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News Roundup for 1/27/12

2012-01-27T17:03:00.000-06:00

Scene from the GOP primaries

-Headline of the Day-
"NBC/WSJ poll: Gingrich leads Romney, but badly trails Obama."

Barack Obama's wisest strategy may involve butt-sitting. Just grab a chair and watch Mittens and Noodles go after each other with ax handles. Then, when the primaries wrap up, the winner will be perfectly tenderized.

Right now, that approach seems to be a winner. Newt's moving out in front nationally, leaving Mitt in the dust. According to the report, "Gingrich leads Romney 37 percent to 28 percent nationally among registered Republicans likely to vote in the primaries; Rick Santorum is in third with 18 percent, and Ron Paul is fourth with 12 percent."

The problem: in this poll at least, Gingrich is the very least likely to beat Obama -- and that includes the entirely unelectable Rick Santorum. Where Romney is within 6 points of Obama, Newt's down three times that number -- 18 points. Newt's problem is that only Republicans like him, while everyone else hates his guts.

But Gingrich had to do a lot of pounding to get where he is. And he's driven Romney's approvals through the floor. Romney's approved of by 31%, while 36% disapprove. The last party nominee whose disapprovals were higher than his approvals was John Kerry. And you know how that worked out.

Keep whacking away at each other, guys. Knock yourselves out. (MSNBC)

-And while we're on the subject-

He might even have time for an encore. (McClatchy)

-Bonus HotD-
"Palin Defends ‘Angry Little Muffin’ Newt Against Right-Wing Conspiracy."

Yeah, let's get Sarah Palin in there too. Everyone just loves her! (Wonkette)

News Roundup for 1/26/12

2012-01-26T16:19:00.000-06:00

Pictured: Gingrich responds to question on CNN

-Headline of the Day-
"Gingrich campaign admits error."

And "error" is media-speak for "bald-faced lie."

Remember when Newt's ex-wife Marianne went on the teevee to say that Newt had wanted an open marriage? Yeah, well after that happened, he went on the offensive. And Noodles did it by doing what Noodles does in pretty much every situation -- he attacked the media messenger.

It was a terrible thing to have Marianne on ABC News, yacking about how her husband wanted to keep seeing his mistress (who is now his wife). It wasn't true and ABC knew it!

"The story was false," Newt said in the last debate. "Every personal friend I have who knew us in that period says the story is false. We offered several of them to ABC to prove it was false. They weren't interested."

Turns out that ABC News wasn't interested because they have some sort of discriminatory policy against nonexistent sources. Newt didn't offer the network any buddies from his old marriage, but "only recommended Gingrich's two daughters from his first marriage." Because, if there's anyone who knows all about a couple's wild, swinging sex life, it's the kids.

Then, during an interview on CNN, Newt said it again. ABC News ignored Newt's phantom sources and that was just the worst thing ever. When CNN's John King told Gingrich that ABC said they were offered no corroborating sources, Newt became indignant.

"If they're saying that, then they're not being honest," Gingrich said. "We had several people prepared to be very clear and very aggressive in their dispute about that, and [ABC News] wasn't interested."

Newt's story died today, when his own campaign finally admitted that the whole thing was BS. Newt was lying -- which, as we've established, gets called an "error" when you're running for president. As if he accidentally said he did something -- at least twice -- which he didn't actually do.

The moral of this story, boys and girls, is that if you're going to play the victim card, you kind of want to actually have it. (CNN)

-Cartoon time with Mark Fiore-
Hey kids, have you heard about our Marxist president's terrible State of the Union speech? It was just one long string of commie statement after commie statement. It was almost unAmerican!

Here's a clip. Prepare to get really, really mad!

Click for animation

Well, OK then. Never mind. (MarkFiore.com)

-Bonus HotD-
"Romney Would Like You to Believe His Tax Rate Is 'Closer to 40 or 50 Percent.'"

See, it's all very complicated. First off, Mittens gave money to charity, which is exactly the same thing as paying taxes -- even if you can write some of it off on your taxes. Then of course, there's that whole corporate tax rate -- which he didn't actually pay, because he's not a corporation.

You know, I'm kind of thinking Mittens might not be entirely honest here. (Wonkette)

Scott Walker's Alternate-Reality Version of Wisconsin

2012-01-26T11:58:00.000-06:00

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker scheduled his annual State of the State address the night after President Obama delivered the State of the Union. It says a lot about how little press he hoped to get with his speech. He probably would've scheduled it for the same night, so it wouldn't have even been broadcast, but at a certain point the attempt to hide something becomes attention-worthy in itself, and I suppose that would've been a national news story. So the night after would have to do. In any case, the truth was not invited.

[Wisconsin State Journal:]

Facing a recall and speaking over a loud and angry crowd outside the Assembly chamber, an unbowed Gov. Scott Walker delivered a State of the State address Wednesday that touted the successes of a difficult year and promised better days ahead.

“During the past year, we added thousands of new jobs,” Walker said. “And we balanced the state budget. We balanced it without raising taxes, without massive layoffs and without budget tricks.”

How much of that is true? Well, pretty much none of it.

Did we add "thousands of new jobs?" Probably. But the impression Walkers obviously wants to leave you with is that unemployment is improving. The opposite is true. Sure, new positions are opening here and there, but the new jobs aren't keeping pace with the job losses. Wisconsin is the only state in the nation to suffer six consecutive months of net job losses. There are far fewer jobs than when Scott Walker was sworn in.

And this shouldn't be surprising. Walker's bought into a certain flavor of mumbo jumbo economics favored by rightwing politicians -- i.e., if you cut taxes for the top wage earners and businesses, companies will flock to your state as a tax haven. The problem is that these tax cuts have to be paid for, so you cut benefits for public workers, slash programs that take the weight off families, and generally undercut consumer demand at every turn. The resulting "Come to Wisconsin, where the taxes are low but the customers don't have any money" sales pitch is not as enticing to businesses as the aforementioned rightwing politicians seem to believe.

I'm going to take the next point out of order -- that Walker didn't raise taxes. This ties in with my previous point. You can say that Walker didn't raise taxes only if you accept Walker's definition of what taxes actually are. In my book, if you pay more taxes, you're taxes have gone up.

Not so with Scooter. He cut the Earned Income Tax Credit, which helps low-income working families. Walker redefines the tax break as a "redistribution program... taking money from other taxpayers and giving it to individuals who have a limited tax liability." But the truth is that it's a refund on payroll taxes like Medicare and Social Security. The people receiving the credit actually did pay those taxes. No one's getting someone else's refund.

So did Walker increase taxes? If you take the plain, spinless fact that many Wisconsin families' taxes will go up, then yeah. When Al Franken had his radio show, he used to say, "Words mean things," and "increase" means "go up." Walker is just plain lying here. He raised taxes.

Did he balance the budget? Depends on who you ask. If you asked Gov. Walker last night, he'd say yes. But if you asked earlier in the week, he'd say no.

[Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:]

Gov. Scott Walker's administration has touted for months its efforts to balance the state budget, but now it also has acknowledged a significant way in which the budget isn't balanced.

To keep the possibility alive of making further cuts to state health programs, the Walker administration quietly certified to the federal government on Dec. 29 that the state had a deficit.

Federal law allows the state to drop tens of thousands of adults to save money on health care costs if the state can show it has a deficit. Walker has said he wants to cut health care spending in other ways, but hasn't ruled out dropping those 53,000 adults if the other methods aren't approved by the federal government.

While we're at it, I think both having and not having a deficit -- depending on what works out best for you at the moment -- qualifies as a "budget trick." That only leaves the "no layoffs" claim.

Yes, there were no "massive" layoffs (note that he couldn't claim no layoffs). But that was always a false choice. It was Walker who said -- in a typical Republican hostage-taking political move -- "pass my budget or the teachers get it." What he's really saying is that he didn't carry out a threat he made to get Democrats to come back from Illinois. His argument boils down to, "Yeah, I took 12,000 hostages, but I didn't have to shoot them. That makes me a hero!"

Not surprisingly, I disagree.

"[S]ome 200 protesters gathered in the Capitol rotunda during Walker’s remarks," WSJ reports. "They loudly sang anti-Walker 'solidarity' songs before his address. Once the speech started, the crowd grew louder, their chants bleeding into the chamber. A constant drumbeat could be heard throughout his 37-minute speech."

There's a metaphor there for truth bleeding into Walker's carefully crafted fiction. It's hard to lie to people about the things they're living, to get them to believe that their personal reality isn't real. Things are bad in Wisconsin and everyone knows it.

So that drumbeat keeps pounding, no matter how vigorously Walker works to convince us of it's silence.

-Wisco

New Poll has Wisconsin Recall Effort at Slight Disadvantage

2012-01-25T12:14:00.000-06:00

Wisconsin is generally considered a swing state, despite the fact that it only seems to swing one way. In presidential races, it's usually a close race between the Democrat and the Republican, but when election day comes, the Democrat wins. In fact, the last time a Republican won the state was during the Reagan landslide against Walter Mondale. Wisconsin always seems tantalizingly within the grasp of the GOP candidate, before it slips away. Maybe Republican strategists have a different nickname for the Badger state -- perhaps one involving the word "heartbreak." Applying the "red/blue" measurement the media likes to use, Wisconsin is a purple state. But generally a bluish purple.

A new Marquette Law School poll shows a race shaping up to be like most other years -- the Democrat leads, but not yet with a majority.

The poll only measured an Obama/Romney race, which -- despite Mitt's recent polling decline -- still seems the most likely. If that race were held today, 48% would vote for Obama, while 40% would vote for Romney. Eight points is a decent lead and much better than the national average, which puts the president just 1.9% ahead -- a squeaker. But since Obama hasn't cracked 50% here, Team Mittens has to think there's some ground to be taken. It's not neck and neck now -- but it could be.

On the recall front, the situation is different. The best number for dems comes from a rematch with Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett -- the opponent Gov. Scott Walker eventually beat in 2010. Walker wins that 50%-44%. This may seem like good news for Walker, until you consider that he's already running a campaign to keep his office. He's been running ads statewide, trying to convince everyone he's just the best governor ever, and the best he can do is a six-point lead over a man who not only isn't running any ads at all, but isn't even a candidate yet. He hasn't officially declared. Scooter's been trying his little heart out and Barrett's within six without even raising a finger -- and that's within the poll's margin for error. In fact, of all the possible Democratic contenders in the poll, only one has numbers below the margin for error.

"The old line ‘you don’t beat somebody with nobody’ is true. Other polls have asked only if Governor Walker should be recalled and have found closer races," says Professor Charles Franklin, director of the Marquette Law School Poll and Wisconsin journalists' political go-to wonk. "But in the end, some specific Democrat will face Governor Walker. This poll is the first of the year to match specific potential Democratic challengers against the governor. The results show a competitive race but one in which Governor Walker starts with an advantage."

But when you consider his other advantages -- the previously mentioned campaign head start, incumbency, fundraising, etc. -- that polling advantage doesn't really add up to much. My take here is that it shows that Walker is both vulnerable and eminently beatable.

And the thing is, you really have to view these races independently of each other. The recall and the presidential won't happen on the same day. That means that presidential coattail effects -- or anti-coattail effects -- won't really apply. It might be more helpful to think of the presidential election and the gubernatorial recall as two separate election cycles -- one right after the other.

But that doesn't mean that one can't be predictive or instructive of the other. The recall will almost certainly happen first. If Walker wins, his campaign machine keeps churning until the presidential election. If the democrat wins, the same will happen. The groundwork being laid by the recall will have a lot to do with who wins the state in the presidential. Two separate cycles, but one feeds the next. Reverse coattails, where the race for lesser office helps the candidate for the higher one.

Publicly, Walker and Republicans will take these numbers and do a media tour with them. Privately though, they've got to be worried. If this is what weeks of TV and radio ads gets them, it may not be enough. And one thing the poll didn't measure is enthusiasm -- one million signatures say recall supporters have that on their side.

Wisconsin the swing state may be swinging away from its own governor.

-Wisco

News Roundup for 1/24/12

2012-01-24T16:04:00.000-06:00

Gingrich to debate moderators

-Headline of the Day-
"Gingrich won't 'allow' moderators to silence crowd at future debates."

Noodles isn't very good at bluffing. See, in case you haven't noticed, Gingrich's debate strategy has been to say something incredibly dickish to the moderators. This becomes a big applause line, because Republican audiences really like assholes. Then Newt basks in the love for him (which is really just hatred for the media) as waves of hoots and the sound of clapping hands washes over him.

That didn't work in the last debate in Florida, because NBC moderator Brian Williams decided that this debate would be less like a gladiatorial event and more like... well, a debate. You know, logical arguments, well thought-out points, appeals to reason rather than emotion. The whole shebang. Real furrowed-brow, cocked-eyebrow, Aristotle stuff. Newt's specialty is the red-faced, throbbing-forehead-vein, Bill O'Reilly stuff.

So you can see the fix he's in.

"We’re going to serve notice on future debates that we won’t tolerate -- we’re just not going to allow that to happen," Gingrich said of NBC's "be nice and polite" policy. "That’s wrong -- the media doesn’t control free speech. People ought to be able to applaud if they want to. It was almost silly."

Yes, Newt is "just not going to allow" any more moderators to drag the tenor of a GOP free media event all the way up to an actual debate, in much the same way that boxing coaches don't allow refs to stop fighters from hitting below the belt. (The Hill)

-Ick-
Geez...

Click for full comic

Ew. (Bad Reporter)

-Bonus HotD-
"Rich Republicans sure love Mitt."

Mitt's winning the 1% demo. The problem: the 1% demo is only 1%. (Salon's War Room)

Mitt's Poverty Level Tax Rate

2012-01-24T10:02:00.000-06:00

Nothing on Earth invites speculation from the punditry more than ignorance. Pundits get paid to do two things; to make predictions and to know things you don't. "I don't know" is probably written on some stone tablet of Forbidden Phrases somewhere. As a result, people take blind stabs at issues they couldn't possibly know anything about. One of those issues has been Mitt Romney's tax returns. Why was he reluctant to release them?

One of the blind stabs was that maybe Mittens didn't pay the required 10% tithe to the Church of Latter Day Saints. Score one for blind stabs -- he probably hasn't. "Mr. Romney reported $21.7 million in income [for 2010]," Wall Street Journal reports. "He paid $3 million in federal taxes, slightly more than the $2.98 million he made in charitable donations. At least $1.5 million of his charitable donations went to the Mormon Church." $21.7 million, $1.5 million tithe. You do the math. Mitt's shorting his church a bit.

But while that figure might get the attention of a certain Tabernacle in a certain Utah city, it's not what's drawing everyone else's. Our attention is drawn to the fact that Romney's tax bill adds up to somewhat less than even the absurdly low 15% estimate Romney gave in South Carolina. Specifically, 13.9%. You could argue that a little more than one percent difference amounts to splitting hairs, but when it's a percentage of a number like $21.7 million, we're talking about some pretty big and split-worthy hairs. It's the difference between the $3,016,300 Romney assumedly paid and $3,255,000 15% would've had him paying. You could feed and house a family on his rounding error.

And there's the question of timing. Romney released the records -- for two years only -- after the debate in Florida last night. Not only did he make sure the numbers weren't an issue in the debate, but he clearly hoped the story would be buried by post-debate coverage. It hasn't been. At least, not as completely as Team Romney probably would've liked. Mittens is probably taxed at a lower rate than you are and this is something he'd really rather you didn't know.

Why? Because his own tax plan takes this disparity and just makes it worse.

[Associated Press:]

Republican Mitt Romney's tax plan would increase taxes on low-income families while cutting taxes for the middle-class and the rich, according to an independent study released Thursday.

On average, households making less than $20,000 would see their taxes increase by more than 60 percent, said the Tax Policy Center, a Washington research group that studied the Romney plan.

Households making between $50,000 and $75,000 would get small tax cuts, averaging 2.2 percent, or about $250, the study said. People making more than $1 million would get tax cuts averaging 15 percent, or about $146,000.

That 13.9% Mitt pays? It's too much. That's got to be shaved down a bit. And what the poor pay? Way too little. That's got to be bumped up a whole lot. Never mind that what Romney pays now is comparable to the rate a person at or near the poverty line might pay without deductions -- in his world, sound and fair tax policy has him paying less and the poor paying more. Like Gingrich's, Romney's contempt for people in poverty is palpable. He's just quieter about it.

And that contempt is odd. Generally when you wage class warfare like this, you don't do it against your own tax bracket. You'd think he'd feel more kinship with his fellow fifteen-percenters, many of whom are struggling along with food stamps.

-Wisco

News Roundup for 1/23/12

2012-01-23T15:54:00.000-06:00

Sorry GOP. Not happening

-Headline of the Day-
"No GOP Cavalry Coming — It’s Too Late For Last Minute Presidential Candidates To Get On The Ballots."

Newt Gingrich's lopsided win in South Carolina has some Republicans nervous. Not helping any is the fact that polls show Newt actually winning Florida right now. All this has super-informed conservative pundits like Bill Kristol and Jennifer Rubin begging for some other Republican to jump into the race and save everyone from their party's awful candidates.

But reality has a message for them: you are screwed.

"In every primary state up through early April, the filing deadlines have passed," according to the report. "That includes the very delegate-rich Super Tuesday of March 6, when a total of 329 delegates will be at stake in primary states, compared to 104 in caucuses." Altogether, a new candidate would have to be able to win the nomination despite sitting out 21 primaries. This is unlikely.

The report goes on, "[F]or a Republican hero to ride in on a white horse, it would take a scenario that verges on political science fiction: A combination of write-in voting where applicable — and for Romney to fully drop out and endorse this new savior candidate, to essentially bequeath his place on the ballot by telling his pledged delegates elected in this manner to go along with it."

So you guys are just going to have to make do with what you've got. I'm sure that'll work out great for you guys. (Talking Points Memo)

-Newt on family values-

Say what you will, but he's got experience. (McClatchy)

-Bonus HotD-
"Tennessee Tea Party Don’t Want No Talk o’ Slavery In Them Schoolbooks."

Bravely fighting back against reality's liberal bias. (Wonkette)

Big Labor for Newt

2012-01-23T12:38:00.000-06:00

In Florida at least, the strategy of labor is clear -- nominate Newt Gingrich. Labor giant AFSCME has made what Greg Sargent calls a "major ad buy in the state," drawing parallels between a past Bain Medicare scandal and a crime committed by Florida Gov. Rick Scott's former company.

The ad doesn't specifically endorse Gingrich, but at this point it looks like a two man race -- if Mitt loses voters, the lion's share run to Newt.

And it's not like Romney needs much of a push to send him over the edge. "Before South Carolina, Mitt Romney was some 20 points ahead in Florida," notes Josh Marshall. "Two new polls have come out in the last twelve hours. Both have Gingrich up by 9 points." Newt's post Carolina bounce is stratospheric. And Rick Scott isn't very popular in his own state. In all, only 38% approve of the job he's doing as governor and even one in five Republicans disapprove. Even among Scott supporters, accusations of Medicare fraud aren't likely to be a plus for a candidate. You have to believe they support Scott despite it, not because of it. It's something they're willing to overlook.

At New York magazine, John Heilemann has a blog post up explaining what happens if Gingrich wins Florida. While it was written before AFSCME's ad buy, it goes a long way toward explaining it:

If Gingrich wins Florida, the Republican Establishment is going to have a meltdown that makes Three Mile Island look like a marshmallow roast. Why? Because the Establishment will be staring down the barrel of two utterly unpalatable choices. On the one hand, Gingrich's national favorable-unfavorable ratings of 26.5 and 58.6 percent, respectively make him not just unelectable against Obama but also mean that he would likely be a ten-ton millstone around the necks of down-ballot Republican candidates across the country. And on the other, Romney will have shown in two successive contests—one in a bellwether Republican state, the other in a key swing state—an inability to beat his deeply unpopular rival. If this scenario unfolds, the sound of GOP grandees whispering calls for a white knight, be it Indiana governor Mitch Daniels (who, conveniently, is delivering the Republican response to Obama’s State of the Union address on Tuesday night) or Wisconsin congressman Paul Ryan or even Jeb Bush, will be deafening.

Clearly, a Gingrich win in this scenario is best outcome, since he's likely to have an anti-coattails effect on congressional and gubernatorial races.

And of course, the contrast between Gingrich and Romney helps. Mitt Romney seems hopelessly out of touch -- at times almost robotic -- while Gingrich is just a jerk. The GOP base has been trained to like jerks. They think dickishness is a positive character trait. Look at talk radio; it's all loudmouths and bullies and liars and... Well, jerks. And check out wingnut comments on blog posts and news stories -- they think being creative with an insult constitutes a well-reasoned, logical argument. Who do you think a Rush Limbaugh fan hears "real" Republicanism from -- Gingrich or Romney?

Already, Gingrich's negatives are being spun into positives. Newt -- despite being an astonishingly poor choice as the candidate who can beat Obama -- is now being put across by some as the most electable candidate. The reasoning has it that Gingrich is "tough enough" to fight back. Completely lost on the people making this argument is whether general election voters are willing to blur the distinction between "tough" and "insufferable" the way Republican voters do. So far, there's absolutely no evidence that they will. If Gingrich catches fire with the GOP electorate, it'll be Sarah Palin all over again -- a divisive figure that divides the public unequally and not in that figure's favor. And, as they were with Palin, Republican voters will be completely blind the fact that their candidate is driving voters away, trapped as they are in their insular rightwing media echo chamber.

No wonder he's labor's candidate of choice. He's a GOP disaster waiting to happen -- and he can't happen soon enough.

-Wisco

News Roundup for 1/19/12

2012-01-19T16:48:00.000-06:00

Every bit the prick he appears to be

-Headline of the Day-
"Limbaugh On Gingrich Cheating On His Ex-Wife: 'Newt's A Victim.'"

Poor Newt Gingrich. All he wanted to do was get little extra love on the side and all of a sudden he's the bad guy. It's so unfair.

See, Newt's ex-wife sat down with ABC News for an as-yet unaired interview. But what we know about what she said is not good for Newt. Basically, after she was diagnosed with MS, Newt decided it was time to look elsewhere for the lovin' -- because he's great like that. That "elsewhere" is now his wife. You know, the weird-eyed robot lady Callista.

Anyway, the ex -- Marianne -- says that Newt wanted to have his cake and eat it too (sorry about that image, it's just a figure of speech). She says he approached her about having an "open marriage" and she shot him down.

According to Rush Limbaugh, Newt is awesome. So he took to the airwaves to defend the honor of America's Greatest Living Hero the only way a conservative seems to know how these days -- with a quick flip of the victim card. "I got a great note from a friend of mine," Rush told his breathless audience of shut-ins, mental patients, and people whose radios only get that one station. "'So Newt wanted an open marriage. BFD. At least he asked his wife for permission instead of cheating on her. That’s a mark of character, in my book. Newt’s a victim."

Slight problem with the phrase "instead of," though. Rush must've confused it with "while." Because the sentence, "At least he asked his wife for permission while cheating on her," is more in line with reality. According to the report, "It’s worth noting that Gingrich had been having an affair for several years before he asked 'permission' to cheat on his wife."

Then again, being a master of spin has nothing to do with mastery of the facts. (ThinkProgress)

-Cartoon time with Mark Fiore-
Hey kids, Snuggly the Security Bear is back and he's here to talk about piracy! Arrr!!

Click for animation

So remember, when you burn a CD, you're being exactly like those pirates in Somalia. Die, buccaneer scum! (MarkFiore.com)

-Bonus HotD-
"Walker turning down $37 million for health care."

I'll be so glad when we recall this moron. (Associated Press)

Senate Dems Make Up Most of Remaining PIPA Support

2012-01-19T12:15:00.000-06:00

The headline at Gizmodo reads, "PIPA Support Collapses, and Here’s a Full List of the Senators Who Newly Oppose It." It turns out that yesterday's internet blackout scared off eighteen Senators from supporting the senate's version of the draconian anti-piracy legislation -- it may not seem like many, but in a chamber with only one hundred seats, it represents a nearly 20% drop of support in a single day.

That's what you call a wildly successful protest.

But looking through the names, it's hard not to notice a certain fact. Only two Democrats -- Maryland's Ben Cardin (originally a co-sponsor) and Jeff Merkley of Oregon -- have changed positions. The bill originally enjoyed bipartisan support, but the rush to abandon it was not bipartisan at all.

[Raw Story:]

While Silicon Valley may have found their voice echos on Capitol Hill more loudly than expected, what remains after Wednesday’s protest is even more telling that what provoked it: Senate Democrats are, by and large, the core pillars of support for the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA), which has not otherwise engendered a strict partisan divide among lawmakers.

Far and away, the top beneficiary in the Senate from interest groups that support PIPA is Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), who’s taken in just short of a million dollars from those groups, according to data from OpenSecrets.org. She’s also the most recent Senator to co-sponsor PIPA, adding her name to the list on Dec. 12. The runner-up is Sen. Al Franken (D-MN), who’s taken $777,383 from PIPA-supporting interest groups, and has co-sponsored the bill since May 2011.

In fact, a list of the top 20 beneficiaries of special interest money in favor of PIPA reads like a list of the Senate’s most influential Democrats: Sen. Kristen Gillibrand (D-NY) in third; Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) in fourth; Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) in fifth; Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), the bill’s primary sponsor, in sixth; Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) in seventh; Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) in eighth; Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) in ninth; and Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO) in tenth.

In fact, you don't hit a Republican until you get way down to fifteenth place -- Sen. Mitch McConnell, the senate minority leader.

This isn't extremely surprising. The Democratic Party has been awful at consumer protection from the entertainment industry since Clinton. It was under Clinton that media consolidation began in earnest, thanks to the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which he signed into law. There are now fewer media voices because of it. The bill was sold as a way to increase competition. The opposite happened -- fewer media companies, a shift toward monopolism, and higher costs to consumers. Right wing talk radio boomed, for example, as Clear Channel took over station after station.

Needless to say, entertainment conglomerates and media companies thought this was wonderful. And Democrats reaped the rewards.

This is the corrupting influence of money in politics. PIPA is almost certainly doomed, since it's house sibling SOPA is pretty much done for. You could argue that, given this fact, there's no downside for Democratic Senators still supporting PIPA -- it's not going to happen, but they still get the Big Media largesse. But that doesn't explain why so many were for it in the first place. The $7,319,983 given to the top eighteen Democratic supporters of PIPA does.

There are a couple of lessons to be learned here; first, Democrats can't be counted on to be the good guys. A two party system is often characterized as a choice between the lesser of two evils. Never forget that the lesser is still an evil.

Second, that as long as votes are for sale in Washington, you can't count on anyone to watch your back. We're going to have to do that ourselves.

-Wisco

News Roundup for 1/18/12

2012-01-18T16:12:00.000-06:00

"I'm ba-ack!"

-Headline of the Day-
"Newt: Palin Will 'Play A Major Role' In My Administration."

Newt Gingrich envisions a role for Sarah Palin in his administration. Maybe as Secretary of... Ummm... Well, it's hard to think of anything she'd be qualified for and Newt probably hasn't given it a lot of thought. Maybe VP again. Who knows?

See, this is all about bumping up his numbers enough to get past Mitt Romney in the South Carolina primary. Sarah Palin endorsed Gingrich (But not really. We'll get to that. Keep your pants on) and Newt wants to capitalize on that.

What happened was that Sarah was on Fox News, which is the only network that still gives a crap about her, and she said that if she were in South Carolina, she'd vote for Gingrich. Not because Newt's such an awesome candidate, mind you, but "in order to keep it going" and -- I'm assuming here -- weaken Mittens. Yeah, this is about the weakest "endorsement" you could probably ever get, but when you're within shouting distance of the frontrunner in a state primary, you take what you can get.

So how do you make a backhanded endorsement seem stronger? You amplify your relationship with the endorser. Newt and Ol' Sarah go way back, he's always planned on making her the Secretary of Boy Howdy or whatever, and a vote for Newt is a vote for his old pal Sarah Palin.

Never mind that Palin was basically saying she'd vote for a cinderblock if she thought it would keep the primaries going. (Talking Points Memo)

-Mittens' argument catches on-

Remember, Romney worked hard to get way up to the 15% tax bracket. (McClatchy)

-Bonus HotD-
"Did Rick Santorum Win the Iowa Caucuses, Not Mitt Romney?"

The answer is "probably yes."

The real question is "will it matter?" (Daily Beast)

A Blackout is Working to Stop SOPA and PIPA

2012-01-18T12:44:00.000-06:00

As you're probably aware, several major websites have blacked out in protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and its senate sibling, the Protect IP Act (PIPA). Wikipedia is still usable, but it takes some futzing to get it to work. Otherwise, Reddit, Craigslist, Boing-Boing, Mozilla, SMBC, and other popular sites are effectively down for the day.

This has turned out to be an effective form of protest.

[Politico:]

An Internet blackout Wednesday by Wikipedia, Reddit, Mozilla and thousands of other sites against two anti-piracy bills in Congress has started to have its desired effect: Co-sponsors of the legislation have changed sides and other lawmakers have called for more debate before any vote.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) — who was a co-sponsor of the PROTECT IP Act — became the latest lawmaker Wednesday to pull his support. In the House, Rep. Ben Quayle (R-Ariz.), originally a co-sponsor of the Stop Online Piracy Act, pulled his name from the list of sponsors on Tuesday. A spokesman for Rep. Lee Terry (R-Neb.), meanwhile, told the Omaha World-Herald on Wednesday that the congressman is also unable to support SOPA as written.

The widespread Internet protest is even bringing new Washington voices into the fray. Mostly silent in the debate, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) tweeted Wednesday he doesn’t back the bills.

"I support intellectual property rights, but I oppose SOPA & PIPA," DeMint tweeted. "They're misguided bills that will cause more harm than good."

But the fact was that these bills were all but dead before the blackout. "[S]ponsors of the House and Senate bills ran into fierce and unexpected opposition, largely derailing their legislative plans. The White House didn’t issue a veto threat, per se, but the administration’s chief technology officials concluded, 'We will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet.' The statement added that any proposed legislation 'must not tamper with the technical architecture of the Internet,'" writes Steve Benen. "The White House’s position left SOPA and PIPA, at least in their current form, effectively dead."

Part of the problem here is that members of congress are often asked to vote on legislation dealing with issues they don't really understand. The members of the specific committees generally get the bills they generate, but outside those committees they're about as well informed as you or I might be. Think about it; do you really believe your congress critter is an expert on issues like internet commerce, international trade, the health insurance industry, nuclear power, and national defense all at the same time? Pretty doubtful.

As a result, congress members rely on lobbyists and their own colleagues to educate them. There's nothing wrong with this in and of itself, but the problem is that there's often incentive for these educators to be a lot less than honest. And it's not just corporate lobbyists who present this problem, but citizen groups as well. Imagine being a member of a group committed to eliminating online porn -- giving congress the tools to shut down websites could be an inviting first step in realizing your goals. This is a precedent you want to set and you're obviously not going to give a presentation that includes a "here's the downside" PowerPoint slide (actually, small money lobbyists probably just write a letter or submit a study, but you get the idea).

It's hard to see how this can possibly be avoided. Even if we reduce the money influence of lobbyists, you could make a pretty damned good argument that the educational influence of lobbyists is almost necessary. You've seen congress. Some of these people are dumber than a sack of doorknobs. Their only actual skill seems to be in getting elected. I, for one, don't want Rep. Louie Gohmert trying to figure out NASA'a latest rocket science project or trying to figure out the math behind monetary policy. If you gave a monkey a shotgun, he'd do less damage.

So what's the answer? You're looking at it. Pressure from citizens and businesses that would be affected by SOPA and PIPA have severely hobbled the legislation's progress. Co-sponsors are jumping ship and the White House is suggesting it's heading for a dead end -- assuming it moves forward at all. It's not the blackout itself that's causing the problem for lawmakers, it's the message that websites are putting up instead of their usual content, a message they've been pushing for weeks now -- call your congress members, tell them to oppose these bills.

It's just like dealing with hate speech. If the answer to hate speech is more speech, not censorship, then the answer to misleading educational lobbying is more lobbying -- in this case, from actual voters. If you contact your representative or senator, it has an impact. If you tell them that you're going to do more than just vote against them -- that you're going to volunteer for and donate to their opponent in the next election -- it counts that much more.

If you doubt that your opinion matters, look at what's happening today and reassess that conclusion.

-Wisco

Wisconsin Budget Kabuki and a Regularly Scheduled 'Crisis'

2012-01-17T13:07:00.000-06:00

It's my opinion that the words "budget crisis" should be banned from political conversation in Wisconsin. This state, like many states, has a constitutional requirement for a balanced budget, so whenever it's time for a new budget, we're facing a "budget crisis." Every time, without fail. Both parties use the term to bludgeon the other party into submission -- "Gah! It's a budget crisis! Why aren't you helping us save Wisconsin?" -- and the media always plays into it. Face it, "Budget Crisis!" makes for better headlines than "Same Kabuki BS That Happens Every Two Years is Happening Again." If the biennial budget constitutes a "budget crisis," then Wisconsin has had over a century of incredible luck in resolving these crises. We're always on the verge of... I don't know, being a failed state I guess... and every time, we manage to be pulled back from the brink of certain doom.

This is why I don't give Gov. Scott Walker a lot of credit for solving the "budget crisis" with his union-busting and his attacks on the middle and lower classes. Walker has managed to do what every single governor before him has done (some of them less burdened by the weight of intelligence than even Scott, by the way), making this less of a towering achievement and more of just a routine. Scott Walker merely managed to avoid what every governor has managed to avoid. This isn't some singular triumph of leadership. In fact, it may be that in the history of this clockwork crisis, few governors have handled it as poorly.

And with that little rant, I herald in deadline day -- the day the petitions to recall Scott Walker must be turned in. The heroic Walker won't be there to watch them roll in.

[Chicago Tribune:]

Supporters of an unprecedented effort to oust Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker from office said they will turn in more than enough signatures Tuesday to force the Republican into a recall election barely a year into his first term.

Walker, however, has no plans to be anywhere near the Capitol when recall organizers turn in the signatures by Tuesday's deadline. The governor is scheduled to be in New York when organizers say they will be unloading the stacks of petitions, weighing a ton, from a truck and hauling them into the state election board's offices.

For their part, recall organizers say they've collected the roughly 540,000 signatures needed to trigger a recall and exceeded it by 200,000 more. This is going to happen. If I were Scott Walker, I wouldn't want to be around to watch the truck roll in either.

And why is Walker being recalled? Because his approach to the "budget crisis" consisted of unbelievable overreach. He used it as a hammer to ban collective bargaining for public employees -- and it didn't work. The other side wasn't cowed into accepting what was a blatantly false argument and that skepticism was later shown to be right. Walker testified to congress -- under oath -- that doing away with collective bargaining "doesn't save any" money. And the argument that it was a crucial step to solving our routine and scheduled "crisis" died right there.

But that's not the only reason. One factor that got me behind the recall was Walker's bass-ackward economics and his attacks on the working poor to the benefit of the rich.

[The Capital Times:]

Wisconsin residents with long-term capital gains will enjoy a new break while lower income filers could see less money under changes in 2011 state and federal income tax laws.

The Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance (WISTAX) on Tuesday released its annual income tax guide and has noted a few minor adjustments.

At the state level, the biggest change includes a deferral for certain capital gains reinvested in qualified Wisconsin businesses and an exempting of health savings accounts (HSAs) from state income tax.

Walker's capital gains tax cut means that 30% of all income made from capital gains -- no matter how much that is -- isn't taxable income. Meanwhile, Walker's budget "also eliminates inflation indexing for the Homestead Credit. That program benefits lower-income tax filers." Walker's continuously claimed to address the "budget crisis" without raising taxes -- a claim that is nothing but a flat-out lie. He also cut the Earned Income Tax Credit, raising taxes further on the working poor.

At least the wealthy won't have to struggle to get by though, huh? Walker is literally taking money from the working poor and giving it to the wealthy. And again, this has nothing to do with balancing the budget.

I'm glad today is deadline day, because we can't get rid of this guy soon enough. And the next time you hear about a Wisconsin "budget crisis," go ahead and shrug it off.

-Wisco

News Roundup for 1/16/12

2012-01-16T15:48:00.000-06:00

Romney's peer group

-Headline of the Day-
"Big banks have picked their candidate, and it's Romney."

Mitt Romney has been trying to convince everyone that he's just a reg'lar Joe. He tries to strike up conversations with the riff-raff by guessing their ethnicity and discussing LEED certification of the local hotels. Rumor has it that he's instructed his valet to put his pants on him one leg at a time. He's done everything short of wearing an "I'm Not Out of Touch" t-shirt everywhere he goes.

Well thank God no one's buying it. If they did, Mittens wouldn't be getting that sweet, sweet campaign cash from the 1%. According to the report, "Employees at the five largest U.S. banks by assets, including Bank of America Corp. and Wells Fargo & Co., had given Romney about $600,000 through the first three quarters of 2011, according to the most recent filings available from the Federal Election Commission... Romney received more from employees of those top five banks than all the other candidates combined."

That ought to keep him in spats and top hats for a while. And all that slash-and-burn, fire-all-the-employees-and-sell-off-the-company Bain stuff in Romney's past? Well, that's not a liability to the crème de la crème of the Wall Street world -- it's an asset. "As the former head of Bain Capital... he comes from their world," we're told.

The next time you see Mittens eating pies with the locals in a folksy, one-of-the-guys photo-op, keep that in mind. (McClatchy)

-The calendar is obviously rigged-
Science is made up of logical conclusions drawn from observable facts.

Observable facts obviously have a liberal bias. (Matt Bors, via The American Bear)

-Bonus HotD-
"On MLK Day, Romney Campaigning With Anti-Immigrant Official Tied To Hate Groups."

I want to say that timing is everything, but there's really no time this would be OK. It's just especially un-OK today. (ThinkProgress)

Griper Blade: Walker's Legislative Steamroller Not Quite So Formidable Now

2012-01-16T11:19:00.000-06:00

Tomorrow's the big day. After months of signature collection, petitions to recall Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker must be turned in by Tuesday. The call to wrap things up actually came last week, indicating the kind of comfortable buffer petitioners have achieved. There were no urgent pleas to keep signing until the very last second, no big final push, just the message that it was time to fold up shop, to make sure all your petitions are signed and dated, and to turn that paperwork in on time.

Of course, this is the second round of recalls in Wisconsin, sparked by Republican overreach and a union-busting law. The first was toward the end of summer last year, when Democrats took two seats in the state Senate. Republicans, after launching a counter-recall, gained no seats. Democrats had come within one seat of taking the Senate majority, while Republicans had fallen from one seat to three seats from taking a quorum-proof super-majority.

Somehow, this got spun into a win for Republicans. The Democratic goal, after all, had been to take the majority in the Senate. Democrats had gained two seats and lost no ground, Republicans had lost two seats and gained no ground, therefore Republicans had won. "Tonight’s results demonstrate that responsible budgeting measures and job creating policies can prevail over mountains of liberal special interest money from those fighting to maintain the unsustainable status quo," said Chris Jankowski, president of the Republican State Leadership Committee. "This tremendous victory is a significant step toward returning government to the people and protecting the hard-working American family and businessperson. By beating back countless liberal special interest dollars and paid supporters, the strength of responsible Republican ideals is obvious and foreshadows continued Republican victories in 2011, 2012 and beyond."

Only in the bass-ackward mind of a Republican is losing two seats winning. And not just winning, a "tremendous victory." Why, it was a landslide! A few more "victories" like that and there won't be any Republicans in the Senate at all.

And now we see what their "win" has brought them.

[Associated Press:]

Republicans who control the Legislature have their sights set on passing just four major bills and little else during the session that begins Tuesday and runs through mid-March.

They insist it's not due to inter-party gridlock, but instead the negative influence of recalls against four Republican senators and the ongoing bitter partisan atmosphere that hinders building coalitions across party lines.

The four bills Republican leaders say they are working to pass would clear the way for an iron ore mine in northern Wisconsin, ease laws related to developing on wetlands and environmental regulation, and create a venture capital fund to assist start-up businesses.

"Republicans last year feared Democrats might take control of the Senate after the recalls and block their proposals. Democrats did pick up two seats, leaving Republicans with a narrow one-vote majority," AP reports. "That slim majority and threat of more recalls leave lawmakers on edge."

"When a legislator is under recall and looking down the barrel of a recall election they're going to be more sensitive," said Republican Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, himself the target of a recall election this time around.

And whether any of this agenda will actually get done is another question entirely. The venture capital fund probably stands the best chance, while the rest may face a rocky road. Of course, the recalls may still turn the Senate over to Democrats, which means that things could change drastically. Even Republicans are acknowledging this.

"Because of the fact that we have four senators under recall and uncertainty that surrounds the Capitol, that will mean that very few bills will pass," state Rep. Robin Vos, the GOP co-chair of the Legislature's budget committee, told the AP.

Previous to the recalls, the GOP was a legislative steamroller, passing bills nearly as quickly as the Governor could sign them. Now, not so much. The steamroller's out of steam. Republicans can't afford any more "wins" like they had last year. If they suffer through another "tremendous victory" like that, they'll be out of business for a while.

-Wisco

News Roundup for 1/13/12

2012-01-13T16:13:00.000-06:00

Sometimes pronounced "four"

-Headline of the Day-
"Rick Perry Lists 3 Departments He’d Cut, But Adds One, Misses Another."

OK, so Rick Perry wants eliminate the departments of commerce, interior, and energy... or is it commerce, education, and energy?

Something like that anyway. All you need to know is that Rick Perry wants to eliminate federal agencies. Three to be specific and which three being too specific.

Referring back to Rick Perry's "Oops" moment at a Republican debate, an interviewer asked him which agencies he'd cut. Should be easy enough. The mistake that marked the beginning of his campaign's tailspin is not likely to be one repeated.

Or so you'd believe. "Three right off the bat, you know, commerce, interior and energy are three that you think," Rick answered.

And Rick answered wrong. On the campaign trail, he's been talking about eliminating the department of education, because -- let's face -- he's living proof that being dumber than a sack of doorknobs is no impediment to fabulous wealth, fame, and success.

What he hasn't been doing is saying word one about the Department of the Interior.

The interviewer caught the slip and asked him if he'd eliminate the Department of Education as well. Darn tootin', Rick said. Then the stupid continued. "They are blackmailing states with our own money, basically saying here is the national test, and here are the national standards you’re going to put into place, "One size fits all doesn’t work. Well maybe it does in gym socks but it sure doesn’t in how we educate our children."

Maybe, maybe not. But you want to take that up with President Bush and the bipartisan group of dim bulbs who passed No Child Left Behind. The Department of Education is doing this stuff because the last Texas Governor to be president made them do this stuff. You can repeal it and they'll stop doing it. You don't have to blow up the waterworks to turn off a faucet, you know.

But whatever. What's important to remember is that the list of agencies Rick Perry would cut grows every time someone asks him; mostly because he can't keep them squared in his mind and when he screws up, his line is "Oh yeah, that one too." (ABC News)

-Cartoon time with Mark Fiore-
Hey kids, the National Defense Authorization Act means that everyone's safe from terr'ists forever. Yay!

Click for animation

Whether you're safe from your government is another question entirely. (MarkFiore.com)

-Bonus HotD-
"Romney's Rhetoric On Jobs Record At Bain Devolves."

First Mittens claimed 100,000 jobs had been created by Bain. No one bought that. Then it was "tens of thousands." No one bought that either. Now it's just "thousands."

By this time next week, it'll probably be "me and this other guy."

Don't believe it. (Talking Points Memo, with video)

And the Presidential Campaign Goes Straight to Stupid...

2012-01-13T12:03:00.000-06:00

I watched Newt Gingrich's movie on Mitt Romney last night. When Mitt Romney Came to Town may be a stinging indictment of Romney's slash-and-burn style of capitalism, but it's not a very good movie. It's more of an attack ad than a documentary, filled with clichéd negative ad tropes -- slow motion clips, ominous and growly square wave tones, etc. No Oscar buzz here.

Still, the message is pretty clear and pretty accurate; when Romney claims to be a "job creator," he's not being 100% honest. But this is Newt Gingrich, which means there has to be at least one completely insane note in the movie. When I saw that Steve Benen wrote about "oblique xenophobic slights" in the movie, I'd expected to see jobs moving to China or undocumented workers stealing American jobs.

What I saw instead was Mittens speaking French.

And apparently Team Newt thinks that speaking French is a horrible, horrible thing. Because I woke up this morning, turned on the news, and saw this:

Hating the French seems like a fad of rightwing nutjobbery of a certain vintage -- say, 2001. It doesn't seem to be a big thing today. Newt's hot button issue is a little less hot and a little more dusty than he seems to believe. Still, the ad was cut for South Carolina -- a state with a much larger Tea Party influence than the previous primaries -- so maybe someone, somewhere will be completely outraged at Mittens' francophonic talents.

But really, are we here already? Are we at the point where all the other issues have been completely exhausted and we have to dig up stupid crap to be critical of? The fact that Newt's ad brings up John Kerry's windsurfing forces us to compare it to idiot issues of the past -- and, I hope, makes us all wonder how these idiot issues ever became issues in the first place.

Part of the reason is that the presidential campaign is too long by far. Do we really need an entire year to make up our minds? I don't think so. Idiot issues prove that we run out of reasons to change our votes long before we even get a chance to vote.

I'm going to go ahead and cut Newt some slack, though. The primary in South Carolina is a much shorter campaign than the national one. So, if you want to get your gratuitous, stupid, intolerant, lowest-common-denominator attacks in, you're not going to want to waste a lot of time. Mitt knows how to do something you probably don't -- and that's terrible. For some reason.

And it's not just the candidates who go running to these idiot issues, it's the media as well. I remember John Kerry making a huge campaign "gaffe" by ordering a philly cheeseteak with swiss cheese instead of Cheez Whiz. Why this matters at all is beyond me. It's not like it proved his trade policy wouldn't work -- it was something that just didn't matter at all. Besides, as a Wisconsinite I feel a duty to break the bad news to Philadelphians: Cheez Whiz is a crime. It's awful. Stop doing that or face human rights abuse charges at The Hague.

Can we get some debate of the issues here? Please? Or are we going to more or less instantly go straight to the stupid? Because I'd rather we didn't.

But I know we will.

-Wisco

News Roundup for 1/11/12

2012-01-11T16:17:00.000-06:00

Rick Perry

-Headline of the Day-
"CNN Apparently Waives Its Own Debate Rules To Let Rick Perry In."

The endless series of GOP debates marches on, this time in South Carolina, and Rick Perry will be there.

Whether he should be there is another question entirely. According to the report, in "CNN’s criteria for inclusion, a candidate must get at least 4th place in either Iowa or New Hampshire, or get 7% support in at least three national Republican or three South Carolina primary polls released in January. The requirements were posted online last Tuesday afternoon, several hours before before the Iowa caucuses began later that night."

The problem: Rick has done almost none of that. "Perry came in fifth place in Iowa, and sixth in New Hampshire," the report says. "And currently, his national and South Carolina poll numbers do not show him meeting that threshold, either."

Worse, the only poll that shows Perry reaching the crucial 7% is from Reuters -- CNN's own polling has Rick at 5% in South Carolina (pdf).

Asked what the hell the deal was, Edie Emery, director of public relations for Turner Broadcasting Systems, said, "Yes, Gov. Perry will be invited to next week’s CNN debate. He has met the criteria."

Fair enough. Except he hasn't. (Talking Points Memo)

-Mittens clarifies-

Surprisingly accurate. (McClatchy)

-Bonus HotD-
"C-SPAN caller asks if 'Romney has a big penis.'"

I think I see what's happening here. The caller overheard a conversation.

Let me straighten this out: what you heard someone say is that Romney is a big dick.

Hope you find this helpful. (Raw Story)

The Bain of the GOP's Existence

2012-01-11T12:37:00.000-06:00

The next time someone tells you, "I'm a capitalist," go ahead and answer, "No, you're not." You'd just be playing the odds. A capitalist is defined as "A wealthy person who uses money to invest in trade and industry for profit in accordance with the principles of capitalism." In other words, probably not you or the person you're talking to. "Capitalist" is synonymous with "financier."

Also, notice the term "job creation" isn't anywhere in the definition. People don't invest to create jobs, they invest to make money. In fact, whether any jobs are created by the investment is entirely beside the point. In many cases, jobs are lost. The people Republicans hold up as the high-minded "job creators" not only aren't interested in creating jobs, but they'd really rather not. When you're maximizing profits, you want as few employees as possible. After all, you're in the business of writing your own paycheck, not someone else's.

When it comes to what Republicans call "job creation," they'd rather you didn't see how the sausage is made. Because when you get right down to it, it looks pretty heartless. If hiring someone means you'll make money, you'll hire someone -- and if firing someone means you'll make money, they're out. The "job creators" have been doing one helluva lot more firing than hiring lately, which makes the GOP's favored term for capitalists a lie. After all, one would assume that a "job creator" actually would get around to creating some jobs. Lately, they've been acting as "job destroyers."

Which brings us to a guy named Willard "Mitt" Romney, son of wealth, former vulture capitalist and professional job destroyer. Remember the villain in all those movies -- you know, the ones where there's a hostile takeover and rich corporate-type wants to sell off all the company's assets and fire everyone? Yeah, those movies. That's Mitt Romney, CEO of Bain Capital. He's that guy.

Even if you're a Republican who worships at the altar of the Free Market, it's hard to look at Romney's past and not see it as a liability. If you're that Republican and you're running against him, it becomes almost impossible not to see a target. And that has his opponents moving to the left of the party. Establishment Republicans are finding themselves at odds with most of their candidates and it's kind of putting them on the spot.

And this in itself is a problem; how do you defend Mitt Romney and Bain Capital without confirming every negative stereotype people have about the GOP and their relationship to the wealthy? If you're conservative spinmeister Frank Luntz, you don't. You change throw up a smokescreen.

Conservatives should not be defending capitalism. They should be defending economic freedom. And there is a difference. The word capitalism was created by Karl Marx to demonize those people who make a profit. We’ve always talked about the free enterprise system or economic freedom. Suddenly, they’re trying to defend something that has only 18 percent support.

The problem here is that "economic freedom" doesn't mean freedom from criticism, any more than freedom of speech means you get to say whatever you want and everyone else gets to shut up about it. And if "economic freedom" means doing what Bain did under Romney, I think the average person would like to see a little less of that particular brand of freedom. After all, you don't become a cookie-cutter movie villain by being widely respected and admired.

My point in all this is a simple one; in order to be more in tune with the average person and criticize Romney and Bain, GOP candidates are running to the left. They can't possibly run to the right with it. The best they'd be able to do is follow Luntz's lead and try to camouflage the issue with pretty words that poll better.

And what does this all prove? That the public is to the left of Republicans on issues of corporate responsibility and business ethics. Most of the candidates know this, that's forcing the GOP establishment to defend Romney, and that in turn putting them in the spotlight. There's a reason why it's mostly private citizens who are rushing to Mitt's defense, not elected Republicans; defending Bain is a Democratic "candidate X is so out of touch" attack ad waiting to happen.

Republican candidates are setting up a narrative that President Obama can carry into the general election. I'm not as convinced of Romney's "inevitability" as everyone else seems to be, but I will agree that the odds are heavily in his favor. What this means is that there will be a continuity of criticism, a bipartisan assault on Romney's past as a movie villain.

Willard has some rough sledding ahead.

-Wisco

News Roundup for 1/10/12

2012-01-10T16:22:00.000-06:00

New RNC logo

-Headline of the Day-
"Republicans Hand Democrats a Populist Issue."

Republicans handed Democrats a gift today, by way on confirming one of the worst GOP stereotypes. In a fourth circuit court case, the Republican National Committee filed an amicus brief [PDF] arguing that candidates for office should be able to get that sweet, sweet corporate cash straight from the corporations themselves.

"Especially if Romney is the nominee, expect this to be rolled into Romney's 'corporations are people, my friend' line, the Bain Capital stuff, and the recent 'I like to fire people gaffe,' with Occupy undertones, for Democrats (or their super PAC surrogates) to make an anti-corporate, Populist message for Obama's reelection," writes Rick Hasen of the Election Law Blog.

In fact, since the RNC basically makes the "corporations are people" argument in the brief, I'd say this was a pretty sure bet. They might as well slap a "for sale" sign on the GOP logo, because the RNC is indicating that they want to sell the party really, really bad. (Political Wire)

-Shovel-Ready-

Don't worry New Hampshire, it's almost over. (Time)

-Bonus HotD-
"Heckler askes Romney: 'Are you going to fire the baby?'"

A Romney critic blows the obligatory baby picture photo op with a wisecrack. Experts say this is the most embarrassing infant-related campaign incident since Chester Arthur confused the "shake hands, kiss baby" routine and had to be forcibly stopped from shaking babies. (Raw Story)

GOP Voters Find Romney as Exciting as a Saltine

2012-01-10T12:14:00.000-06:00

The New Hampshire primaries are today and, if polling is to be believed, Mitt Romney may be looking at a landslide. This is probably fortunate for Team Romney, since it may wipe the taste of a humiliating Iowa squeaker from their mouths. Then again, Mitt's trajectory has been downward in the Granite State in recent days, so it's possible that he may not get his monstrous win. Still, barring a miracle, Romney will win.

While the media have been talking about Romney's "inevitability" as the GOP nominee, the other narrative has been the Republican voters' inability to get behind him. While polls show him winning in New Hampshire, I haven't seen one that has him cracking 50%. If this primary battle is what the media has portrayed it to be -- Romney vs. Not-Romney -- then Not-Romney still has the numbers, if not the candidate. As a result, Mitt Romney's rise seems to be accompanied by a consequence; waning GOP enthusiasm.

Part of the reason for the Iowa squeaker was that evaporating enthusiasm. Where turnout for the caucuses was expected to reach 140,000, 122,000 showed up. Romney won by eight votes, making it the tightest win in caucus history. And the number of registered Iowa Republicans has declined from 21.1 percent in 2008 to 19.9 percent now.

Nationally, the numbers are no better. A new CBS News poll finds that most GOP voters disapprove of their presidential choices -- and that percentage has increased.

The nominating process may officially be underway, but Republicans have yet to enthusiastically embrace a potential nominee for president - and despite the late date, most would like to see other candidates enter the race, according to a new CBS News poll.

The survey finds that 58 percent of Republican primary voters want more presidential choices, while just 37 percent say they are satisfied with the current field. The percentage of Republican primary voters that wants more choices has increased 12 percentage points since October.

A twelve percent quarterly rise in voter dissatisfaction is nothing to sneeze at. This is not the direction the Republican Party wants to be moving in right now. And it's not just Mitt that's dragging the party's enthusiasm down, it's the clear lack of a Mitt-alternative. This is why voters have been running from candidate to candidate, desperately searching for a Not-Romney who is also a Not-Joke.

They haven't been having a lot of luck. First it was Trump, then Bachmann, then Cain, then Gingrich, now maybe Santorum. As a result, the Not-Romney contingent is scattered and demoralized. How often can candidates let you down before you conclude they're all worthless?

"There is no candidate in the GOP field who more than one third of Republican primary voters say they would enthusiastically support if he were the nominee," CBS reports. "Rick Santorum does best in terms of enthusiasm, with 33 percent saying they would enthusiastically support him. (Roughly one in two say their support for Santorum would either come with reservations or simply result from the fact that he is the GOP nominee.) Santorum is followed by Newt Gingrich, whom 29 percent would enthusiastically support, and Romney, whom 27 percent would enthusiastically support. They're followed by Rick Perry at 17 percent, Ron Paul at 15 percent and Jon Huntsman at 12 percent."

The only bright spot for the GOP in the poll is that it shows Romney beating Obama by two points, mostly the result of Independents swinging Romney's way and within the poll's three-point margin of error. But the caveats here are that it's still very early and that Romney's perceived strong suit -- business and the economy -- is being hammered at by his rivals. Also, that two points means a "whoever wants it more" race -- bad news for a candidate whose voters lack enthusiasm. And Romney voters' enthusiasm is running third, between Newt Gingrich and the miserable, hopeless Rick Perry.

It may be that, in the end, Barack Obama will win reelection by being the final Not-Romney candidate.

-Wisco

News Roundup for 1/9/12

2012-01-09T16:51:00.000-06:00

Probably not what Romney meant

-Headline of the Day-
"'I like being able to fire people.'"

The above words are a fine example of something you should never, ever in a million years say if you're running for president under the banner of "I'm a Big-Time Job Creator!"

This is especially true if you're Mitt Romney, whose record of job creation is sketchy at best and nearly nonexistent at worst.

But Mittens said exactly that at a Chamber of Commerce breakfast this morning in Nashua. Full context: "I want individuals to have their own insurance. That means the insurance company will have an incentive to keep you healthy. It also means that if you don’t like what they do, you could fire them. I like being able to fire people who provide services to me. You know, if someone isn’t giving the good service, I want to say, I’m going to go get someone else to provide this service to."

OK, so not so extremely terrible in context -- just garden variety terrible. As a sound bite goes, this is a campaign commercial. For example, Team Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt was nearly speechless at his candidate's good fortune. His response: "!!!"

No, really.

"I think I see the point Romney was trying to get at," Steve Benen comments, "but for a guy with an atrocious jobs record, who got very wealthy laying off American workers, 'I like being able to fire people' is a seven-word phrase that may prove tough to live down."

With all the GOP candidates already going all OWS on Romney (yeah, they've all turned hippie), this is exactly the wrong way for Mittens to go.

Still, he's quickly disproving that whole "not a real Republican" thing everyone tried to saddle him with -- he's got the Republican style of competence down pat. (Political Animal)

-I used to like having eyes-
Oh jeebus...

Click for full comic

Maybe steel wool will get the image out... (Bad Reporter)

-Bonus HotD-
"Could Huntsman Take Second?"

Jon Huntsman has a real chance of taking the silver in New Hampshire tomorrow. That Santorum boomlet sure didn't last long, huh? (Talking Points Memo)

Out of State Money King Scott Walker Complains About Out of State Money in Wisconsin Recall

2012-01-09T12:57:00.001-06:00

The petitioning period for recalling Wisconsin's Governor Scott Walker is winding down. Petitioners have until January 17 to collect over 540,000 signatures and, by all accounts, they'll make it with a few hundred thousand to spare. This is on.

As is so often the case when dealing with a Republican and elections, hypocrisy becomes a problem. They've got a pack full of victim cards and will pounce on any excuse to play one. If it weren't for be constantly offended, outraged, and aggrieved, they wouldn't have anything to talk about. And so it is that Scott Walker has taken to playing a victim card he has no right to hold.

[Huffington Post:]

As Wisconsin Democrats continued their push to force his recall, Gov. Scott Walker (R) came to Washington on Thursday to raise funds for the election that is all but certain to occur. But while Walker has slammed the influence of out-of-state money in the recall effort, he defended his own fundraising from non-Wisconsinites as fundamentally different from what he called the "excessive amounts" raised by unions and liberal groups.

"The people from around the country who are helping us at the grassroots level are trying to match the amazing levels of money coming in from unions from Washington and throughout the country," said Walker at a question-and-answer event at the American Enterprise Institute on Thursday morning. Walker spoke at AEI before meeting with Republican donors at the Capitol Hill Club later in the day.

And here comes the hypocrisy: "According to his latest campaign finance report, Walker has raised $5.1 million since the start of the recall effort on November 15th. Nearly half of that amount, $2.4 million, has come from outside of Wisconsin."

"I’ve never seen any candidate — ever — get close to half their money from out of state," said Mike McCabe, executive director of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, told the political journalism site Wisconsin Watch. "I used to always be stunned when I saw a candidate for state office with 10 percent coming from out of state."

To be sure, recall supporters are pulling a lot of out of state money too -- also about half of their funding -- but the differences are startling. According to Wisconsin Watch:

The Democrats and United Wisconsin (the two biggest groups in favor of recalling Walker) took in much less money overall than the governor. As a reminder, Walker can take unlimited donations for recall-related expenses, while the Dems need a candidate to start doing that.
Their biggest donors are much smaller than Walker’s biggest donors. That guy in Texas donating $250,000? So far, there’s no Dem equivalent.
They seem to have a much bigger proportion of small donors. It’s hard to say how many, because they’re unitemized (legally) in campaign finance filings.
Anti-Walkerites got a big chunk from out of state, just like Walker. (However, we’d caution that comparing Democratic party contributions to Walker’s receipts isn’t apples-to-apples. [W]e excluded contributions to the party from other political committees — such as county Democratic parties — so we could look at the individual dollars.)

The amount of out-of-state pro-Walker money is staggering. "Five million dollars is more than I’ve ever seen in a single reporting period by a candidate in the history of the state," McCabe said. For their part, state Democrats have raised $3.1 million total, while United Wisconsin -- the main organizer of the recall -- has raised $329,994. Only 10% of United Wisconsin's money is from out of state.

Meanwhile, the big money pours in for Walker.

The largest single contributor to Walker’s campaign was Bob J. Perry, a homebuilder in Houston, Texas, who gave $250,000. Perry is a prominent funder of conservative causes. He gave more than $4 million to Swift Vets and POWs for Truth, a group that helped torpedo 2004 Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry. In 2010, he gave $7 million to American Crossroads, a Republican campaign fund.

When asked about the out of state money, Walker told the Huffington Post, "[E]ven money that's coming in from outside of Wisconsin in many cases is coming from people giving us 10, 15, 20 dollars, saying, 'We want to help you counter money coming from Washington and elsewhere.'"

Ten, fifteen, twenty, a quarter of a million dollars -- all the same thing really. Just reg'lar folks scraping together what little they can.

If you want to raise buttloads of money from out of state, don't claim you're the victim of buttloads of out of state money -- especially when your buttload is much, much bigger.

Then again, honesty doesn't seem to be a requirement when playing the victim card.

-Wisco

Scott Walker's Taxpayer-Funded Bailout

2012-01-06T13:01:00.000-06:00

I wouldn't call this a loss for recall supporters, since they aren't really out anything. I'd call this a loss for Wisconsin taxpayers.

[Wisconsin State Journal:]

A judge ruled Thursday that the state Government Accountability Board needs to take more aggressive action to vet recall signatures that are expected to be submitted in two weeks against Gov. Scott Walker and other Republican office holders.

The ruling by Waukesha County Circuit Judge J. Mac Davis came in a case filed Dec. 15 by Walker's campaign committee and Stephan Thompson, executive director of the state Republican Party, asking Davis to order the accountability board to seek out and eliminate duplicate and fictitious signatures and illegible addresses in recall petitions.

Davis, who refused to enter injunctions in the case, based his decision on his interpretation of state law, more than on equal protection arguments brought up by the Republicans. He also said that the board must take "reasonable" efforts to eliminate such signatures.

The problem here is that the state now must do the Walker campaign's job for them. GAB director Kevin Kennedy had originally said that it was up to the Walker campaign to challenge signatures, in much the same way it's up to each campaign to challenge votes in a recount. But the Walker campaign whined that they would only have ten days after the petition was signed to check all the signatures and that he'd have to hire temps with the campaign's own money and oh my God it's just a terrible thing...

So now I have to pay for it. So much for saving the taxpayers' money.

"In court, Kennedy testified that entering signatures into a database to look for duplicates could take eight extra weeks for his staff, and could cost $94,000 for software and outside help," the Journal Sentinel reports. At least Walker's finally creating a few jobs.

There's no way that enough signatures will be weeded out to stop the recall. Halfway through the petition process, the Democratic Party of Wisconsin announced that 500,000 signatures had been collected. That was very nearly the 540,208 mark required to trigger a recall and that announcement was made before Christmas. I think the requisite number have probably been collected, but that petitioners will continue to get signatures until the very last day of the period, in order to create a buffer for signatures that are thrown out. If your goal is to collect as many signatures as possible, the last thing you want to do is send out a "We've got enough!" press release. You want to send out the "Almost there! Keep plugging away!" press release the party sent out in December. I'm guessing the December numbers are the last official ones we'll see until the final tally is released.

Long story short, Team Walker knows that the recall is going to happen. And they don't want to spend the campaign's money on challenging signatures. That's just a sort of ritual to stretch out the process and build up a campaign war chest, anyway. These are Republicans and, being Republicans, they're really big on saving the taxpayer's money -- right up until the moment that they're not. $94,000 will now be blown on a timewaster.

And, of course, if Kennedy's right, then it's eight more weeks of fundraising for Walker. We spend money on a doomed effort to save Walker from a recall, so he has more time to rake money in.

Is it any wonder we want to recall this guy?

-Wisco

News Roundup for 1/5/12

2012-01-05T16:41:00.000-06:00

What the Romney tax plan looks like to the middle class

-Headline of the Day-
"Romney Plan Raises Taxes On Lower-Middle Class, Cuts Taxes On Wealthy."

Mittens is the 1%. If you ever doubted that, check out his new tax plan, which can best be described as a massive middle finger to anyone who isn't fabulously well-to-do. Basically, it works like this; the less you make, the larger your tax hike. Conversely, the more you make, the bigger your tax cut.

According to the report, "The Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center crunched the numbers — part of a series of analyses the group has done of the GOP candidates’ tax proposals — and found that the plan constitutes a major tax cut for wealthy Americans. But compared to today’s rates, Romney proposes effective tax increases for people making less than $40,000."

Meanwhile, the "average millionaire would thus pay $145,568 less in taxes in 2015 than they do today." Relying on the poorest to make up for the wealthiest just plain doesn't work -- mostly because math has a liberal bias -- and this makes Romney's plan a "a budget buster, meaning greater deficits or deep cuts to federal programs."

So, if you're not a bazillionaire and you're planning to vote for Romney, you're a chump. Plain and simple. (Talking Points Memo)

-Cartoon time with Mark Fiore-
Hey kids, did you know there was this big election thing going on? Of course you do! And did you know that other things are going on too? Of course you don't, thanks to...

Click for animation

For example, did you know there was political unrest in Iraq, with explosions across Baghda... Oh wait, BREAKING NEWS: Ron Paul seen eating ribs with mustard!

Ooh... That's really going to hurt him in Missouri. (MarkFiore.com)

-Bonus HotD-
"Santorum Suggests Banishing Ninth Circuit Court Judges To Guam."

Oh Rick, you are going to be fun. (ThinkProgress)

Why Won't Santorum be President?

2012-01-05T12:36:00.002-06:00

Shortest post ever: because he's a ridiculous boob.

OK, so maybe not the shortest post ever. That's an accusation that requires a bit of explanation. You see, back in 2006, Rick was in a tough reelection race against Bob Casey. Things weren't going very well -- Santorum would later lose that election in a landslide -- and he needed to pull a rabbit out of his hat. So Santorum teamed up with Rep. Pete Hoekstra to declare that WMD had been found in Iraq.

[Fox News:]

The United States has found 500 chemical weapons in Iraq since 2003, and more weapons of mass destruction are likely to be uncovered, two Republican lawmakers said Wednesday.

"We have found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, chemical weapons," Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., said in a quickly called press conference late Wednesday afternoon.

Reading from a declassified portion of a report by the National Ground Intelligence Center, a Defense Department intelligence unit, Santorum said: "Since 2003, coalition forces have recovered approximately 500 weapons munitions which contain degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent. Despite many efforts to locate and destroy Iraq's pre-Gulf War chemical munitions, filled and unfilled pre-Gulf War chemical munitions are assessed to still exist."

Well there ya go then; George W. Bush was right, those anti-war hippies were wrong, America had saved the world, and Rick Santorum was instrumental in all that. Good thing Rick had the foresight to offer 100%, unquestioning support of the invasion of Iraq, huh?

But there was a problem here -- the word "degraded." Sarin and mustard gas have a shelf life. And, as chemical agents, that shelf life is pretty predictable. In short, the agents couldn't have been fresh when we invaded. Santorum and Hoekstra had nothing.

Here's what stale chemical agents do, again from Fox News, this time from 2004:

A roadside bomb containing sarin nerve agent recently exploded near a U.S. military convoy, the U.S. military said Monday.

[...]

Two people were treated for "minor exposure" after the sarin incident but no serious injuries were reported. Soldiers transporting the shell for inspection suffered symptoms consistent with low-level chemical exposure, which is what led to the discovery, a U.S. official told Fox News.

Those symptoms consisted of a headache. Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said the shells pre-dated the 1991 Gulf War.

Put Santorum's argument in the proper order here; instead of using this to justify the invasion after the fact, imagine this intelligence being used to justify the invasion itself. We suspect Iraq has a few hundred headache bombs, that means Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction and is an "existential threat" to our nation. We absolutely must invade.

Last time I checked, giving a couple of guys a headache and "mass destruction" were two entirely different things.

Not even the Bush administration -- desperate for some justification for a war turned horribly, horribly wrong -- could bring themselves to get behind Santorum and Hoekstra. And no one in the military would back them up either.

[Griper Blade:]

Santorum got his defeat on home turf -- Fox News. ThinkProgress reports, "Fox News’ Jim Angle contacted the Defense Department who quickly disavowed Santorum and Hoekstra’s claims. A Defense Department official told Angle flatly that the munitions hyped by Santorum and Hoekstra are 'not the WMD’s for which this country went to war.'

Of course, Santorum wouldn't back down. He told Alan Colmes, who'd broke the news that his big revelation was a bunch of horse**it to Santorum, "I’d like to know who that defense dept, spokesperson is. The fact of the matter is, I’ll wait and see what the actual Defense Department formally says or more important what the administration formally says."

As far as I know, the White House never addressed Santorum's claims directly. And Rick dismissed the DoD response that Colmes informed him of. His big "The Iraq War was worth it!" story quickly fizzled, Santorum wound up looking like an even bigger fool than he did before, and went on to lose his reelection bid by over 700,000 votes -- or about 20%. As I said, a landslide.

This is what Santorum looks like when his back is against the wall. Not just a bad liar, but a hopelessly incompetent one. At some point, Rick is going to pull some ridiculous claim out of his pants and remind everyone just how much of a boob he really is.

I'm hoping that happens in the general election, but I doubt he'll make it that far.

-Wisco

News Roundup for 1/4/12

2012-01-04T16:16:00.000-06:00

New GOP logo

-Headline of the Day-
"Gingrich Floats Idea of Anti-Romney Alliance."

The Republican presidential nominating process is already starting to feel like some crazy reality TV game show. Now Newt Gingrich proposes a strategy straight out of Survivor -- weaker candidates form an alliance to take out the stronger one.

In an interview with wingnut radio host Laura Ingraham, Newt was asked, "Can you see a scenario under which [Rick Santorum and yourself] would align together to try to defeat the establishment candidate, Mitt Romney?"

"Absolutely. Of course," Newt said. "I mean Rick and I have a 20-year friendship, we are both rebels, we both came into this business as reformers, we both dislike deeply the degree to which the establishment sells out the American people. We both think Washington has to be changed in very fundamental ways, and we have lots of things that fit together. And the thing that's interesting is if you take the votes, you add to that Perry and Bachmann, you begin to see the size of the conservative vote compared to Romney...if you take, you know, Santorum and Perry and Bachmann and Gingrich you get some sense of what a small minority Romney really represents."

This will probably work out great -- provided Mittens doesn't find the immunity idol hidden in New Hampshire. (Political Wire)

-Cartoon time with Mark Fiore-
Hey kids, the roundup is finally back and that means I can get lazy right off the bat with a leftover Mark Fiore cartoon! Yay!

Click for animation

I know, there was a lot more crazy than that, but these things can only run so long... (MarkFiore.com)

-Bonus HotD-
"Jon Huntsman Reacts To Sen. John McCain’s Romney Endorsement: 'Nobody Cares.'"

Probably the truest thing a Republican has said all week. (Mediaite)

Sweeping Up After Iowa

2012-01-04T12:08:00.000-06:00

I'm tempted to say that the big winner in last night's Iowa caucuses was not-Romney. Newt Gingrich -- the old not-Romney -- got 16,251 votes. Rick Santorum -- the new not-Romney -- pulled in 30,007. Mitt Romney barely won, with 30,015 (we won't include Ron Paul as a not-Romney, because Paul voters were almost certainly voting for Paul, not against Romney). It's probably too simplistic to say that, had there been a single not-Romney, he would've won with by 16,000 or better, but I don't think Mittens would've won. I doubt anyone on Team Romney is feeling extremely triumphant today. The phrase of the day is probably "a win is a win." They're probably right. The Iowa caucuses aren't even representative of Iowa.

A few other observations from around the web:

Michael Li: Wow. Paid media $/vote so far: Santorum $1.65, Bachmann $8, Romney $113.07, Gingrich $139 Paul $227, Perry $817. [Numbers calculated last night with about 80% of the vote in]

Associated Press: Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has won most of the delegates in the Iowa Republican caucuses, edging former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum. Romney won a projected 13 delegates and Santorum won 12. Texas Rep. Ron Paul was shut out.

Paul Begala: The Romney-inevitability stories will now be tempered by chin-stroking about the candidate's weakness. He is basically tied with a guy who supports banning contraception and another guy who attacks the 1964 Civil Rights Act. If Mitt Romney can't beat them, he ought to find another party to run in.

Wonkette headline: "Romney Beats Santorum By Just 0.000002667% of U.S. Population."

Dave Weigel: Four years ago, a depressed GOP went to the precinct caucuses, very well aware that Democrats had all the energy. The total GOP vote: 119,188. This year, Republicans should be psyched about the chance to uproot Barack Obama. There will be something above 122,000 total votes. An improvement, right? Well... in 2008, 86 percent of the people who chose the GOP caucuses were Republicans. This year, 75 percent of the electorate was Republican, with the rest of the vote coming from independents and Democrats. What the hell happened?

John Dickerson: As if to solidify Romney's position as the candidate the base isn't excited about, shortly before the final votes were counted Ben Smith reported that John McCain would endorse Romney. McCain, too, had trouble firing up GOP voters.

Josh Marshall: Going into tonight the idea was that Romney could come in first, second or maybe even third and still ‘win’. There was a decent logic to that. But as I hear the conventional wisdom taking shape, the result in practice (which could still quite likely be a numerical victory for Romney) seems considerably worse for Romney than one might have expected. It feels like a significant setback. In the big picture, still very hard to see how someone else gets the nomination. But a tie for first, which seemed like it would be still pretty good for Romney, doesn’t look so good in the event.

Steve Benen: Time will tell where Bachmann’s remaining supporters go, but it’s unlikely they’ll gravitate towards Mitt Romney. Indeed, the fact that the GOP field is shrinking at all is not what Romney wants to see. As we discussed earlier, because the former governor’s support in his party is so limited, Romney benefits greatly from as large a field as possible — the more the anti-Romney vote is divided among many candidates, the easier it is for him.

Right Wing Watch headline: "Religious Right Leaders to Meet and Plot Strategy on How to Stop Romney."

***
Not sure what to add after all that, other than to say I'm less inclined to think the Iowa caucuses were meaningless than I was before. If there had been a clear winner, I think I'd feel safer in making that assertion. But given that it was basically a tie, I think the least we can take out of it is that the search for a viable not-Romney is still on and the GOP primary is very much in flux.

-Wisco

Iowa Caucuses Aren't Even Representative of Iowans, Let Alone the Nation

2012-01-03T12:19:00.000-06:00

`What IS a Caucus-race?' said Alice; not that she wanted much to know, but the Dodo had paused as if it thought that SOMEBODY ought to speak, and no one else seemed inclined to say anything.

`Why,' said the Dodo, `the best way to explain it is to do it.' (And, as you might like to try the thing yourself, some winter day, I will tell you how the Dodo managed it.)

First it marked out a race-course, in a sort of circle, (`the exact shape doesn't matter,' it said,) and then all the party were placed along the course, here and there. There was no `One, two, three, and away,' but they began running when they liked, and left off when they liked, so that it was not easy to know when the race was over. However, when they had been running half an hour or so, and were quite dry again, the Dodo suddenly called out `The race is over!' and they all crowded round it, panting, and asking, `But who has won?'
-Lewis Carrol, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, "A Caucus-Race and a Long Tale"

Yesterday, a mini-tempest in a micro-teapot came up over something NBC's Andrea Mitchell said in regard to the Iowa caucuses. "The rap on Iowa: It doesn’t represent the rest of the country, too white, too evangelical, too rural," she said. It is, apparently, a terrible thing to make a demographic observation that is true and wingnut bloggers responded to it with their usual "Help, I'm being oppressed!" histrionics.

But the fact of the matter is that the caucuses are barely even representative of Iowans, let alone the rest of the nation.

[Politico:]

The 2012 Republican presidential caucuses begin at 7:00 p.m. on Jan. 3. Iowa Republicans who wish to participate may locate their caucus site using the Iowa Secretary of State’s poll location tool. Republican caucuses for the state’s 1,774 precincts occur in public buildings, schools and homes, and some precincts share caucus space with other precincts. Every precinct in Adair County, for example, will caucus at Greenfield’s Nodaway Valley High School next Tuesday night.

So, if you can't blow an hour of your night precisely at 7:00, you're out of luck. If you want to vote absentee, you're out of luck. And then things get even dumber:

[Wikipedia:]

In the Republican caucuses, each voter officially casts his or her vote by secret ballot. Voters are presented blank sheets of paper with no candidate names on them. After listening to some campaigning for each candidate by caucus participants, they write their choices down and the Republican Party of Iowa tabulates the results at each precinct and transmits them to the media. In 2008, some precincts used a show of hands or preprinted ballots. The non-binding results are tabulated and reported to the state party, which releases the results to the media. Delegates from the precinct caucuses go on to the county conventions, which choose delegates to the district conventions, which in turn selects delegates to the Iowa State Convention. Thus, it is the Republican Iowa State Convention, not the precinct caucuses, which selects the ultimate delegates from Iowa to the Republican National Convention. All delegates are officially unbound from the results of the precinct caucus, although media organizations either estimate delegate numbers by estimating county convention results or simply divide them proportionally.

Is each precinct winner-take-all? You got me. I can't find a direct answer to that anywhere, but it seems to be the case. Not that it matters any -- the delegates aren't bound by the will of the voter. The caucuses are at their heart an arcane, non-binding advisory referendum. Think of the electoral college, only worse.

The idea that this could represent the opinion of the average Iowa Republican is more than a little suspect. Troops overseas or even stationed in a different state are out. Elderly and disabled voters who can't make to the caucus location are out. People who find the hour inconvenient are out. And the voters are few and ideologically skewed.

[Ezra Klein:]

...The momentum coming out of the caucus can cement Romney as the nominee or vault another contender to the nomination. But let's all take a deep breath and agree that that is completely insane.

In 2008, the Iowa Republican Caucus got record turnout: 120,000 people. That is to say, four percent of all the residents of Iowa. And those 120,000 people represent four hundredths of one percent of the total population of America.

And it's not a representative four hundredths of one percent of the American people. It's not a representative four percent of Iowans. It's not even a representative four percent of Iowa Republicans. The likely caucusgoers are further to the right than the average Iowa Republican.

Whoever comes out on top tonight will likely say that the "Iowan people have spoken." It won't be true.

-Wisco

Republicans vs. Reality

2011-12-21T12:15:00.000-06:00

A lot is being made of a Wall Street Journal editorial out today that points out the obvious: House Republicans have completely screwed up the payroll tax cut extension. While it's nice to see the WSJ momentarily dip their toes in reality, they can't seem to bring themselves to go for full immersion. The editorial is crawling with half-truths and unfounded assumptions. In other words, it was obviously written by the Wall Street Journal editorial board. Still, when a rightwing propaganda outlet attacks the right wing, it's at least interesting to watch.

But has it set the GOP back on the right course? Not exactly. And by "not exactly," I mean "exactly not."

In a report on the whole fiasco, The Hill shares this tidbit:

House Republicans... think it is Democrats who will be blamed for not working with the GOP on a deal to extend the break for a year. In their talking points Tuesday, they emphasized that a conference committee was the normal process for resolving differences between the two chambers.

Why do they believe they're winning this? Because they're Republicans, of course; they only believe things that make them comfortable, back up their prejudices, or confirm their ideology. "Damn the facts, full speed ahead," could be the GOP motto. And this time, they've got a full head of steam and a heading in the wrong direction. President Obama's approvals are climbing, while the Republican Party's are falling.

"President Barack Obama's approval rating appears to be fueled by dramatic gains among middle-income Americans," explains CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. "The data suggest that the debate over the payroll tax is helping Obama's efforts to portray himself as the defender of the middle class." In CNN's poll, the president's approval has risen five points to 49%, the highest since a bounce after the death of Osama Bin Laden.

Obama's gains have come at the expense of the Republicans in Congress and the GOP in general. By a 50% to 31% margin, people questioned say they have more confidence in the president than in congressional Republicans to handle the major issues facing the country. Obama held a much narrower 44% to 39% margin in March.

And the GOP's overall favorable rating has dropped to six points, to 43%, since June, while the Democrats' positive rating remained steady at 55%.

"The Democrats do particularly well among middle income Americans, while the Republicans win support only from the top end of the income scale," adds Holland.

It may well be that Republican disdain for reality has finally come back to bite them. They're like Charlie Sheen, who was convinced he was "winning" while it was obvious to everyone that this was delusion. While House Republicans see themselves as "Braveheart," everyone else sees them as clowns. Reality has a liberal bias and, in this instance, that bias is harsh.

No wonder outlets like the Wall Street Journal's editorial page use reality only sparingly.

-Wisco

GOP's Economic Sabotage Backfiring

2011-12-20T12:05:00.000-06:00

I want you to try -- really try -- to see the following statement as rational or logical; "A payroll tax cut extension is too important for stimulating the economy to be allowed to expire after just two months. Therefore, we need to pass a year-long extension or nothing."

OK, if you got that to make any damned sense, let me know how you did it. Because I can't get it to work at all. If an extension of the payroll tax cut is so important that it absolutely must last for a year, in what insane universe does it make sense that no extension at all is preferable to a mere two months? Further, what's preventing you from coming back in two months and demanding an extension for the remaining ten? I take this argument and I turn it over and bend it and twist it and smack it with a hammer and I just can't get it to fit within any system of logic or rationality that I know of.

As a result, I'm forced to conclude that it's stupid. Those are the rules, I don't make them up. An argument that makes no damned sense at all is just a stupid argument.

And this stupid argument is the basis for the latest roadblock thrown up by House Republicans; It's a super-important, must-pass tax cut that they love so damned much that they're willing to kill it unless it's born perfect.

If you buy that, you're a fool. And it may be that a lot of people aren't fools.

Last month, a poll made some minor press ripples. The survey was of Florida voters and was the first -- and, as far as I know, the last -- to include a very important question; "Do you think the Republicans are intentionally stalling efforts to jumpstart the economy to insure that Barack Obama is not reelected?"

49% said yes and 39% said no. And the only thing dragging the yeses below the 50% mark were Republican voters throwing the curve. Only 24% of GOP voters believed this -- which is still a lot -- compared to 70% of Democrats and 52% of indies. So the non-Republican consensus in Florida was that, yes, the GOP is deliberately throwing the game.

"To be sure, this wasn’t a national poll; it only asked voters in one state," wrote Steven Benen at the time. "But it's a large, diverse swing state that both parties take very seriously."

In that light, the GOP's payroll tax cut extension argument begins to make a little more sense. Not the argument itself, which is still logical hamburger, but the existence of the argument; it's a poorly thought-out, last minute rationalization to explain a move designed to harm the economy. The problem is that, as a poorly thought-out, last minute rationalization, not a lot of people are buying it.

[Washington Post (emphasis mine):]

Obama’s job-approval rating [in Washington Post-ABC News polling] is now at its highest since March, excluding a temporary bump after the killing of Osama bin Laden: Forty-nine percent approve, and 47 percent disapprove.

Perhaps more important to the battle over the payroll tax cut, Obama has regained an advantage over Republicans in Congress when it comes to “protecting the middle class.” In the new poll, 50 percent say they trust Obama on this issue, compared with 35 percent who choose the GOP -- a major change from last month, when the two sides were more evenly matched on the question.

On taxes, Obama has improved since early October, while public trust of the GOP has slipped. Forty-six percent now side with Obama on the issue, and 41 percent with Republicans in Congress. Independents now side with the president on that front by a 17-point margin, 49 to 32 percent.

In short, the GOP's economic sabotage is beginning to backfire. And in a big way. The GOP has gone from evenly matched to a fifteen-percent deficit in public trust to protect the middle class -- in a month. The phrase you're looking for here is "precipitous decline." A poorly thought-out, last minute rationalization isn't going to cut it. At this point, their economic sabotage is as transparent as glass.

It's time for the GOP to abandon economic sabotage. It's not working as a political strategy, which makes it pointless. It really shouldn't need saying, but the people who love to wrap themselves in the flag don't get to go out of their way to actually harm America -- especially when there's no advantage in it to anyone.

-Wisco

The Church of the 'Free Market'

2011-12-19T12:01:00.000-06:00

Jeb Bush has released a religious tract. It's disguised as an op-ed on economics in the Wall Street Journal, but it's a religious tract.

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

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

But we do. We have to make it easier for people to do the things that allow them to rise. We have to let them compete. We need to let people fight for business. We need to let people take risks. We need to let people fail. We need to let people suffer the consequences of bad decisions. And we need to let people enjoy the fruits of good decisions, even good luck.

In what way is this a religious tract? Because the argument is backed up only by the strength of Bush's belief. It's a nearly fact-free piece -- the only number he brings up is the population of the United States. He proves nothing, his conclusions are apparently drawn from thin air, his arguments are tired.

Bush makes the case for unregulated capitalism or, as it's dishonestly known among conservatives, the "free market." A market that allows for monopolism and strangles competition can't honestly be described as "free," but Jeb -- like the rest of his party -- is bent on confusing market anarchy and freedom.

The problem, as Bush puts it, is that every time there's some problem, government thinks it's their job to fix it. This is apparently a terrible thing.

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

Yes, it's a terrible thing for government to work to prevent future "human tragedies." Three Mile Island, Love Canal, and asbestos in schools should've just been bumps in the road. Instead, the government went ahead and tried to prevent similar future incidents, which is a terrible, terrible abridgement of freedom.

Why is it an abridgment of freedom? I have to confess, you've got me there. Because Jeb Bush says so, I guess. As I said, he doesn't actually cite any facts or figures, so we just have to make a leap of faith with him. We need the "freedom to rise," which is somehow protected by a regulatory and tax structure that's responsible for income inequality that's been growing since Reagan started the ball rolling back in the eighties. It's weird, but looking at that chart, I'm seeing the "right to rise" being enjoyed by the top 5%, and 95% of Americans falling -- and only the top 1% actually rising dramatically.

But there I go citing facts. Facts have no place in a religious conversation and Jeb Bush is definitely preaching the Free Market Gospel.

"[W]e can return to the road we once knew and which has served us well," he writes, "a road where individuals acting freely and with little restraint are able to pursue fortune and prosperity as they see fit, a road where the government's role is not to shape the marketplace but to help prepare its citizens to prosper from it."

When was that exactly? Looking back, I see a nation that's always regulated business -- even back to its founding. When was this free market golden age? Then again, I keep forgetting that this is a religious argument. Bush's Golden Era of Unregulated Capitalism is a myth -- a myth that stands at the core of the Republican Party. There's a yearning for a time than never actually existed on the right, when hard work paid off and made you wealthy, instead of trapped within the class you were born into. Sure, there have been a few people who've managed to rise out of humble births and become fabulously wealthy, but they're so few that they're the exceptions that prove the rule. The stories of success are the ones that get told. The millions upon millions upon millions of stories of people spinning their wheels and getting nowhere are almost never told -- the ordinary is uninteresting.

America will be a lot better off if we ignore the fundamentalists ramblings of religious zealots like Jeb Bush. We have separation of church and state, maybe it's time to consider a separation of church and market.

-Wisco

Eveything You Know is Wrong by Lloyd Pye (click title to watch video)

2011-12-17T22:20:00.005-06:00

Lloyd Pye is a novelist, a screenwriter, an independent researcher and the author of the bestselling non-fiction book, "Everything You Know is Wrong," upon which this video presentation is based. In this lecture he discusses the so-called "pre-humans," (these are the fossilized remains of hominoids ((or hominids)). He goes over the ideas of mainstream Anthropology and its complete acceptance of Darwinism and points out why he believes those ideas are wrong. Included in this section of the presentation is a discussion of Bigfoot and Sasquatch. He then ventures into the ideas of Zechariah Sitchin which he has embraced wholeheartedly. While I personally find the first part of his presentation to be brilliant, when he goes into the ideas of Sitchin he loses me. There is something about Sitchin's ideas that leave me hanging. According to Sitchin, ancient Sumerian texts reveal that homo sapiens on this planet were created by the Annunaki to be a slave race. I think he's wrong about that. It's my belief that it's the Neanderthals that were created as a slave race. I think they were the result of mixing humans with animals and that the Great Apes, (gorillas, chimpanzees and orangutans) are a leftover from this process. (Interestingly, Soviet Dictator Joseph Stalin had an unsuccessful program in which he tried to breed humans and apes. Was he attempting to repeat this process?).

That Neanderthals and humans fought each other has been well-established and is accepted by mainstream academics. The archaeological record shows that Neanderthals moved en masse from the Middle East towards Eastern Europe in a pattern that suggests they were running away. It's my belief that the representations of Neanderthal that we are shown in textbooks is not quite right...

News Roundup for 12/16/11

2011-12-16T16:29:00.000-06:00

As trustworthy as she looks

-Headline of the Day-
"Michele Bachmann says 'PolitiFact came out and said that everything I said was true' in last debate."

During the last semi-weekly meeting of The Liar's Club, Michele Bachmann and Newt Gingrich got into a little tête-à-tête over Newt's influence lobbying with Freddie Mac. This was probably a tactical error on Shelly's part, since no one has a bigger tête than Newt -- in both the physical and metaphorical senses. Seriously, he couldn't find a football helmet that would fit over his melon in high school.

Anyway, Newt said that Shelly's claim that he lobbied for Freddie Mac was "factually not true" -- which is ironic, because it was a rare instance where she was saying something factual. And it was here that she slipped back into her old habit.

"Well, after the debates that we had last week, PolitiFact came out and said that everything that I said was true," she said. "And the evidence is that Speaker Gingrich took $1.6 million. You don't need to be within the technical definition of being a lobbyist to still be influence-peddling with senior Republicans in Washington, D.C., to get them to do your bidding."

To which PolitiFact says:

So, yeah... (PolitiFact)

-Past the 'sell by' date-

Click to embiggen

Precisely. (Truthdig)

-Bonus HotD-
"Newt's New Endorser: OWS is a Muslim Brotherhood Plot!"

Bonus fun: it's "Gopher" from Love Boat -- who apparently is a complete lunatic.

No, really. (Mother Jones)

News Roundup for 12/15/11

2011-12-15T16:10:00.000-06:00

Newt Gingrich has a magic spy satellite or something

-Headline of the Day-
"Newt's iffy claim: Iran hides nukes under mosques."

If there's one thing that Newt Gingrich excels at, it's pulling the purest bullshit straight out of his ass. And at a debate against Jon Huntsman in New Hampshire, he reminded us of this skill by making a claim to a "fact" that a) he couldn't possibly know and b) no one else on earth has ever claimed.

"[Iran has] huge underground facilities. Some of the underground facilities are under mosques," Newt said. "Some of them are in cities. The idea that you’re going to wage a bombing campaign that accurately takes out all the Iranian nuclear program I think is a fantasy."

It's interesting that he'd choose the word "fantasy," because this is what Newt's story seems to be. "There’s no evidence [for that]," says David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security and an expert on Iran's nuclear program. "I don’t know where Gingrich gets this, but it sounds like he is just repeating rumors."

"Nope," Ken Pollack, a Mideast specialist at the Brookings Institution, says. "Never heard that they have underground facilities beneath mosques. They do have extensive tunnels at some sites, and I guess some of those tunnels may run under mosques, but I have never heard that they purposely built them under mosques as this seems to suggest."

Never mind those guys. They don't know what they're talking about. Newt knows it's true, because he heard it from this bigtime expert-on-everything-guy named "Newt." (Salon's War Room)

-Cartoon time with Mark Fiore-
Hey kids, you know that big war in Iraq? It's over today (sort of, kind of, a little bit...) Yay!

Click for animation
Go kiss a nurse. (MarkFiore.com)

-Bonus HotD-
"Justice Department: Sheriff Arpaio mistreated Latinos."

Racist sheriff is racist and the fallout begins. Imagine my surprise. (Politico)

GOP Candidates Unified in Their Love for Failed Economic Policies

2011-12-15T12:33:00.000-06:00

A National Review editorial is making some news today, mostly because it pleads with GOP voters to not to support Newt Gingrich. The magazine is still seen as representing the intellectual arm of the Republican Party -- despite the fact that it now features dim bulbs like Jonah Goldberg, Kathryn Jean Lopez, and Rich Lowry -- so there's some news value here. But the same now-undeserved reputation for braininess is why most conservatives won't pay any attention to it. After years of attacking "ivory tower intellectuals," they've managed to get the base to stop listening to them. Nice work, guys. Congrats on your success.

But it's not the anti-endorsement of Newt Gingrich that caught my eye. It was the concise description (in the form of praise) of just about everything that's wrong with the Republican candidates and the party in general.

A hard-fought presidential primary campaign is obscuring the uncharacteristic degree of unity within the Republican party. It has reached a conservative consensus on most of the pressing issues of the day. All of the leading candidates, and almost all of the lagging ones, support the right to life. All of them favor the repeal of Obamacare. Most of them support reforms to restrain the growth of entitlement spending. All of them favor reducing the corporate tax rate to levels that will make the U.S. a competitive location for investment. Almost all of them seem to understand the dangers of a precipitate withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan, and of a defense policy driven by the need to protect social spending rather than the national interest. Conservatives may disagree among themselves about which candidate most deserves support, but all of us should take heart in this development -- and none of us should exaggerate the programmatic differences within the field.

I especially like the part about "a defense policy driven by the need to protect social spending rather than the national interest," as if social needs aren't in the national interest -- at least, not like the buying super-important fighter jets we never use. Blowing people up on the other side of the world -- that's in the national interest. Making sure kids at home have enough to eat? That's waste.

So, what have all these years of good old, common sense, conservative Reagonomics gotten us? Not anything good.

[Associated Press:]

Squeezed by rising living costs, a record number of Americans — nearly 1 in 2 — have fallen into poverty or are scraping by on earnings that classify them as low income.

The latest census data depict a middle class that's shrinking as unemployment stays high and the government's safety net frays. The new numbers follow years of stagnating wages for the middle class that have hurt millions of workers and families.

"Safety net programs such as food stamps and tax credits kept poverty from rising even higher in 2010, but for many low-income families with work-related and medical expenses, they are considered too 'rich' to qualify," said Sheldon Danziger, a University of Michigan public policy professor who specializes in poverty.

"The reality is that prospects for the poor and the near poor are dismal," he said. "If Congress and the states make further cuts, we can expect the number of poor and low-income families to rise for the next several years."

Cut this, cut that, cut this thing over here. Pretty soon, you've got middle class taxpayers paying in to Washington and not getting anything in return. Tax credits, tax cuts, subsidies, and other government largesse are reserved solely for the "job creators" -- who are conspicuously absent in the job-creating field. Cut spending, lay off government employees, increase unemployment, and the golden shower of wealth will come trickling down from on high. Decades after Ronald Reagan promised this would all pay off, it hasn't. But just you wait. This time for sure. If the rising tide isn't lifting all boats, you're just not bailing fast enough.

And the most depressing part of all this is that organizations like the National Review thinks this is great. All the Republicans agree that we should keep committing this massive redistribution of wealth from the middle class to the rich -- to the point that half of America is in poverty -- and that's a wonderful thing. They should be congratulated, because the American Dream is about taking food out of kids' mouths and giving it to people who've never missed a damned meal in their lives.

Thanks, National Review, for pointing out that all the Republicans are on board with this robbery. And don't worry, I'll take your advice, I won't vote for Newt Gingrich.

Or any of the other bass-ackward Robin Hoods the GOP has running.

-Wisco

News Roundup for 12/14/11

2011-12-14T16:24:00.000-06:00

Hasn't actually signed any petitions

-Headline of the Day-
"BS Alert: Mickey Mouse And Adolf Hitler Have Not Joined Scott Walker Recall Effort."

The rightwing media is going positively mental over the "fact" that Mickey Mouse and Adolf Hitler are signing petitions to recall Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. Turns out they're losing it over nothing -- which is what they do best.

What's happening is either a poor or selective reading of a Milwaukee TV station's report on the recall effort. In that story, a reporter asked an official with Wisconsin's Government Accountability Board whether -- hypothetically -- a signature with a name like "Mickey Mouse" or "Adolf Hitler" would automatically be disqualified. The official said no. It's up to the other side to challenge signatures on the petition -- because you never know, some guy may actually be named Mickey Mouse or Adolf Hitler. Some people have idiots for parents and such things aren't unprecedented. Someone shouldn't be barred for life from signing petitions just because his mom was an moron who thought the name "Donald Duck" would be cute. As long as the signature is accompanied by a valid address and date, the GAB will err on the side of caution and assume that Adolf Hitler's parents were jerks until proven otherwise. In short, they're using common sense.

And are Mickey and Adolf signing petitions like crazy? What part of the word "hypothetical" are you having trouble with?

Of course, this is more than just the right finding an excuse for their favorite activity -- a fullblown, pants-wetting freakout over nothing. "The Hitler/Mouse hypotheticals are the go-to clichés in stories that seek to create the false hysteria about voter fraud that fuels the wave of voter ID laws which threaten to disenfranchise millions of voters nationwide, the kind of hysteria that the mainstream media abetted in its treatment of ACORN," writes Mediaite's Tommy Christopher. "It’s the exact kind of hysteria that this story feeds, which makes this potential bit of cable news fluff deadly serious. Voter ID laws are pegged to the false idea that casting fictitious votes is simple and widespread, and by conflating voter fraud with voter registration fraud. This distinction was completely lost in the ACORN story, even though the organization was required by law to submit all registrations they received, and even though they flagged all suspicious registrations."

"So when you see this Mickey Mouse story on your favorite 24 hour news outlet, don’t laugh. Do something," he concludes.

And if you see someone freaking out over this non-story, tell them to change their pants. (Mediaite)

-Word of the day-

Click to embiggen

AKA, the "self-fulfilling prophecy." (Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal)

-Bonus HotD-
"Rick Santorum Pleads With Voters To Call Him ‘Intelligent’ Just For Once."

Voters answer, "No." (Wonkette)

DNC to Tea Party; 'Please Vote for Newt!'

2011-12-14T12:13:00.001-06:00

After the last GOP debate, the Democratic National Committee released this web ad calling Newt Gingrich "the original Tea Partier." In it, he says a lot of things that would concern liberals, but not much that would bother conservatives. In fact, many in the rightwing blogosphere took the ad as a pathetic attempt to smear Gingrich for being correct. "[T]he fact that anyone would want to limit government spending horrifies democrats," wrote the perpetually-wrong Jim Hoft.

That Gingrich is an awful person is not something lefties need to be convinced of. A Gingrich presidency would make George W. Bush's terms look like a smashing success story, as an imperious egomaniac formed policy based on perceived personal slights and formed positions that respond to petty grievances. He would be a disaster and every liberal and Democrat knows it. The ad is clearly not aimed at the Democratic base.

And it's not aimed at the general electorate, either. For the most part, people do have a poor opinion of the Tea Party. But I don't think it's poor enough to be a handicap at the ballot box.

No, the ad is -- in my opinion -- a thinly disguised pro-Gingrich ad aimed at the 'baggers.

[Washington Post, Nov. 29:]

In surging to the top in the race for the Republican nomination, recent polls find Newt Gingrich has built a coalition of three high-turnout groups: older Republicans, tea party supporters and conservatives.

[...]

Tea party supporters swung strongly to Gingrich, from 11 percent in October to 31 percent in November, while Romney held steady at 19 percent. Conservatives show an identical swing, from 10 to 30 percent, in CNN polls from October to November.

"Tea party supporters accounted for two in three Republican voters in the 2010 midterm elections," the report continues. "And while the movement has lost support since then, tea partiers continue to make up a substantial and highly engaged segment of the Republican electorate."

Now, consider an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll out today:

Romney faces a challenge with the Republican primary electorate, trailing Gingrich nationally by 17 percentage points as nearly two-thirds of Republicans view him as either liberal or moderate.

Gingrich, meanwhile, faces a challenge with the general electorate, as half of all voters say they wouldn’t vote for him in November, and as he trails President Barack Obama by more than 10 percentage points in a hypothetical contest -- compared with Romney’s two-point deficit versus the Democratic incumbent.

I think it's important to make the distinction; 50% of voters aren't saying they'd vote for Obama, they're saying they would not vote for Gingrich. As I always say, it's easier to get people to vote against someone than for someone -- and half the electorate is already predisposed to voting against Gingrich.

It's clear that Team Obama would rather face Gingrich than Romney in the general election. He may beat both in every poll, but the difference between the president and Mitt is always around 2% -- way too close for comfort. So what Democrats need to do is encourage conservatives to nominate Gingrich, while avoiding building him up in the eyes of everyone else. In short, a message that all but says, "Hey Tea Partiers, vote for Newt!"

You're looking at it.

-Wisco

News Roundup for 12/13/11

2011-12-13T16:22:00.000-06:00

Hitting a new Lowe

-Headline of the Day-
"Protests growing against Lowe's."

All Lowe's wants to do is sell you a hammer. Maybe some bathroom tiles. If they're lucky, some big saw thing. So it was that the home improvement chain sought what it thought was the path of least resistance when it came to wingnut bigots concerned that a TV shows wasn't portraying American Muslims as terr'isty enough. Turns out TLC's All-American Muslim managed to find a family that wasn't building bombs in their basement and this was the worst thing ever! One guy even suggested they find a family that does engage in terrorism and film that, because committing crimes against America is apparently cool with him so long as it makes Muslims look bad on the teevee.

So all these people got together and decided they needed to complain to the advertisers of the show. And that's when things got stupid. Lowe's, apparently headed by people born without spines, decided that they wouldn't advertise on a show that was controversial. They said they were sad that they'd made "some people very unhappy," but this was the way things were going to be.

But here's the problem with avoiding controversy: you can't. It's pretty much impossible -- especially when the people ginning up the controversy are a bunch of bigoted assholes who hate a show because it doesn't lie about an entire American demographic. In running away from a tiny controversy, they ran headlong into a giant one. That's the sort of brilliant business sense that we've come to expect from corporate America.

Anyhoo, now Lowe's is in trouble with the not-bigot people, which is just about everyone (I know, we've been over this all before, but some people are just tuning in). They've got MoveOn and a Democratic senator on their case, as well as people like me. It's just really, really bad.

So, the lesson here is that if you run a business and a bunch of customers tell you to start hating another bunch of customers, chase them off with a broomstick. Pronto. (Politico)

-An apt analogy-

Click to embiggen

Works for me. (DailyKos)

-Bonus HotD-
"Axelrod Plays The Monkey Butt Card On Newt Gingrich."

David Axelrod: "I told my colleagues yesterday a bit of homespun wisdom I got from an alderman in Chicago some years ago when one of his colleagues wanted to run for higher office and he was really dubious. He said, 'just remember the higher a monkey climbs on a pole, the more you can see his butt.' So, you know, [Newt Gingrich] is very high on the pole right now and we’ll see how people like the view." (Talking Points Memo)

GOP's Own Data Proves Voter ID Laws are About Suppressing the Vote

2011-12-13T12:23:00.000-06:00

For years, the right has argued that the United States is a republic, not a democracy. The argument is deeply flawed, in that it's an "apples exclude oranges" statement. A republic is a structure, democracy is a system. To say that one rules out the other is like saying a grilled cheese sandwich is not grilled, but a sandwich. The United States is a constitutional republic that uses the system of democracy. To say anything else is simply to lie. We vote people into office, who in turn become professional voters. There's democracy all over the damned place.

I'd always assumed that Republicans made this argument as a matter of simple rhetorical dishonesty; Democrat = democracy, Republican = republic. If the United States was founded as a republic only, Republicans -- by virtue of their party's name -- could convince the weak-minded and logic-challenged that Republicans were closer to the founders' original vision. Not the best or most rational argument, but -- let's face it -- the GOP doesn't waste a lot of time on outreach to brainiacs. Think back to the Tea Party protests for examples of the deep thinkers the party attracts.

But there's a darker reason for the argument; Republicans aren't big fans of democracy. Here's the co-founder of the rightwing Heritage Institute and the Moral Majority, the late Paul Weyrich:

Now many of our Christians have what I call the goo-goo syndrome -- good government. They want everybody to vote. I don't want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people, they never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.

For Republicans, voting is only good when the right people vote -- and if you can discourage the wrong people from voting, that's great. If you can actually prevent the wrong people from voting, that's even better. Is that democracy? No, it's not -- which explains why the GOP is big on this republic argument.

And Republicans are currently waging a War on Democracy, in the form of restrictive voter ID laws. According to their arguments, voter fraud is rampant across the nation and must be dealt with. As a result, laws are passed that -- merely coincidentally, mind you -- make it more difficult for minorities, the poor, seniors, and students to vote. All blocks that tend to vote Democratic or oppose GOP policies.

After getting some pushback from voters and in the media, the Republican Party apparently felt they were in a "put up or shut up" situation. They had to prove that voter fraud was a massive problem, so the Republican National Lawyers Association collected data from 2000-2010 showing election fraud in 46 states (apparently, there were no instances of fraud in four states). The problem; if this was a "put up or shut up" situation, they would've been much better off choosing "shut up."

[Debbie Hines, Huffington Post:]

Viewing the data for the period 2000-2010, the report by its own account shows there is no link between voter fraud in states and the need for stricter voter ID laws. The data shows that during the entire 10 year period, 21 states had only 1 or 2 convictions for some form of voter irregularity. And some of these 21 states have the strictest form of voter ID laws based on a finding of 2 or less convictions in ten years. Five states had a total of three convictions over a ten year period. Rhode Island had 4 convictions for the same 10 years. Taking a close look at the RNLA data shows 30 states, including the District of Columbia had 3 or less voter fraud convictions for a 10 year period.

Voter ID laws enacted now in over half the states, require voters to present some form of identification as a requirement to vote. Fourteen states require a government issued photo ID when voting in person. At the time of registering to vote, other states like Kansas and Alabama further demand proof of citizenship beyond the federal legal requirement that citizens swear they are citizens. Kansas had one conviction for voter fraud in ten years; Alabama had three convictions in the same time period. During the 2011 legislative session, five states -- Wisconsin, Texas, Tennessee, Alabama and South Carolina -- joined Georgia and Indiana by enacting the strictest form of photo ID requirement for voters, and most of these newest changes will first come into effect for the 2012 elections.

As thin as the data is, it's padded. Included are incidents of election fraud (vote buying and ballot tampering, for example) that voter ID would do nothing to prevent. In trying to provide evidence to bolster their claims of widespread voter fraud, they've only managed to prove just how trivial a problem it actually is. In fact, even if all these instances had happened in the same year, rather than over a decade, there just wouldn't be enough of them to change the outcome of an election. Taken as they are -- ten years of data -- they show numbers so tiny that rounding errors and miscounts would be more consequential. In short, they've proved conclusively that voter fraud is not a problem.

But, then again, voter fraud isn't the problem they're trying to solve. People who aren't likely to vote Republican are the problem they're trying to solve. If you doubt that, show me the election that would've had a different outcome without voter fraud.

Republicans have cured themselves of Weyrich's "goo-goo syndrome." Now they're trying to cure the nation. We may be a republic that uses the system of democracy now, but they're working on fixing that problem.

-Wisco

News Roundup for 12/12/11

2011-12-12T16:53:00.000-06:00

YouTube's logo?

-Headline of the Day-
"Legal expert says online piracy bill is unconstitutional."

Imagine a law so broadly and stupidly written that a couple of kids singing Birthday by The Beatles could get YouTube shut down. Now stop imagining it, because it's not an entirely imaginary scenario. The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is currently being bounced around in congress and would do just that. According to the report, "The bill would empower the Justice Department and copyright holders to demand that search engines, Internet providers and payment processors cut ties with websites 'dedicated' to copyright infringement." What does it mean to be "'dedicated' to copyright infringement?" Who knows? It's not defined, but since YouTube probably gets hundreds of copyright infringement notices a day, you could easily argue that it's a piracy site by SOPA's standards.

Like I said, broadly and stupidly written.

But Lawrence Tribe, a legal scholar with the Harvard Law School says that the very basis of the law is unconstitutional, since it calls for "prior restraint" -- the suppression of speech before a case goes to court. In other words, the punishment is handed down before the trial -- which is bad. And, of course, there's that whole "broadly and stupidly written" thing.

"Conceivably, an entire website containing tens of thousands of pages could be targeted if only a single page were accused of infringement," Tribe says. "Such an approach would create severe practical problems for sites with substantial user-generated content, such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, and for blogs that allow users to post videos, photos, and other materials."

You know, sites like the one you're looking at right now. Real terrible piratey stuff.

And, of course, there's the whole question of whether law enforcement should be involved in copyright policing at all. Copyright infringement has traditionally been a civil crime, policed by lawsuits. Changing it to a criminal offense and having law enforcement police it would save media companies a lot of money, while shifting that cost to the taxpayers. In short, it's a permanent bailout for people who don't even need a temporary one -- seen a lot of starving media execs lately? Me neither, so what problem is it that we're solving here again?

But hey, it's already passed the House, which is run by Republicans who oppose burdensome, big-government regulations and corporate bailouts -- right up until the point that they don't. It's the Senate, run by supposedly big-government regulatin', baily-outy Democrats, that's holding things up here.

Here's hoping they hold it up forever. (The Hill)

-Merry Christmas to some!-

Click to embiggen

To the rest, good luck. (MSNBC)

-Bonus HotD-
"Crappy Retail Chain Lowe’s Sorry If Anyone Is Upset They Hate Muslims."

Bigots were unhappy that Lowe's advertised on a show that portrayed American Muslims as not-insane. So Lowe's pulled the ads. Now they're in trouble with the not-insane -- who are most people.

The moral of this story: always tell bigots to fuck off. Every time. (Wonkette)

Fox Unable to Fathom How GOP Screwed Themselves

2011-12-12T12:18:00.000-06:00

Thursday, a Fox News poll showed that the public believes -- by an extremely wide margin -- that Pres. Barack Obama would probably be reelected. The video above is the reaction from the hosts of Fox's morning lobotomy patient show, Fox & Friends. As you can see, they're not taking it well. You expect Gretchen Carlson to look at the camera and ask, "We've been telling you Obama is pure evil! Haven't you people been listening to us?!?"

To be fair, the results aren't anything approaching reality, numbers-wise. The same poll shows the president winning, but that "Obama edges Romney by only 1 point and Gingrich by 5 points." So not by a comfortable margin by any means. In fact, you could call it a statistical dead heat in the Obama/Romney matchup. Still, in a non-numerical sense, the perception of that 44% who say that Obama will win is accurate within the poll, which does in fact show that Obama would win. Fox and Friends were freaking out that the largest percentage agreed with the findings of their poll.

What we see here again is what I've come to call the "clown show effect." While an endless series of GOP debates has amounted to free advertising for Republican candidates, that advertising hasn't been extremely positive. And, of course, Herman Cain's flameout didn't help any.

In fact, The Hill reports that the "political winds have shifted to the Democrats’ backs over the last month."

President Obama is in better shape at the prospect of a prolonged GOP primary battle between former Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) and Mitt Romney. Democrats in the House have been buoyed by a series of court decisions on redistricting and Senate Democrats have recently landed potentially strong recruits in conservative-leaning states.

Democrats on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue have seized on the payroll tax extension, which has divided the GOP.

Voter angst at Washington is extremely high, though it is unclear which party will feel the most of the public’s wrath next November.

"The political atmosphere is clearly volatile," the report continues. "A couple months ago, Republicans were optimistic that they had a good chance of running the White House and both chambers of Congress in January, 2013. But since then, that optimism has waned."

Another part of the problem for the GOP is their commitment to continuing to be politically tone deaf. Despite the fact that Rep. Paul Ryan's Medicare-slaying plan was extremely unpopular with voters, Republicans keep going back to it as if it were the most popular idea in history. In trying to out-conservative Newt Gingrich for example, Mitt Romney's taken to waving the Ryan plan around like a flag. And the entire party is opposed to the wealthy paying their fair share in taxes, which voters poll after poll say they want.

The problem for Republicans is that they looked at Obama's poll numbers and assumed they had a gimme. No matter what they did, they reasoned, Obama was going to lose. So they might as well do whatever they wanted. Sensing easy prey, nutjobs like Cain and Bachmann and Santorum and Perry crawled out of the woodwork, figuring this was their big chance -- the election where a Republican couldn't possibly lose -- and proceeded to pollute the debate with idiocy, hate, and flim-flammery. The feeding frenzy quickly devolved into a three-ring circus, with a clown act in every ring.

And, of course, this all forced the candidates to try to outcrazy each other. The GOP base, finally tired of the original model, is looking for their next Sarah Palin. So each candidate is trying to fill that void by being as divorced from reality as they can possibly be. Pandering to the Tea Party doesn't help with general election voters, either.

Looking back, it all seems a little predictable, like this was what had to happen, given the circumstances. The only thing I find surprising about all this is the shock displayed at rightwing sideshows like Fox and Friends.

-Wisco

News Roundup for 12/9/11

2011-12-09T16:30:00.000-06:00

What Gingrich pictures when he imagines a Palestinian

-Headline of the Day-
"Gingrich: Palestinians 'invented,' promises Netanyahu-style foreign policy."

Part of being a Republican is being positively insane on the issue of Israel and the middle east. It's very important to be the least realistic person in any given room on the subject and Newt Gingrich is determined to be that person.

In an interview with The Jewish Channel, Newt decided the time was right to leave reality completely behind. Not only don't Palestinians have any claim to what was formerly called "Palestine," but Palestinians themselves are just made-up things, like leprechauns, unicorns, and Reagan's welfare queens.

"Remember there was no Palestine as a state. It was part of the Ottoman Empire. And I think that we've had an invented Palestinian people, who are in fact Arabs, and were historically part of the Arab community," Newt said. "And they had a chance to go many places. And for a variety of political reasons we have sustained this war against Israel now since the 1940's, and I think it’s tragic."

OK, so by this logic, there is no "America," since America was part of the British Empire. And Newt as a so-called "American" doesn't actually exist, because he's part of the white race from Europe.

Consistency in logic is a real bitch, ain't it?

Which is why Newt decided to abandon consistency pretty much immediately. In the same interview, Gingrich said, "I believe if somebody goes around and says you don’t have a right to exist, they’re probably not prepared to negotiate for peace."

So what's it say when you go even further and say they never even existed in the first place? (Politico)

-Class warfare defined-

Click to embiggen

...and the middle class and labor and small businesses... (McClatchy)

-Bonus HotD-
"Rick Perry Will Get Rid of Activist Judges As Soon As He Can Name One."

All the hatemongering in the world can't distract from the fact that Rick Perry really is just an idiot. (Wonkette)

GOP Flateartherism Strikes Again

2011-12-09T12:55:00.000-06:00

At this point, I have to ask, what do Republicans have against demand? I get that they like this pie-in-the-sky supply-side stuff, but it's "supply and demand," not "supply or demand." At every turn, Republican economic policies have consumers reducing spending, as if a stagnant economy and slow to non-existent growth is the best thing ever.

Case in point:

[The Hill:]

GOP leaders hope to build momentum for an end-of-year tax package with sweeping reforms to federal unemployment benefits.

The Republican proposal is expected to reduce the total number of weeks unemployed workers are eligible for aid by as much as 40 weeks and tighten rules for eligibility.

Such a reduction would significantly reduce the cost of extending federal unemployment benefits, making it easier to secure GOP support for a measure that will also include an extension of a payroll tax cut many conservative Republicans dislike.

Can I just go ahead and say that this is stupid beyond words? Employment benefits are an economic stimulus that not only kicks in automatically, but automatically ramps up when the economy is bad and dials back when the economy improves. I don't know what it is about "the economy is people spending money" that Republicans don't get. Unemployed people spend money. Why? Because they have to. As much as the GOP likes to pretend that unemployment benefits are a lavish free ride, they represent as significant reduction in income. People collecting benefits aren't wasting that money on frivolous stuff, they're trying to figure out how to get it to cover their expenses. As a result, they spend all of it.

And with long-term unemployment a major problem, Republicans want to reduce the number of weeks a person can collect benefits? Are you kidding me? As I said before, this is stupid beyond words. What Republicans are proposing is crippling the economy in one place to pay for fixing it in another -- i.e., a sort of shifting status quo, where the problems of one sector are sloughed off on another, resulting in no net improvement. Want a payroll tax cut extension to boost consumer spending? Fine, then we have to cut unemployment benefits and reduce consumer spending there.

It's like they don't even understand the basic problem at all. The Republican War on Math marches forward.

Of course, the GOP had earlier defeated a measure that would've set up a "millionaires surtax" to pay for the extension. But we've got to protect the wealthy, because they're saving and not spending. Yeah, it doesn't make any damned sense, but really, do you even expect it to at this point?

And how do millionaires feel about the surtax?

[National Public Radio:]

[W]e put a query on Facebook. And several business owners who said they would be affected by the "millionaires surtax" responded.

"It's not in the top 20 things that we think about when we're making a business hire," said Ian Yankwitt, who owns Tortoise Investment Management.

[...]

He says his ultimate marginal tax rate "didn't even make it on the agenda."

And that was the consensus; a surtax wouldn't make any difference to the respondents.

See -- and I know this is hard for Republicans to get their heads around -- people go into business to make money. And here's the tricky part; if no one's spending money, they don't make money. You can give them the biggest tax cut in the world, but if their income is down, they'll make less money. It's weird, I know. But that's math for you. It just hates GOP economics.

Worse, people don't hire people just for the hell of it and because they can afford it. They hire people because they need them. No tax cut is going to make someone need an employee -- consumer demand will. And the reverse is true; if they can't afford a worker anymore, they'll lay them off. Why wouldn't they be able to afford to keep the job open? I don't know, maybe because some boneheaded Republicans cut unemployment benefits and now a whole bunch of people aren't spending money anymore. Things like that. As I said, math hates Republicans.

The Earth is not flat and the laws of supply and demand have not been repealed. I know that may be hard for Republicans to accept, but that's just the way things are.

-Wisco

News Roundup for 12/8/11

2011-12-08T16:39:00.000-06:00

What a Great American Patriot looks like

-Headline of the Day-
"Eric Boehlert Targeted In Bungled 'Verizon' Sting."

Eric Boehlert is a terrible man who helps run Media Matters for America. How do we know he's a terrible man? Because he works for Media Matters. How do we know that's a bad thing? Because Bill O'Reilly says they're like nazis or something.

Someone has to take Media Matters down a peg, because they unfairly post rightwing craziness in the media -- verbatim and in context. This is a terrible thing.

So an unknown Great American Patriot came up with a cunning plan: dress up like a guy from Verizon and have Boehlert take a survey that has absolutely nothing to do with telephones, then post the information or give it to Fox News or something. I don't know, he's not coming forward. Probably something like that.

Anyway, that didn't work. Turns out that, in order to be a respected media critic, you've got to be all smart and stuff -- smart enough to know that questions about his salary and the 99-percenters had jack-all to do with phones. So he called the Great American Patriot on his BS and the guy took off running.

"The only sort of comical part was he forgot which way he was supposed to run in case I started following. He ended up sort of in the road, and he sort of turned left and then right," Boehlert told Sam Stein of the Huffington Post. "The last I saw him he was in a full sprint down my street running away from my house."

So who was the Great American Patriot? Who knows? Speculation is that he may be part of James O'Keefe's fake sting/propaganda outfit Project Veritas. But that's only speculation. He might just be someone inspired by O'Keefe to try his hand at the same sort of confidence gaming. Whoever he is, he's gone. And whatever he brilliant sting was trying to accomplish failed.

Come forward, Great American Patriot, and meet the recognition you deserve. (Huffington Post)

-Cartoon time with Mark Fiore-
Hey kids, Little Suzie Newsykins is back and she's here to talk about Newt Gingrich! Yay!

Click for animation

Bonus: he kind of looks like the guy who runs the Keebler Elf tree. (MarkFiore.com)

-Bonus HotD-
"Bill O'Reilly Hits Community Organizer with Umbrella, Tries to Get Him Arrested."

Blowhard Bill really is just an awful person. (Right Wing Watch)

GOP Enthusiasm and The Clown Show Effect

2011-12-08T12:30:00.000-06:00

When I look at polling, I tend to use myself as a model. I look at the question and think about how I'd answer it. Maybe that's not the best way to go about it. I suppose I'm not always the average voter.

For example, take voter enthusiasm polls. For myself, enthusiasm is pretty much irrelevant. I go out and vote regardless of how stoked I am about it in any particular cycle. Using myself as a model, voter enthusiasm would be a meaningless stat. But other people apparently react differently to their own enthusiasm. The polls really do seem to reflect the final turnout.

Which is why a new Gallup poll must have Republicans feeling a little uneasy. When respondents were asked, "Thinking ahead to the election for president next year, compared to previous elections, are you more enthusiastic than usual, or less enthusiastic?" 49% of "Republicans and independents who lean Republican" reported being more enthusiastic. This compares well with the 44% of Democrats and dem leaners who say the same.

And it's at this point that the good news ends for the GOP. Their enthusiasm has dropped nearly 10% from September, when it was at 58%. Call it the "clown show effect."

[Gallup:]

Republicans' enthusiasm about voting has dropped and, as a result, the enthusiasm gap between Republicans and Democrats has narrowed significantly. This marks a change from the decided enthusiasm advantage Republicans enjoyed just two months ago and in last year's midterm elections.

The decrease in Republicans' enthusiasm could reflect the intensive and bruising battle for the GOP nomination going on within the party, and the rapid rise and fall of various candidates in the esteem of rank-and-file Republicans nationwide. Once the Republican nominee is determined next year, Republicans' voting enthusiasm may steady, but whether this is at a high, medium, or low level remains to be seen.

So this may be the low point, after which it rises again. But if Gallup is right and this is the result of candidate skirmishing and the embarrassing spectacle of candidates like Herman Cain, then that seems unlikely.

Gingrich is a disaster waiting to happen. So far, the press has gone relatively easy on his past and Newt's benefited from that. But once people start doing oppo-research, they won't have a lot of trouble digging up dirt. In fact, "digging" is probably the wrong word -- it's all so public that "fetching" is probably better. Want the juicy details? Just go to Wikipedia.

And then there's Mitt Romney. Romney may not be the ethics nightmare that Gingrich embodies, but it's pretty clear that he's Republican voters' Plan B. They intensely dislike his finger-in-the-wind approach to politics and policy and don't trust him -- perhaps rightly -- to remain as conservative as he pretends to be. Romney's like that weird, space-saving spare tire -- not a good fit, unreliable, but when you need it you'll use it. It'll get you were you need to go, but you don't want to ride on it forever. If he gets to the White House, Republicans will wind up riding on that tire for four years until they get a chance to replace it.

These are most likely the two biggest contenders for nominee -- a train wreck and a flip-flopper. Who's left in the not-Romney category who hasn't already been cycled out? Rick Santorum, who's just plain mean, and Jon Huntsman, who's the sort of politician that Republicans fear Romney secretly to be. Ron Paul? I just don't see it. Legalizing drugs and prostitution alone counts him out, as does cutting aid to Israel.

The impression that Republicans have a weak field this cycle is entirely accurate. There's no one to get excited about here. Republican voters seem to have spent a lot of enthusiasm energy on Herman Cain, who was a doomed candidate even before we found out he was a serial sexual harasser and an adulterer. He was obviously unprepared and unserious.

Frankly, I don't see GOP enthusiasm improving much as time goes on. I could be wrong -- predictions have a bad habit of coming back and biting you from behind. But right now, things look pretty downward-oriented for the GOP. Meanwhile, Democrats have a chance to get economic populism behind them -- and they're taking it. They seem to be taking GOP talking points by the horns, giving Democratic voters something to fight. Want to get voters to the polls? Give them something to be against. Some voters will always hold their noses and vote for more of the same, but more will vote against something with relish.

We'll see how things pan out in the long run, but at the moment, things seem to be turning Democrats' way.

-Wisco

News Roundup for 12/7/11

2011-12-07T15:48:00.000-06:00

Rick keeps his girlish figure by pummeling poor people

-Headline of the Day-
"Santorum: We Don’t Need Food Stamps Because Obesity Rates Are So High."

Good news, everyone; Rick Santorum has noticed that the problem of hunger in America has gone away!

Where'd it go? Who knows. But he doesn't see any hunger around anywhere. See, Rick's -- oh, let's go ahead and call it "reasoning" -- works this way: we've got a lot of people on food stamps and there are overweight people. The end. So it's safe to cut funding for food stamps.

"If hunger is a problem in America, then why do we have an obesity problem among the people who we say have a hunger program?" Rick asks.

Fair question, fair question... I'm sorry, no it's not. It's a stupid question. Not everyone receiving food stamps is overweight, for one. For another, being overweight doesn't mean you're eating right. Need me to draw you picture? Here you go:

Rick probably doesn't know it, being a fabulously well-to-do former Senator, but cheap food is shitty food. And shitty food makes you gain weight. People don't have a weight problem because they're eating too healthy, you know. It's mostly because they eat junk. I always say that if all you can afford for dinner is a 99 cent mac and cheese dinner and a can of Orange Faygo, you're going to put on weight. It's almost unavoidable.

But that's what you call yer "facts and logic."

Rick Santorum doesn't do facts and logic. (ThinkProgress)

-Things ain't looking good for Mittens-

Click for full comic

They probably have Sandusky confused with Herman Cain. (GoComics)

-Bonus HotD-
"Bolling Apologizes To 'Froggy,' Challenges Him To Debate."

Remember how Fox idiot Eric Bolling accused the muppets of being commies? Now he wants to debate Kermit. Kermit is a puppet. He isn't real. Apparently, some people haven't figured that out.

And, no. He didn't really apologize.

Proof positive Fox is the channel for complete morons. (Media Matters)

Recognizing the Failure of Reaganomics

2011-12-07T11:45:00.000-06:00

Nearly every presidential candidate in my memory has promised to change Washington for the better. Politicians need to do things differently, we're told. To work together, to find common ground, to put aside politics for the good of the nation. It all sounds good, but the problem with this promise is that you're promising to change someone else. If Washington doesn't want to change, Washington isn't going to change. And, as we've seen in recent years, if Washington actually wants to get worse, then there isn't a lot any one person can do about it. Barack Obama, like every candidate before him, promised to change the way Washington worked. The problem was that he meant it.

President Obama kept to this centrist, moderate path long after it became clear it didn't lead anywhere. Republicans became a jerking-kneed herd, obstructing anything Democratic, out of a fit of sore-loserism and the belief that political sabotage would pay off for them at the ballot box. Centrism should have died, but Obama seemed to believe there was still some hope. There wasn't. There can probably never be. Democracy is an adversarial system and fighting is built in. A system where one side wins and one side loses once every two years fosters competition, not cooperation. The basic argument behind centrism and moderation is deeply, deeply flawed; that cooperation is more important than the best ideas, that the process is more important than the result.

So it came as both a surprise and a relief when President Obama spoke at Osawatomie, Kansas yesterday. The centrist Obama was mostly absent. Instead, a partisan Obama stepped up to the podium.

Now, just as there was in Teddy Roosevelt’s time, there is a certain crowd in Washington who, for the last few decades, have said, let’s respond to this economic challenge with the same old tune. “The market will take care of everything,” they tell us. If we just cut more regulations and cut more taxes -- especially for the wealthy -- our economy will grow stronger. Sure, they say, there will be winners and losers. But if the winners do really well, then jobs and prosperity will eventually trickle down to everybody else. And, they argue, even if prosperity doesn’t trickle down, well, that’s the price of liberty.

Now, it’s a simple theory. And we have to admit, it’s one that speaks to our rugged individualism and our healthy skepticism of too much government. That’s in America’s DNA. And that theory fits well on a bumper sticker. (Laughter.) But here’s the problem: It doesn’t work. It has never worked. It didn’t work when it was tried in the decade before the Great Depression. It’s not what led to the incredible postwar booms of the ‘50s and ‘60s. And it didn’t work when we tried it during the last decade. I mean, understand, it’s not as if we haven’t tried this theory.

Robert Reich has a better breakdown of the speech than I can provide, but the basic argument here is that Republican ideas simply do not work. They've resulted in failure after failure after failure. This isn't a matter of opinion, it's a matter of history. Plain facts, uncomfortable truths, and putting solutions above compromise? This is a different Barack Obama.

[Steve Benen:]

You want a populist president, putting the interests of working families and the middle class above all? You’ve got it. For 55 minutes, Barack Obama made the case for progressive governance while destroying the foundation for the right’s vision.

This wasn’t a “let’s compromise” speech. It wasn’t a “Democrats and Republican can get along” speech. And it certainly wasn’t a “I’m ready to meet my opponents half-way” speech. Obama’s given those speeches, he’s made those efforts, and he’s invested enormous energy in trying to close the gap between the parties.

The president does not seem willing, though, to keep pushing a right-wing boulder that will not move. Instead, Obama is presenting the vision he believes in, and wants the American mainstream to rally behind it, whether radicalized Republicans like it or not.

More of this please -- and less of the centrist compromiser. Here's hoping this Obama stays around after the election.

-Wisco

News Roundup for 12/6/11

2011-12-06T15:47:00.000-06:00

~~Ineffective~~ Effective protester

-Headline of the Day-
"Cuomo caves to protesters, will hike taxes on rich New Yorkers."

Those Occupy Wall Street commies are never going to accomplish anything, because they don't have a message and they're living outside like hobos and they're screwing around with drum circles and... Oh look, they accomplished something!

According to the report, "After facing repeated protests over his resistance to raising taxes on wealthy New Yorkers, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo relented on Tuesday, striking a deal with legislators that will boost state revenues by $1.9 billion while simultaneously dropping the middle class tax rate to the lowest it has been in 58 years."

"New York citizens earning $20,000 per year or more are currently taxed at a rate of 6.85 percent, as are married couples earning more than $40,000 per year," the report continues. "The new tax brackets would drop tax rates for the lowest incomes to 6.45 percent, while increasing the rates for higher earners. Couples with incomes between $150,000 and $300,000 will pay 6.65 percent; households that earn $300,000 to $2 million will pay 6.85 percent; and incomes over $2 million will be taxed at 8.82 percent..."

That sound you hear is about a thousand empty-headed pundits and corporate apologists eating crow. (Raw Story)

-And a Happy Newt Year-

Click to embiggen

I don't know what they're complaining about, they almost got stuck with Cain. This is actually a step up. (Truthdig)

-Bonus HotD-
"Hero Child Explains Gay Rights In Words Bachmann Can Understand."

Eight year old Elijah from Myrtle Beach leaves Shelly Bachmann speechless, becomes hero to the nation. (Wonkette, with video)

GOP Insiders Panic Over Gingrich

2011-12-06T12:03:00.000-06:00

Please excuse the above ante-meridian idiocy. I normally don't have a lot of use for talking heads and the worst are morning talking heads. Apparently, when you first get up, you're five years old. While MSNBC's Morning Joe never quite plums the depths that Fox and Friends reaches, it's clearly not for a lack of trying. Joe Scarborough and his merry band don't seem to have it in them to pretend to be quite so stupid as Fox's AM freak show, but that doesn't stop them from giving it the old college try.

The clip is brought to our attention by Taylor Marsh, who has this to say about it:

The Republican establishment has seen what their base is about to do and they’re in a panic and rightly so. The tipping point coming when Donald Trump reentered the fray with his Apprentice Debate, the optics and audio of which boiled down the Republican farce we’ve been watching all year.

This segment is delicious... really, watch it. At one point at then end of the opening segment of “Morning Joe,” Scarborough even served up that Republicans are talking about how to “broker a convention.” The Hill has a further report along the same lines, though it’s not just the “kingmakers” in a meltdown over the very real possibility of Newt Gingrich winning the nomination. It’s everybody in the entire conservative echelon.

If you can't bring yourself to watch the video, I can hardly blame you. Suffice it to say that Scarborough -- who served with Newt and knows him personally -- sees the possibility of a Gingrich nomination as a looming disaster. It's a meteor on a collision course with the GOP and would cause the party to lose bigger than Goldwater did in '64.

Scarborough believes that Republican voters don't remember Newt Gingrich or, if they do, remember him incorrectly. He's probably right. Gingrich is a profoundly unlikeable man with a tremendous ego, so convinced of his own brilliance that he doesn't really edit his thoughts before the come out of his mouth -- if an idea pops into his head, it's like he has to articulate it. As a result, he winds up saying some seriously crazy things.

Worse, Newt legitimately seems to hate the poor, downtrodden, and underprivileged and enjoys kicking people while they're down. This is already evident in his present rhetoric and, if Obama turns the debate to income inequality and the 99% -- as he's almost certain to do -- Gingrich will become positively cartoonish. I can say this without being hyperbolic; Newt Gingrich is a nasty, nasty man.

And as a nasty man, Newt left very few friends behind when he resigned as Speaker of the House. The aforementioned Hill piece makes that clear. Rep. Peter King remembers a man who was "condescending... dismissive," with a "superiority complex." Columnist George Will says Gingrich "embodies the vanity and rapacity that make modern Washington repulsive." Sen. Richard Burr recalls "a guy of 1,000 ideas, and the attention span of a 1-year-old," whose "discipline and his attention to any individual thing is not his strong suit."

And, as much as Tea Party voters seem to like him now, Libertarians say they won't like him later.

[Talking Points Memo:]

“Newt is the establishment. He’s antithetical to what the Tea Party is talking about,” explains [Christopher Barron, a Republican strategist with libertarian leanings and head of GOProud, which represents gay conservatives]. “This is about building on the Tea Party’s success. It would take a lot of selective amnesia” to think Newt could represent the Tea Party’s agenda.

[...]

“There’s a belief that the field represents a pre-Tea Party Republicanism,” said Michael D. Tanner, a senior research fellow at the Libertarian Cato Institute. It’s a crop of left-overs, he explains. Libertarians wanted Paul Ryan or Chris Christie. Instead, they got “pre-Tea Party folks.” Tanner wrote an op-ed last week in National Review Online on both Romney and Gingrich’s brand of Bush-era, big government conservatism. “Gingrich has been held in low-esteem by libertarians for a long time.”

[...]

This week, Cato vice president Gene Healy penned a piece in the Washington Examiner urging conservatives not to settle on Newt. “Newt’s hardly the ‘anti-Romney,’” Healy cautions, “he’s Mitt Romney with more baggage.”

Long story short, Newt represents the latest in bad ideas the Republican base has had lately. And Democrats should do very little to discourage them from making that choice. If President Obama put out an official campaign statement saying the president was terrified of a Gingrich candidacy, that'd be great. And Democrats should go on talking head shows to beg the 'baggers not to throw them in the briar patch by nominating Newt.

-Wisco

News Roundup for 12/5/11

2011-12-05T16:14:00.000-06:00

Hates America

-Headline of the Day-
"The Muppets Are Communist, Fox Business Network Says."

Muppets are commies! So says Fox Business' Eric Bolling (who, by the way, is just awful). According to the report, "Last week, on the network's Follow the Money program, host Eric Bolling went McCarthy on the new, Disney-released film, The Muppets, insisting that its storyline featuring an evil oil baron made it the latest example of Hollywood's so-called liberal agenda."

See, the new Muppet movie has a rich and powerful villain -- a totally new thing in fiction that no one has ever done before. And, since the villain is a rich oil man, that means the muppets are commies trying to brainwash our children, not that the villain is a movie cliché.

"It's amazing how far the left will go just to manipulate your kids, to convince them, give the anti-corporate message," Dan Gainor of the conservative Media Research Center told Bolling.

"They've been doing it for decades. Hollywood, the left, the media, they hate the oil industry," Gainor continued. "They hate corporate America. And so you'll see all these movies attacking it, whether it was Cars 2, which was another kids' movie, the George Clooney movie Syriana, There Will Be Blood, all these movies attacking the oil industry, none of them reminding people what oil means for most people: fuel to light a hospital, heat your home, fuel an ambulance to get you to the hospital if you need that. And they don't want to tell that story."

I'll tell you why they don't want to tell that story -- it's crushingly dull and awful storytelling.

Look, it's a really simple and ancient literary formula; the stronger the villain, the greater the hero. That's why Sauron was a creature of almost godlike power and not just a guy with an argument for the beneficial aspects of magic rings. A rich guy is a guy with (in movie logic) unlimited resources -- who better to test the heroism of a bunch of carpet remnants?

But, as always, when the right sees an excuse to play the victim card, they play it. Proving, once again, that they don't get heroism at all. (Huffington Post)

-That's all, folks!-

Click to embiggen

(McClatchy)

-Bonus HotD-
"Kansas Is Spending $2,180 Per Day Defending Its Anti-Abortion Laws."

Republican "fiscal sanity" at work; defending clearly unconstitutional laws from their inevitable doom. (ThinkProgress)

The Average 'Deeply-Held Conservative Belief' Probably has a Shelf-Life of Six Months

2011-12-05T12:49:00.000-06:00

Last week, I wrote about one of the hallmarks of modern Republican thought; believing what they want to believe. In that post, I focused mainly on a completely backwards economic philosophy that basically argues that if you put more bread on store shelves, more customers will magically appear to buy it. In the alternate reality that the GOP want so badly to inhabit, supply drives demand. Employers don't hire people because they need them, they hire people because they can afford them. In GOPWorld, if you hire someone you don't need, you're "growing your business" and customers will start beating down your door. Therefore, the road to universal prosperity is paved with tax cuts, so everyone can afford to hire a whole bunch of people that they currently don't need.

If that makes absolutely no sense at all to you, then congratulations; you're not stupid. Economic growth is consumer-driven, not employer-driven. And if you're hiring people to make bread for non-existent customers, that bread will rot on the shelves and you'll go broke. The supply-side fairy who waves a wand to create customers out of thin air doesn't exist, sorry. But Republicans don't want to hear that, so it's just not true at all for them.

But it's possible for a species to be unique for more than one trait. And Republicans also share another trait that separates them from you or me; shameless hypocrisy. It actually goes hand in hand with believing what you want to believe; the marriage results in cognitive dissonance.

The most recent national example of this may be the now-derailed Herman Cain Train. Prior to revelations of sexual harassment and affairs, Herman Cain and Republicans had all but declared racism dead in America. After the news broke and they went into spin mode, the blame went to Democrats and a media who were afraid of a black conservative. Where racism didn't exist before Cain got into trouble, it was the sole driving force behind the scandal afterward. Conservatives did a complete 180 and few of them blinked. What was true last week wasn't true this week. But be ready, because it could become true again. It really depends on what they need to be true at the moment.

Take, for instance, a less national (but perhaps more important) example, offered by John Nichols this weekend in Wisconsin's The Capital Times:

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s campaign is spending a lot of the money it has collected from out-of-state billionaires to fund a television ad campaign that preaches against recall elections.

The governor’s “Recall: No” campaign, which has been augmented by a push from Americans for Prosperity, a project of the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, argues that the push for a recall election is simply “sour grapes.” Walker and Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch won the 2010 election, the line goes, so Wisconsinites should swallow hard and shut up for four years.

This fantasy, that elections produce a “king for four years” or an “elected despot” (to borrow phrases from Thomas Jefferson and James Madison), has been promoted by the governor in interviews with right-wing talk radio and regular appearances on Fox News and CNBC programs.

“A minority of voters will get to force a new election in Wisconsin … costing millions of dollars to the taxpayers this spring,” Walker griped in the latest of the appearances on programs that he makes as part of a fundraising push.

Walker's complaints strike "a particularly hypocritical note," writes Nichols.

Back when he was a state legislator, Walker was an enthusiastic proponent of recall elections. In fact, he was one of only a handful of state legislators who aligned with — and ultimately took money from — a group that was seeking to recall U.S. Sens. Russ Feingold and Herb Kohl.

Walker got even more enthusiastic about recalls in 2002, when he became the favored candidate of the group seeking to remove Milwaukee County Executive Tom Ament. After Ament resigned, Walker was elected to replace him.

"You know the folks that were angry about this started a recall and they were told they needed to collect 73,000 signatures in 60 days," Walker said of the Milwaukee County recall. "Well, not hundreds, not thousands, but tens of thousands of ordinary people did an extraordinary thing. They stood up and took their government back. In less than 30 days they collected more than 150,000 signatures. It was at that moment I realized the real emotion on display in my county wasn't just about anger. You see, if it had been about anger, it would have been about people checking out and moving out or giving up. But instead what happened was really amazing. You saw people standing up shoulder to shoulder, neighbor to neighbor and saying we want our government back. And in doing so the real emotion on display was about hope."

Where recall elections were an exercise in democracy that brought a tear to Walker's eye in 2002, they're a costly temper tantrum from sore losers now.

Whether it's Herman Cain cries of racism or Walker's newly-found opposition to recall elections or a host of other GOP flip-flops, you can boil it down to one argument; it's only OK when Republicans do it.

-Wisco

News Roundup for 12/2/11

2011-12-02T16:48:00.000-06:00

Herman Cain's women's outreach manager

-Headline of the Day-
"Cain highlights female supporters on new website."

And by "highlights" he means... Oh, make up your own joke. It's easy.

Anyway, despite coming down to the wire on his decision whether to keep going or not, Herman Cain has a new website up featuring all the women in America that Herman Cain either hasn't sexually harassed or had an affair with. Which so far is about 50 of them. If you're a woman who hasn't been harassed by or had an affair with Herman, you're invited to tell your story about why you think he's wonderful.

If your opinion of the Cain Train is somewhat different, you probably shouldn't waste your time submitting it. Criticism is not taken well there. According to the report, "The site features testimonials from female Cain supporters offering words of support and attacking the women who have alleged sexual harassment and an affair with Cain as 'scheming' and 'desperate.'"

Because, you see, not knowing Herman Cain at all, they'd be the experts about that. Of course the site is run under Herman's wife's name, Gloria Cain, who would be an expert. But according to at least one report, Gloria may not be as enthused with Herman as the site would suggest. Friends describe "a woman angry that her life has been turned upside down by her husband's need for attention and power by any means."

And, of course, this is Herman Cain we're talking about, so this thing can't go by without a gaffe. "[T]he group quickly came under fire after media organizations noted that the photo of four women giving the thumbs-up signal on the Web site was not truly of Cain supporters but a stock photo," reports the Washington Post.

Never let it be said that the Herman Cain campaign did not die as it lived; completely FUBAR. (The Hill)

-Cartoon time with Mark Fiore-
Hey kids, I was out yesterday, trying to recall this knuckleheaded governor we've got here, so I didn't get a chance to put this up. Anyway, here's two cavemen discussing science. Yay!

Click for animation

Wow, it's almost like it's a metaphor for something... (MarkFiore.com)

-Bonus HotD-
"Saudis fear there will be ‘no more virgins’ and people will turn gay if female drive ban is lifted."

Wow, Saudi Arabia has Republicans too! (Daily Mail)

In Payroll Tax Cut Debate, GOP War on Facts Marches On

2011-12-02T12:56:00.000-06:00

There are a lot of things to dislike about the modern Republican Party. There's the attitude they have toward what they consider "the other" -- i.e., gays, lesbians, non-Christians, etc. -- that casts nearly every person who doesn't look like they just stepped out of Normal Rockwell print as an obvious enemy of America. There's the authoritarian bent that would control who you love and what you say, that would listen in on your phone calls and torture you pretty much at whim, that would have even minor offenders in prison and loves the death penalty, and would mark every miscarried pregnancy as a potential murder scene and force women to give birth against their will. But the biggest problem with the Republican Party -- in fact, the problem from which almost all of the other problems stem -- is their hostility to plain, provable fact.

From climate to evolution to economics, we see Republicans believing what they'd like to be true, rather than what is true. When Michele Bachmann said that the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine (which reduces cervical cancer in women by preventing a very common STD) caused "mental retardation," it wasn't because she had any evidence of it, but because she wanted it to be true. Social conservatives oppose the HPV vaccine because they believe that protection increases sexual activity among teens. Not surprisingly, this isn't true either, for the exact same reason that airbags don't increase car crashes. But Bachmann believes whatever it is she wants to believe, because that's just what Republicans do.

Case in point:

[Reuters:]

In late-night votes, the Senate, as expected, defeated a Democratic plan that would have extended and expanded the payroll tax cut that is scheduled to expire on December 31.

Republicans particularly objected to a new tax on the wealthy to cover the $110 billion in projected lost revenues from continuing the temporary tax cut.

OK, so no surprise there. Republicans don't want to raise taxes on the "job creators" (more BS, by the way. Consumers create jobs, not employers). But then things get weird.

After the Democratic legislation was defeated, the Senate promptly killed an alternative Republican plan. It too would have extended the tax cut for a year. But it did not embrace the Democrats' proposal to reduce the worker tax even further and to also cut an employer-paid payroll tax.

Republican ambivalence toward any extension of the payroll tax cut was evident in the Senate as a majority of the party's 47 senators voted against the Republican plan.

Here's the kicker; "The White House, investment banks and some economists have warned in recent days that U.S. economic growth could suffer in 2012 if the tax cut for workers is allowed to expire..." Reuters reports. "Many Republican lawmakers are skeptical that extending the tax cut beyond this year will help job creation and say it will have only a temporary effect on the economy."

See, that right there's your problem; a factual appeal to reason. That's never going to work. In order to get Republicans on board, you have to make up some complete horsecrap argument about how letting the tax cuts expire will increase abortions or create more Muslims or something. That, they'd buy.

But "experts" with their "numbers" and "math" and fancypants "historical data?" Ivory tower elitist claptrap! Take your economic forecasts elsewhere, Poindexter. Here in America, we legislate from the gut. And the fact that our gut only tells us what we want to hear is just coincidence. And in this case, Republican guts tell them that everything Barack Obama says is always wrong -- without exception.

Reuters says that the defeat of both bills clears the way "for negotiations on compromise legislation that could boost the economy next year." If history is any guide, that ought to work our great.

-Wisco

Strategist to GOP Governors: 'I'm so Scared of This Anti-Wall Street Effort'

2011-12-01T13:27:00.000-06:00

One of my favorite arguments from the conservative side is that the wealthy deserve their wealth because they worked harder for it. While I don't doubt that a hedge fund manager puts in long hours, I do doubt that a single one of them anywhere in the world works harder than your average bricklayer on any given construction site. If the Republican formula of hard-work-equals-wealth were true, I'm guessing that construction workers, migrant farm workers, dock workers, soldiers, etc. would be at the top of every Forbes list and hedge fund managers, CEOs, mortgage company execs, money traders, etc. would be collecting food stamps.

Which is why this advice from conservative spinmeister Frank Luntz strikes me as so off-the-mark:

Republicans should forget about winning the battle over the 'middle class.' Call them 'hardworking taxpayers.'

"They cannot win if the fight is on hardworking taxpayers. We can say we defend the 'middle class' and the public will say, I'm not sure about that. But defending 'hardworking taxpayers' and Republicans have the advantage."

At least he's being somewhat realistic. But when a Republican says they stand for the middle class, I'm not thinking, "I'm not sure about that" -- I'm holding my sides and laughing. Think of Mitt Romney talking about "the 80 to 90 percent of us in this country," as if he's just some ordinary fella who decided to run for president and not a bona fide member of the 1%.

Of course, the problem with Frank Luntz isn't that he's bad at what he does. The problem isn't even that he's good at what he does. The problem with Frank Luntz is what he does. And what he does is take the truth and twist it like a balloon animal until it's unrecognizable. When every Republican says the exact same thing over and over and over ("We gotta stay the course!"), that's Frank at work.

And Frank Luntz is hard at work. Not harder than a shipyard welder, but harder than your average one-percenter.

The Republican Governors Association met this week in Florida to give GOP state executives a chance to rejuvenate, strategize and team-build. But during a plenary session on Wednesday, one question kept coming up: How can Republicans do a better job of talking about Occupy Wall Street?

"I'm so scared of this anti-Wall Street effort. I'm frightened to death," said Frank Luntz, a Republican strategist and one of the nation's foremost experts on crafting the perfect political message. "They're having an impact on what the American people think of capitalism."

Luntz offered tips on how Republicans could discuss the grievances of the Occupiers, and help the governors better handle all these new questions from constituents about "income inequality" and "paying your fair share."

In fact, he told the governors that they shouldn't use the word "capitalism" at all. Sounds bad. They should use the terms "economic freedom" or "free market" -- as if either of those things actually exist. Economic freedom isn't there for the vast majority of Americans, currently experiencing the wonders of downward mobility. And "free market" only works if you make "free" a synonym for "rigged."

Other advice from Luntz; don't say government "taxes the rich" -- because everyone actually wants that -- instead, "talk about government taking the money from hardworking Americans." Sorry, had to laugh again there. Let's just ignore that Republicans want to cut Medicare and Social Security to fund continued top-heavy tax cuts -- that is, they want to take money from actual hardworking Americans, so the rich can continue to take a free ride.

The takeaway from all this is, of course, that Luntz is "frightened to death" of Occupy Wall Street and believes it's "having an impact on what the American people think of capitalism." This is probably what Republicans are saying behind closed doors. In front of the cameras, they're all "Oh, they don't have a message" and "I don't think even they know what they want" -- and then they dial up Frank Luntz to tell GOP governors how to deal with the movement. Mouths say one thing, actions say another. And actions speak louder than words.

Another takeaway here is that Republicans are busy trying to figure out how to get their constituents to agree with them, rather than the other way around. In typical GOP fashion, they see things bass-ackward. They don't represent the voters, they try to get the voters to represent them. Constituents don't tell Republicans what their concerns are, Republicans tell constituents what to be concerned about. The people serve the party, not the other way around. It's your job to be part of the big rightwing noise machine, so that Republicans can be elected to represent Republicans. I suppose you could call that a form of democracy, just not a very good one.

At a certain point this is going to stop working. Not for everyone, but for enough. It doesn't even work on everyone now. Sooner or later, they're going to twist and bend and pull that balloon animal to the point that it pops. And all the Frank Luntz spin in the world isn't going to help after that.

-Wisco

News Roundup for 11/30/11

2011-11-30T16:57:00.000-06:00

At least Herman still has a way with the ladies

-Headline of the Day-
"Cain: 'Stupid people are ruining America.'"

And, as America's leading stupid person, Herman Cain ought to know.

"Here’s what I need you to do," Cain told a crowd in Dayton today. "Stay informed, know the facts because stupid people are ruining America."

"They are," he went on. "We just have to out-vote them."

And so far, it seems to be working. The more people know about Herman, the less they seem willing to vote for him.

"The former Godfather's Pizza CEO has referred to Uzbekistan as 'Ubeki-beki-beki-stan-stan,' didn’t seem to know that China has nuclear weapons, asked Cuban-Americans how to speak 'Cuban,' struggled to remember the U.S. role in ousting Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, worried that the Taliban was forming a new government in Libya, and decided that CNN host Wolf Blitzer’s name was simply 'Blitz,'" the report reminds us.

Herman Cain will be happy to know that Herman Cain is one stupid person who doesn't stand a chance of ruining America. (Raw Story)

-Minor blessings-
Voters react to Herman Cain.

Click to embiggen

Thank goodness for small miracles. (Truthdig)

-Bonus HotD-
"Herman Cain's campaign a study in ineptitude."

Won't get any argument from me. (Politico)

Rightwing Election Fraud in Wisconsin Recall

2011-11-30T12:16:00.000-06:00

The Wisconsin recalls of Gov. Walker and Lt. Gov. Kleefisch are now underway and in full swing. But, if the recall effort is moving forward, so are Republican dirty tricks.

[Caledonia Patch:]

Residents who signed legitimate recall petitions may never have them counted by the Government Accountability Board.

A Caledonia resident, who asked not to have his name used, told Caledonia Patch that he and at least two other people in Racine are collecting signatures to recall Scott Walker, but have no intention of turning them into the GAB. Instead, they want people to think they've signed the petition, but not actually have their signatures count.

They are doing this to sabotage the recall effort, the resident said.

"The man claimed he had already collected 150 signatures at Walmart and Pick'n Save on 27th Street in Franklin yesterday," according to the report. "However, when asked to produce the documents, he said, he would need to think about showing them to Patch. He said he won't be turning them into the GAB, but hasn't destroyed them."

That has since changed. The group, who call themselves Operation Burn Notice, claim they're operating within the law. "The Democrats put this out there and they made some mistakes," the man originally told CP. "If you go to their Facebook page, you can download the petition from right there. I’m sure they are counting how many are being downloaded, but just because they are printed, don’t mean they’ll be used... It’s not illegal to collect them and not turn them in."

Turns out that yeah, that's as illegal as you'd expect. The man now says he'll turn the petitions over to the Government Accountability Board (GAB). The GAB says that "destroying or defacing an official recall petition would violate state law... Such a violation... would be a class I felony in Wisconsin, which carries a maximum fine of $10,000 and up to three-and-a-half years in jail."

Still Operation Burn Notice claims to have collected 100,000 signatures, which they plan to destroy in a "public burn" on January 14. I'm guessing that, given the severity of the proposed crime, that's never going to happen.

Whether they're actually going to destroy them or not, anecdotal evidence suggests they're out there collecting signatures. In the comment section to a post at the local Dane101 blog, Erica R. writes:

My boyfriend almost caught two of the people from that facebook page.

Two men were in his neighborhood collecting petition signatures and we walked up to them and discussed the recall efforts and Scott Walker. They acted strange and laughed awkwardly while looking at each other.

We knew something was up so I quickly ran to my car where I had stupidly left my iPhone. By the time I got it, the two men were running down the block in the opposite direction with my boyfriend behind him.

One made a threat about having a gun, so he stopped running. They shouted "Operation Burn Notice!" from far away. We tried to chase them down in my car, but they were gone and I have no idea how they managed to get away so quickly

If I saw a picture of the men, I could identify them.

"There is no gray area here," said Graeme Zielinski, spokesman for the Wisconsin Democratic Party. "What they are doing is highly illegal." He guesses that the aim isn't actually to destroy the petitions, but to create doubt when people see legit canvassers.

"They want legitimate circulators to be turned away," he explained. "But we think this involves a very small number of people... Our message to the public is: don't let this intimidate you. You can sign a petition more than once if you think you have signed a petition that someone may have destroyed, and you aren't violating the law." Zielinski called on the Department of Justice to investigate.

"If these folks have ties to the Republican or TEA party, they need to look at themselves at the top," he said.

In another instance of petition fraud, a group claiming to be "Occupy-Madison" announced on their website that all the signatures needed had been collected and instructed readers to stop collecting them and destroy any petitions they had. That site has since been shut down.

"There have been several false blog posts and web updates claiming that the recall effort has a certain amount of signatures, or in one case that we have collected all that we need," advises the Wisconsin Democratic Party. "All are false. Please don't believe any numbers unless they are officially released by United WI. Any numbers UW puts out will be corroborated by Wisdems. Please pass along."

As things are now, these efforts to stop the recall seem hopeless. 540,208 signatures must be collected within 60 days of the recall campaign's launch and, at only twelve days in, United Wisconsin reported 300,000 collected. The goal is 600,000-700,000, to create a buffer to allow for mistakes and mischief.

But if the petition fraud campaign is doomed, it also demonstrates a pretty obvious fact -- pro-Walker people are running scared.

-Wisco

News Roundup for 11/29/11

2011-11-29T16:39:00.000-06:00

Pres. Obama and VP Biden react to Gingrich's call for them to repudiate numbers

-Headline of the Day-
"Newt Gingrich: 'I Call On The President To Repudiate The Concept Of The 99 And The 1.'"

The Republican War on Math reached a fever pitch today, when presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich called upon President Obama to disavow the very concept of numbers.

"I repudiate, and I call on the President to repudiate, the concept of the 99 and the 1," Newton said. "It is un-American, it is divisive, it is historically false... You are not going to get job creation when you engage in class warfare because you have to attack the very people you hope will create jobs."

You ever notice that Newton does not use any contractions? Perhaps he can not.

Whatever linguistic challenges Gingrich may face, his grasp of mathematics is as poor as the rest of the GOP field. The concept of 99% and 1% is not only "historically accurate" -- whatever that's supposed to mean -- but provable with a common household calculator. And it's not the 99-percenters who've been attacking "the very people you hope will create jobs," it's Newton. Because, in typical GOP fashion, he has job creation all wrong. Consumers create jobs, not suppliers. If 99% of the people are broke, those 1% who aren't aren't going to hire people -- mostly because no one will be able to afford what they've been hired to do. It's like hiring someone to paint your boat because you can afford to pay them -- but you don't actually have a boat.

People aren't going to do stuff like that.

But don't try to tell Newt that. Those are facts. And the War on Math is just a front in the broader War on Facts. In that war, Newt's a four-star general. (ThinkProgress, with video)

-And the main tactic is the War on Facts is...-
...being an asshole about it.

Click to embiggen

It's what they're good at. (Cartoon Politics)

-Bonus HotD-
"Rick Perry Hoping He Can At Least Win Imaginary Nov. 12 Election."

Rick tells an audience, "Those of you that will be 21 by November the 12th, I ask for your support and your vote. Those of you who won't be, work hard."

The election is November 6th and you only have to be 18 to vote.

The elitist tyranny of facts win again. (Wonkette)

GOP Economic Incoherence

2011-11-29T13:00:00.000-06:00

One of the great triumphs of Republican spin has been their ability to convince their base that they don't work for the government. To illustrate this, let's look at the common Republican argument that government doesn't create jobs. They stand there in their suits bought with a government paycheck, in a government-supplied office, with government-supplied staff, telling us -- in all seriousness, mind you -- that the government has never created a single job. Meanwhile, Republican candidates -- at least, those who happen to be governors and former governors -- compete over which created the most jobs in their states. Cognitive dissonance rules the day, as Republicans try to live in what would, to any rational person, be a confusing whirl of conflicting messages and beliefs.

The oddest thing about this is that GOP austerity is actually shedding jobs in the public sector and adding to unemployment.

[Washington Post:]

[An upcoming report from the National Governors Association and the National Association of State Budget Officers] says that although state general fund revenue increased in 2011 and is expected to increase 2012, it remains $21 billion below 2008 levels. In addition, states are bracing for further reductions in federal aid that are likely to come from Washington’s efforts to slow the growth of the deficit.

The fiscal pressure on states has become a drag on the job market; local and state governments are shedding jobs, even though the private-sector job market has shown signs of improvement.

State and local governments have cut 455,000 jobs since the beginning of 2010, and public-sector jobs account for the smallest share of the nation's employment since the 2008 financial crisis, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

If it's impossible for government to create jobs, where did all these that are being lost come from in the first place? It's a gaping hole in their argument that they don't even try to paper over. You're just supposed to ignore it.

As Republicans at the federal level block aid to the states, those at the state level are reducing their workforces. Then both blame President Obama and Democrats for unemployment. Their fingerprints are all over the knife, but they insist the culprit is someone else.

And it's not just government layoffs that are costing jobs. It's reduced spending. When the government spends money, it usually goes someplace -- as much as the GOP would like you to believe it just gets shoveled into a furnace. It pays contractors and consumers, doctors and administrators. Spending is demand -- regardless of where it comes from. And when you reduce demand, the economy takes the hit. Absolutely, positively, 100% guaranteed. Government dials back when times are relatively good and there's some wiggle room, so it can afford to spend more when times are bad.

Or, at least, it should. But the big government furnace was running full blast under Bush. Iraq was a shovelful. The completely unpaid-for Medicare Part D was another shovelful. The insanely huge and completely ineffective Bush tax cuts were another shovelful. The creation of a massive and expensive surveillance bureaucracy was yet another. Bush -- and many of the same Republicans so newly concerned about deficits now -- spent money like it was going out of style, leaving the US with record deficits when they should've been creating a rainy day fund.

And here they are now, still treating the abrasion with sandpaper, still practicing completely bass-ackward economics. No wonder most think Republicans are actively trying to sabotage the economy -- the only other explanation is gross incompetence. Their attitude toward spending is completely independent of the economy. The GOP's plan is clearly to spend like crazy when a Republican is in the White House and freak out about spending when a Democrat's in there.

And we pay the price. As GOP austerity is costing jobs at the state level and creating a drag on the economy, we're supposed to believe that government didn't create those jobs. That way, Republicans can't be blamed for losing them.

-Wisco

News Roundup for 11/28/11

2011-11-28T16:30:00.000-06:00

The only kind of Muslims anti-Muslim nuts like

-Headline of the Day-
"Religious Right Groups Launch Fight Against TLC Reality Show."

You know what the Florida Family Association thinks is terrible? Muslims! They hate them like the dickens. So when The Learning Channel announced they'd be airing a reality TV show called All-American Muslim, FFA freaked out.

See, it turned out that people on the show didn't reflect FFA's stereotypes at all. No one attacks old ladies while yelling "Oodle-oodle-oodle!" There's no Death to America stuff, no one tries to force sharia law on anyone. They don't stone their daughters in the backyard. It's just terrible. It's like they're trying to show that all the things anti-Muslim people believe is crazy horseshit -- which means it's secret terr'ist propaganda!

"The Learning Channel's new show All-American Muslim is propaganda clearly designed to counter legitimate and present-day concerns about many Muslims who are advancing Islamic fundamentalism and Sharia law," says FFA. "The show profiles only Muslims that appear to be ordinary folks while excluding many Islamic believers whose agenda poses a clear and present danger to liberties and traditional values that the majority of Americans cherish."

Maybe that's because the family in the show doesn't know any people like that -- which would make sense, right? I mean, just because I'm a white guy doesn't mean I have white power types coming over to my house. Seems to me this is the same sort of deal.

Anyway, FFA aren't the only crazies up in arms about the show. Anti-Muslim activist Robert Spencer -- who's just awful, BTW -- suggested what he considers a more accurate idea for a reality show. TLC should go find some guy who starts off OK and then ends up "participating in jihad activity" -- because it's totally cool to let some guy plan and carry out terrorism for a TV show, as long as that makes Muslims look bad.

So, for the record, the anti-Muslim nutjobs have now gone completely around the bend -- Muslims who are terrorists are good, while Muslims who aren't terrorists are bad.

There really is no word to adequately describe the clownishness. (Right Wing Watch)

-Thanksgiving leftovers with Mark Fiore-
Hey kids, one of the cool things about taking a week off of blogging is that you get an extra cartoon from Mark Fiore the week you come back. Yay!

Today, Uncle Mark (who's a famous Howitzer Prize-winning cartoonist) will shows us all how to draw turkeys!

Click for animation

Wow, and I thought I was sick of turkey before... (MarkFiore.com)

-Bonus HotD-
"Union Leader Declined To Endorse Romney Because He ‘Represents The One Percent.’"

So instead, the New Hampshire paper endorsed Newt Gingrich.

Seems like kind of a lateral move to me. (ThinkProgress)

Gov. #HeBlowsALot Gets a Civics Lesson

2011-11-28T11:51:00.000-06:00

Just made mean comments at gov brownback and told him he sucked, in person #heblowsalot

I think Emma Sullivan, an 18 year-old high school student in Fairway, Kansas, is correct. Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback blows a lot. As a Senator, Brownback ran in 2008 as one of the rightest of the rightwing presidential candidates. Obviously, he was unsuccessful. So he went back to Kansas to become one of the rightest of the rightwing governors in America.

For some reason, Brownback's office was surprised to learn that extremists are often criticized by voters. Sullivan's twitter problem began at a Youth in Government program last week in Topeka. Brownback greeted the group and she tweeted the line from the event. Needless to say, this was the worst thing ever.

[Wichita Eagle:]

On Tuesday, Sullivan was called to her principal's office and told that the tweet had been flagged by someone on Brownback's staff and reported to organizers of the Youth in Government program.

The principal "laid into me about how this was unacceptable and an embarrassment," Sullivan said. "He said I had created this huge controversy and everyone was up in arms about it... and now he had to do damage control."

"I'm mainly shocked that they would even see that tweet and be concerned about me," she said. "I just honestly feel they're making a lot bigger deal out of it than it actually was."

Sullivan didn't actually say anything to Brownback, but said she her friends had been "joking about what they’d really like to say (to Brownback), so I just took out my phone."

So, of course something had to be done. Sullivan was ordered by her principal to write a letter of apology and had "even suggested talking points" to hit in the letter.

It's at this point that you're probably thinking, "This is all very stupid." And you'd be correct. Probably the most stupid -- and disturbing -- part being that Brownback's office has people searching social media, looking for criticism to stamp out (this incident has given those people a lot of work to do, by the way).

But this is more than the story of a thin-skinned governor whose political paranoia has reached an obviously Nixonian level. It's an example of how empty the words "liberty" and "freedom" are when they come out of Republicans' mouths -- even as they act as if they're the sole protectors of them. The conservative bent is not libertarian as they'd like us to believe, but authoritarian. Or, more accurately, libertarianism mixed with socialism for people who can write the big checks, authoritarianism for everyone else.

Think of something like the PATRIOT Act or applause for Rick Perry's record of executions. Think of the passionate defense of things like warrantless wiretapping and torture. Think of "personhood" laws which would make every miscarriage a crime scene in which the woman had to be cleared of "fetal homicide."

These people aren't big fans of freedom. And they certainly aren't enemies of intrusive government -- in fact, when government intrudes, they're largely responsible for it. These people are authoritarian to their core.

It's not the people who talk about freedom and liberty the most who love it best, it's the people who stand up for it. For her part, Emma Sullivan is refusing to write Brownback a letter of apology -- proving that she understands the concepts of liberty and freedom much, much better than her governor. It's Brownback who owes Sullivan -- and the rest of the citizens in his state -- an apology, not the other way around.

-Wisco

News Roundup for 11/22/11

2011-11-22T16:39:00.000-06:00

Not so awfully honest

-Headline of the Day-
"In Defending Dishonest Ad, Romney Campaign Stunningly Claims Obama Won’t Talk About The Economy."

You might've heard that the Romney campaign has put out their first campaign ad. And you might've heard the ad is a damned lie. If this is the case, you heard right.

Team Mittens got a soundbite of President Obama saying, "If we keep talking about the economy, we're going to lose." Except President Obama never said that, candidate Obama did. And candidate Obama wasn't talking about himself, he was quoting Sen. John McCain's campaign, who were running screaming at the time from dumb things their candidate had said about the economy. When Obama used the quote, he was saying he totally wanted to talk about the economy.

So anyway, pretty much everyone figured out that Mittens' ad was bullshit right off the bat. As a result, the campaign's first ad is being seen as something of a disaster. So, caught in a lie, the Team Mittens decided the time was right to go to another lie.

"Three years ago, candidate Barack Obama mocked his opponent's campaign for saying 'if we keep talking about the economy, we're going to lose,'" says Romney's communications director Gail Gitcho. "Now, President Obama's campaign is desperate not to talk about the economy. Their strategy is to wage a personal campaign -- or 'kill Romney.' It is a campaign of distraction."

They had to lie about Obama, the reasoning goes, because Obama won't talk about the economy. Yeah, that makes absolutely no sense at all, but what are you going to do? That's Republicans for ya.

And it makes even less sense when you realize the President is talking about the economy all the damned time. Remember that whole Jobs Bill thing? What do you think that's all about? In fact, ThinkProgress did the legwork and gathered a buttload of recent presidential statements about the economy -- it's like he won't shut up about it.

Someone get an Romneyite to take a gander at that. It ought to clear up all their confusion over there. (ThinkProgress)

-The pepperspray cop meme evolves-

Click to embiggen

The internets win again. (Mindless Ramblings)

-Bonus HotD-
"#OccupyLA Wins: LA City Council Offers Downtown Office, Homeless Housing, Farmland!"

Turns out you can deal with the Occupy movement without batons and rubber bullets and pepperspray.

Weird, huh? (Wonkette)

News Roundup for 11/21/11

2011-11-21T16:29:00.000-06:00

Schoen and Caddell

-Headline of the day-
"The 'Dump Obama' movement has begun; Guess who'd replace him?"

Conservative columnist Andrew Malcolm is just super-excited to learn that there's a movement out there to run Hillary Clinton for president, so she can kick out Obama. Here's a list of the names in that movement; pollsters Douglas Schoen and Patrick Caddell.

OK, so that's not really a "list" (it's not officially a list until you have to use a comma), but that's OK, because it's not really a movement either. Basically, it's two "Democratic" pollsters and an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. And, of course, these pollsters are "Democratic" in much the same way that Joe Lieberman is. They tried this crap before and no one bit then. But this time for sure, because it's a "movement!"

Hillary says no way, but who cares? Andrew Malcolm is totally sure this "movement" is on the march. (Investor's Business Daily)

-The art of crowd control-
Lt. John Pike, the UC Davis cop who gratuitously pepper-sprayed peaceful protesters, has made his mark on internet culture. According to the report, Pike "is popping up in some of the world’s most famous paintings as part of an Internet meme intended to shame him for his actions."

Click to embiggen

And not just art, it's moving on to movie stills, historical photos, etc. Pike is now famous for being a prick.

Good for the internet. (Washington Post)

-Bonus HotD-
"The Top 0.1% Of The Nation Earn Half Of All Capital Gains."

And that's why Republicans love capital gains tax cuts. (Forbes)

Facing Recall, Gov. Scott Walker Isn't Finding Much Support

2011-11-21T12:59:00.000-06:00

Last week, Wisconsin officially kicked off our effort to recall Gov. Scott Walker. Saying that effort is off to a good start would be a bit of an understatement.

[Talking Points Memo:]

Wisconsin Democrats, after last week’s official launch of the campaign to recall Gov. Scott Walker, made a major show of strength over the weekend.

United Wisconsin, the group managing the recall, announced on Saturday that during the first four days of the effort — from Tuesday through Friday -- they had brought in 105,000 signatures, nearly a fifth of the threshold they must legally meet: 540,208 signatures in a 60-day window.

"There are, of course, two important caveats," warns TPM's Eric Kleefeld, "First, after months of build-up to the recall campaign, it is natural that there would be an initial rush to sign in the first few days. Second, the Dems will have to gather even more than 540,208 signatures in real terms -- for a buffer that campaigns routinely collect in order to protect against signatures being disqualified over one imperfection or another."

Personally, I'd say the odds of the petition failing are extremely low. In his short time as governor, Walker has managed to make himself unpopular. A recent St. Norbert's College/Wisconsin Public Radio poll found that 58% of Wisconsinites support the recall, with only 38% opposed. That poll is a departure from other polling. But even if it's an outlier, things don't look good for Walker -- other polls show the public split, which means that there are more than enough supporters.

And those supporters are active.

[Wisconsin State Journal:]

Tens of thousands gathered Saturday at the state Capitol in support of the ongoing effort to recall Gov. Scott Walker, the largest such rally since the historic month-long protests over collective bargaining ended in March.

State Department of Administration officials estimate 25,000 to 30,000 people filled the square, marching through the cold drizzle, holding signs and chanting seemingly every possible derivation of "Recall Walker."

[...]

A group of about 50 Walker supporters made a brief appearance. They weaved through a collection of teachers, students and organized labor officials unified in their desire to remove Walker from office.

By the time I got there, the pro-Walker people were gone. There was absolutely no sign of them anywhere. It was just one big block of anti-Walker protesters and the gathering had the feel of a celebration or a street fair. I know this is a liberal city, but the fact that Walker could only scare up 50 not-so-die-hard supporters to show up does not bode well for his future. Walker's approval ratings are low and he doesn't have a lot of passionate defenders.

Which means that, even if they don't support the recall, they aren't all that interested in it. Walker's going to have to do what Republicans nationwide have had to resort to -- hiring people to do the legwork, because they can't find volunteers. He may have a headstart on fundraising, but he's going to wind up blowing a lot of it. Already, he's making unwise campaign choices, like buying airtime for "don't sign the petition" ads in Madison -- a complete waste of money. This is not the action of a confident man, this is the action of a man who knows he's going to need every vote he can get.

"[T]he people of Wisconsin are on to him," writes John Nichols. "Democrats want him out. Independents want him out. In fact, more than 20 percent of Republicans now say they want to see Walker recalled."

Worse, he seems to be having a hard time finding people who are passionate about keeping him in.

-Wisco

News Roundup for 11/18/11

2011-11-18T16:24:00.000-06:00

"Stop me, before I spend again!"

-Headline of the Day-
"Rep. Paul Ryan Votes Against Balanced Budget Amendment Because It Doesn't Ruin The Constitution Enough."

What America needs is a Balanced Budget Amendment, becuase congress just spends too much money! Of course, another option might be for congress to just stop throwing money down holes like those in Iraq, but where's the fun in that?

No, it's much better to get into congress, pretend you're not in congress, and try to pass a consitutuional amendment to get you to stop spending so goddam much money. "I won't stop spending money!" they say. "So reelect me to congress and I'll make me stop spending so much money! Who do I think I am?"

Yes, it's all very stupid, but that's Washington for you.

Anyway, Rep. Paul Ryan is one of the people who keeps promising to keep people like Rep. Paul Ryan from spending so much money. He's a big fan of a BBA, which made it surprising that he voted against it when it came up for a vote.

"The backstory here is that, just a few months ago, Ryan and his fellow congressional Republicans were pushing a permanent austerity amendment that would effectively lock Tea Party fiscal policy in place permanently. Among other things, amendment would make it functionally impossible to ever raise taxes, while simultaneously requiring the federal government to balance its budget entirely through spending cuts.

"Were Paul Ryan’s fantasy scenario -- a balanced budget achieved entirely through cuts -- to actually play out, it would 'throw about 15 million more people out of work, double the unemployment rate from 9 percent to approximately 18 percent, and cause the economy to shrink by about 17 percent instead of growing by an expected 2 percent.'"

So Paulie voted against the BBA because it didn't suck nearly hard enough.

Now what's to stop Paul Ryan from spending so much money? Not Paul Ryan, that's for sure. (ThinkProgress)

-Newt's biggest advantage-

Click to embiggen

Also his biggest drawback. (McClatchy)

-Bonus HotD-
"Billionaires Use Tax Loophole To Lower Their Tax Rates To 1 Percent."

So the 1% pays a rate of 1%. And pundits wonder why the 99% are pissed off. (ThinkProgress)

Stories to Watch: 11/17/11

2011-11-17T16:54:00.000-06:00

Rick Perry HQ

-Headline of the Day-
"No, President Obama Didn't 'Call Americans Lazy.'"

Over at Rick Perry fer Prezdint Campaign HQ, things don't seem to be going real well. Rick's polling somewhere behind a cold bowl of dog chow, he's solidified his reputation as an airhead, Newt Gingrich is rising in the polls... Hell, this whole thing is in a tailspin.

So they've apparently gotten a hold of a Wingnut Talking Points Edition of a magnetic poetry set. You just grab a random handful, wing it at the fridge, and presto -- your new winning message. I'm just guessing here, mind you. But it does seem to be the case.

See, Perry's got a new ad out that... Well, it's odd. First, Rick's standing in like a park or something watching TV. No, really -- he's also wearing a blue denim shirt like a prison farm laborer. Anyway, he sees President Obama say on TV that Americans are lazy. So he turns to the camera and says Obama is a pathetic socialist who thinks Americans are lazy, which is why we need a Balanced Budget Amendment. Yeah, none of those thoughts have anything to do with the other ones, which is why I'm hypothesizing the magnetic poetry set.

And of course, President Obama never said Americans are lazy. Rick must be thinking of Herman Cain. What Obama was basically saying was that bureaucrats have been lazy in selling what a great place America is to do business. So, pretty much the opposite of what Rick would have you believe.

Then again, maybe Rick was just too dumb to understand it. That's the choice you're faced with so often when looking at Republicans' statements; are they lying or stupid? (David Weigel, with video)

-Cartoon time with Mark Fiore-
Hey kids, it turns out that credit default swaps and stupid investments have Wall Street feeling a little under the weather. But don't worry, there's a cure for that!

Click for animation

And now they can do it all over again! (MarkFiore.com)

-Bonus HotD-
"Perry funds dry up after gaffes and dip in polls."

Whoops! Looks like it's time for another dip in the magnetic poetry set. New Perry ad, "Democrats want to build a NAFTA superhighway to abortion clinics, which is why we need to cut the capital gains tax!" (Houston Chronicle)

The Purpose of Protest is Not to Win Friends

2011-11-17T12:19:00.000-06:00

I wrote about this briefly yesterday and, given the events of today, it deserves a bit more fleshing out.

To bring you up to speed, Public Policy Polling released a survey yesterday finding that Occupy Wall Street was losing ground in public opinion. At the time, I wrote that this in itself wasn't anything to lose any sleep over, because Occupy Wall Street isn't up for election anywhere. Successful protest movements are seldom extremely popular -- both the anti-war and the anti-segregation movements in the '60s were unpopular at the time, regardless of how Hollywood portrays them now. What's important in a successful protest movement is that people agree with you. The point is to mold the national dialogue -- in other words, to change the subject -- and get people to debate the issue or issues that you believe are of primary importance. It doesn't matter if people approve of how you do it, because generally they won't. Public protest is disruptive and inconvenient, which is the entire point. People talk about inconvenience and, if somewhere in the conversation the sentence "They've got a point, though" pops up, then mission accomplished. It's not about you or getting people to like you, it's about getting people to talk about the issue.

Which was why the PPP's Tom Jensen's analysis bothered me (emphasis mine):

I don’t think the bad poll numbers for Occupy Wall Street reflect Americans being unconcerned with wealth inequality. Polling we did in some key swing states earlier this year found overwhelming support for raising taxes on people who make over $150,000 a year. In late September we found that 73% of voters supported the ‘Buffett rule’ with only 16% opposed. And in October we found that Senators resistant to raising taxes on those who make more than a million dollars a year could pay a price at the polls. I don’t think any of that has changed- what the downturn in Occupy Wall Street’s image suggests is that voters are seeing the movement as more about the ‘Occupy’ than the ‘Wall Street.’ The controversy over the protests is starting to drown out the actual message.

Until today, Occupy Wall Street was in danger of becoming about Occupy Wall Street. That's why the day of action -- focused not on the right to protest, but on Wall Street -- is so welcome. If the conversation is only about the protest, the protesters lose, because everyone misses the damned point.

And the point of the protests is a winner. Other polling backs up Jensen's take; people agree with OWS, even as they disapprove of them. Greg Sargent points to a news Public Religion Research Institute poll [pdf] that finds that the goals of OWS and the wishes of the American people largely coincide.

It finds that 67 percent of Americans agree that government should do more to reduce the gap between rich and poor, which a large majority says is growing. Sixty nine percent favor hiking taxes on millionaires. Fifty seven percent favor eliminating tax breaks for corporations. Sixty seven percent oppose cutting federal programs that help the poor (though a large majority also says the poor are too dependent on government). A plurality, 48 percent, thinks the American Dream — that if you work hard, you’ll get ahead — no longer holds true. These general findings are borne out in many other polls.

So who cares if they approve of the protests? If you're protesting in order to win a popularity contest, you may be using one of the worst tactics in the world. What matters is that you change the conversation. And Occupy Wall Street has. Not long ago, everything was about cutting spending and reducing deficits -- even as polling showed these weren't Americans' primary concerns. People are worried about jobs, they're worried about income inequality, they're worried about the rich getting a free ride on the backs of everyone else. Hell, they're even worried about one of the big OWS issues the right keeps trying to dismiss -- the PRRI poll shows that 66% believe "the government should do more to help students pay for college and pay off student loan debt."

If people are talking about that, you're winning. But if people are debating your right to protest -- and that's the discussion you're encouraging -- then things are starting to derail. You need to get back to the issues or the protest loses all meaning.

-Wisco

A Super Committee of One

2011-11-16T12:40:00.000-06:00

The way things are going, it looks like the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction (i.e., the "super committee") will be able to accomplish one thing -- reinforce my belief that Blue Ribbon Panels are useless. When that panel is advisory -- think the 9/11 commission -- their recommendations are generally ignored. When that panel is legislative, the results are no different from what the full congress would achieve. In the latter case, it's like a poll; you take aside a smaller sample of the larger group and find that the opinions break down pretty much the same way and in the same proportion. So, if congress is deadlocked, creating a smaller version of congress from that same congress isn't going to make things any easier. All you've really done is take that deadlock and concentrate it. With seven days to go until a deadline, the super committee is spinning its wheels.

How depressingly predictable.

Steve Benen reports that Republicans are actually fighting amongst themselves over the method to trim $1.2 trillion from the deficit. The bad news is that neither camp is willing to accept a deal that doesn't include tax cuts. That's right, a committee that's designed to reduce the deficit is also supposed to produce tax cuts somehow. "The GOP divide is between right-wing members (those willing to trade $250 billion in new revenue for $3.7 trillion in tax cuts, mostly benefiting the wealthy) and very right-wing members (those who want to reduce the debt without accepting any revenue at all)," he writes. Math hates Republicans.

At the center of all this is a nasty, corrupt individual named Grover Norquist.

[Huffington Post:]

A new wave of pessimism colored super committee talks on Tuesday as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) blasted anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist for meddling with the panel's progress and suggested that the American public "impeach" him.

During a stakeout with reporters, Reid read aloud part of an interview Norquist did with The Hill on Monday in which Norquist said Republican leaders in both chambers promised him they wouldn't accept a debt reduction deal that included tax hikes

"It won't pass the House or the Senate," Norquist, who is the president of the advocacy group Americans for Tax Reform, said in the interview. "I've talked to the House leadership and the Senate leadership. They're not going to be passing any tax increases."

Conservatives like to complain about "unelected" leaders who influence the legislative process. They even get worked up over "unelected judges," as if this was some sort of technicality and not the way the Constitution was written. But the truth is that Republicans love the unelected. In 2004, lobbyists wrote the "Clear Skies Act" and Republicans thought that was just the best thing ever. Letting lobbyists write GOP bills hasn't stopped since. And here they are again, allowing an unelected lobbyist to dictate US economic policy.

So add one more to the list of reasons why Blue Ribbon panels never work; the unelected people Republicans answer to never sit on those committees. You can't negotiate with a sock puppet.

-Wisco

News Roundup for 11/15/11

2011-11-15T17:00:00.000-06:00

Armed and dangerous -- no, not the cops...

-Headline of the Day-
"City Claims Occupy Wall Street Protesters Were Stockpiling Weapons, Fights Court Order To Reopen Park."

Them Occupy Wall Street commies got big piles of guns and stuff!

Wait, no. According to the City of New York, currently fighting a legal battle to declare Zuccatti Park a free-speech-free zone, are getting a little creative in their defense. Deputy Mayor Cas Holloway "filed a motion on behalf of the city today opposing a court order requiring the NYPD to allow Occupy Wall Street demonstrators back into Zuccotti Park."

In that motion, Holloway wrote, "It was our understanding that the protesters may have had a significant number of items that could potentially be used as weapons." For the record, that could be pretty much anything. The biggest threat to public safety cited were "cardboard tubes with metal pipes inside," which I guess are more weapony than just metal pipes. Other evidence of a heavily armed protesters includes the aftermath of an October 1st march across the Brooklyn Bridge, where authorities reportedly found "knives, mace and hypodermic needles were observed discarded on the roadway."

OK, I'm going to go ahead and call bullshit on that one. One, who discards a knife? Those things cost money. And cops have been macing protesters, not the other way around. Finally, hypodermic needles? Yeah, that's my weapon of choice, right up there with thumbtacks -- it's New York, those are called "litter." I'm surprised they didn't include used condoms in that list of "weaponry."

There's a lesson to be learned here, of course. If you're going to stockpile weapons (or be accused of it) make sure they're guns.

When the cops come to take your guns away, the NRA will have a hissy. Guaranteed. (Gothamist)

-Racism is dead!-

Click to embiggen

Except when it's not. (McClatchy)

-Bonus HotD-
"Scalia and Thomas dine with healthcare law challengers as court takes case."

You know, it's one thing to have a conflict of interest and it's quite another to go out of your way to create it. The first is called "random stuff that happens in life," the second is called "being a dick about it." (LA Times)

Keeping the Focus on Wall Street

2011-11-15T12:14:00.000-06:00

By now, you've probably heard that New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg ordered police to clear Zuccotti Park of Occupy Wall Street protesters in what can only be described as a raid in the middle of the night.

[New York Times:]

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg on Tuesday defended his decision to clear the park in Lower Manhattan that was the birthplace of the Occupy Wall Street Movement, saying “health and safety conditions became intolerable” in the park where the protesters had camped out for nearly two months.

[...]

The mayor’s comments at a City Hall news conference came about seven hours after hundreds of police officers moved in to clear the park after warning that the nearly two-month-old camp would be “cleared and restored” but that demonstrators who did not leave would face arrest. The protesters, about 200 of whom have been staying in the park overnight, initially resisted with chants of “Whose park? Our park!”

The police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, said that nearly 200 people had been arrested, 142 in the park at 50 to 60 in the streets nearby. Most were held on charges of disorderly conduct and resisting arrest, among them City Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez, a Democrat who represents northern Manhattan. He was with a group near the intersection of Broadway and Vesey Street that was attempting to link up with the protesters in the park. The group tried to push through a line of officers trying to prevent people from reaching the park.

Matt Yglesias makes a pretty convincing case that this is probably good for OWS in the end, because the only other foreseeable outcome would involve the protesters losing interest as winter blew in and wandering off. I'm not entirely convinced this is true, in part because there's more than Zuccotti to the Occupy movement.

But a larger problem with this possible ending comes from what has been a growing problem over the past few weeks -- mission creep. As police cracked down on protest after protest across the nation, the focus seems to have shifted somewhat from income inequality and the legalization of Wall Street crime to the protesters right to protest itself.

Already, OWS protesters have a temporary restraining order allowing them to return to Zuccotti with their tents. And Bloomberg, by all accounts as of this writing, is illegally ignoring that order. The story is already shifting from "Wall Street is robbing America blind" to "the First Amendment still exists." While the right to protest is a fundamental American right, what they're protesting is being lost in the shuffle here.

Not helping any is the manner in which Bloomberg and the NYPD have handled this mass-eviction. It involved a government-imposed media blackout worthy of any banana republic dictator. Journalists trying to cover the story report being chased off and roughed up by police, while the air space over Zuccotti was restricted to prevent news helicopters from covering the raid. This is completely inexcusable and Bloomberg should be impeached or recalled over this, if city law allows such a thing. Bloomberg's blackout was not only blatantly unconstitutional, but un-American.

And Mayor Bloomberg's sudden embrace of a life of crime is an issue that must be dealt with. But we're creatures with binary minds; we're capable of doing two things at once. Bloomberg and the NYPD should be called to account for the egregious violations of the nation's highest law, but not at the cost of allowing it to change the subject.

Occupy Wall Street is about Wall Street, not the Occupiers' right to protest. Let's try to keep it that way.

-Wisco

So BofA Dropped Their Debit Card Fee -- You're Still Being Screwed

2011-11-14T12:15:00.000-06:00

When Bank of America announced they were dropping plans to institute a $5 monthly debit card fee, that was a win for consumers. The fee was an end run around new banking regulations that limited the amount banks could charge merchants for processing debit card purchases. In other words, the banks took a "stop screwing people" law and applied it as a "screw different people" law. It didn't go over real well.

The move was a PR disaster and other banks that had been planning similar fees backed off as well. For now, the debit card fee is all but dead. But that doesn't mean that a "stop screwing people" law has to be taken as a "stop screwing people" law. Meet the stealth screw.

[New York Times:]

Even as Bank of America and other major lenders back away from charging customers to use their debit cards, many banks have been quietly imposing other new fees.

...Facing a reaction from an angry public and heightened scrutiny from regulators, banks are turning to all sorts of fees that fly under the radar. Everything, it seems, has a price.

"Banks tried the in-your-face fee with debit cards, and consumers said enough," said Alex Matjanec, a co-founder of MyBankTracker.com. "What most people don't realize is that they have been adding new charges or taking fees that have always existed and increased them, or are making them harder to avoid."

Lose your debit card? That'll be $5-$20. Fifteen bucks to have money wired to your account. Fifty cents for every deposit made from a mobile phone. "Banks can still earn a profit on most checking accounts," NYT reports. "But they are under intense pressure to make up an estimated $12 billion a year of income that vanished with the passage of rules curbing lucrative overdraft charges and lowering debit card swipe fees."

"They have got to make up the income some place," Vernon Hill II, the founder of Commerce Bank, told the Times. "I think we will see a lot more fees."

They've got to? Says who?

For example, the aforementioned $15 wire fee. That comes from TD Bank, a Canadian-based company. They simply have to make up for not being able to screw merchants, because... Well, that's not extremely clear.

In September of 2010, TD reported an increase of profit over the previous quarter of 29%. Of course, they were still recovering from the housing crash at the time. A year later, TD reported a profit increase of 23%, "allowing it to briefly supplant Royal Bank of Canada as Canada's largest company by market value."

Wow, times are tough, huh?

The idea that profits always have to be increasing is not just bad for consumers, it's also unsustainable. Banks are already starting to charge more and more for every little thing, nickel and diming customers at every turn, and they're still not making enough to satisfy themselves. When banks say they "have" to raise fees to make money, what they really mean is that they have to raise fees to make more money. They don't really "have" to -- not by a long shot.

Of course, all these new fees can't be "secret fees." Banks are required by law to disclose them beforehand. But banks use disclosure to make the fees as secret as possible, burying them under a pile of legalese. A Pew study found that checking account disclosures contain a median of 49 fees, hidden in a document "generally twice as long Romeo and Juliet." Overdraft fees, when you look at them like the short-term loans that they actually are, carry an annual interest of 5,000%.

And all to continue to see profits increase year after year. If you're still wondering why the 99% are angry at bankers and Wall Street, this is just one example. It's hard not to notice someone rooting around for spare change in your pocket. It's even harder to thank them for it.

-Wisco

Griper Blade: GOP Candidates: Lying or Just Stupid?

2011-11-10T11:54:00.000-06:00

The media has it wrong. When it comes to reporting on the GOP presidential debates, the media treats them like a network promo plug for The Amazing Race. Right now, all the networks are breathless over Rick Perry's deer-in-the-headlights moment at last night's debate; as if everyone didn't know Perry's an empty suit who's probably unfit even for the relatively low-demand job he currently holds. A formal debate is, by definition, the presentation of logical arguments with the purpose of discovering truth. Currently, political debates are the media's self-generated content; stories created by the media for the media to report on. For candidates, they aren't opportunities to make valid points and logical arguments. They're a platform for talking points, spin, soundbites, and just plain lies.

And meanness. While everyone else is pretending to be amazed by what an idiot the known idiot Rick Perry was, Jonathan Bernstein points to the real low point of the evening:

No, that would be Herman Cain. Look, he wasn’t going to be the nominee at any point during the cycle, and he certainly wasn’t going to be the nominee after it turned out he was an alleged serial sexual harasser. But after dragging American political rhetoric to a new low, referring to the House Minority Leader and a former speaker as “Princess Nancy,” it’s about time that Cain was called to account for insulting the American people and the political process for the farce that he’s engaging in. Whether it’s not knowing that China has nuclear weapons, or repeatedly botching his own position on abortion, or any of a number of other gaffes, Cain has made Perry look like a well-briefed genius throughout the campaign. And Wednesday night, he was even worse.

Yes, he’s that bad.

It's an insult to people like Aristotle to call what happened last night a "debate." It was a contest to see who could get the best applause line while being the least inept. And if a debate is a method of determining truth, the game show contestants at last night's event didn't even try to make it a debate.

FactCheck.org ran a check on the "debate" and found it to be largely fact-free. "The latest debate among Republican candidates for president was a tame affair that produced few factual claims needing correction," they report. "Candidates stuck mostly to promises and expressions of their conservative faith in free markets, and their disdain for government" -- in other words, it was a campaign slogan contest.

When candidates did bother to cite facts and figures, they turned out to be spun or just plain inaccurate. FactCheck.org found Cain and Bachmann were wide of the truth on taxation and Romney got it wrong of the salaries of federal workers, while Gingrich's contribution was in getting the history of Social Security and the federal budget wrong, as well as repeating the zombie lie that Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, and government regulations were responsible for the mortgage meltdown.

And Gingrich wasn't the only one to tell that last lie. "There is a basic problem with the argument, made by several candidates, that the government forced mortgage lenders to make bad loans: most subprime loans were made by companies that were not subject to any kind of federal regulation," writes factchecker Binyamin Appelbaum for the New York Times. "Furthermore, there was no need for force. Financial companies jumped into the market. The major investment banks lined up to purchase subprime lenders, the major retail banks created subprime-lending divisions and a generation of upstart subprime lenders like Ameriquest and Countrywide were briefly celebrated as rising stars of American business... No executive of a major mortgage company said at the time that the government was forcing him to make subprime loans. The executives said they did it because they thought they’d make money..."

So what are the only logical conclusions left to us here? The Republican candidates -- each and every one of them -- are either lying or completely ignorant on the subjects of banking, regulations, the economy, and housing. Those really are the only two possible choices. What caused the meltdown isn't a matter of opinion, you can't have an alternate take on it -- history is unchanging and facts are a bitch. People who say the government put a gun to lenders' heads, forcing them to make bad loans and securitize that bad debt into what would become toxic assets, are either lying or ignorant. There are no other explanations.

And those should be the big headlines today, not Perry's still-uninterrupted moronitude or the national practical joke that is Herman Cain. Americans should be waking up to headlines reading, "GOP Candidates: Lying or Just Stupid?" Pundits should be talking over each other about that, with one suit vehemently insisting they're all liars, while another passionately defends her belief that they're all just stupid. And pollsters should be hitting the phonebanks, trying to determine whether the public believes the GOP debate was all lies or all stupidity. The media should hold candidates to account for the things they say, not for the way they say (or in Perry's case, fail to say) them. A stumbling, fumbling, stuttered statement of truth should be considered a win -- an obvious win -- over a flawlessly articulated recitation of fiction.

But it's not. And that's the problem. At least my little contribution to the conversation has the right headline.

-Wisco

News Roundup for 11/8/11

2011-11-08T16:19:00.000-06:00

Rush Limbaugh's "Date Night" van

-Headline of the Day-
"Limbaugh On Cain Accusations: Political Correctness 'Has Now Spread To Behavior — Not Just Speech.'"

Rush Limbaugh has had it up to here with all this PC crap! Not only can't you say whatever you want without some liberal or minority or lady getting offended, now you can't even do whatever you want -- it's an outrage!

"Political correctness, which is censorship, has now spread to behavior -- not just speech," Rush told his audience of bobblehead dolls today. "It's spread to behavior." He then went on to pine for the good old days, when you could refer to women as "broads" and everyone was cool with it.

"I tell you, you women, why don’t you just make it official, put on some burqas?" he said, wrapping it all up in a neat bow of crazy. "And I’ll guaran-damn-tee you nobody’ll touch you. You put on a burqa, and everybody’ll leave you alone, if that’s what you want."

Of course, Herman Cain's problem isn't that it's politically incorrect to fondle an unwilling woman and pull her head down to your crotch -- it's pretty much legally incorrect. Cain's lucky he didn't walk away in handcuffs that day -- and not in a fun way.

But still, wouldn't it be better to live in Rush's world, where you can sexually assault any random person and have "Oh, don't be so PC!" as a perfectly legitimate defense?

Why, nowadays you can't roam around, doing whatever the fuck you want to whomever the fuck you want. It's like there's no anarchy anymore!

And is that really what the founders intended? (Talking Points Memo, with video)

-Herman Cain explains-

Click for full comic

That ought to clear everything up. (GoComics)

-Bonus HotD-
"Gazillionaire Mitt Romney Whines Gov’t Employees Earn More Than He Does."

No, really. (Wonkette, with video)

Poll: 99-Percenters' Argument Gains Traction

2011-11-08T12:29:00.000-06:00

The current economic structure of the country is out of balance and favors a very small proportion of the rich over the rest of the country. America needs to reduce the power of major banks and corporations and demand greater accountability and transparency. The government should not provide financial aid to corporations and should not provide tax breaks to the rich.

The block of text above was not lifted from an Occupy Wall Street protester's overly verbose sign, as much as it expresses common sentiment among the occupiers. No, that text was taken from an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll released last night. Respondents were asked if they "strongly agree, mildly agree, feel neutral about, mildly disagree, or strongly disagree" with the statement and the majority agreed -- overwhelmingly. 76% said they agreed with the statement, with 60% agreeing strongly.

In the same poll, respondents were asked if they agreed with a more tea-flavored statement; "The national debt must be cut significantly by reducing spending and the size of government,including eliminating some federal agencies and programs. Regulations on business by the federal government should be reduced and instead, the private sector and individuals should have greater control. The government should not raise taxes on anyone."

53% agreed, with 33% agreeing strongly. Obviously, there's some overlap here of those who want to be able to have their cake and eat it too. After all, you can't "reduce the power of major banks and corporations and demand greater accountability and transparency," while saying that "regulations on business by the federal government should be reduced and instead, the private sector and individuals should have greater control." It really has to be one or the other.

But the big takeaway here is that the first statement is wildly more popular than the second. ThinkProgress makes that distinction by removing that overlap and looking only at the "strongly agrees" -- filtered that way, the OWS-flavored statement is nearly twice as popular as the tea-flavored statement.

So Republicans can stop talking about "what the American people want" any time now. The American people clearly want that which the GOP most strongly opposes.

The same poll shows that, when asked if they approve of President Obama's handling of the economy, 59% disapprove. Not extremely surprising, given the state of the economy. But when it comes to who's responsible for that economy, 36% blame Wall Street, 34% blame George W. Bush, and only 21% blame Obama. So the president's low economic approvals aren't the result of people blaming him for problems, but because of his inability to fix them quickly enough.

And, when it comes to who's better on the economy -- Republicans or Obama -- the president clearly comes out on top. When asked who's to blame for not finding solutions to "the problems facing America," 56% blame congressional Republicans, 57% blame Democrats, and 36% blame President Obama.

Which goes a long way toward explaining why Obama is still preferred by the voters -- albeit narrowly. 45% say they'll probably vote for Obama, while 42% say they'll vote for a generic GOP nominee. But when you get more specific, the GOP presidential field does worse; Obama leads the top named candidate -- Mitt Romney -- 49% to 43%. And Herman Cain gets trounced, 38% to 53%. The GOP field is echoing congressional Republicans, which won't serve them well in the general election.

But go back to that first, OWS-flavered statement. 76% agree with that. The national conversation has turned from deficit reduction (foolish in a weak economy in any case) to economic inequality. A year ago, that would've seemed unthinkable. It's clear that, in this economic debate, Occupy Wall Street is winning.

-Wisco

News Roundup for 11/7/11

2011-11-07T16:27:00.000-06:00

Herman Cain conducts a job interview

-Headline of the Day-
"Fourth accuser: Cain 'reached for my genitals.'"

Herman Cain's sexual harassment scandal has, in the words of ThinkProgress' Ian Millhiser, been "upgraded to criminal sexual abuse." Of course, that's assuming the obviously Occupy-Wall-Street-supporting hippie commie America-hater is telling the truth.

And that accuser is Sharon Bialek, a registered Republican and tea party supporter. So there's that. No word on whether she wants to bring down the neo-feudal corporatist structure, but I'm going to go out on a limb and guess no.

According to Bialek, she met Cain to discuss finding a job in 1997. "At that time, I had on a black pleated skirt, suit jacket and a blouse," she said. "Instead of going into the offices, he suddenly reached over and he put his hand on my leg, under my skirt and reached for my genitals. He also grabbed my head and brought it towards his crotch." I guess Herman was confused about what sort of "job" she was looking for.

"I said, 'What are you doing? You know I have a boyfriend. This isn’t what I came here for,'" she recalled. "Mr. Cain said, 'You want a job, right?'"

"She reached out to Mr. Cain for help in finding another job," Bialek's attorney Gloria Allred explained. "Mr. Cain, instead, decided to provide her with his idea of a stimulus package."

Oh for chrissake, Gloria. Don't. Just don't. (Raw Story, with video)

-It's not all bad news-
There is a big winner in all this, after all:

Click to embiggen

Look at it this way Republicans; you're not losing a frontrunner, you're gaining someone who will have to do for the time being. (McClatchy)

-Bonus HotD-
"Report: News Corp. hired investigators to spy on hacking victims’ lawyers."

Wait, Rupert hired people to spy on the lawyers of the people he was spying on?

Scandals should really have less recursion, is all I'm saying. (Raw Story)