Politics Plus

Barack Obama has alienated a major segment of the Democratic base.  Some of the criticism is not reasonable.  Obama has been unable to keep campaign promises, because after his initiatives passed the House, Republicans in the Senate, aided by a few DINOs, have blocked virtually everything he tried to accomplish.  However, there have been promises that he could have kept and didn’t, such as supporting the extension of the misnamed PATRIOT Act after promising to oppose it.  However, the biggest complaint, and most justified, has been his abject failure to fight for the people who put him in office: progressives, labor, and the poor and middle classes.  In the last couple of days, he has begun to show what I hope is the first glimmering of fighting back.

Faced with a divided Congress and an economy in desperate straits, President Obama tried bargaining with Republicans, he tried adopting some of their ideas and he pleaded with them for reasonable policies to help stave off disaster. For his efforts, he got nothing but a cold shoulder and the country got a credit downgrade.

Now, on a bus tour in the Midwest, he is bitterly pointing the finger at his opponents for their refusal to consider any new revenues to tackle the deficit and their insistence on deep near-term spending cuts that will only cause more economic pain. His anger is long overdue. But it would be much more effective if he combined it with strong ideas of his own for how to fix the economy, rather than the thin agenda he is now promoting.

Fearing the real possibility of a default (something that never seemed to concern the Republicans), the president stayed largely mild-mannered through the whole debt-ceiling hostage ordeal. He even praised the bill that emerged, even though it cut spending excessively at a time when the fragile economy can’t afford it.

But on a factory trip last week and again on his tour of Iowa and Illinois, he was far more candid. He accurately referred to the “debt-ceiling debacle” and pointed out that the resulting downgrade was an assessment that Congress cannot make necessary compromises. “We’ve got the kind of partisan brinksmanship that is willing to put party ahead of country,” he said.

He left no doubt of his target when he noted that Speaker John Boehner walked away from a more balanced deficit-cutting deal and that, in last week’s debate, the Republican presidential contenders unanimously rejected the possibility of a deal that cut spending 10 times as much as it raised taxes. “What that tells me is, O.K., you’ve gotten to the point where you’re just thinking about politics. You’re not thinking about common sense.”… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <NY Times>

I like the talk, but it will take more than talk to convince me.

Rachel Maddow and Ed Schultz discuss what Obama must do to restore himself to the Democratic base.

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Schultz is right. To energize the base, we need to see lines in the sand that are not surrendered. He needs to deliver for the people who put him in office.  Delivering means fighting for what we value.  Of course, this may turn out to be just talk.

Regardless, there are practical realities that I must face.  Life does not always give us choices between right and wrong.  Sometimes, all the choices are wrong, and instead of acting like crybabies, we need to do what we can to mitigate the damage.  Barring unforeseen circumstances, 2013 will bring President Bachmann, President Perry, President Romney or President Obama.  I will do what I can to make certain the disasters, that the first three choices represent, do not happen, even if I have to hold my nose to do it.

While the telephone hacking case in the UK is not directly germane to the US, we may rationally suspect that what Murdoch has done there has been reflected in his so called news media here, namely the New York Post, the Wall Street Journal, and of course, the Republican Ministry of propaganda, aka Fox.  New revelations in the US confirm that Murdoch and son’s testimony before parliament was completely dishonest.

Rupert Murdoch, James Murdoch and their former editor Andy Coulson all face embarrassing new allegations of dishonesty and cover-up after the publication of an explosive letter written by the News of the World’s disgraced royal correspondent, Clive Goodman.

In the letter, which was written four years ago but published only on Tuesday, Goodman claims that phone hacking was "widely discussed" at editorial meetings at the paper until Coulson himself banned further references to it; that Coulson offered to let him keep his job if he agreed not to implicate the paper in hacking when he came to court; and that his own hacking was carried out with "the full knowledge and support" of other senior journalists, whom he named.

The claims are acutely troubling for the prime minister, David Cameron, who hired Coulson as his media adviser on the basis that he knew nothing about phone hacking. And they confront Rupert and James Murdoch with the humiliating prospect of being recalled to parliament to justify the evidence which they gave last month on the aftermath of Goodman’s allegations. In a separate letter, one of the Murdochs’ own law firms claim that parts of that evidence were variously "hard to credit", "self-serving" and "inaccurate and misleading".

Goodman’s claims also raise serious questions about Rupert Murdoch’s close friend and adviser, Les Hinton, who was sent a copy of the letter but failed to pass it to police and who then led a cast of senior Murdoch personnel in telling parliament that they believed Coulson knew nothing about the interception of the voicemail of public figures and that Goodman was the only journalist involved… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Common Dreams>

Note that Les Hinton is the man that Murdoch chose to head Dow Jones and the Wall Street Journal, which he did, until he resigned on July 15, in the wake of this scandal.

MSNBC News reported this story.

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I certainly hope that DOJ and the FBI are investigating this thoroughly, because Republicans in Congress will block any meaningful investigation of their propaganda machine.

Republican candidate Rick Perry offers many political vulnerabilities to exploit, should he win the Republican nomination.  His desire to turn America into a Republican supply-side pseudo-Christian theocracy will not sit well with most voters.  Add to that his track record of supporting secession.  A Presidential aspirant, who would consider dropping out of the country, will be most difficult to wrap in the flag.  However, the biggest hazard he will face is his recently documented intent to destroy Social Security and Medicare.

Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) has made it quite clear that he believes Social Security is an unconstitutional “Ponzi scheme.” In his book Fed Up!, Perry writes that Social Security is “by far the best example” of a program “violently tossing aside any respect for our founding principles.” Today, at the Iowa State Fair, Perry responded to a question from Politico’s Ben Smith by saying that he thinks one of the ways to deal with his vehement objections to Social Security is to simply send the program to the states and let them figure out what to do with it…

…Watch it:

 

Perry has said before that he wants to give states the option of allowing workers to opt out of Social Security. “So the states will let people opt out of Social Security?” asked CNN’s Eliot Spitzer. “They should,” Perry replied. But as ThinkProgress’ Ian Millhiser has pointed out, making Social Security a state program is simply economically impossible…

Inserted from <Think Progress>

There is a reason he seemed so noncommittal in that video. Doing what Republicans do best, he is lying. Like House Republicans, he intends to do away with Social Security and Medicare. Rachel Maddow examines the evidence and discusses it and more with Howard Dean.

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The solution for Social Security, which does not add a penny to the deficit, is to increase the income cap.  The solution for Medicare is to stop the upward spiral of health care costs in general, driven by ever increasing insurance industry profit.  The best way to accomplish that is with Medicare for all.

Should Perry get the nomination, the Republican spin machine will go into high gear, trying to prevent America from learning the truth about Perry.  The time to start educating people about this is now.

Mitt Romney has too long a record of pandering to plutocrats to have a chance at successfully lying to deny it.  A while back, his claim to be unemployed just like them to a group of Floridians drew chortles of disbelief.  So he no longer tries.  Now he lies trying to justify it.  If his infamous claim that “corporations are people too” was not enough, he has added more.  One is the implication that we aren’t rich, because we’re too stupid.

In a New York Times op-ed today, billionaire investor Warrenn Buffett renewed his oft-made call for tax increases on the ultra-wealthy. “While the poor and middle class fight for us in Afghanistan, and while most Americans struggle to make ends meet, we mega-rich continue to get our extraordinary tax breaks,” he wrote. “My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress. It’s time for our government to get serious about shared sacrifice.”

Today, 2012 GOP presidential contender Mitt Romney — who has a personal net worth between $190 million and $250 million — rejected that argument. Reprising a version of his “corporations are people” argument from last week, Romney claims that Buffett’s taxes are higher than he says they are because he, as a business owner, bears the burden of the corporate income tax [Murdoch delinked]. (This argument comes from a piece by the Wall Street Journal’s Stephen Moore, who explicitly believes that the poor need to pay higher taxes to finance tax cuts for the rich.) Romney went on to claim that raising taxes on the wealthy would actually be a tax increase on small businesses…

Inserted from <Think Progress>

Raising taxes on the poor and middle classes to support welfare for millionaires, billionaires and corporate criminals is becoming standard Republican fare.  Look what Republicans are doing at the state level, wherever they have complete control.

Ed Shultz has the big whopper.

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Dang!  I wish I was smart enough to inherit millions and have all those loopholes that Republicans refuse to close!

If Romney is the sanest of the Republican field, as I often hear, Republican sanity had gone south to the land of the tinfoil hat.