FIRST DRAFT

There Is No Bargaining

Josh: 

This isn’t only about President Obama’s negotiating acumen. In conversations with the president’s key advisors and the President himself over the last three years one point that has always come out to me very clearly is that the President really believes in the importance of the Grand Bargain. He thinks it’s an important goal purely on its own terms. That’s something I don’t think a lot of his diehard supporters fully grasp. He thinks it’s important in longrange fiscal terms (and there’s some reality to that). But he always believes it’s important for the country and even for the Democratic party to have a big global agreement that settles the big fiscal policy for a generation and let’s the country get on to other issues — social and cultural issues, the environment, building the economy etc.

There's no incentive for Republicans to settle. There is not, and never has been, any incentive for Republicans to solve problems politically. It's not what they do. They don't get elected to solve problems. They don't get elected to lower taxes. They don't even really get elected to cut spending. They get elected because liberals suck, full stop. And as long as they can still make the argument that liberals suck, they don't need to do anything else. 

So, I mean, go ahead and make them all kinds of offers. Go ahead and demonstrate your good faith, Mr. President. It's the 240th time you've done this, but this time surely it'll work. 

A. 

Hello Goodbye

Willard Mittbot Romney and his bridezilla made a brief return to the public stage in an interview with Mike Wallace's spawn on Fox News. I expected to be gleeful about having a chance to mock them again but the thrill is gone, so I wish they'd drag their entitled asses back to La Jolla and get to work on that car elevator. Besides, I cannot top what Charlie Pierce wrote about Willard-n-Ann at his joint:

While all that glorious gobshitery was going on elsewhere, we saw the re-emergence this weekend of that lovely Romney couple, who used to stop by with some regularity last year, charming us with their patrician je ne sais quoi, tossing coins off the balcony to the peasants, and generally dividing the world into the only two classes that matter — Themselves and The Help. They dropped by again, this time courtesy of the good people at Fox News, who I believe did this on purpose, so we could all judge the caliber of the bullet we dodged last fall by the whopping huge crater it left in the wall behind our heads.

I'll let Macca and the Fab Four have the last word: "You say yes, I say no. You say stop and I say go go go." And that means you, Willard:

 

Oh You Have GOT to be Kidding Me: Medicare Edition

What the fuck did you win an election for, you assholes? 

Recall the core fight on taxes: Republicans say they’re open to more revenue, but they want to find it by closing deductions and loopholes. Democrats say that any deal needs to include more revenue, and they want to find it by letting the George W. Bush tax cuts expire for the wealthy, which would mean the top tax rate snaps back up to 39.6 percent.

But what if you do a bit of both? … Talk to smart folks in Washington, and here’s what they think will happen: The final tax deal will raise rates a bit, giving Democrats a win, but not all the way back to 39.6 percent, giving Republicans a win.

Yes, by all means let's give them a win, given how many Americans wanted them to get what they want. Let's give them a win because obviously if everybody loses that means everybody's equally fucked and we're pretty well solidly used to that by now. 

I talk all the time about how there's tremendous bias in media, and in politics as well, and it's bias towards the status quo. This is the cause of most misery in the world, I am coming to think, the tremendous effort we expend on compensating for problems so as not to move, rather than saying it actually hurts to be stabbed with this pitchfork cut it the fuck OUT. 

And in exchange for this win, what are Republicans getting? 

[T]he headline Democratic concession is likely to be that the Medicare eligibility age rises from 65 to 67.

ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR GODDAMN FUCKING MINDS? That's not a concession. That's a danger-close nuclear fucking bomb. QUIT LISTENING TO THE FUCKING PUNDITS ON THIS. Just because David Broder could continue writing columns until almost dead does not mean somebody can stay on the factory line or in the shipyard or working the checkout counter or otherwise on foot all damn day until almost age 70.

Not everyone is a stupid, privileged bitch like you Washington columnist fucks. Have these fucking garden implements even seen what a 64-year-old who's spent his life on his feet looks like these days? It ain't ideal, and even those in the best of health would rather not be killing themselves for minimum wage in order to eke out those last couple of years before stumbling into Medicare. And once upon a fucking time before this country got so goddamn fucking mean we used to think they wouldn't have to BECAUSE THEY DIDN'T. 

Let's review the current state of the middle class: Smash unions so that nobody has pensions anymore and can't retire in safety to continue upholding the standards of decent society by staying in their homes and buying groceries. Then, since nobody has pensions anymore, make it so that they can't even retire on Medicare until they're practically past caring, driving them into poverty and despair. All so that there can be a fucking compromise.

I swear to fuck, you fucking pundit jackasses. Did nobody in your fucking family tree ever ride a goddamn tractor for a living or come home with grease under his nails? Who do you think RAISES generations of elite pussy columnists who get hard-ons from punishing grandparents, anyway? We have a middle class at all because of those presently about to retire, but fuck them, because we don't understand life exepcectancy statistics and think everybody's in good health until 90. 

LIGHT YOUR DEM SENATORS THE FUCK UP.  Krugman's goddamn right there'll be hell to pay. Hell to pay will be the best they can hope for. 

A. 

Anybody Sensing a Trend Here?

Chicago teachers go on strike, for being sick of Rahm's bullshit generally, and also for being screwed out of limits on class sizes and length of the school day and promised wage increases: 

Key disputed issues in the talks were teacher cost of living raises, additional pay for experience, job security in the face of annual school closures and staff shakeups, and a new teacher evaluation process that ties teacher ratings in part to student test score growth.

“Evaluate us on what we do, not on the lives of our children we do not control,” Lewis said Sunday, denouncing the online process by which teacher evaluators were being trained.

CTU officials contend that CPS’ offer of raises over the next four years does not fairly compensate them for the 4 percent raise they lost this past school year and the longer and “harder” school year they will face this school year, with the introduction of a tougher new curriculum.

The union also has pushed for improved working conditions, such as smaller class sizes, more libraries, air-conditioned schools, and more social workers and counselors to address the increasing needs of students surrounded by violence — all big-ticket items. CPS officials contend they are seeking a “fair” contract, with raises for teachers, but are limited by funding and the threat of a $1 billion deficit at the end of this school year.

THOSE MONSTERS. 

The local press just cannot believe the effrontery: 

They are mainly stuck on two issues: teacher recall and teacher evaluations. Emanuel said teachers cannot strike over either issue by law. They’re also still fixated on issues that cannot be resolved at the bargaining table, such as financial resources for schools and wraparound social service supports for students.

They are right to fight for these issues — but they are not ones that warrant keeping 350,000 students out of the classroom.

Well, how the hell else is anybody going to pay any attention? For as long as I have been alive these have been issues in public schools, especially those in poor/city districts, and for as long as I have been alive the only response of those in power has been to basically shrug, continue making cuts, and whine about overpaid teachers on TV. 

I'm sorry, I can't find it in my heart to have much sympathy for people whose entire argument is "other people's lives suck, so you should stop resisting the suck in your own life and just lean into it:"

 Average teacher pay in Chicago is already at $71,000 without benefits, while the average Chicagoan makes only $30,203 and the unemployment rate in the city is nearly 11 percent.

Liberals are the communists here? Somehow it always seems to be the wingnuts who are arguing that everybody's pay needs to be dragged down to the same level, which is usually Charles-Dickens-poor, before anybody can ask please sir may I have some more. 

If somebody else has it worse off, the answer isn't to shut up until things get precisely that bad for you, too. The answer is to pull that other person up as well, by doing things like teaching them well, and fairly, in a school with air conditioning for 106-degree days, and textbooks that no longer mention the looming threat of war with the Soviet Union.

A. 

Some wingnut thinks this is cute

Stumbled upon this malakatude at the Guardian. It's some teawad's 6 year old kid speaking words he seems not to understand. Holy exploitation, Batman:

 

Oh For Fuck's Sake, Own It Already

This will so totally work, you guys:

Claire McCaskill will not be attending the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, a McCaskill aide confirmed to TPM Tuesday. McCaskill joins a list of vulnerable Democratic politicians whose home districts are hostile ground for President Obama and who will be steering clear of the convention.

This always works. It's always totally effective for a Democrat to run against other Democrats. I mean, we know it completely impresses the Sunday shows, and that's who's really voting anyway! It makes you look all mavericky and complecticated, and it absolutely insulates you from criticism that you're a babykilling gay-married who wept over Osama's bullet-ridden corpse while listening to a dramatic reading of Rules for Radicals by Bill Ayers and Al Sharpton. In Chicago. Where you took the bus. 

It is just so fucking predictable and sad at this point, watching Democrats fall for this shit. I don't know who's advising them. I don't know who's sitting them down and saying, for too long in American history we have relished electing bold and courageous leaders who display the values of loyalty and integrity even during difficult times. For too long, Americans have chosen men and women with gusto and gallantry, whose acts of bravery have inspired little schoolchildren and lit the fires of hope in every heart across this dark, dark planet we call home. 

Now, as a country, we finally are ready to vote for a bunch of pussies who are askeered of standing at the side of the nation's first black president whose re-election is only vaguely endangered because his opponent's asshole supporters have more money than God and blowing it on dressage horses got old. Right now, America is looking for a candidate who knows who her friends are, and wants to be as far away from them as possible. Lest someone on Fox call her a rude name. 

WHICH THEY ARE SO TOTALLY DOING ANYWAY. So it's not even effective politics. It's not even working. 

Look, I'm not saying you should never disagree with your friends. I fight with my friends all the time about stuff and I love them like I love my left breast. What I am saying is that in moments of extremity, say, during an election year when your enemies want to kill and then eat you, you might consider that if you throw your friends overboard you'll be left with your enemies, alone. 

A. 

A Country of Assholes Part 312

Boy are we ever: 

Selective Enforcement
"The Quinn administration is gearing up to hire a company to check the eligibility of Medicaid patients, a key part of a plan to cut $1.6 billion a year from the health insurance program for the poor,"Crain's reports.

Also, neither the Quinn nor Emanuel administrations are hiring companies to check the eligibility of tax subsidy and TIF recipients. They already know most don't qualify.

A. 

Prosecute Banksters, Not Whistleblowers

Oh for fuck's sake. 

A. 

Keep Your Powder Dry, Boys

Southern Beale referenced this earlier, but it's become clear in recent days that the DNC has decided to cut Wisconsin loose, probably because hey, it's just a state full of union workers and teachers and cops and farmers and steelworkers and so, really, fuck it, we can afford to let it rot. 

And rotting is what it's doing. Make no mistake, we only think we've seen what Walker and his Fitzgerald cronies are like. There's a whole other world of bullying, punishing, vindictive, scorched-earth plans under their skins, and if we think they're arrogant now, if we think they're bold now, wait until they survive a recall. Wait until they win that fight. Imagine them then. 

This isn't about $500,000. $500,000 is nothing. $500,000 is lunch money for the DNC. $500,000 is lunch money to anybody who, in the general election, is going to have to face Mitt Fucking Romney and his current group of clowns. $500,000 could be raised in an afternoon, if you put Barack Obama on the phone. This isn't about the money. It's about the risk inherent in fighting a fight you don't know for sure you can win. The polls aren't perfect. The process wasn't easy. I know how fractured and frustrating fights like this can be, but none of that matters. None of that matters in the face of this: 

They came by the hundreds of thousands. In the snow, in the rain, past the jeering Tea Partiers, through the locked doors, they came and they stood up for something we haven't seen people stand up for in many, many years: The right to organize, the right to unionize, the right to work with dignity and security and hope. Many, many people, including me, didn't believe anything like that could even exist anymore. We didn't believe people had it in them, not to come and certainly not to stay. And still they came. 

That's what the DNC is risking. That's what they're abandoning. That's what they'll throw away. Look at those people. Give them a place to put their shoulders and they'll roll back the mountains. Look at their faces. I was in the crowd that day and I've never seen anything like that, never ever. I didn't believe we were still like that, people. Americans. I didn't believe the fight could still be fought. 

So this isn't a fight Democrats think they can win? Wait until they see what it's like to lose. 

Maybe I'm driven too much by fear. Fear of having to go home and hand in a bad report card, fear of having to tell someone I'm not going to live up to the promise I made him. Fear of having to go out every day and walk past people who will be laughing their asses off if I slip, stumble, fall on my face. Fear of having to listen to those Americans for Prosperity dicks gloat all the way around the Capitol if Walker pulls this off somehow. But here's my question: Why isn't the DNC afraid? Why aren't they afraid of losing? If they're not afraid of losing their jobs as teachers and bus drivers, why aren't they afraid of losing face at least? Why are they willing to forfeit a game they should play until the last second they can wring from the clock? 

This is the kind of crap that has driven me insane about the party since 2001. Since the Clinton impeachment, really, since the trend of bashing one's own party to get attention became a thing, since liberals started paring down the number of things they publicly gave a shit about in order not to upset anybody. Since the Bush years of not being able to be against the war because somebody would call you a pussy, since protesting the unprecedented expansion of executive power made you a traitor. 

This is the kind of crap that drives me insane about people generally, about the metrics we use to decide how to ration out just what fights we should fight, as if courage is a bowl of sugar, and there's only so much of it and no more. The odds are tough, sure. They were during the protests, too. They were during the recall petition drives. They're always tough. Name me one time things have been easy and I'll call you a liar. You either accept that all unlikely victories in the face of impossible odds are unlikely and impossible and fight every fight out anyway, fight every battle that's worth fighting everywhere, or you admit that you don't really want to win, and at least the rest of us will know where we stand. 

We stand with Wisconsin. 

A. 

Summing Up Chicago

Driftglass:

Whatever is happening on the 5th floor of City Hall and whatever gloss a drive-by steno like Friedman wants to put on it, the fact is that below decks thing are a mess.

Rahm's budget is shot because Daley hocked everything he could lay his hands to prop himself up for his final three years in office. This he did with the full support of the Chicago Machine wnd with the City Council acting as his willing accomplice.

Rahm's line workers are shot because for the last several years those who weren't clout-protected were driven like rented mules to make good on one special Mayoral imitative after another, while random layoffs dropped like bombs all around them.

THIS. Go read the whole thing, and drop your spare change in the fundraiser bucket while you're over there, so we can keep reading more sense amid all the Friedmanisms.

A.

They Cannot Muzzle The Light

You know that famous picture from the Westboro Baptists protests and counter-protests? This one?

I feel like standing next to Capitol Hill with that sign right now. Or the DNC headquarters. Something.

Thousands of people are in the fucking streets. Thousands. In New York, Boston, Cali, Philly. Thousands.

Yet Washington Democrats cower in the corner for fear of joining them.

I can see why. What if one of the hippies has a rude shirt?

And doesn't it make Obama look bad to point out that the earth is caving in on his watch?

What if somebody at the rallies compared Republicans to Satan? What would Chris Matthews say?

What if somebody at the rallies once sold his food stamps on Facebook?

Won't that give Republicans and the pundits who hold Washington hostage cause to say mean things about us? Won't that give them cause to talk about how we're all about the smelly kids and faggots and welfare cheats and others who are anathema to America? Surely they wouldn't be doing that anyway so I'd best stay over here, and pretend those protesters don't speak for me.

Surely I'd better not note that these are my people, my constituents, the middle class workers for which my party is supposed to have fought, once upon a time, in a land far, far away. Surely I'd better not concede that even if they are just "college kids," they're goddamn citizens of this country whose concerns deserve a voice and whose voice is a vote. Surely I'd better not worry that where there are ten of them today there will be sixty tomorrow, because when in history has that ever happened?

Surely it's safer to stay indoors, keep my powder dry, and hold off having this fight until things get just a little bit worse. Surely, when the right moment comes along, someone will let me know.

In case it's escaped anyone's notice, the Occupy All That Shit protests aren't going away. They're growing. They're going from city to city. They're getting louder. They're gaining friends and allies. They're becoming more. And I don't know how much more, how many more people it's going to take before somebody supposedly on the side of the middle class takes fucking notice and gets his ass down to the microphone. 

Isn't there a single strategist in Washington yelling that there are thousands of votes out there to be won by actually acting like a Democrat? I know that hasn't exactly been in high favor the last 10 years, but do thousands of people in the street express anything BUT a deep hunger for a world that isn't going to screw them over? And isn't that a political opportunity of which someone should avail himself?

Yes, the Tea Party was funded, and marketed nonstop by Fux News. You know what else it was? Supported by every major Republican candidate, who looked at the racist signs and the ignorant-ass 'necks in attendance and said sure, some of them are gaping assholes but all of 'em are gonna vote and they might as well vote for me. That's part of how that movement gained legitimacy. If tea partiers held a march against Obama's wars, they wouldn't lack for grand marshals.

Our leaders, even among those who do nothing but comment, just snipe about hippies and kids, as if they have any economic or demographic data on these crowds at all. That's if they notice; most are too busy figuring out how much to cut from Social Security. I want to grab them by the shoulders and shake them. Yes, everybody's tired, but eventually your exhaustion is just self-indulgence, and it doesn't matter what's on the back of the trustafarian's shirt at this point.

You go to the revolution with the revolutionaries you have.

I'll be at Occupy Chicago tomorrow with food and coffee for the demonstrators. Where will our leaders be?

A.

Malaka Of The Week: Jackie Clarkson

Jackie Clarkson is a veteran New Orleans pol. She's currently President of the City Council, which isn't as grand as it sounds: we have 2 at large members and they alternate in the post. She is also the mother of the fabulous character actress, Patty Clarkson, of whom she is apt to brag at the drop of a hat. She is also malaka of the week after making a serious gaffe from which she seems unable or unwilling to recover. Here are some extensive quotes from Ariella Cohen's kick ass story at  the Lens:

For Blunt and the millions of non-white Americans who survived segregation, the years before the civil-rights era were fraught with daily injustices as obvious as having to sit at the back of the bus or send your child to an inferior school, and as subtle as being forced to put tissue paper on your head before trying on a hat.

“We had to abide by the rules,” Blunt said.

Given that history, public officials around the country have often avoided using that period as a reference point. Especially in the South. Not, however, New Orleans City Council President Jackie Clarkson.

Clarkson, 76, has been known to invoke the 1940s and‘50s as the city’s halcyon days. Sugary memories of her youth in Algiers, and her father, Johnny Brechtel, who helped found New Orleans Recreation Department in the late 1940s pepper council meetings. One familiar anecdote involves a 1949 issue of Life magazine wherein her father’s work with NORD was recognized for its “progressive” approach to urban recreation.

Rarely in her reminiscences does Clarkson acknowledge that the city was, at that time, building separate playground for black and white children. Most recently, Clarkson spoke of the era while praising Mayor Mitch Landrieu at a public meeting in Lakeview.

“I never dreamed I would stand here and say this city is on the best roll I’ve been since I was a child,” she told a racially mixed crowd. “For those of you who are also my age, is this not just like the ’40s and ’50s?

“It’s that good, and we are back on that roll.”

The usual rule of thumb is that when you dig yourself a hole, it's wise to stop digging. Clarkson is far too grand to do so; she obviously doesn't think she said anything wrong:

“The things Jackie’s thrilled about … the ’50s and ’60s were not glory days for me and the rest of the black community,” said Pearl Cantrelle, President of Kenilworth Civic Improvement Association, speaking at another meeting on the 2012 budget.

“I don’t like sitting on the back of the bus or picketing on the steps of City Hall.”

Cantrelle’s comments drew applause and cheers across the vast Household of Faith sanctuary. And minutes later, Clarkson was greeted with boos from the mostly black crowd after she was introduced to the crowd, having arrived a bit tardy for the meeting. As the catcalls died down and she took her seat, Clarkson can be heard on a video recording telling an aide that she’d never been booed in her life.

“We’ve wasted our time. Let’s go,” she muttered to the aide, though they both stayed.

The mayor, however, apparently didn’t hear Clarkson and decided, a few moments later, to hand off a microphone to the notoriously voluble councilwoman, so that she could explain herself to Cantrelle. And explain herself she did.

Clarkson, wearing one of her trademark printed silk neck scarves and a bright blue suit, began her speech with an earnest plea for the crowd of roughly 300 to understand that she would “never do anything to offend you.” She had “opened a business out here in the ’70s and always believed in you,” she recalled.

After Hurricane Katrina, she had gone on “international television and said ‘bring back the east, that’s a valuable part of our city’,” she said. “If that wasn’t enough to prove how much I believe in you…I don’t know what else to do.

“I’ve been out here as an At-Large Councilwoman, anytime there’s been anything important and anytime I’ve been invited,” she said.

As she continued well beyond the 30 seconds that Landrieu suggested she use for a response, angry voices began to rise around her and Clarkson’s tone hardened.

“Excuse me, excuse me – no, I’m going to finish,” she said. “I’ve never been treated like this in my lifetime, and I won’t have it.”

“I was referring to my childhood,” Clarkson continued. “I had a very happy childhood. I’m not apologizing for that.”

“Please don’t be so rude,” she scolded the crowd before explaining that her “father’s best friend in the 1940s” was Morris Jeff Sr., “a black Ph.D. who I adored.”

Ouch, Jackie C is, of course, a grand dame and grand dames do not apologize even if they acknowledge error. She clearly doesn't think this exchange was a gaffe: it's kind of like my man Berlusconi saying that Italy is a "shitty country" because they're ungrateful for his Silvioness.

Jackie C is known to be imperious: I once dubbed her the NOLA Queen of Hearts. I've never considered her stupid but answering a constituent by saying "one of my Daddy's best friends was black" is asking for it. I do wonder if she's starting to lose it mentally: she *is* 76 years old, after all. Stubbornness is a more likely explanation.

I would, however, like to thank Jackie C for her utter cluelessness in dealing with the inevitable criticism that has flowed from her remarks. Her malakatude is good for the satire business and my little buddy Jeffrey is having a field day, calling the episode The Help 2. Well played, sir.

The good news for Jackie C is that old white people love her and if there's ever a film made about her life, Patricia Clarkson would be excellent casting.

 

Let's Be Friends!

NICE, Madigan:

Politics, as the adage goes, makes for strange bedfellows. How else to describe the news state House Speaker and de facto jefe of the Illinois Democratic Party Michael Madigan attending two fundraisers for House Speaker and Republican John Boehner a couple of weeks back?

[snip]

Madigan spokesman Steve Brown said his boss was there in the spirit of cooperation. Only the public hopes politicians cooperate with each other to get shit done, not raise money.

I get Mike's got to be hard up for friends these days, given his reputation as a truly epic asshole and the state's continued financial suckery, but seriously, nobody's 5-year-old had a bouncy castle he could spend the afternoon in?

And I bolded that bit above because it's such an important point, especially during this new era of cooperation and bipartisanship. People only really care if politicians like each other if that liking results in people's lives improving. I don't care how many rounds of golf Obama and Boehner play together, or if they call each other names. I live in the world, I can wrap my head around the idea that two grown-ass men think less than the world of each other, and occsaionally say mean things. What I can't wrap my head around is prioritizing making nice over doing good, or acting like the former is the latter.

A.

Just When We Thought He'd Gone Away

At dinner Friday night I commented to Dan that we hadn't heard from Joe Lieberman in a while, and maybe Obama had quietly had the little jerk neutered.

So I guess it's my fault Lieberman's back and more odious than ever. I'm sorry. From now on I'll just refer to him as Lord Voldemort. 

A.

 

Freezer Burn

You know, it's not that there shouldn't have been a compromise to keep the government running. I can sit here and say they should have made Republicans shut it down and eat it and choke on it, but a) I have no confidence in Democrats' ability to make Republicans pay politically for anything they've done ever and b) it's really easy for me to yell things like "shut it down" when my paycheck and/or benefits don't depend on government running in any way. I'm all in favor of keeping the government running.

But there's an awful lot of truth to this:

Ezra Klein gets this right, I think: it’s one thing for Obama to decide that it was better to give in to Republican hostage-taking than draw a line in the sand; it’s another for him to celebrate the result. Yet that’s just what he did. More than that, he has now completely accepted the Republican frame that spending cuts right now are what America needs.

Which, yeah, you don't go out there and yell, "WE GOT SCREWED AND IT WAS AWESOME! Be grateful for how hosed we are! Be incredibly happy that we came together and agreed on a bunch of stuff that, while it wasn't half as asstastic as it could have been, will under the very best scenarios help absolutely no one whatsoever! Wheee!" You don't win the argument by pretending you won when you lost. Not only does it mean you, you know, lost, but it means those people already pissed about the loss will not only think you are a loser but a delusional one.

Centrism is not what America needs. Shutting up and going away so that America can think we're all getting along and being nice so they won't have to think about politics in any way is not what America needs. I swear, half the carping that goes on about how we all need to compromise is just a cover for, "Oh, God, I am exhausted and I can't wrap my brain around this stuff. Can't we just watch TV? I just want to watch TV."

And I get it. I do. It is exhausting. It is annoying that stuff doesn't just work. I keep going back to this guy I used to work with, who when the IT tech was explaining in great detail why our computers were fucked would just yell at the top of his lungs, "FIX IT!" This is how I feel about the world in general most days.

We just want government handled, because if it's handled, then someone is handling it, and we can go bake some cupcakes. If it's not handled, and I want to send this out as some kind of telegram to the world, but if you still notice a problem it means nobody is handling it. So if your school has a hole in the roof and eight of your ten friends are out of work and your kid sister can't get birth control pills without running a fucking gauntlet of assholes holding bloody-bucket signs and screaming, that means nobody is handling any of that. Moreover, it means you're going to have to handle it, and that alone is enough to make everybody want to lie down and nap.

Cuts are going to fix none of the 47 things currently wrong in this economy. Cuts are not going to make CEOs less beholden to their beliefs that they are owed bonuses and severances. Cuts are not going to make clothes and food less expensive. Cuts are not going to bring the factory down the street back to life. (I know NO ONE who has started a business "because the tax picture right now so totally kicks ass," by the way. People start businesses because they want to make or sell something, and that's about the only real reason.) So that we all agree on cuts as being in principle nice things DOESN'T FIX ANYTHING, and it's beyond insulting to expect us to be happy to have agreement when agreement in and of itself doesn't give us the desired results.

From the Ezra piece Krugman links above:

The Obama White House is looking toward the Clinton model. After all, Clinton also suffered a major setback in his first midterm, Clinton also faced down a hardline Republican Congress, Clinton also suffered major policy defeats, and yet Clinton, as the story goes, managed to co-opt the conservative agenda and remake himself into a successful centrist. The Obama administration has even hired many of Clinton’s top aides to help them recapture that late-90s magic.

That story misses something important: Clinton’s success was a function of a roaring economy. The late ‘90s were a boom time like few others -- and not just in America. The unemployment rate was less than 6 percent in 1995, and fell to under 5 percent in 1996.

The outcome matters. Agreement, centrism, compromise, these things are done in service to particular ends. They're not ends in and of themselves. I had a teacher in high school used to talk about averages by saying if your feet are in the icebox and your head is in the oven, on average you feel pretty good. Burning and freezing are not okay, however, and possibly we should try to argue for something other than the most vicious middle we can find.

A.

 

 

Well, since we're doing snow day goggie and kitteh and ferret stuff...

Sorry to get out of my box, but when I let Bailey and Brillo out for their morning constitutional yesterday, I had a feeling that one or both would have trouble with the strange white stuff all over the ground.

They usually trot over to the far end of the yard to do their business, but poor Bailey just wandered around in circles looking pitiful until he finally just squatted a bit and went in the snow on the porch.

I remarked - "Quitter."

 

Spineless

I'm not surprised by the fact that Congressional Democrats won't be voting to rescind the Bush tax cuts for people with polo ponies BUT I'm still horrified. They've raised spinelessness to dizzying new heights: they refuse to do something popular out of fear of the Tea Party.

There are some times that you should bring something to a vote on the floor knowing that you'll lose that vote but gain politically. Instead, the House has allowed its fear and loathing of the Senate to trump political common sense. Yes, the House does the heavy-lifting on many bills that the Senate either kills or allows to languish BUT this should have been a no-brainer.

Living in formerly purple, now red, Louisiana, I've been less critical of the Blue Dogs than many. Not this time: they're driving the bus in the House and their strategy is duck and cower. They're convinced that the mean old teabaggers will leave them be if they assume the fetal position. Fat fucking chance.

Don't Tell Me

Assholes:

Don’t believe the hype. The failure of cloture in order to repeal don’t ask, don’t tell cannot be fully laid at the feet of the Republican party. The Democrats – and not just the ones who voted bigot like Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor – have a lot of blame in this failure too.

If someone in the Senate threatens a filibuster, they need to be forced to filibuster. When southern racists opposed civil rights, they were forced to actually filibuster on the floor of the senate. If you are so bigoted that you oppose allowing a vote (that has a majority) on whether gay Americans can serve their country, by God, stand up and defend your position in the well of the U.S. Senate.

Nice job, fucksticks. Really. Good one there. You just helped the GOP make history, you gutless wonders. How does it feel? Listening to Rachel Maddow tonight, this is the first time a defense appropriations bill has failed to pass since 1961.

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What will you get out of this, pray tell? Reward for your brave moral stand, Blanche Lincoln, by way of the GOP not running a candidate against you? Maybe their candidate will refrain from making really nasty attack ads. Maybe your own constituents will love you a lot more now. Maybe you'll be re-elected. Maybe you'll go live the rest of your life in peace and harmony knowing you did the right thing, and be able to look at yourself in the mirror in the morning each day, because God DAMN it, people, this was one of those votes.

This was one of those votes. Like FISA, like the war, like the PATRIOT Act, where you either do the right thing or you spend the rest of your life flapping around trying to explain and justify and wiggle out of why you didn't do the right thing. And I don't know about you, and I don't know about members of the U.S. Senate, but it seems in terms of simple expediency that acting like a grown-up would have been best here, and fuck what your bigoted phone callers might have said.

Not to mention which, boy, remember all those times the Democrats refused to vote against defense appropriations as a method of getting their political point across? Remember all those times Democrats refused to vote against defense spending because they were afraid of looking like they didn't care about the troops? Because Republicans would be mean? Because Republicans would accuse them of wanting our troops to die? Boy, that was a scary thing for Republicans to threaten Democrats with. That was a line of attack we were all really frightened of.

I wonder how many Republicans are frightened of it tonight. I wonder how many Republicans are sitting in their offices waiting for the flyers and the ads and the radio callers-in and the angry mobs of military mothers barraging them with complaints about not giving John and Jane G.I. the money they need. I wonder if Republicans are as worried as Democrats once were, about the political price to be paid for putting the screws to the party in power in the name of what they said they believed, even at the expense of not voting for something important.

No, actually, I don't wonder at all. Fucking gutless bastards. All those times Democrats cowered in their beds, hoping if they stayed very still and quiet and didn't go to the anti-war rallies then nobody would call them commie pussies. All those times Democrats sat back and played the odds, figuring they'd be slammed more for doing something than for doing nothing, as if it is ever the case that you lose people by doing too much. As if that is ever a thing that happens. All those times Democrats shut up and voted for the appropriations bill and didn't filibuster anything because that would be mean, and everybody knows you're not mean.

Not unless you're a Republican, that is.

Fuck this noise. Congress had its chance to do the right thing and make this as permanent as it could be. Sign an executive order, Mr. President. At least then you'll know, if it's overturned by the next president, that you, you personally, you did all you could. Dry powder doesn't seem to be doing us a lot of good these days anyway. Let it burn.

A.

Boy I'm Glad We Kept Our Powder Dry

Republicans would rather your grandma starve than Warren Buffet have to pump his own gas:

WASHINGTON – Senate Republicans will oppose any effort to renew soon-to-expire Bush administration tax cuts if upper income taxpayers are excluded from the reductions.

A spokesman for Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell says every Senate Republican has pledged to oppose President Barack Obama's tax-cutting plan. Obama would renew the tax cuts for most people, but let the top income tax rate rise back to almost 40 percent on family or small business income over $250,000.

McConnell has said a bill extending the tax cuts for only low- and middle-income earners cannot pass the Senate. Forty-one senators can block a bill with a filibuster, but McConnell spokesman Don Stewart declined to say whether all 41 Republicans would support a filibuster.

Let's be clear on this: Those tax cuts, along with a 40-year tradition of starving public services, have bankrupted this country. The victims of this bankrupting have been school children, the poor, the elderly, teachers, firefighters, cops and construction workers, along with artists, social service workers, social justice advocates and anyone else who is in any small way trying to make the world a better place. It is that simple. The largesse of their hard work was given to wealthy Americans and the middle-class, working-class and poor were told to suck it up until Daddy Warbucks felt like creating a few jobs. Surprise, surprise, Daddy Warbucks felt like doing no such thing.

So now they're fucked. They're underwater on their mortgages (or close to it), they're wondering every week if their paychecks are going to bounce (those of them lucky enough to still have jobs) and they know without a shadow of a doubt that help is not in any way coming. They're watched their pensions looted, their protections stripped and any semblance of trust in the government to which they've paid taxes their whole lives is just completely fucking gone.

And in the face of this, in the face of this very reasonable fear and anger, the Republicans are offering to continue to screw them over. To obstruct any kind of help, to obliterate any chance of useful legislation, to tell them nothing but how to blame black people and welfare recipients and buy Glenn Beck's books, while they shut down the government and make sure no sluts get abortions and no gay people get married. Because THAT's useful.

What price will they pay for their actions? What outrage will they face? None, naturally, since the Democrats can do nothing right:

Plus, they‘re ahead in the polls, so what will Republicans do if they take control of the government, of the U.S. Congress?  Here‘s what they‘re talking about doing—killing Obama health care, canceling what‘s left of the stimulus, and using subpoena power to investigate the White House.  One GOP lobbyist states it plainly.  Quote, “The goal, obviously, would be to make it a one-term presidency.”

Well, the leader of the campaign against President Obama would be the new Speaker, if he took office, John Boehner.  The president went directly after him yesterday.  We‘re going to ask the HARDBALL strategists whether it‘s good politics for the president to make Boehner the name and face of the Republican Party.  Do enough people even know who this guy is?

Right. Republicans are going to implode this country, so should Obama pick someone more well-known to demonize? Maybe Sarah Palin, I hear she's famous. Jesus H. Cracked Pepper Christ, THIS is the question? This is what we're asking?

You know what frustrates me the most about this shit? Remembering, especially over the weekend with all the Bush Glory Days retrospectives, just how pants-shittingly scared every Democrat was to oppose the most bizarre, nonsensical, un-American, batshit thing the president could come up with. How afraid they were of the wrath of the people for saying things like, "Mayhap we shouldn't blow up a country if we can't rebuild it" and "Did Iraq really attack us on 9/11" and "Possibly torturing people makes us look like douches."

How absolutely stalwart they were in their refusal to march with anti-war activists, to appear at rallies opposing the Bush administration's policies, to filibuster his Supreme Court nominees, to question his appointees with any real vigor. Notable exceptions aside (I'm looking at you, Chris Dodd, on FISA and you, John Kerry, on John Bolton and during your campaign) how they trembled in the face of anticipated wrath from voters should they dare to oppose the president. How they didn't want to make trouble. How they kept their powder dry.

What consequences would they have faced had they used up all their goddamn powder? I don't know. Let's see what consequences will Republicans face for their obstruction and backwards-ass actions? What will they suffer for opposing the president?

Nothing, on all counts, in all likelihood, and maybe then we can put paid to this notion that being called a dick on the Sunday shows is any kind of real, you know, thing. Being called a dick in a Sarah Palin mailing isn't a real consequence either. Even being voted out of office isn't that awful of a fate; it's not like you're going to end up on a bread line.

Unlike grandma, if Republicans have their way.

A.

Kent Conrad's Proposed Solutions

Without offsets:

We enacted these tax cuts, there was no job creation, debt exploded, and only the wealthiest of the wealthy profited. So tell me, Mr. Fiscal Conservative Kent Conrad, why should we not let the tax cuts for the rich expire?

Allow me to speak for Kent here:

It's actually pretty simple. What's going to happen is we'll just cut the Department of Education, probably eliminate Social Security or raise the retirement age to 79 or so (since I once knew somebody who lived to be 97 and was perfectly healthy), and we'll make a 1600 SAT score mandatory for receiving food stamps.

We'll make sure nobody wounded in one of our AWESOME wars can get an aspirin without paying $700 for it, our cops and firefighters can use equipment from 50 years ago (they built things to last back then!) so long as it doesn't actively electrocute them, and the water mains around here should be good for another 120 years or so.

There are private corporate foundations to provide support for the arts, and really, who DOESN'T want to enjoy the kind of productions Pfizer would put on? Our universities can continue servicing Unilever in the academic equivalent of the tavern alley, because we certainly can't afford all that nonsense about higher education. Libraries? Please, I have the Internet, so you don't need books.

The widows and the orphans? They should have been more careful with their spouses and their parents, so as not to lose them so easily. Besides, we're a Christian nation, let the churches take care of them. BP's gonna take care of the Gulf cleanup. You say we're still hosed from Hurricane Katrina, but those people should have evacuated anyway, so we don't owe them.

There will be plenty of "offsets" found by systematically fucking over this country with a rusty chainsaw, and if you think it's going to be any more complicated than that, I have a new well-capping procedure with a made-for-TV theme song name I'd like to sell you. 

One of these days I want to be wrong about some of this shit, I really do.

A.