that al-Hashimi is a parliamentary ally of Iraq’s Sunni Arab minority. Currently, the group is boycotting its participation in parliament “to protest what it called Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s monopolization of all decision-making.”

The arrest warrant may reignite tensions between the Shi’ites and Sunnis sects, whose relationship is already shaky due to the recent withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, Reuters reported.

“Political tensions between Shi’ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and his Sunni partners in the country’s delicate power-sharing deal have sharpened… as both parties traded accusations and counter charges.”

More below the fold >>

Yesterday’s comment in my diary – How ‘Shock and Awe’ Ended

Maliki to Lead Iraq with Iron Fist

Iraq political crisis erupts as last U.S. troops leave

BAGHDAD — Iraq’s political process was unraveling faster than had been anticipated, with Sunni politicians walking out of the nation’s parliament and threatening to resign from the government even before the last U.S. troops had left the country. The crisis was triggered by reports that security forces loyal to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite, are planning to arrest the country’s Sunni vice president, Tariq al-Hashimi, and charge him with terrorism.

In recent days, the homes of top Sunni politicians in the fortified Green Zone have been ringed by tanks and armored personnel carriers, and rumors are flying that arrest warrants will be issued for other Sunni leaders. A brewing confrontation in the province of Diyala underscored the risk that violence could erupt. After the mostly Sunni leadership of the province declared last week that it intends to seek regional autonomy under the terms of Iraq’s constitution, Shiite militiamen surrounded the provincial council headquarters and set fire to the Sunni governor’s home.

The governor and most members of the provincial council have fled to northern Kurdistan, and on Saturday, the main highway linking Baghdad to the northern city of Kirkuk was blocked for a third day by Shiite militiamen who, residents said, belong to Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army.

Iraqi authorities bar VP Al-Hashimi from travel

• Ashraf Camp of Mujahidin-e Khalq to be shut down at Iranian border
• As US troops exit Iraq, Maliki moves against Sunni rivals

"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."

Ron Paul represents some of the worst aspects of the Republican Party. He’s generally opposed to every bit of progress made since the Progressive Movement began having success roughly a hundred years ago. But he also offers one of few voices on the right that questions our foreign policy, our drug policy, and our ever-increasing surveillance state. Ideally, he would have less influence on the former issues and more influence on the latter ones. In the context of a Republican nominating process, it will be his heterodox views that come to the fore, and so we can expect the Republican Establishment to come down on him with both feet if, as now seems possible, he wins the Iowa Caucuses. Whether they tackle his foreign policy sins frontally or attack him for being kooky and racist, they will be most concerned to discredit his views on foreign policy.

I think Democrats are fairly united in the belief that Mitt Romney would pose the most dangerous challenge to Obama’s reelection, and it will probably help Romney if Paul wins Iowa because Romney can unite most of the party against Paul in a way that simply wouldn’t be possible against any of the other candidates. So, a Ron Paul victory in Iowa would be an unwelcome development because it would appear to make a Romney nomination much more likely. It would be better for Paul to emerge somewhat later in the process.

In an ideal scenario, Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, and some other candidate would each get enough delegates to create a deadlocked first ballot at the convention. At that point, Ron Paul could negotiate terms for shifting his delegates’ support to one or the other of the other candidates (or to a draft candidate). Some of those concessions would be of little interest to progressives, like minor changes to the Republican platform or cabinet positions in any future government. The wedge Paul would create would be the biggest benefit, as it would split the GOP into irreconcilable camps. But a dose of sanity on the Pentagon’s budget and drug policy could help our country move in a more positive direction. It’s hard to say if more influence from Paulistas could move the GOP in a saner direction overall. I think it more likely to just weaken the party’s cohesiveness and party discipline. But I’d see that as a major positive, too.

In general, I’d like Paul to do very well in the primaries, but I’d rather he not start out so strong that he wins Iowa. If he does that, he’ll wipe out all Romney’s other competition and find himself quickly marginalized and his message forgotten. Of course, since Paul won’t drop out (most likely), a prolonged two-person race between Paul and Romney could prove quite costly to the GOP, but only if Paul can withstand an incredible onslaught and still win some decent percentage of contests. I don’t see that as too likely.

First, let’s address the obvious: yes, Jeb Bush has a Wall Street Journal op-ed because the party has been preparing to slot him into the presidential race if there’s no other way to get an electable nominee. But the op-ed was clearly in the pipeline before polls started revealing the implosion of the Newt Gingrich campaign, and the rise of a libertarian anti-Romney who can’t win anywhere where GOP voters insist on a foreign policy that emphasizes killing brown people for Jesus (i.e., the vast majority of red states). So Ron Paul will fade right after Gingrich, Romney is all but anointed, and Jeb will soon retreat to the background, hoping to be Mitt’s market-oriented secretary of education.

But since the party elders took the trouble to put this op-ed together for Jeb, let’s examine it, particularly the opening:

Congressman Paul Ryan recently coined a smart phrase to describe the core concept of economic freedom: “The right to rise.”

Think about it. We talk about the right to free speech, the right to bear arms, the right to assembly. The right to rise doesn’t seem like something we should have to protect.

But we do. We have to make it easier for people to do the things that allow them to rise. We have to let them compete. We need to let people fight for business.

“The right to rise”? In a sane America, if we wanted to use the phrase “the right to rise” at this moment in history, we’d use it to talk about people who can’t rise because they can’t sell a house and move to where jobs are because the fat cats won’t allow serious levels of mortgage modification to stabilize the housing market; we’d talk about people who can’t rise and find work because we refuse to make a serious effort to engage in the sort of Keynesian public-works stimulus that would put money in people’s pockets that they would later give to struggling merchants in exchange for food, clothing, and consumer goods; we’d talk about people who can’t rise because they’ve been laid off as teachers or cops as we refuse to raise taxes on the wealthy to pay for needed services; we’d talk about students who will struggle to rise for decades because they bear a crushing burden of student loans and no job prospects.

But Jeb, and Paul Ryan before him, mean nothing of the sort. They mean the right to be capitalists — a right that every sane person knows is clearly not threatened in America in any way, shape, or form. Ah, but, but … regulations! Jeb says they’re awful!

Increasingly, we have let our elected officials abridge our own economic freedoms through the annual passage of thousands of laws and their associated regulations. We see human tragedy and we demand a regulation to prevent it. We see a criminal fraud and we demand more laws. We see an industry dying and we demand it be saved. Each time, we demand “Do something … anything.”

…Woe to the elected leader who fails to deliver a multipoint plan for economic success, driven by specific government action. “Trust in the dynamism of the market” is not a phrase in today’s political lexicon.

Several things are going on here: Jeb warming up to substitute for Mitt, Jeb trying to co-opt Ron Paul’s rhetoric, Jeb attempting to lift the albatross of Paul Ryan’s bad reputation from around the neck of what must have been a painstakingly crafted slogan from the GOP laboratories.

But this is still horrifying. The phrase essentially describes operating big businesses without effective government oversight as a fundamental human right, like something that would have been fought for in Tahrir Square or on the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

If we as a nation fall for this Orwellian phrase — now or in the future — we deserve the decline and fall that will come to us.

(X-posted at No More Mister Nice Blog.)

First, let’s address the obvious: yes, Jeb Bush has a Wall Street Journal op-ed because the party has been preparing to slot him into the presidential race if there’s no other way to get an electable nominee. But the op-ed was clearly in the pipeline before polls started revealing the implosion of the Newt Gingrich campaign, and the rise of a libertarian anti-Romney who can’t win anywhere where GOP voters insist on a foreign policy that emphasizes killing brown people for Jesus (i.e., the vast majority of red states). So Ron Paul will fade right after Gingrich, Romney is all but anointed, and Jeb will soon retreat to the background, hoping to be Mitt’s market-oriented secretary of education.

But since the party elders took the trouble to put this op-ed together for Jeb, let’s examine it, particularly the opening:

Congressman Paul Ryan recently coined a smart phrase to describe the core concept of economic freedom: “The right to rise.”

Think about it. We talk about the right to free speech, the right to bear arms, the right to assembly. The right to rise doesn’t seem like something we should have to protect.

But we do. We have to make it easier for people to do the things that allow them to rise. We have to let them compete. We need to let people fight for business.

“The right to rise”? In a sane America, if we wanted to use the phrase “the right to rise” at this moment in history, we’d use it to talk about people who can’t rise because they can’t sell a house and move to where jobs are because the fat cats won’t allow serious levels of mortgage modification to stabilize the housing market; we’d talk about people who can’t rise and find work because we refuse to make a serious effort to engage in the sort of Keynesian public-works stimulus that would put money in people’s pockets that they would later give to struggling merchants in exchange for food, clothing, and consumer goods; we’d talk about people who can’t rise because they’ve been laid off as teachers or cops as we refuse to raise taxes on the wealthy to pay for needed services; we’d talk about students who will struggle to rise for decades because they bear a crushing burden of student loans and no job prospects.

But Jeb, and Paul Ryan before him, mean nothing of the sort. They mean the right to be capitalists — a right that every sane person knows is clearly not threatened in America in any way, shape, or form. Ah, but, but … regulations! Jeb says they’re awful!

Increasingly, we have let our elected officials abridge our own economic freedoms through the annual passage of thousands of laws and their associated regulations. We see human tragedy and we demand a regulation to prevent it. We see a criminal fraud and we demand more laws. We see an industry dying and we demand it be saved. Each time, we demand “Do something … anything.”

…Woe to the elected leader who fails to deliver a multipoint plan for economic success, driven by specific government action. “Trust in the dynamism of the market” is not a phrase in today’s political lexicon.

Several things are going on here: Jeb warming up to substitute for Mitt, Jeb trying to co-opt Ron Paul’s rhetoric, Jeb attempting to lift the albatross of Paul Ryan’s bad reputation from around the neck of what must have been a painstakingly crafted slogan from the GOP laboratories.

But this is still horrifying. The phrase essentially describes operating big businesses without effective government oversight as a fundamental human right, like something that would have been fought for in Tahrir Square or on the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

If we as a nation fall for this Orwellian phrase — now or in the future — we deserve the decline and fall that will come to us.

(X-posted at No More Mister Nice Blog.)