A Low Point

It was admittedly one of the most politically incorrect scenes ever produced for a show that revels in its shamelessness, but it actually raised a valid point about the power of language and how the powerless and marginalized can fight back against hateful epithets. In any case, it seems sadly appropriate tonight.

I wish Congress could debate with half that civility and a quarter of its common sense.

Shameless Self-Promotion: On Tour Down South This Week

Hey Tribbers!

This is some shameless self-promotion here, but if I don’t toot my horn, who will (don’t answer that, it’s not a euphemism)?

I just got word that I will be o tour down south for the next 3-7 days, with my good friend Izzy and his band, the Catastrophics:

We’ll be in Charlotte, NC at the Double Door in on Thursday, Knoxville on Friday, and in Wilmington NC on Saturday. Tour dates here. Hope to see some of you, I’ll be the guy standing on the upright bass.

Tea Baggers Design Their Own Defeat

Erick Erickson makes some interesting points that could help us discern how this government shutdown crisis will end. Mr. Erickson opposes two possible “wins” that the Republicans hope to be able to claim in return for funding the government. The first is the Vitter Amendment, which seeks to exploit a drafting error in the Affordable Care Act that would appear to ban certain federal employees from receiving their traditional health care subsidies if they get their insurance off of one of the new exchanges. Unfortunately, for Sen. David Vitter (R-LA), the drafting error is exaggerated, and the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has already fixed the problem. The OPM simply ruled that members of Congress and their staffs can keep their traditional subsidy but will be ineligible for the new premium support that most people will receive from the exchanges. Yet, Vitter is hoping to sabotage ObamaCare by forcing members of Congress to vote for a subsidy for themselves that others can only get in a different form.

Mr. Erickson dismisses this gambit as “a shiny object” and assumes that Congress would find a way around it in short order. In other words, it wouldn’t really undermine ObamaCare and it wouldn’t really help average Americans, so it’s worthless.

The second possible ‘win’ is the repeal of the medical device tax, which is an important revenue source for ObamaCare. Eliminating the tax would do significant damage to the law if the lost revenue wasn’t raised elsewhere. In theory, there is substantial bipartisan support for repealing and replacing the medical device tax, including from Democratic Minnesotan Senators Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken. But if the name of the game is to starve the PPACA of funding, that bipartisan support vanishes. At best, the House Republicans could force a difficult vote on some lawmakers who have expressed a willingness to repeal the tax and have accepted financial support as a result.

But Erickson wouldn”t see this tax repeal as a victory for two reasons. The first is that it irritates him that powerful lobbyists might have the ability to get changes in the law that suit them, while ordinary citizens are incapable of getting changes that directly affect their interests. The second reason is that he considers the potential tax repeal an improvement of the law that would cost him an important and powerful ally in his crusade to eliminate the whole law. In other words, he is actively opposed to anything that might remove a legitimate objection to the health care law.

The result of this Tea Party objection to largely symbolic ‘wins’ for the Republicans is, as Ed Kilgore points out, that it makes it less likely that John Boehner can pass another Continuing Resolution with only Republican votes.

While most of the debate is whether these are other Obamacare strings on a CR could conceivably be accepted by Senate Democrats, the more immediate question is whether they’ll be enough to command the support of House conservatives. One of the trail bosses of the great conservative cattle drive towards the chasm this year, Erick Erickson, says no…

We need to remember that Speaker Boehner cannot afford to lose more than 16 votes if he intends to pass a CR with only Republican votes, so the Tea Party suicide caucus does not have to be very large for him to fail.

And that failure may spell the end game of at least the government shutdown half of his crisis. The Senate will reject the latest House CR today and send it back. If Boehner fails to respond with a bill containing the Vitter Amendment and a repeal of the medical device tax, then he’ll be able to argue that the Tea Party faction wouldn’t even accept a symbolic victory, and then he could go ahead and violate the Hastert Rule and rely on Democrats to pass a clean CR. He could also rally support in his caucus against the hardliners who wouldn’t take ‘yes’ for an answer and shore up his flank.

Maybe Mr. Erickson can’t see this outcome coming, or maybe he would welcome it as one more opportunity to blast the “Establishment’s” leadership. But, either way, Erickson and the rest of the Tea Baggers are making it more likely both that the Republicans will get nothing (which was already almost assured) and that the Tea Party will get all the blame (which was not).

Randall ‘Tex’ Cobb, Revisited

Approximately one in ten Americans will change their support of the Affordable Care Act to disapproval if you call it “ObamaCare,” indicating that there is a significant amount of partisan opposition to the bill that doesn’t reach the merits. It’s significant because calling it ObamaCare lowers support from 46% to 37%, which makes all the difference in the world. Meanwhile, in this part of the country, Republican lawmakers are running scared. Michael Grimm, who represents Staten Island and parts of Brooklyn, has this to say:

“The circus created the past few days isn’t reflective of mainstream Republicans — it projects an image of not being reasonable. The vast majority of Republicans are pretty level-headed and are here to govern,” said Representative Michael Grimm, a New York Republican.

“This is a moment in history for our party to, once and for all, put everything on the table. But at some point we’re going to come together and unify,” Grimm said, adding that the “far-right faction” of the party “represents 15 percent of the country, but they’re trying to control the entire debate.”

And Rep. Charlie Dent, who represents Allentown and Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, says that he is ready to support a clean continuing resolution (CR) because he doesn’t intend “to support a fool’s errand.” The House Republicans have tried to put on a show of unity, but it’s not real.

Likewise in the Upper Chamber, where Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming (about whom, gay rights advocate Mike Rogers has recently had something to say), was overheard complaining about “those crazy people in the House” to Sen. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire. Sen. Susan Collins of Maine says that she opposes a strategy that “cannot possibly work.”

This is the condition of the Republican Party as Speaker Boehner launches a campaign he transparently does not believe in.

By embracing the Tea Party’s strategy aimed at thwarting ObamaCare, Boehner (R-Ohio) is betting he can win the public relations battle against President Obama’s bully pulpit.

It is a huge gamble; the political fallout from it could be felt for years to come.

This is the equivalent of a poorly-regarded boxer taking on the heavyweight champion of the world, when he doesn’t believe in himself and has his arms tied behind his back, and hoping to win on the judges’ scorecards because he knows he lacks the power to score a knockout. As Sen. Collins said, this cannot possibly work.

Not Going to Play By Those Rules

I’ve been saying for a while that President Obama simply doesn’t agree with most of the bipartisan American foreign policy establishment that Syria represents the central battlefield in a regional struggle between Sunnis and Shiites or, especially, a proxy battle between the United States and Russia, or Iran. The president doesn’t want Iran to get a nuclear weapon because he opposes the proliferation of nuclear weapons, but that is about as far as he sees America’s interests coinciding with Israel and Saudi Arabia’s obsession with Iran.

I don’t want to minimize the danger of Iran obtaining a nuclear weapons capability, but we need to understand that Iran’s nuclear program has been used by Israel and Saudi Arabia to isolate and weaken Iran for reasons that go far beyond the fear of a nuclear-armed Iran. If you don’t believe me, just look at two quotes in tonight’s New York Times, one from an Israeli and one from a Saudi:

“The most critical problem with Iran is its aim of achieving nuclear weapons, but the problem with Iran is wider,” added Mr. [Yuval] Steinitz, who led Israel’s delegation in a boycott of Mr. Rouhani’s speech last week at the United Nations. “Iran is not a peace-seeking country or regime — on the contrary. Iran is maybe the most aggressive country in the world, and it’s not just against Israel.”

“There is a lot of suspicion and even paranoia about some secret deal between Iran and America,” said Jamal Khashoggi, a prominent Saudi journalist who is close to the royal family. “My concern is that the Americans will accept Iran as it is — so that the Iranians can continue their old policies of expansionism and aggression.”

Mr. Khashoggi is honest enough to admit that his main worry is that the United States accepts Iran “as it is.” He means “as it is,” just with the nuclear threat greatly diminished. In other words, he wants the U.S. and Iran to be adversaries for reasons that go beyond nuclear weapons. Mr. Steinitz says basically the same thing. Regardless of nuclear weapons, Iran is very aggressive.

Now, I don’t want to dismiss concerns about Iran’s aggression, but it seems to come in two main types. They advocate on behalf of Shiites in countries like Bahrain, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Lebanon, and they wage proxy wars mainly against Israel, but also in Syria and Lebanon. This may demonstrate a degree of aggression, but it’s not the kind of aggression that involves outright invading and trying to subjugate their neighbors.

If I had to identify Iran’s most negative impact on the world and the region, it has been their promotion of a form of political Islam that has had wide appeal among Sunnis and has encouraged the growth of Islamist groups in Arab countries, some of whom have turned to terrorism. But I’d have to admit that Saudi Arabia is even more culpable in this regard.

Overall, the period of official U.S.-Iranian antagonism that has existed since the Shah fled in 1979 has been one of increasing radicalism and dysfunction, and it doesn’t seem to have served anyone well.

Everyone has become accustomed to their assigned roles and no one seems to be able to think creatively in a way that might stop this tailspin. But the president is willing to think differently. He’s willing to reject what everyone else seems to think is obvious. For this, he gets called naive. The best evidence that the president is on the right path is that he is being insulted by the people who are invested in pursuing a sectarian war or who think that we are in a proxy battle on the side of the Sunnis against Russia and Iran.

We could be in such a battle, but we aren’t for one simple reason. The president decided that we aren’t.

Discussing a Mass Hallucination

Byron York talked to Michele Bachmann on Friday Night:

I talked with one of the most vocal of the defund/delay advocates, Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, on Friday night, as she waited to hear what path the House Republican leadership would take. It’s safe to say her views reflected those of many of her conservative colleagues, and her reasoning was this: One, Obamacare as a policy is so far-reaching, so consequential, and so damaging that members of Congress should do everything they can — everything — to stop it before it fully goes into effect. Two, lesser measures to fight Obamacare — repealing the medical device tax or making Congress purchase coverage through the exchanges without special subsidies — are just not big enough to address the problem. And three, there have been government shutdowns in the past over far less urgent reasons that did not result in doom for Republicans.

“There is a very large group of us who believe that this is it, this isn’t just another year, this isn’t just another CR fight,” Bachmann told me. “This is historic, and it’s a historic shift that’s about to happen, and if we’re going to fight, we need to fight now.”

“This isn’t just another bill,” Bachmann continued. “This isn’t load limits on turnip trucks that we’re talking about. This is consequential. And I think the reason why you’ve come to this flash point is that this is an extremely consequential bill that will impact every American, and that’s why you have such passionate opinions. And we’re not giving up and we’re not caving in that easily.”

Well, when the president signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Joe Biden told him that it was a “big effing deal.” And it was. So, I don’t disagree with Rep. Bachmann about that. Who is going to vote for people who want to make their health insurance more expensive and less comprehensive, or who simply want to take their insurance away?

So, yeah, the law is extremely consequential, and conservatives don’t want to live in a country where they are on the losing side of the national debate over health care every single time. But they already do live in that country. What they are engaged in now is just a mass hallucination. It’s just massive denial.

And the rest of us are losing our patience.

Debt Maniacs Created the Problem

Have you ever seen more astroturf organizations? They’ve created anti-debt organizations for everything. I’m glad that Paul Stebbins feels like he has some responsibility for the Republicans’ debt-ceiling nihilism, but I don’t see what he’s done to fix it.

He doesn’t like it when people point out that he’s obsessed with throwing granny in the snow. But that’s objectively what he wants to do, at least to the degree that he wants less money in retirees’ pockets so that he can have an easier time competing with the government for investment dollars. He says so, explicitly.

“Business is about long term planning, and the cost of capital is a huge factor in your competitive ability. And the cost of capital’s going to be related to the long term fiscal viability of the United States. With $1.1 trillion in debt, I’m competing with the government for the capital, and that’s not good.”

So, while I appreciate that he thinks the debt defaulters are completely insane, and I’m glad that he realizes that business leaders are partly responsible for enabling and encouraging their insanity, I am not ready to accept his apology.