Month: January 2014

On Monday, Bill Kristol said that Mike Huckabee would beat Chris Christie in a race for the Republican nomination, and I don’t really doubt that that is true. But that’s not a good thing for the Republican Party. At the RNC’s winter meeting in Washington DC this morning, Huckabee made some provocative remarks:

“I think it’s time Republicans no longer accept listening to the Democrats talk about a ‘war on women,'” Huckabee said during a speech at the Republican National Committee’s winter meeting in Washington. “The fact is the Republicans don’t have a war on women, they have a war for women, to empower them to be something other than victims of their gender.”

Huckabee said Democrats rely on women believing they are weaker than men and in need of government handouts, including the contraception mandate in Obamacare.

Huckabee said Democrats tell women “they are helpless without Uncle Sugar coming in and providing them for them a prescription each month for birth control because they cannot control their libido or their reproductive system without the help of government.”

Let’s deconstruct this. I understand that he’s putting words in the Democrats’ mouths, but what is he really saying? I think he’s saying that anyone who can’t afford birth control pills needs to remain abstinent. And he’s saying that women are strong enough to go without sex for their entire lives unless and until they have enough money for birth control. I don’t think he’s even contemplating the possibility of a woman being coerced into having sex, or feeling that they have no choice but to exchange sex to alleviate their poverty. He definitely isn’t thinking about poor women’s desire to avoid having more children than they can afford, which may well be none.

Now, it’s also possible that Huckabee is just opposed to birth control regardless of who pays for it. He’s not Catholic, but maybe he feels that way. I don’t know. I just think it’s a strange argument that poor women should go without birth control. And it’s an even stranger argument that women should just go buy it in cash rather than having it covered as part of their preventative health care package. I don’t know if Huckabee is aware of this, but pregnancy can be hazardous to your health. A lot of woman cannot safely carry a baby to term, and many others can only do so at great personal risk. So, it’s not like this isn’t a valid heath care concern.

Finally, insurance companies know that pregnancy is expensive and potentially complicated, which is why they are perfectly happy to help women avoid unwanted pregnancies.

I don’t even know who Huckabee is talking to. Who are the people who think he makes sense?

From what I understand, Erick Erickson actually believes that Hell is a real place and that it isn’t located in Michigan. It’s hot and unpleasant and eternal. He better hope he’s wrong about that.

First Read really doesn’t get it. Obviously, the Republican leadership in Congress does not want to have another fight over the debt ceiling. Yet, to a man, they all argue that they will not raise the debt ceiling unless they can get some kind of concession to give to their base. They aren’t making that argument as some kind of rhetorical device; they are making it because they can’t get the votes to raise the debt ceiling otherwise, unless they go to Nancy Pelosi with their hat in their hand and beg for her votes.

They don’t want to do that, so they keep insisting on some kind of face-saving gesture from the administration. But the administration not only has zero interest in reinforcing the idea that raising the debt ceiling is a transactional event, but they actually want the Republicans to hold the debt hostage because it infuriates the Republicans’ donors and pisses off the public.

So, no, there is no chance that the administration will help the Republican leadership save face, and the Republican leadership will have to decide whether they are willing to stand up to their rank-and-file or not.

It’s not the Democrats’ problem.

I see signs that the Democrats are getting organized and coalescing around a populist economic message. Sen. Chuck Schumer is taking a time-out from undermining the administration’s Iran policy to give a speech at the Center for American Progress today, where he will outline a strategy to split rank-and-file Tea Partiers from their oligarch leaders, using an extension of unemployment insurance and a hike in the minimum wage as bait.

Likewise, the president will use the State of the Union speech to focus on income inequality:

A president who has yet to add to the big legislative accomplishments of his first term will call for raising the minimum wage to $10 per hour and extending federal unemployment benefits that expired last month.

He will also discuss energy and college affordability, two other issues that relate to the economic mobility message that is a major White House theme ahead of this year’s midterm elections.

The White House sees the State of the Union as a key part of the president’s second term reboot, and will accentuate it with a presidential road trip where Obama will tout his proposals.

Some recent polling suggest that the Democrats are on solid footing here.

When asked what would do more to reduce poverty, 54% of all Americans say raising taxes on the wealthy and corporations in order to expand programs for the poor. Fewer (35%) believe that lowering taxes on the wealthy to encourage investment and economic growth would be the more effective approach.

Now, if you think of the typical Tea Partier as working class, white, and somewhat culturally conservative, you might expect to find a lot of them in a place like West Virginia, and that is a state where the Democrats’ populist pitch ought to resonate. Will it?

Here in West Virginia, which has some of the shortest life spans and highest poverty rates in the country, the strength of the demand has surprised officials, with more than 75,000 people enrolling in Medicaid…Waitresses, fast food workers, security guards and cleaners described feeling intense relief that they are now protected from the punishing medical bills that have punched holes in their family budgets.

President Obama gave those waitresses and security guards access to health care, and the Republican Party wants to take that health care away from them. The Koch Brothers want to take that health care away from them.

And, the question is, can the Democrats break through the idiot wind being blasted out by the Mighty Right-Wing Wurlitzer and make their case to these people?

It’s interesting that they are even going to try. Being coordinated will help.

And in another sign of better coordination between congressional Democrats and Obama’s team, Organizing for Action, a grassroots action group created to support the president’s agenda, has helped coordinate events around the country this week to pressure GOP lawmakers to support extended unemployment benefits.

Outside groups such as the AFL-CIO, SEIU, AFSCME and MomsRising have also participated in the coalition targeting GOP lawmakers. They helped organize events targeting Sens. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) and Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) on Wednesday, Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) on Thursday and Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.) on Friday, according to Democratic aides briefed on their activities.

I do try to maintain my optimistic nature, even though it is difficult sometimes. I’ve been arguing for more populist politics for a decade now. Let’s get to work.

Former Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell began his higher education in an admirable way. He received a B.B.A. in management from Notre Dame University and an M.B.A. from Boston University. In between he worked in the Army. Something went a little screwy, however, when he sought a joint M.A./J.D. degree from the Christian Broadcasting Network University. That school is now known as Regent University. It became a feeder school for the Bush administration, with predictably disastrous results. You can probably blame Kay Coles James or, I don’t know, her pal Duke Cunningham.

But, I digress. We were talking about Bob McDonnell and his Regent University law degree. How is that tied to the other Republican governor who was elected in 2009?

Regent University School of Law, founded by televangelist Pat Robertson to provide “Christian leadership to change the world,” has worked hard in its two-decade history to upgrade its reputation, fighting past years when a majority of its graduates couldn’t pass the bar exam and leading up to recent victories over Ivy League teams in national law student competitions.

But even in its darker days, Regent has had no better friend than the Bush administration. Graduates of the law school have been among the most influential of the more than 150 Regent University alumni hired to federal government positions since President Bush took office in 2001, according to a university website.

One of those graduates is Monica Goodling , the former top aide to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales who is at the center of the storm over the firing of US attorneys. Goodling, who resigned on Friday, has become the face of Regent overnight — and drawn a harsh spotlight to the administration’s hiring of officials educated at smaller, conservative schools with sometimes marginal academic reputations.

Documents show that Goodling, who has asserted her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination to avoid testifying before Congress, was one of a handful of officials overseeing the firings. She helped install Timothy Griffin , the Karl Rove aide and her former boss at the Republican National Committee, as a replacement US attorney in Arkansas.

Because Goodling graduated from Regent in 1999 and has scant prosecutorial experience, her qualifications to evaluate the performance of US attorneys have come under fire.

Ah, yes. At the time of the U.S. Attorney’s dismissal scandal, Chris Christie was the U.S. Attorney for New Jersey. Monica Goodling thought that he was doing a good job. I wonder why?

In November 2009, the voters of Virginia and New Jersey went to the polls to elect a new governor. A year earlier, they had both elected Barack Obama after witnessing the most criminally corrupt and incompetent administration in modern American history fuck things up for eight straight years.

And they forgot everything they had learned and voted for Bob McDonnell and Chris Christie, one of whom is going to jail and the other of whom could be headed that way shortly.

It should take longer than a year to forget an example like the Bush administration, but that’s what happened.

I like Brian Beutler’s piece, and I agree with it. In particular, I like the part about the carpet not being big enough to cover the room. I think the Republican Party has outlived its usefulness. I don’t see it morphing back into something socially acceptable to decent people. I don’t see it organically fixing itself the way you would expect a losing party to. It just needs to die. I don’t see why the GOP should even be considered a major party in Massachusetts or California. Why attach that label to yourself if you’re running for office in those states?

Let the South and the prairies have the GOP. Give everyone else something real to choose.

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The opening by UN SG Ban Ki-moon was magnificent and should be lauded. The response by Syrian regime and SNC oppostion was less so, both were combative and used all available tools of propaganda to establish their animosity towards one another. The negotiations are due to start Friday in Geneva – YouTube video.

Montreux, 22 January 2014 – Secretary-General’s remarks at the High Level Segment of the Geneva Conference on Syria

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has called for involving the patriotic opposition inside Syria into the inter-Syrian talks

Speaking at the Geneva II Peace Conference, Lavrov said, “The Geneva Communiqué and U.N. Security Council Resolution 2118 imply that all groups of the Syrian society should have an opportunity to be involved in the national dialogue.”

“However, patriotic opposition groups, which are acting inside Syria and showing interest in taking part in the Geneva II forum, are not involved in the process,” the Russian minister said, adding “I believe that the situation should be corrected by involving them in the talks. Moscow hopes that our LAS partners realize this task.”

“The same fully applies to the need of involving Iran in our joint efforts on implementing the Geneva communiqué without attempting to make a certain interpretation of it. The essence of this document is that questions of Syria’s future should be decided on the basis of mutual assent of the government and the opposition,” Sergei Lavrov said.

Secretary of State John Kerry’s Intervention at the Geneva ll International Conference on Syria

Thank you very much, Secretary Ban, and thank you, Ambassador Brahimi, for your commitment to helping the Syrian people find a new future.  And I join with Foreign Minister Lavrov in thanking all of the countries around the table, all of the groups around the table.  I thank President Burkhalter and the people of Switzerland for making this important meeting possible.  And I thank the Russian Federation and Foreign Minister Lavrov for his cooperation and efforts together with us, working to try to initiate this process.  I also want to welcome the leaders of the Syrian opposition, and I thank them for the courageous decision they’ve made.  Everybody here knows the pressures that have existed.

…
Now, lost in the daily reports of violence is the fact that this revolution did not begin as an armed resistance.  This started peacefully.  It was started by schoolboys in Daraa who are armed only with graffiti cans, citizens who were peacefully and legitimately calling for change.  And they were met almost immediately with violence.  When their parents came out to protest the arrest of the children, 120 people died.  That was the beginning.

And tragically, the Assad regime answered peaceful demonstration after peaceful demonstration with ever-increasing force.  In the three years since then, this conflict has now left more than 130,000 dead, and it’s hard to count accurately.  We all know that.  The fact is that these people have been killed by guns, by tanks, by artillery, by gas, by barrel bombs, by Scud missiles.  They’ve been killed by weapons almost exclusively of the magnitude not possessed by the opposition.  Starvation has been used as a weapon of war.  And most recently, we have seen horrific reports of systematic torture and execution of thousands of prisoners.  This is an appalling assault, not only on human lives, but on human dignity and on every standard by which the international community tries to organize itself, recognizing the horrors of the humanitarian catastrophe that has unfolded, the destabilization of neighboring countries, and the endless exile of refugees.

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Now, we need to deal with reality here.  We really need to deal with reality.  Mutual consent, which is what has brought us here, for a transition government means that that government cannot be formed with someone that is objected to by one side or the other.  That means that Bashar Assad will not be part of that transition government.  There is no way – no way possible in the imagination – that the man who has led the brutal response to his own people could regain the legitimacy to govern.  One man and those who have supported him can no longer hold an entire nation and a region hostage.  The right to lead a country does not come from torture, nor barrel bombs, nor Scud missiles.  It comes from the consent of the people.  And it’s hard to imagine how that consent could be forthcoming at this point in time.

JPost – Kerry at Syria peace talks: No way Assad can be in new gov’t

I think the more affluent, better-educated wing of the progressive movement often doesn’t really appreciate how critical the labor movement is to the overall health and viability of the left. If you haven’t worked in a union job, and you don’t have close family who work union jobs, then you might be oblivious. But the Republicans understand perfectly well, and they’re doing something about it:

Passing right-to-work in Michigan was more than a policy victory. It was a major score for Republicans who have long sought to weaken the Democratic Party by attacking its sources of funding and organizing muscle. “Michigan big labor literally controls one of the major political parties,” Dick DeVos said last January. “I’m not suggesting they have influence; I’m saying they hold total dominance, command, and control.” So DeVos and his allies hit labor—and the Democratic Party—where it hurt: their bank accounts. By attacking their opponents’ revenue stream, they could help put Michigan into play for the GOP heading into the 2016 presidential race—as it was more than three decades earlier, when the state’s Reagan Democrats were key to winning the White House.

More broadly, the Michigan fight has given hope—and a road map—to conservatives across the country working to cripple organized labor and defund the left. Whereas party activists had for years viewed right-to-work as a pipe dream, a determined and very wealthy family, putting in place all the elements of a classic political campaign, was able to move the needle in a matter of months. “Michigan is Stalingrad, man,” one prominent conservative activist told me. “It’s where the battle will be won or lost.”

If you don’t even know that the fight is going on or why it’s important, you can’t be much help.

The rightward drift of the Washington Post continues unabated, as they bring the right-wing blog Volokh Conspiracy under their umbrella, even as Ezra Klein and Dylan Matthews leave out the side door. The Post‘s announcement trumpets the credentials of Eugene Volokh and his Conspiracists, but they don’t seem to be aware that they’re a gang of misfits and cranks who are prone to complaining about the absence of flag-pins and people who have qualms about torture.

The Post seems to think that these clowns will substitute for Klein and Matthews’ ability to explain stuff.

Their expertise covers free speech, religious freedom, guns, criminal procedure, environmental law, business law, national security law, and much more. Some of the contributors also have extensive records in government service, and in high-profile Supreme Court litigation: they include a former federal judge; one of the chief architects of the challenge to the Affordable Care Act individual mandate; a former general counsel for the NSA and former Assistant Secretary for Policy at DHS; and a member of the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues…

This must-read source will be a great addition to The Post’s coverage of law, politics and policy.

Yes, now we will be able to gain important insights, like how Sarah Palin’s ignorance proves that she has a first-rate intelligence.

The central nervous system of the Republican Party shut down the day it became necessary to make that argument. And the Volokh Conspiracists led the way.

Why yes, yes it has been. And by a right wing Texas mega-church pastor, Robert Jeffress, who was interviewed (i.e., given a platform to speak hate) on Fox News by Bill O’Reilly. Oh but that’s only part of the story. In the Good Reverend’s own words:

There’s going to be a future world dictator, before Christ returns, who’s going to usurp people’s personal …rights. …He’s going to wage war against God’s people, he’s gonna change God’s laws and he’s going to do it without any opposition. And my question was, how’s he going to be able to pull that off? And my thesis is, people will have been conditioned long before the Antichrist comes to accept governmental overreach. And that’s what you’re seeing with President Obama right now.

Government overreach? Hmm. You mean like Bush’s screwed up, unfunded Medicare Part D Drug Plan that the ACA worked to fix by lowering costs? Or a war against a nation that had nothing to do with 9/11 because “Shock and awe baby!” But I digress.

What are the terrible examples of government overreach to which the good pastor refers. Cuts to unemployment benefits? Proposed cuts and/or the elimination of Medicare and Social Security. Cuts to the EPA, the FDA, the CDC, OSHA and any other agency that helps protect Americans at work and at home? Damn, I guess LBJ and FDR and all those other Democrats (and a few Republicans – you know from the before Newt Gingrich version of the GOP) who helped pass the legislation that made our food supply a little safer, our health a little better and clean-up our air and water were agents of Satan, as well.

Oh, but it’s not just government overreach. You see Obama is persecuting Christians thorough both the ACA and his support for the (wait for it) “Gay Agenda.” Because you can’t properly set the table for the Anti-Christ until Christians are not permitted to legally discriminate against LGBT people.

The pastor said he’s based his conclusions on the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, which has extended health care coverage to millions of Americans, and the mandate requiring health insurers and employers who offer health insurance to cover some contraception costs.

“President Obama is without apology the most pro-abortion president in history, but what’s even worse, Bill, is we are being conditioned to accept that government has the right to persecute people of faith,” [Jeffress] said. […]

He said that Obama had targeted Christians and other religious people for his support for same-sex marriage, which the pastor said was destroying family life.

Guess we know what all those good Christian folks are going to be hearing from the pulpits of their monster churches this Fall come election season. Same as it ever was: “Vote Republican or go to hell!”