Republicans, Disasters, and Their Idea of a 'Real America'

Steve Benen believes we won't be seeing a big disaster relief fight over the tornado disaster in Oklahoma. I hope he's right. The Republican Party's refusal to fund relief after Hurricanne Sandy was shameful at best, anti-American at worst. While Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn quickly decided to hold his constituents hostage to budget cuts, he doesn't have a lot of allies in that effort. By yesterday, he was already forced into damage control mode and the rest of the GOP was taking the opposite position.


Many prominent Republicans sounded downright Democratic yesterday. Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), who opposed Sandy relief, said, "Finding some way to offset is not the priority. Meeting the known and immediate needs as quickly as possible is the priority." House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) added, "I really don't think disasters of this type should be offset. We have an obligation to help those people. We'll worry about our budgetary items back here, but the aid has to be there."

Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) said, "I think they should get every penny they need. I've been through this. We can do the political games later on, the important thing is to get them the aid as quickly as they need it and not to make a political issue out of it." Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) added, "[A]t the end of the day my objective here is to make sure the people here get the help they need in a timely fashion."


"Here's hoping we'll see a return to traditional American norms when it comes to post-disaster aid. For generations," Benen writes. "Congress didn't fight over offsets in the wake of a crisis, it simply moved to help American communities in their time of need. That changed after Republicans took control of the House in 2010, but given GOP reactions yesterday, we may be seeing the first signs that the party is rethinking the utility of its posture."

What we need to remember, however, was that Sandy happened right before the election. President Obama got a little bounce for his competent handling of the crisis and New Jersy Governor Chris Christie praised him for his leadership. It wasn't the deciding factor in the election, but it was a deciding factor, with 41% of respondents in a one exit poll saying it was either the "most important factor" in casting their vote or just an "important factor."

If there's one thing we know about Republicans, it's that they're petty. They made up excuses to hold up Sandy relief, citing non-existent pork. James Inhofe, Oklahoma's other senator, said that it was just a bad time to deal with the problem. "There’s always a lot of theater right before Christmas time..." he said. "We shouldn’t be talking about it right before Christmas." Of course, this was after his party held up the bill for two months.

Of course, Sandy was very different from the tornado in Oklahoma. Sandy wiped out Democratic neighborhoods. Oklahoma is another story. The state voted for Mitt Romney over Barack Obama in a complete rout: 66.8% to 33.2%, In the county where the tornadoes hit, Mitt didn't do as well, but he did extremely well nonetheless: 58.3% to 41.7%.

It could simply be that their unwillingness to aid their fellow citizens in a time of crisis was one of the many things for which Republicans have taken a beating in public opinion. In which case, Benen may get his wish and see a return to normalcy for generations. Their experiment in post-disaster stinginess didn't turn out as well as they'd hoped.

But if the reason for the sudden Republican generosity of spirit is the political identity and demographics of the victims, then probably not. Given the way the party has behaved in recent years, that motivation is not something I would put passed them. Republicans have decided that entire regions of the country are less American than others. It's not unusual to hear a conservative rail against "east coast liberals" or "San Franscisco values." In her run with John McCain, Sarah Palin appealed to small towns as the "Real America," suggesting that urban voters weren't sufficiently American for the Republican party.

Can we trust these people not to punish regions they don't like by withholding aid? Until they prove otherwise, I'm going to say it's at least possible that we can't.

-Wisco

[photo by The National Guard]

A Vanishing Opportunity to Turn the Tables on the GOP

Politico called last week a "political gift" for Republicans. The convergence of three controversies had a fading political party drooling. Of course, Benghazi was an entirely made up conspiracy theory, the IRS story may or may not be scandalous but doesn't involve the White House, and seizing phone records from the AP is the sort of thing Republicans can actually get behind in their never-ending War on Terror.

Still, the press went a little nuts with the stories on an otherwise slow news week and Republicans began to believe the hype. Wall-to-wall coverage of these three stories merged into one rat king of story and the nation was transfixed. Completely and utterly transfixed.

Or were we?


CNN: President Barack Obama comes out of what was arguably the worst week of his presidency with his approval rating holding steady, according to a new national poll.

But a CNN/ORC International survey released Sunday morning also indicates that congressional Republicans are not overplaying their hand when it comes to their reaction to the three controversies that have consumed the nation's capital over the past week and a half. And the poll finds that a majority of Americans take all three issues seriously.

According to the survey, which was conducted Friday and Saturday, 53% of Americans say they approve of the job the president is doing, with 45% saying they disapprove. The president's approval rating was at 51% in CNN's last poll, which was conducted in early April.


So Americans take these issues seriously, but not seriously enough to change their opinion of the president. "The CNN poll is in-line with Gallup, which also indicated a very slight rise in Obama's approval rating over the same time period," the report continues. "And Gallup's daily tracking poll also indicated a slight upward movement of Obama's approval rating over the past week. But as with the CNN poll, it was within that survey's sampling error."

The only polling that shows the President taking even a hint of a beating over this stuff is the right-leaning and historically inaccurate Rasmussen. So of course, that's the one all the wingnuts are running to -- poll trutherism still runs deep on the right. For them, the accuracy of polling is measured by how well the findings repeat what you want to hear. Other polling the right is ignoring shows people are following their "gift" of a scandal bouquet at "at levels below historic averages" -- suggesting the stories aren't as gripping as the sensationalist press and desperate Republicans would like them to be. I'd say the trio was running out of steam, but I doubt it ever had a full head of steam to begin with.

Now would be the time to take these stories away from the GOP and turn their scandal around on them. If you want an example of a political gift, take the story that Republicans edited emails relating to Benghazi and leaked them to the press. This should be a huge scandal for Republicans; they were caught lying to keep their sinking Benghazi controversy afloat, which does double damage. First, they were exposed while trying to frame the administration and the State Department with counterfeit emails, which is bad enough on its own. But second, it proves that Benghazi is BS, which is more damaging to them -- after all, if the story was solid, you wouldn't have to lie to prop it up.

But the administration is not taking advantage of the GOP's tremendous misstep. And I'm at a loss to explain it. If you get the chance to take control of the narrative, then you take control of the narrative. That should be chiseled into a massive stone monument in the White House basement. They can't make these stories go away, but they can outshine them. If the media moths are drawn to the flame of a trio of "scandals" the GOP is hyping, you just build a bigger bonfire right next to it. Republicans just handed them the match. Contrary to what CNN's pollsters think, the GOP has overplayed their hand here -- drastically and potentially catastrophically -- but someone needs to call them on it. The press isn't, the White House should.

The opportunity is quickly fading. Already, this is turning into a scandal for ABC News, who published the false information, instead of for the Republican Party who leaked it. Yes, ABC's Jonathan Karl is a rightwing tool who was more than happy to aid the cause by reporting the party's BS. But it is, in the end, the party's BS -- not ABC's nor Karl's. The fault for the lie is with the liar, those who knowingly repeat the lie are merely henchmen. But if this media scandal narrative goes on for much longer, Republicans will be -- for all intents and purposes -- let off the hook for a deeply dishonest and shameful act of politically-motivated fraud. It may even be criminal, since it's akin to forgery. It is, without a doubt, a moral failing at the very least. It's an act unbefitting a party in this democracy and another example of how far from the principles of honesty and integrity the GOP has wandered.

But as to why the White House isn't running with it? You got me. Maybe they were just riding out last week, afraid the story would be buried by all the hype, and will pick it up today. But that doesn't seem to be happening. Meanwhile, it's just sticking out there -- a big festering obvious boil on the GOP's butt. There has to be some reason why the administration doesn't reach out and give it a swift kick, but for the life of me, I can't figure out what that reason could be.

-Wisco

[cartoon via Truthdig]

Republicans Need to Dig Up Some Better 'Scandals'

Want a scandal? Here's a scandal:


Salon: Try, if you can, to ignore all the lurid coke-and-sex bombshells contained in the three Department of Interior Inspector General reports about the shenanigans at the U.S. Minerals Management Service (MMS). The program director who snorted speed off a subordinate’s toaster oven, and made her give him a blow job while driving around the neighborhood. The two “MMS Chicks” who were notorious for getting plastered at conventions and having one-night stands with oil industry employees.

Try — and yes, I know it’s hard — try even to ignore the allegation that one program director told a subordinate that if she could score him some coke during the MMS performance appraisal period, he would increase her performance award. What’s the big deal? Who wouldn’t be motivated by such an incentive? And what’s a little drunken sex and coke binging on government time among friends? It happens to the best of us.

The significance of the three reports delivered by the inspector general to Congress on Wednesday lies not in the prurience of some of the indiscretions, but in the symbolism. The Royalty-in-Kind Program of the U.S. Minerals Management Service is where offshore drilling meets the U.S. government. And gosh, is it ever one heck of a mess. You want a toxic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico? Just read the reports.


You'll happy to know that this isn't happening now, but in the misty, far-flung past of bustling 2008. This was the Bush administration's scandal and it was bad. The MMS was responsible for leasing federal land for oil and natural gas drilling. And it was corrupt nearly beyond belief. An Inspector General found not only ethical breaches, but criminal misconduct in an agency who's mission had changed under the Bush administration from serving the interests of the American people to making as much money as possible for the oil and gas industry. The agency was basically run by lobbyists, practically guaranteeing malfeasance. After the Deepwater Horizon disaster, the agency was finally eliminated under Interior Department restructuring.

I don't bring this up to try to distract from the current controversies plaguing the White House, but to make a simple point; as salacious and shocking as it was at the time, no one talks about the MMS scandal anymore. Of course, the Bush administration had four colossal scandals that leap immediately to mind: the failure to take terrorism seriously, resulting in 9/11; the lies and hype about WMD that led to the invasion of Iraq; the awful response to Hurricane Katrina; and the use of torture. There were also warrantless wiretaps, blowing the cover of Valerie Plame, Dick Cheney getting hammered and shooting some poor guy in the face, and some I'm either forgetting or skipping over for the sake of brevity. In the scandal-production department, the Bushies were overachievers.

Still, you'd think that sex and drugs would sustain people's attention. But in the end, people were fired, people were found guilty of crimes, and America moved on. What really sank the story was that beyond the orgy atmosphere, the story became stultifyingly dull. The actual scandal was about the way the payments were made for leases and how those payments were abused. MMS was using a program called "royalties-in-kind" (RIK), where instead of paying rent with actual money, companies would pay in oil and gas, which MMS would then sell to raise revenue. This resulted in a circle-jerk of corruption, with the MMS renting storage for all this oil and gas from pipeline companies and tank farms. All very bad for American consumers and taxpayers -- and all very boring.

What the controversies involving the White House today lack is that easily understandable hook. If the MMS scandal had only been about meth and blow jobs, it might have had more of a lasting impact on the American memory. But the core controversy was something not so accessible. If all you talked about was drug parties and sexual misconduct, you'd be practicing journalistic malpractice because -- as bad as those things were -- they were not the source of the big crimes. And eventually the public just lost interest.

This is the problem Republicans face with Benghazi -- except they don't even have sex parties and drugs to work with. The GOP timeline for their scandal is hopelessly convoluted and overly-complicated -- Occam's Razor hacks it to bits. You barely even get started explaining it and people's eyes glaze over. Beyond making no sense, the Republican Benghazi story is boring as all get-out and too complicated to follow. As a result, no one but Republicans care and no one but Republicans believe the Republicans.

The Tea Party/IRS controversy has a different problem -- once you take a close look at it, it's hard to see what the supposed "scandal" actually is. It's turning out that the IRS scrutinized organizations on both the left and the right and, of those, turned down tax-exempt status for none of the Tea Party groups. Only a lefty group was denied. Further, people are more likely to start wondering how in Hell a Tea Party group can be classified as a charity and not political. If anything, it highlights a flaw in the system, where political groups are getting a free ride on the taxpayers' dime (and isn't the Tea Party supposed to be against things like that, anyway?). They'll make hay with this and throw around a bunch of victim cards, but -- like Benghazi -- this "scandal" has been on life support since the day it was born.

Finally, there's the AP phone records scandal. That's the one that's probably the most genuine and that's the one Republicans are the least interested in. The problem here: Republicans wanted leaks chased down and they're big fans of monitoring private communications in the name of national security. The media will talk about this one a lot, because it involves themselves and their interests, but Republicans are mainly on a fishing expedition here -- they're hoping someone screwed up and seized phone records illegally. If they don't find evidence of a crime, they're walking away from this one.

Unless Republicans can manage to scare up a good old-fashioned hookers-and-blow scandal -- and only hookers and blow -- their second terms scandal line-up is looking a little weak. They're hoping for Watergate and all they have are Whitewaters.

-Wisco

[photo via Des Moine Register]

Using the Threat of Violence to Shut Down Debate

You didn't have to be Nostradamus to see it coming, but I'll take credit for it anyway. When Mayors Against Illegal Guns announced they'd be holding rallies in eight states Mother's Day weekend, I wrote, "Expect armed goons to show up to at least one of these, because if there’s anything the gun nuts really lack, it’s class and a nose for good PR." Lo and behold, at a rally in Pennsylvania, said goons showed up.


PhillyBurbs.com: As victims of gun violence spoke about how universal background checks might have saved a loved one’s life, pro-gun supporters jeered and yelled remarks Saturday in Morrisville’s Williamson Park.

Steve Kesselman of Holland raised his voice above the crowd to briefly talk about the loss of his 20-year-old son from a deadly shotgun blast after an argument last year. 

“My son is dead! His mother cannot enjoy him anymore because of gun violence! Universal background checks is all we’re looking for. I have nothing against guns!” Kesselman yelled into the microphone.

“Do you believe in unicorns?!” a pro-gun supporter yelled from the crowd.


"Gun owners from groups such as Concerned Gun Owners of Bucks County, the National Rifle Association and a New Jersey group called the NJ2As gathered at Williamson Park before the marchers arrived," according to the report. "Many wore guns and rifles."

“I think it’s ridiculous the way they’ve been acting. I’m so numb to the idiots out there," Kesselman said of the armed counter-protesters.

I don't want to refer to my own writing on the subject too often, but I've been on a bit of a tear lately, so the info I've for previous posts is the info I have closest at hand. So I'm going to go ahead and refer back to a post from last week, where I argued that things like armed protests should be taken as open threats of violence on par with terrorism:


So you’ve got people who hate government and want to kill tyrants. And these are the same people who see tyranny under every rock. Polling shows that nearly half of all Republican voters think armed revolution "might be necessary" in the near future. A reasonable person wouldn’t be out of line to wonder when all this tyrant-fighting was going to start and it wouldn’t be unreasonable to think it could be any second now. And when they hear about a terrorist attack with an unknown motive, it’s not unreasonable to wonder if maybe all this tyrant-killing has finally gotten under way.


When people argue that violence, murder, and assassination are legitimate political tools, brandishing firearms is meant to frighten people into silence. It's bullying and, like all bullies, these bullies are cowards. Anyone who shouts in the face of a peaceful grandmother isn't a model of courage. And anyone who heckles a father speaking about death of his son is not a paragon decorum. These people don't want to have a debate. In fact, they're so terrified of the discussion that they'll show up with guns to try to shut it down. These people call themselves "patriots," but they're really just cowardly thugs. Courageous people don't need to hide behind their weapons.

And they're ineffective thugs, at that. They couldn't shut down the rally in Morrisville and they won't stop the growing movement to reduce gun violence, because the issue is way too important. It's not going to get derailed by a bunch of tantrum-throwing toddlers afraid someone's going to take away their binky. That importance was underscored the very next day, with a Mother's Day mass shooting in New Orleans. Nineteen people were injured while attending a parade, when three men opened fire on the crowd. Two of the victims are children.

So wave your guns around and menace old ladies and jeer at grieving fathers all you want, gun nuts. We're not going anywhere. Every time there's a mass shooting or a dead kid, it strengthens our resolve. And if you feel the need to wave your guns around in a crowd of families and children, you're just proving our point. We're pretty convinced you shouldn't be able to do that.

If you want to have a rational discussion about how to deal with gun violence, that's fine. We may not agree on everything and may walk away as divided as we were before, but that's the way it's supposed to work. Democracy's not supposed to be easy or comfortable all the time. But if your idea of "debate" is to stick a gun in someone's face and tell them to shut up, then we don't have a lot to talk about.

You're nothing but a goon and you're part of the problem.

-Wisco

[photo via PhillyBurbs.com]

A Child-Killer Twice as Deadly as Cancer

Mediaite's Tommy Christopher believes he's seeing an epidemic of child-related shootings in recent days. He identifies twelve accidental shootings by children -- nine involving toddlers -- in the month of April. And the string of tragedies continues, with news of a three year-old boy shooting and killing himself in Florida with his uncle's 9mm. Although the gun was left carelessly in a backpack, the state had deemed Jeffrey Walker a "responsible gun owner" and granted him a concealed carry permit. The uncle's gun, no doubt carried out of concern for safety, did absolutely nothing to protect his loved ones against a child's curiosity. This Officially Responsible Gun Owner was arrested and charged with culpable negligence for exposing a minor to a firearm -- a felony.

Christopher's list of incidents is horrifying, including a ten-month-old infant shot in the face by a three year-old and a "four year-old who shot and killed his aunt in a room full of adults, including a sheriff’s deputy who was also a school resource officer."

Christopher includes in his report a "disturbing statistic" from a story about a six year-old shot in the chest by her brother:


According to the Children’s Defense Fund, one-third of all households with children younger than 18 have a gun, and more than 40 percent of gun-owning households with children store their guns unlocked.

The fund also reported that 22 percent of children with gun-owning parents handled guns in their homes without their parents’ knowledge.


Which begs the question: is this a sudden epidemic child-related gun violence or is this just the bloody background noise to American life -- a constant string of tragedies that have become so normal here that we don't give it any more thought than car accidents?

It didn't take much digging to get my answer.


USA Today: In 2010, 15,576 children and teenagers were injured by firearms — three times more than the number of U.S. soldiers injured in the war in Afghanistan, according to [the Children's Defense Fund].

Nationally, guns still kill twice as many children and young people than cancer, five times as many than heart disease and 15 times more than infection, according to the New England Journal of Medicine.

"We see guns as much of a threat in their life as we used to see bacteria and viruses," said Dr. Judith S. Palfrey, a past president of the American Academy of Pediatrics and the co-author of the New England journal report. "If you look at what's actually killing children and disabling children, guns is one of the major things."


This is nothing new. In 2012, Reuters reported that the American Academy of Pediatrics was calling for "strictest possible regulation of gun sales, as well as more education for parents on the dangers of having a gun at home, to prevent deaths of kids and teens." And even if you're an extremely cautious gun owner, locking your guns away in a gun safe or using trigger locks, you're not statistically doing any good. A 2006 study reports, "Parents who locked their guns away and discussed gun safety with their children were as likely to be contradicted as parents who did not take such safety measures."

In other words, it makes no difference how difficult you make it for kids to get a hold of your guns -- there are so many reckless gun owners out there that your neighbor's carelessness probably cancels you out. And the people who think they've taught their children not to handle guns stand a good chance of being wrong. The same report tells us, "Many parents who were living in homes with firearms and who reported that their children had never handled firearms in their homes were contradicted by their children's self-reports."

No, it's not a sudden epidemic. "People tend to only pay attention to gun safety issues after these mass killings but this is happening all the time to our children and it’s totally preventable," says Angela Sauaia, M.D., Ph.D., of the Colorado School of Public Health and the University of Colorado School of Medicine and author of a study on children and guns.

This is the wallpaper in American life -- so constant that we don't see it any longer. A blood soaked status quo where children are sacrificed to some twisted version of "liberty" and -- in a demented and cruel irony -- a completely erroneous conception of personal safety. How many of these firearms that resulted in the deaths of children were supposedly there to protect the family?

We do things about childhood cancer. We fight it. But firearms result in more dead kids in America than cancer -- by a 2:1 ratio -- and people tell us we're completely helpless to do anything about it. For these gun worshipping morons, the answer to gun violence is always more guns. But how do you use a gun to protect a toddler from an unsecured gun? Do you shoot the kid to stop her from shooting herself? Unsecured guns are the problem and it's time we dealt with it.

And can we please put the myth of the "responsible gun owner" being the majority to bed? When studies show that American guns are so loosely secured that locking up your own guns is statistically meaningless in protecting your children, we can safely assume that a huge percentage of gun owners do not deal with their firearms responsibly. If responsible gun owners will have to be inconvenienced by gun safety regulations, then it sucks to be you. But frankly, I don't care. Blame the massive percentage of gun owners who are clowns, not the people who want to protect their kids from those clowns. Put the blame where the blame belongs; not with the regulators, but with the irresponsible and incautious dopes who leave firearms where anyone can get at them. If I just described you (and if you're a gun owner, there's a good chance I did), then too bad -- you suck. Take that energy you're using to be so offended and use it to do something about all your stupidly easily accessible firearms.

We have to have priorities. Putting the safety of children above the ability for any moron to have as many guns laying around as they want is responsible prioritizing. If you own firearms and you don't see that, then you're not a responsible gun owner. As we've already established, you suck.

-Wisco

[photo by spaceabstract]