Griper Blade

A Vanishing Opportunity to Turn the Tables on the GOP

2013-05-20T10:31:00.000-05:00

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."

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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]

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Republicans Need to Dig Up Some Better 'Scandals'

2013-05-16T10:41:00.001-05:00

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.

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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]

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Using the Threat of Violence to Shut Down Debate

2013-05-13T10:43:00.000-05:00

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."

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“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]

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A Child-Killer Twice as Deadly as Cancer

2013-05-09T10:38:00.000-05:00

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?

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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]

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Poll Shows Guns, Immigration 'Top Priorities' for Voters -- Queue the Rightwing Spin

2013-05-08T10:42:00.000-05:00

It's a poll that sure to get a lot off attention -- and spin -- from the right. A new Gallup poll shows that most voters rate "reducing gun violence" and "reforming immigration" as top priorities. The problem is that this percentage is on the lower end of the scale from economic issues.

Part of the problem is that Gallup gives their analysis of the poll the completely inaccurate title of "Americans Give Guns, Immigration Reform Low Priority." The poll shows that 55% of Americans rate gun violence and 50% rate immigration reform as "top priorities" and 20% and 32% think that the respective issues are of medium priority. It's hard to see how those numbers are bad news for people advocating for either issue. It's just that fewer are rating those issues as priorities over economic issues. People don't think immigration and gun violence are "low priority," as Gallup's headline would make it seem. Majorities think they're high priority. In fact, Gallup specifically asked in they were low priority and the response was overwhelming. Only 13% believe that immigration reform is a low priority, while 17% believe the same about gun violence.

Gallup even admits to comparing specific apples to very broad oranges:

"Creating jobs" and "helping the economy grow" are of course broad and diffuse goals that do not easily translate into specific legislation. And even though there is significant consensus across party lines that these two issues should be given high priority, there are fundamental party disagreements on the broad approach that can be taken to achieve these goals. These disagreements no doubt have kept the Congress and the president from moving forward on these issues -- but to the degree that these elected representatives feel it is their duty to follow the wishes of those they represent, they would renew their focus on efforts to come to consensus on reaching these goals."

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The short take to that is that "creating jobs" and "helping the economy grow" are vague notions that always score high. In answering those questions, respondents could have very different approaches in mind. To one person, these could mean another round of economic stimulus; to another, big giant tax cuts for the "job creators." Meanwhile, gun violence and immigration reform are not only more specific agenda items, but suggest very specific legislation being debated in Washington at this very moment in history. In fact, the more vague the question, the more positive the answer across the board. "Creating more jobs" and "helping the economy grow" score higher than more specific policy-related questions like "reducing the deficit" and "improving access to healthcare." The maddeningly vague but oh-so enticing sounding "making government work more efficiently" scores big, despite the fact that it could mean anything from increasing budgets so departments and agencies don't have to cut corners to privatizing everything and turning the nation into a Libertarian Utopia. It means whatever you want it to mean, so of course it's very popular.

But the big takeaway from this poll isn't that people should forget about gun violence and immigration reform, the takeaway is that prioritizing these issues wouldn't be politically expensive. When majorities say that issues are of top priority, you're doing OK. And even people who say an issue is of "medium priority" won't be disappointed to see it addressed -- after all, they do agree that it's a priority. Despite Gallup's poor wording in their headline, their poll shows that majorities would like to see gun violence and immigration reform addressed as a top priority.

As I said, the right will try to spin this to scare politicians away from these two issues -- in fact, they already are. But anyone who looks at the numbers closely will see that the soft-on-crime and anti-immigrant arguments do very poorly here -- which is why they're glomming onto the headline, instead of the actual report.

-Wisco

[photo via KB35]

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If the Right Doesn't Like Being Suspected of Terrorism, They Should Stop Talking Like Terrorists

2013-05-07T10:25:00.000-05:00

I’m not sure how to start this one, but I know where I want to go with it. So let’s just jump right in.

Associated Press: FBI officials said Monday they foiled a terrorist attack being planned in a small western Minnesota town, but they offered no details about the exact targets of the attack _ or the motive of the man accused of having a cache of explosives and weapons in a mobile home.

The FBI said "the lives of several local residents were potentially saved" with the arrest of Buford Rogers, 24, who made his first appearance Monday in U.S. District Court in St. Paul on one count of being a felon in possession of a firearm.

Rogers, of Montevideo, was arrested Friday after authorities searched a mobile home he’s associated with and found Molotov cocktails, suspected pipe bombs and firearms, according to a court affidavit.

ABC News’ Matthew Jaffe reports via Twitter that the FBI told him Buford is a "militia type" -- meaning one of those rightwing extremist domestic terrorists we’ve all been assured are imaginary. And that’s enough to trigger a whine from the right. The wingnut blog Jammie Wearing Fool would like to inform you that the real victim here is the Tea Party.

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We’re just applying the mainstream media standard for reportage here. C’mon, a guy name Buford with a so-called assault rifle living in a trailer park? Why he has to be a tea party guy, right? He meets every possible stereotype. Of course we have no evidence to support that assertion, but that hasn’t stopped the left from wild speculation any time there’s a terror incident or mass shooting.

Yeah, no evidence of terrorism -- other than the FBI saying they’ve stopped a terrorist attack. How completely irresponsible of the lamestream media to repeat the things they’re told by law enforcement. No one’s actually saying the guy’s Tea Party, they’re saying he’s a rightwing nutjob. Granted, those would seem to be the same thing at first glance -- and most often are -- but it’s possible to be one without being the other. Think vanilla and French vanilla.

But how whiny is it that JWF feels the need to jump right in immediately and proclaim media victimhood? This seems a bit like a hangover from the Boston bombing. When news of that broke, a lot of people -- responsibly, if you ask me -- warned not to jump to conclusions. It could’ve been an Islamic terrorist or could’ve been a rightwing extremist; we didn’t know.

And that was all it took.The rightwing blogosphere went nuts with victim cards. It turned out that acknowledging the very real possibility that the bombing was the work of a rightwinger was verboten by wingnut political correctness. And now they’re getting into niggling and pointless little distinctions; yes, the would-be mass-murderer was likely a rightwing fanatic -- but don’t you dare say he was part of the Tea Party!

Because... Well, I’m not sure about the because. Just because.

Consider how silly this all is. Imagine that this was the first rightwing domestic terrorist ever. Imagine that such an animal had never been seen in the wild before. But imagine the Republican Party and the Tea Party were exactly the same. They’ve been openly hostile to the very idea of government. They’ve been obsessed with guns and the need for the ability to kill members of the police, military, and government (what do you think "fighting tyranny" would actually look like, after all?). And, while talking about the need to kill tyrants, they also accuse everything they don’t agree with of being "tyranny." For chrissakes, curly fluorescent lightbulbs are supposedly tyranny.

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.

In other words; if you don’t want people to assume you’re a terrorist, don’t spend most of your time talking like a goddam terrorist. If you’re spending a lot of time talking about going to war with the American government and murdering and assassinating your fellow Americans, don’t whine when people assume you’re serious. And now that some rightwing nutjob is almost certainly an honest-to-goodness, for-real terrorist, we’ve got the right whining that Buford is not being classified as the correct kind of rightwing nutjob. Maybe it might be a good time to give it a rest, OK? Maybe turn off the victim machine for a bit, because it’s finally blown a logical gasket.

But if being called a terrorist bothers the right so much, maybe using a threat to use deadly violence any second now as a mantra isn’t the best way to approach politics. Maybe the best way to avoid being accused of terrorism is to stop talking like you’re a terrorist.

-Wisco

[photo via HowieInSeattle]

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NRA Turns to the Tried and Failed Politics of the Tea Party

2013-05-06T09:59:00.001-05:00

In some ways, new NRA president Jim Porter is the best thing to happen to the common sense regulators’ side of the argument. He approaches the issue with the same subtlety and finesse of a brain surgeon with a sledge hammer. He seems to be an all or nothing, slash and burn type, who practices rightwing politics of exclusion. Josh Horwitz, executive director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence says that Porter drags the National Rifle Association even farther "into the extremist camp."

"With Jim Porter, they’ve gone full crazy," he says.

He also represents just about every failed approach to national politics imaginable. At the NRA convention this weekend, he called for a "culture war" -- I guess because rightwing culture wars have gone so swimmingly lately. And yes, he is far outside the mainstream.

Talking Points Memo: Porter has called President Barack Obama a “fake president,” Attorney General Eric Holder “rabidly un-American” and the U.S. Civil War the “War of Northern Aggression.” On Friday, he repeated his call for training every U.S. citizen in the use of standard military firearms, to allow them to defend themselves against tyranny.

As I’ve pointed out before, calling for the taking up of arms to "fight tyranny" is just a more pleasant-sounding way of endorsing the assassination and murder of your fellow Americans. And "War of northern aggression" means exactly what it seems to mean; a revisionist take that puts the north at fault in the Civil War, completely ignoring and -- even denying -- the role of racism and slavery in launching that war. The exclusionist aim straight at white voters is unmistakable here and it’s the same tactic that’s cost Republicans black voters nearly universally. "Fake president" is an obvious birther reference. At a time when the Republican Party is trying to shed these tendencies, Porter drags them back in. I doubt he’s making many friends over at GOP HQ.

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You might remember Sharron Angle, a Tea Party candidate who ran in 2010. She was another Todd Akin type and what cost her election -- at least in part -- was her endorsement of "Second Amendment remedies" to deal with what she saw as an unresponsive congress and even to remove her election opponent, Harry Reid, from office. In other words, she pretty much endorsed assassinating Harry Reid and any other congress member who’s politics you don’t like. People found this kind of talk a tad bit terrorist-sounding.

And it's nearly indistinguishable from Porter’s rhetoric. I doubt the average person will like it any better coming from him. So we have an NRA president practicing failed rightwing politics and repeating far-right talking points that everyone else finds insane. But keep in mind that the NRA’s purpose here is different from the GOP’s. The Republican Party’s purpose is to get Republicans elected. The NRA’s purpose is to make money for small arms merchants. The NRA made an alliance with the GOP long ago, but that doesn’t mean they work hand in hand. What Porter’s trying to do here is pretty simple -- collect all the white male voters turned off by the GOP’s rebranding effort under the NRA banner. You get all the racists and the homophobes and the Christian supremacists and various and sundry other extremists, then you try to sell them back to the party. A big problem with the GOP rebranding effort has been in trying to win over new voters, while keeping these frootloops in the flock. Porter seems to believe he can turn these people into single-issue voters and use them as leverage to keep the GOP from caving in when the pressure builds.

And so NRA gatherings start to look like Tea Party rallies -- thinly veiled racism and all. It’s a bad strategy, because eventually the Republican Party will realize that pandering to these voters just plain isn’t worth it. After all, the rebranding effort is the first glimmer of a dawning realization that these people are costing more votes than they bring. But in the meantime, the NRA will do what the Tea Party did -- enable completely insane candidates to win primaries, then lose general elections with their frothing nutbaggery.

On the other hand, what else can Porter do? His "culture war" is already being fought and he’s losing it badly. Gun ownership is down, support for gun regulation is high -- all you can really do is buy time while you try to figure out how to turn this around.

The tone of the NRA convention was triumphalist, but the reality -- as made clear by the NRA’s strategy going forward -- is that their "movement" is treading water.

-Wisco

[photo by Gerald Rich]

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White House Makes Bad Call on Plan B

2013-05-02T09:50:00.000-05:00

Imagine if flu shots at pharmacies became a political football. People should not have easy access to flu vaccinations, because that only encourages risky behavior like riding in elevators or mass transit, going to public places like shopping malls, and having unnecessary contact with children. If we didn’t allow people easy access to flu vaccines, we wouldn’t be "rewarding" people who engage in this sort of risky behavior. With a more cautious population, the spread of influenza would actually decrease and America would be a better and healthier place because of it.

Right about now, you’re thinking that’s just crazy. And you’re right. Easy access to flu vaccines doesn’t encourage behaviors that lead to getting sick. In fact, pharmacy flu shots reduce the number of hospital stays by American children and does the same for people over fifty. The flu shot at the corner pharmacy doesn’t harm society, it helps it. I don’t imagine you’re very surprised. This is all very common sense and entirely predictable. The argument that easy access to flu vaccines leads to unhealthy behavior and an increase in flu cases is absurd on it’s face.

It’s also the logic behind this:

Wonkblog, Washington Post: The Justice Department filed notice late Wednesday that it will challenge a federal court decision requiring the government to make emergency contraceptives available over the counter to women of all ages.

The move came hours after the Food and Drug Administration approved over-the-counter sales of emergency contraceptives to women 15 and older. Previously, Plan B was available to teenagers younger than 17 only with a prescription. Older women had to request it from a pharmacist.

The Obama administration also asked the U.S. District Court of the Eastern District of New York to stay Judge Edward Korman’s early-April ruling, which is set to take effect Sunday.

“We are deeply disappointed that just days after President Obama proclaimed his commitment to women’s reproductive rights, his administration has decided once again to deprive women of their right to obtain emergency contraception without unjustified and burdensome restrictions,” Center for Reproductive Rights President Nancy Northup, who represents the defendants, said.

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I doubt the Obama administration actually believes that easy access to emergency contraception will automatically lead to fifteen year-old girls suddenly having all kinds of crazy sex, but that is the argument they’re caving in to. Whether because they think the fight will be a distraction or for some other reason, the White House is willing to side with people making an insane and stupid argument against over-the-counter emergency contraception.

And the most obvious conclusion to draw here is that they think the issue is trivial. So a kid here and there gets knocked up before she’s ready and ruins her future. So what? There are plenty of teenagers where they came from. America will be fine... even if these kids are not.

The fact is that there is no scientific reason for keeping emergency contraception from anyone capable of childbearing. Putting age limits and restrictions on Plan B is a political decision, not one based on health science. It serves no purpose other than to mollify nutjobs who promote an argument as stupid as saying that ambulances cause car wrecks, because people know they can drive irresponsibly and get rescued if things go wrong. The White House wants to avoid a fight with these people -- people who desperately need to be fought and defeated -- for reasons that are unclear. What is clear is that they don’t think teenage girls are worth the bother.

If they had just ignored the "problem," threw up their hands, and said, "Looks like the courts settled it. Let’s move on," it seems likely that there would’ve been very little blowback. The people who want to keep emergency contraception away from teenagers are probably not very numerous. A few anti-choice nutjobs who think all birth control is identical to abortion, mixed with perpetually panicked reactionaries who spend their days terrified that someone is having some sort sex somewhere that they should disapprove of. They’re clawing their eyes out every day over some "outrage" or other anyway. Screw ’em. They like freaking out. Why spoil their fun?

And let’s not just gloss over the problem of crisis pregnancies in teenagers. If they can’t get emergency contraception, that’s bad enough. But they also face more roadblocks to abortion than other pregnant women. The result can be tragic. If there’s one thing we know about women seeking abortion, it’s that they do it because they think it’s necessary. They’ll risk their lives to end a pregnancy -- and there’s no rational reason on Earth why they should have to, especially when you can prevent one in the first place.

Flu shots may not be a political football, but emergency contraception is. The smartest, most responsible thing for an administration to do here isn’t to punt, but to refuse to play football at all.

-Wisco

[photo by Marcus Q]

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If You're a Criminal and You Want a Gun, the GOP is Here to Help

2013-05-01T10:23:00.002-05:00

Yesterday, news of a confrontation over gun control was making the rounds. According to Greg Sargent, Democrats were sending the story around to columnists and bloggers, making sure they got wind of it. It’s not surprising, it’s a helluva story.

NBC News: Bringing the national gun debate to a tiny New England town on Tuesday, the daughter of the slain principal of Sandy Hook Elementary confronted Sen. Kelly Ayotte at the lawmaker’s first town hall meeting since she voted against expanded background checks on all commercial gun sales.

Erica Lafferty, who first met with the Republican senator in Washington earlier this month after she opposed the compromise negotiated by Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Pat Toomey, R-Pa., was visibly angry as she spoke into the microphone at the meeting, which drew more than 100 people who came to condemn or support Ayotte’s vote.

"You had mentioned that day the burden on owners of gun stores that the expanded background checks would harm. I am just wondering why the burden of my mother being gunned down in the halls of her elementary school isn’t more important than that," said Lafferty, whose mother Dawn Hochsprung was gunned down by Newtown shooter Adam Lanza.

Ayotte responded at the Warren, N.H., meeting: "Erica, I, certainly let me just say -- I’m obviously so sorry."

"And, um, I think that ultimately when we look at what happened in Sandy Hook, I understand that’s what drove this whole discussion -- all of us want to make sure that doesn’t happen again," Ayotte said.

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Sargent brings up a great point. That it’s not preventing the exact Sandy Hook scenario and only that exact scenario that people like Lafferty are interested in; it’s preventing a future tragedy of any kind:

This debate isn’t just about preventing another Sandy Hook. It’s about doing something to stem an epidemic that continues to kill thousands of Americans per year. Despite the constant claims on the right that “expanded background checks wouldn’t have stopped Sandy Hook,” which is true, the families themselves don’t see this as relevant; they are pushing for gun control in order to prevent more shootings from tearing apart other people’s families later. “I’m not just here for the 26 that died at Sandy Hook,” another family member said recently. “If we can make any steps forward to help save lives, then it’s a step worth taking.” And, yes, there is plenty of evidence that expanding background checks would reduce gun crime.

But Ayotte’s response to Lafferty is deeply nonsensical. "All of us want to make sure that [Sandy Hook] doesn’t happen again" -- but doing something to make sure of it is another thing entirely. After hearing it, Lafferty stormed out of the town hall. "I had had enough," she explained afterward.

Ayotte’s more detailed position on the issue is hardly more complex than blowing out a birthday candle and wishing real hard, which her town hall response would suggest. Like all those who voted against expanding background checks, Ayotte insists we have to "enforce the laws we have" and do more to keep guns out of the hands of people who’ve been deemed incapable of owning firearms by the courts -- i.e., "keep them away from crazy people."

But how the hell are you supposed to do that if no one checks to make sure the guy buying a gun isn’t a deranged lunatic or convicted felon? In other words, how are we supposed to enforce the laws we have when clowns like the Hon. Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) keep voting against enforcement measures? People who technically aren’t allowed to buy guns face only the slightest inconvenience in acquiring firearms. In 2009, ABC News sent a buyer to a gun show to see how many background checks he could avoid. The result: "After one hour at the show, Omar walked away with a handful of guns, all purchased without one single background check." If you’re legally barred from purchasing a firearm, go to a gun show, go to an online seller, go to a garage sale. It’s just that easy. Without closing the gun show loophole, background checks are a pointless joke. The gun lobby and their stooges keep talking about some "black market" where criminals could buy guns. But there doesn’t have to be a black market. For all intents and purposes, the gun show loophole is the black market -- operating right out in the open, all the damned time. Even Al Qaeda knows about it.

The reason that Ayotte’s and the rest of her soft-on-crime colleagues’ arguments make no sense is not because they haven’t given the issue a lot of thought, but because their position is indefensible. They don’t want to close the gun show loophole because they’ve been paid off not to close the gun show loophole. It’s not about safety or liberty -- that’s all horsecrap -- it’s about selling guns and selling ammunition to criminals. Period. The rest is just rationalization and propaganda. It’s meant to scare gullible and cowardly chumps into supporting soft-on-crime politicians and buying lots and lots of guns themselves. They keep talking about how we should enforce the law, but vote against enforcement. It’s like disbanding a city’s police force, then complaining that no one’s doing anything about all this rape and mayhem. "Wow, crime sure is terrible, huh? Sure wish someone would do something about it. In the meantime, you’d better buy a pile of guns." The whole argument just stump dumb and shame on you if you’ve been stupid enough to fall for it.

Lafferty confronted Ayotte because Ayotte needed to be confronted over her wildly irresponsible vote. It wasn’t a vote in favor of liberty, it was a vote to preserve a loophole used by small arms merchants to sell guns to criminals. She needed to be confronted about it then and every damned day for the rest of her (preferably short) career in politics. And the same goes for the rest of them.

-Wisco

[photo by Mike Saechang]

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Arizona Offers the Very Latest in Stupid Gun Laws

2013-04-30T10:09:00.003-05:00

It’s one of those things that make very little sense at first glance. In the state where former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords suffered a catastrophic gunshot wound and several others were killed at the hand of an over-armed gunman, an effort to destroy unwanted guns and keep them off the streets is torpedoed by a soft-on-crime governor and legislature.

Associated Press: Arizona cities and counties that hold community gun buyback events will have to sell the surrendered weapons instead of destroying them under a bill Gov. Jan Brewer signed into law Monday.

The bill was championed by Republicans in the GOP-controlled Legislature who argued that municipalities were skirting a 2010 law that was tightened last year and requires police to sell seized weapons to federally licensed dealers. They argued that destroying property turned over to the government is a waste of taxpayer resources.

Democrats who argued against the bill said it usurps local control and goes against the wishes of people who turn over their unwanted weapons to keep them out of the hands of children or thieves.

Buybacks are popular among some police and elected officials who either pay cash or hand out gift cards in exchange for weapons. Tucson and other Arizona communities destroyed weapons from the events, arguing that because the guns were voluntarily surrendered, the laws concerning weapons seized by authorities didn’t apply.

Apparently, some people had trouble understanding the word "seized." Oddly enough (this being Arizona, after all), a lot of the legislators probably support "English-only" legislation. It’d be easier to take them seriously if they actually understood the language themselves.

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Of course, they do understand the language -- or at least, most do -- and the misunderstanding of the legal definition of "seizure" is deliberate. They’re arguing that a word means something other than what any legal dictionary will tell you it means as a pretext to undermine gun buybacks. But why on Earth would anyone oppose destroying guns that no one wanted in the first place?

There are a few reasons I can think of. None of them are good; at least one is simply childish and the rest are plain corrupt.

We’ll start with the childish. You may have noticed a certain contrarian streak in conservative thought. It’s the idea that if liberals are for it, it must be bad. It’s the jerking knee. There are people out there who deliberately waste money burning more fossil fuels than they need to on Earth Day, just because they think it makes liberals mad. Dickish, yes. But "dickish" and "conservative" are practically synonyms these days.

But that only explains why legislators in Arizona think passing this brainless law is fun. People don’t pass practical jokes as laws. What’s really behind this is what’s always behind conservative lawmaking -- money. Specifically, putting profit before every consideration in the world; before public health and safety, before the advice of law enforcement, before common sense. They do these things because someone will make a buck and -- just like loosening environmental or safety regulation at the bidding of big business -- they don't give a damn who gets hurt.

The first beneficiaries would be the arms dealers. Gun buyback programs generally bring in a lot of firearms and it’s likely those resellers would get a deal on them, just to get them out of the police impound. The profit potential could, in many cases, be tremendous.

The second beneficiaries would be arms manufacturers. Used guns do not use used bullets. Some handgun that’s been laying in a drawer since Uncle Ralph died is never going to be reloaded, unless it’s stolen. While gun buybacks are meant to reduce the number of stolen firearms on the street, most neglected guns aren’t stolen. And that means that every gun out there that some Aunt Sally just wants to be rid off represents a lifetime of lost sales. And if she gets rid of it at a gun buyback, that gun is destroyed and any chance of related sales are destroyed with it.

But someone who buys a used gun? Yeah, they’re planning on using it -- and that means they’re planning on loading it. Which means a couple of boxes of ammo to go with their newly purchased firearm -- and a couple more when those run out. Ka-ching! Those sales are lost no more.

Of course, it’s inevitable that some of these firearms that would otherwise be destroyed will be used in the commission of crimes. But you can’t make an omelet without shooting a few eggs in the face, right? Which is more important, the fate of some random, faceless prole or the profits of arms manufacturers? I mean really, what are you, a communist? When it comes to a choice between reducing crime and increasing profits, the gun lobby’s puppets will cast the soft on crime vote every time.

I’d hope that actually making it illegal to get guns off the street would be about the worst, most shameless law the pro-blood money could come up with. But I’m sure they’ll come up with something even more ridiculously evil down the road -- selling pistols out of vending machines in high schools, maybe. For now, it is the worst, the most corrupt, the cruelest gun law in the country.

-Wisco

[photo by M Glasgow]

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Romney Done In by Misplaced GOP Focus on Voter Suppression

2013-04-29T10:05:00.000-05:00

There’s an Associated Press story out there today that may reinvigorate the Generals in the Republican War on Voting. It seems that a certain demographic got a little too excited about the 2012 election and, for all intents and purposes, choose the winner in the presidential race.

Associated Press: America’s blacks voted at a higher rate than other minority groups in 2012 and by most measures surpassed the white turnout for the first time, reflecting a deeply polarized presidential election in which blacks strongly supported Barack Obama while many whites stayed home.

Had people voted last November at the same rates they did in 2004, when black turnout was below its current historic levels, Republican Mitt Romney would have won narrowly, according to an analysis conducted for The Associated Press.

Census data and exit polling show that whites and blacks will remain the two largest racial groups of eligible voters for the next decade. Last year’s heavy black turnout came despite concerns about the effect of new voter-identification laws on minority voting, outweighed by the desire to re-elect the first black president.

We see these numbers despite the fact that the Brennan Center For Justice estimated that Republican voter suppression efforts would disenfranchise as many as five million voters in 2012. Unfortunately for the Grand Old Party, a few of their anti-democratic efforts to keep minority voters from the polls didn’t go as well as they’d hoped. In the swing state of Wisconsin, for example, a voter ID law was struck down as unconstitutional. In a damning ruling, Dane County Circuit Judge Richard Niess wrote that the law was clearly about disenfranchising voters and that this was contemptible. "Voter fraud is no more poisonous to our democracy than voter suppression," he said.

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Of course, there’s the low white turnout to be contended with. The story makes it clear that if Republicans had put their effort into turning out white voters, rather than suppressing the black vote, November might have turned out differently. The story goes on to say it wouldn’t have taken much to change the outcome. "Romney would have erased Obama’s nearly 5 million-vote victory margin and narrowly won the popular vote if voters had turned out as they did in 2004... Then, white turnout was slightly higher and black voting lower," we’re told.

It says a lot about the party that they were more interested in "poisoning our democracy" with laws designed to chase minority voters from the polls, than they were with working within the system as it exists and turning out voters for their side. It’s almost stereotypically villainous of them to prefer shooing people away from the polls, instead of urging them to vote. It’s like they preferred an assault on democracy to good old-fashioned grassroots democratic efforts.

And this preference for dirty tricks over above board campaigning may very well have cost Mitt Romney the election -- so file this one in the "Serves them right" folder.

But of course, we already know that the base is driving the bus and the "Republican leadership" is a sham. And it’s not too difficult to predict how the right will take this story. Remember, if there’s one thing the wingnut base does not do, it’s realize they were wrong -- at least, not if they can avoid it. I can see this story accomplishing two things in rightwing media: actually reinforce the "black people stole the election" fantasy -- probably involving a zombie version of ACORN and/or the New Black Panther Party -- and the poll truther idea that polling was skewed in Obama’s favor prior to the election as part of a conspiracy to drive down Republican voter enthusiasm.

Neither take would be particularly sane. But this is the party where majorities believe Pres. Obama isn’t a citizen, that nearly every climate scientist on Earth is involved in a massive conspiracy to promote the "hoax" of global warming, and that the American public is going to start freaking out over Benghazi any second now. "Sane" isn’t on the GOP menu.

And of course, the whole thing leads to the one rock-solid Republican principle -- if what you’re doing isn’t working, you need to do more of it. If you squint and cock your head just right, it almost looks like voter suppression nearly worked. Just a tad fewer African-American voters and it all would’ve turned out differently (never mind all the missing white voters).

As always, Republicans will take what should be a pretty clear lesson, turn it on its head, and take what they want to learn away from it. For them, the lesson won’t be to worry less about who’s voting and more about who’s not. The lesson will be "this proves we’re heading in the right direction."

The story that should be the voter suppression movement’s epitaph will instead be the banner the suppressors march forward under. The big takeaway won’t be that being underhanded doesn’t work, it’s that they weren’t being underhanded enough.

-Wisco

[photo by Gage Skidmore]

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Soft-on-Crime Anti-Background Check Vote Does Damage

2013-04-25T09:38:00.001-05:00

With the retirement of Sen. Joe Lieberman, it looked like the era of Three Amigos might be over. By joining up with John McCain and Lindsey Graham, Lieberman joined a team of three Senators who were the source of some very bad ideas -- most of them involving throwing fistfuls or money at the Pentagon and Israel, backing military action as the only solution to pretty much every foreign policy problem, and attacking anyone unwilling to throw money and start shooting as muddleheaded, weak-in-the-face-of-terrorism wusses. It looked the Three Amigos had become two and America was in severe danger of benefiting from the loss. But along came young New Hampshire Republican Kelly Ayotte and the Two Amigos were Three again. Brainless militarism once again had three guaranteed advocates.

But the new lineup may not be long-lasting -- at least, not if the newest compañera keeps ignoring the will of her constituents.

Huffington Post: A new poll has New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R) down a total of 15 points from her previous approval rating in a survey that followed her vote against requiring background checks for firearms purchases.

Ayotte's plunge underscores the changing politics around gun control and gun safety. In years past, lawmakers worried that a vote for gun control would bring the anger of the National Rifle Association. In the new reality, votes against gun control also carry a political risk, as the Ayotte poll indicates.

A full three-quarters of New Hampshire voters support such background checks, along with 56 percent of Republicans, according to Public Policy Polling. A WMUR Granite State Poll taken in January and February found that more than 9 in 10 state residents supported implementing background checks at gun shows.

"In October, the last time that PPP surveyed voters about Ayotte, she had a 48-35 approval rating," Huffington Post reports. "She has now tumbled underwater, with 46 percent disapproving and 44 percent approving. The 11-point surge in disapproval threatens Ayotte's 2016 reelection, when she could face popular Democratic Gov. Maggie Hassan. Ayotte won her 2010 race by 23 points, but in a hypothetical matchup against Hassan trails 46-44."

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This isn't to say that every soft-on-crime vote will come with a cost for the Senator casting it. In fact, Nate Silver took a look at the question and found that it probably won't in a broad sense. Yes, people supported expanded background checks in overwhelming numbers, but supporting something and voting because of it are two different things. In a lot of races, voters may be disappointed in their Senators' votes on the background check bill, but that vote may be a lower priority than other issues. And Silver was looking at a more immediate impact in 2014, not the lasting impact of a protracted campaign by gun safety advocates through 2014, heading into the presidential campaign of 2016, and -- if necessary -- beyond.

The real stunner in the poll is in the almost overnight tumbling of the NRA from a seat of unquestionable power. Conventional wisdom of just a few months ago would've had Ayotte gaining votes and popularity, as the NRA ~~paid her off~~ rewarded her for helping leave the gunshow loophole wide open and allowing unlicensed gun dealers to continue to do business with criminals. But that pay off may not be enough to overcome the anger of New Hampshire voters -- and in any case, the pro-gun safety message clearly won the day there, even if Ayotte didn't realize it. The NRA's influence with New Hampshire voters seems to be pretty nonexistent.

Silver's piece looks at the background check vote as a 2014 hammer -- a bludgeon used against the party as a whole as an overriding strategy. But it may be that voting against curbing gun violence is a 2014, 2016, etc. scalpel; an ongoing, surgical effort to separate soft-on-crime senators and representatives from less gun-happy voting populations. After all, if the vote isn't hurting them nationwide, it's definitely hurting in New Hampshire. And if it's hurting in New Hampshire, it's got to be hurting elsewhere.

Gun-happy politicians and lobbyists are finding comfort in a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll. That poll found that, post-background check filibuster, voters favor stricter gun control by only 49%-45%. But that poll asks only about generic "gun control" and not specific legislation or policies. The history of polling on the issue is the same as it is on many issues: if you poll on the buzzphrases, the results are very different from polling on specifics. The NRA and Republicans have been approaching the issue with a simpleminded, fortune cookie approach -- "gun control" is bad. They've avoided specifics because, when you get into real proposals, policies, and solutions, they all turn out to be common sense and reasonable. So the right does what the right always does -- target jerking knees, rather than engaged minds. And polling shows that isn't getting them majorities -- their numbers are still underwater.

The big takeaway from the NBC/WSJ poll is that gun safety advocates should continue to talk about specifics and the takeaway from the Granite State Poll is that we should be selective in targeting politicians, peeling off the vulnerable and leaving others worried about their left flanks on the issue. I keep saying that this is a long fight, but a necessary one. If the Ayotte numbers show us anything, it's that the NRA is already losing the long game.

-Wisco

[photo by roberthuffstutter]

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Graham and McCain Exploit Boston Tragedy

2013-04-23T09:49:00.000-05:00

After the arrest of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in connection with the Boston bomb attacks, the nation's top unrepentant neocons -- John McCain and Lindsey Graham -- are currently engaged in a high-profile demonstration of grandstanding. The purpose of this posturing seems to be to showcase how Very Important and Serious they are, why you should have them on Meet the Press, and why you should vote for Graham instead of whatever random Tea Party nutjob the far right base will try to primary him with.

Graham and McCain would very much like Tsarnaev to be charged as an enemy combatant. Slate's Emily Bazelon spells out exactly why this is all pretense -- Graham knows this can't happen because "he helped write the 2009 law [pdf] that says Tsarnaev may not be tried as an enemy combatant and thus points away from holding him as one. But that’s not stopping Graham and the others from trying to score terror points—and, of course, trying to make the president appear weak. This isn’t about actually fighting terrorists. It’s about running for election."

So far, the rightwing blogosphere is following along like a brainless puppy. Mostly because they too are more interested in embarrassing Obama than rights or justice. After all, it was just weeks ago that half of them where defending the right of suspects like Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to due process in the case of drone attacks on American citizens. But that was because the Obama administration held the opposite view, not because they gave a damn. Now that an American citizen is not in the sights of a drone hitman, they're all wondering why anyone would be at all concerned about due process for terrorists. As always, consistency is not their strong point.

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But really, what would be the point of charging Tsarnaev as an enemy combatant anyway? Declaring him an enemy combatant would put him in the military tribunal system, rather than the criminal justice system. While military tribunals can be kangaroo courts (and that's the propaganda value for the Dimmer Twins -- to supposedly guarantee a conviction with sham justice), that's not the purpose of tribunals. Their purpose is the try actual international terrorists without compromising their value as intelligence assets. That's why certain rights recognized by criminal courts are ignored by tribunals. You don't get to see all the evidence against you, for example, because much of that evidence may still be classified and you can't possibly clear everyone involved in the case -- especially the defendant's lawyers. "Military tribunal" isn't shorthand for "super extra-mean court for people who don't deserve rights," as McCain and Graham apparently want you to see it. It's a very specific process for trying suspects while protecting the need to keep secrets. So the enemy combatant question isn't whether Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is an extra-bad guy, but whether he has any secrets the prosecution couldn't allow to be brought out in court.

And the answer to that is -- very , very clearly -- no. Despite a BS Daily Mirror story the rightwing blogosphere fell for, there's absolutely no reason to believe that the Tsarnaev's were working with any international terrorist organization or that Dzhokhar has any intelligence value at all. If you doubt that, check out Tim Murphy's listicle, "The 11 Most Mystifying Things the Tsarnaev Brothers Did," over at Mother Jones. It's enlightening.

According to the Mirror, the Tsarnaevs were so well-trained that they couldn't possibly have carried the bombings out on their own. Yet Murphy spells out some astonishingly brainless missteps that point not only to a lack of training, by a complete lack of any advance planning. Dzhokar made no effort at all to keep his face covered during the Marathon -- even going so far as to turn his hat backwards to expose his face -- despite being surrounded by hundreds of cameras. They ran out of money and used a hostage's card to rob an ATM. When they didn't get enough out of that machine, they tried another -- apparently unaware that ATMs are networked and giving prosecutors one more photo as evidence. That hostage escaped when the brothers stopped at a gas station to get snacks. They kept the hostage's cell, allowing police to track them using the phone's GPS. Among the weaponry they brought with them was a BB gun. A crack squad of highly trained international terrorists they were not.

And if they weren't working alone, how did they run out of money, anyway? Did Al Qaeda go broke at exactly the wrong time? For that matter, why did they have to resort to carjacking? People in terrorist sleeper cells would tend to have cars, I'd imagine. Someone could supply them with another. They were obviously alone, without support. The enemy combatant classification would make no sense.

The call to have Tsarnaev tried as an enemy combatant is shameless, grandstanding opportunism and nothing more. It's a PR move meant to make the president look weak, while making neocon tools like Graham and McCain look like they're super-serious about terrorism -- but a brief examination of the facts proves that they're not.

Like the anti-immigrant zealot Charles Grassley, these two are pimping tragedy to advance a political agenda. I'd say they should be ashamed, but the first qualification of a Republican candidate for anything seems to be shamelessness. So that's a dead end right there.

But that shouldn't stop you from being disgusted by them. They've taken a national tragedy and run with it, just as they did with 9/11. It's just as contemptible now as it was then.

-Wisco

[photo by isafmedia]

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Overlooked Earth Day

2013-04-22T09:32:00.001-05:00

Given the awful week we just went through, it might be easy to overlook Earth Day. After all, terrorist bombings and exploding fertilizer plants and a congress more interested in saving gun manufacturers' profits than in saving American lives aren't problems to be solved by reducing carbon emissions. But the truth is that we need to remember Earth Day now more than ever. If we don't have a survivable environment, none of these other problems will matter. Earth Day comes at a perfect time -- just when we start to lose sight of the importance of the environment, we're reminded that all other problems are of secondary importance.

Fortunately, we're able to walk and chew gum at the same time -- i.e., we don't have to solve problems one at a time, in order of importance. We can deal with terrorism and corporate anarchy and gun fetishism and the environment at once. It's really not that hard. Or, at least, it shouldn't be. But our media makes it more difficult. It's not that the media can't walk and chew gum at the same time -- newspapers prove the opposite. We don't get a big log of paper devoted to one, single subject on our doorsteps every day. But the electronic media; now there's an example of a one-track mind. The explosion in West, Texas proves that. In any normal circumstance, it would be the story of the year -- but it was unfortunately overshadowed by another tragedy.

Now, I want you to consider how TV coverage of the Boston bomb attacks went. Think back. When you tuned into your favorite cable news network, you spent one helluva lot of time watching talking heads say nothing. They'd learn something new, take the few minutes it took to report that, then yack and yack and yack about nothing. In fact, if you remember correctly, you'll remember that TV media mostly talked about their own coverage; "We're hearing a lot of conflicting reports, so we'll keep you up-to-date when things get clearer." It's an oddity that cable news won't cut away from a story -- even when they have nothing to say -- but the purpose of that is to keep eyes on screens. If you turn on CNN to get news about The Big Story and they're talking about something else, you're switching over to MSNBC. Ratings bias kicks in and we all wind up watching big piles of nothing.

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If the media can't take a moment to celebrate Earth Day, if other news stories are "too big" to even spare a moment of air-time, we can do it here. Meet the "carbon bubble":

International Herald Tribune: On Monday many people are celebrating Earth Day by admiring the beauty of our planet and by calling attention to the environmental dangers it faces.

While the focus is on the planet, economists are warning that carbon emissions could cause grave damage to something else green and dear.

The value of carbon-based investments — many traded publicly — could implode once governments start seriously curbing emissions, bursting what some have dubbed “the carbon bubble.”

The carbon bubble is a pretty simple concept; as it becomes clearer that excess carbon is a problem that must be solved, fossil fuels that release carbon become less attractive and, therefore, have less value. Oil, gas, and coal reserves are increasingly being seen as "unburnable," which reduces demand and reduces price. The result is a bubble; a situation where investors see more value in something than reality does. When reality catches up to the investors, the market forces the price to crash as it falls down to real world levels.

But a carbon bubble is not unavoidable. Unwise commodities traders might take a bath, but investors wouldn't have to -- and probably won't. Energy companies are diversifying their energy production, increasing investment in green energy. According to the US Energy Information Association, renewables are the fastest growing chunk of US energy consumption. Energy companies that ignore this trend would be asking for trouble. Part of the reason for this rise is simple; superior marketing. The green energy movement sells renewables for energy companies -- at no cost. And they've been tremendously successful. People will go out of their way to buy a portion of their electricity from green production -- i.e., people will specifically look for ways to buy green energy, but no one goes out of their way to make sure their electricity was generated with coal. Since only so much generating capacity is needed and people are demanding more and more renewable production, dirtier methods are increasingly being pushed out of the market.

Fossil fuel producers may squawk about this, but it's just capitalism. Technologies get dumped in favor of better tech all the time -- it's called progress. Just as cars put the buggy whip industry out of business, so renewables will eventually bury fossil fuels. And we don't notice market crashes and collapsing bubbles when this process of replacement happens over and over and over, because the jobs and market share of the new technology replaces those of the old. Will coal miners and natural gas drillers find themselves out of jobs? Eventually, sure. But new markets and new jobs will be opening up in the renewables sector to replace them. When people say that dealing with climate change will be bad for the economy, what they really mean is that it will be bad for them -- the economy and labor will actually be fine. And it will only be bad for energy companies who refuse to diversify. In other words, it won't be green energy that harms these companies, it'll be bad business management.

It may seem like progress stops occasionally, as these big news stories suck up all the oxygen. But the fact is that the world chugs along whether or not anyone's watching and the rest of the news unfolds just like always. "The world holds its breath" is a metaphor only. Other news develops whether it's covered or not. And long-term stories like climate and the environment get pushed to the farthest back burner, where they simmer nonetheless. This Earth Day may not get much coverage, because of boredom and shinier baubles, but this Earth Day is happening all the same.

And progress is being made every day, whether the cameras are there or not.

-Wisco

[photo via Wikimedia Commons]

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The Gun Show Loophole Remains -- And You Should be Angry About That

2013-04-18T10:44:00.003-05:00

Reading through the reactions to yesterday's successful obstruction of an expanded background checks bill, there's one thing you notice right away. Normally, stories like this are peppered with words like "saddened," disappointed," or "discouraged." That's not the case today. Today, people are opening their papers or visiting their favorite online news source and reading words like "angry," "disgusted," and "furious."

The pro-crime lobby may think they've beaten us, but all they really managed to do is make us mad.

For her part, Gabrielle Giffords has spent her time cultivating the image of a happy warrior, a friendly hero overcoming tremendous adversity and senseless tragedy. While the hero part of that persona remains, "happy" doesn't describe her op-ed on the issue in the New York Times:

Speaking is physically difficult for me. But my feelings are clear: I’m furious. I will not rest until we have righted the wrong these senators have done, and until we have changed our laws so we can look parents in the face and say: We are trying to keep your children safe. We cannot allow the status quo — desperately protected by the gun lobby so that they can make more money by spreading fear and misinformation — to go on.

I am asking every reasonable American to help me tell the truth about the cowardice these senators demonstrated. I am asking for mothers to stop these lawmakers at the grocery store and tell them: You’ve lost my vote. I am asking activists to unsubscribe from these senators’ e-mail lists and to stop giving them money. I’m asking citizens to go to their offices and say: You’ve disappointed me, and there will be consequences.

Giffords writes that "if we cannot make our communities safer with the Congress we have now, we will use every means available to make sure we have a different Congress, one that puts communities’ interests ahead of the gun lobby’s." The issue of partisanship does not come up. Democrat, Republican, or Independent, if you sided with the pro-criminal gun lobby, we want your head.

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"This defeat is only the latest chapter of what I’ve always known would be a long, hard haul," she says. "Our democracy’s history is littered with names we neither remember nor celebrate — people who stood in the way of progress while protecting the powerful. On Wednesday, a number of senators voted to join that list."

President Obama's reaction was just as angry and just as nonpartisan. He said that the gun lobby had "willfully lied" about background checks,that too many senators "failed," and that members of both parties caved to NRA pressure, making the wrong choice. Salon's Alex Seitz-Wald notes that the President deliberately chose to use provocative language: "Even though politicians lie all the time, the word 'lie' is almost never uttered in public discourse in Washington, let alone by the president, underscoring his unusual anger." Personally, I think it's both shameful and a mistake not to call out lies as lies -- it makes it so much easier for liars to get away with it -- so the rejection of softer language strikes me as a breath of fresh air. And, of course, the unaccustomed bluntness is designed to put the charge in headlines.

This tone of righteous anger and accusations of lying really is that deliberate, I think. The soft-on-crimers are now in a position where they have to defend their vote if they want to talk about it. And of course, it invites factcheckers to examine the claims. But there's a tendency in the face of anger to react with anger, to meet passion with passion -- and the person who strikes back in anger lashes out thoughtlessly and clumsily, ensuring that PR mistakes will be made. Heartless comments will be spoken, the families of the massacred will be insulted. You think "legitimate rape" was a misstep? Wait until some gun lobby puppet tells a tearful Sandy Hook parent to stop complaining or accuses a survivor of the Aurora massacre of being a closet communist. Some on the right already felt safe attacking Newtown families; start whacking them in the nose over and over and they'll really start to get stupid.

And seriously, better than 90% of Americans backed the background check bill. That's as close to unanimous as you're ever likely to see. Republicans may be quietly celebrating their win in a cocktail party with NRA lobbyists somewhere, but they'd be wise to ask themselves how many of these sorts of "victories" their party can actually survive. From women's health to immigration to marriage equality, they really need to consider the fact that they can't take the minority position on every issue and become a majority party again. If gun safety advocates don't let the issue go, it highlights how they've once again taken the side opposite the voters.

But the most powerful tool in the toolbox is that righteous anger. Senators who voted to sustain the filibuster shouldn't be asked to explain themselves, they should be made to defend themselves -- and not as legislators, but as human beings. They should be asked, "What the hell is wrong with you?" Patricia Maisch, a hero of the Tuscon shooting rampage that so critically injured Gabrielle Giffords got it right. As soon as it was clear the filibuster had held, she stood up in the Senate gallery and shouted, "Shame on you! Shame on you!" This woman grabbed a magazine away from Jared Loughner in Tuscon in 2011, preventing him from reloading and undoubtedly saving many lives. She showed the same courage yesterday, raining condemnation down on spineless or soulless Senators who put gun sales and profits above protecting American lives. Make no mistake, protecting the giant loopholes in current background check law is about being able to sell guns and ammo to criminals. President Obama is right: anyone who says differently is a liar.

And they should be called liars. To their face.

-Wisco

[photo by M Glasgow]

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The Pointlessness of Spinning an Event Like the Boston Bombings

2013-04-17T10:02:00.000-05:00

I saw the article yesterday, but I kind of set it aside. In it, the Boston Globe reported that the Boston Marathon bombing has all the earmarks of a domestic terror attack. I bookmarked it and tagged it for later, thinking that maybe it would be better reference from a historical standpoint than from a predictive one. After all, rightwing bloggers have been using baseless speculation to cover themselves in clown paint and I wasn't eager to emulate their failures. I thought the article would better serve as a "clues were there" reference (or "clues were misleading," as the case might be). The article describes the bombs as "crudely made" and suggest that the death toll indicates they weren't as effective as the bomber would've hoped, "making it unlikely that they were the work of a foreign government or global terrorist group, such as Al Qaeda." Besides, Islamic terrorist organizations always claim credit for bombings -- that is, after all, the point: to spread terror -- and we're now approaching the end of the 72 hour window in which those claims usually are issued. In incidents of attacks by lone domestic terrorists, it's generally the case that no one takes credit, because the perpetrator doesn't want to risk providing more evidence. In these cases, the purpose of the attack isn't to spread terror, but to "strike a blow" against a perceived enemy from the perspective of their own lives (i.e., the DC Sniper, the Olympic Park bombing, or Oklahoma City). Sophisticated terrorists try to perceive their attacks from the eyes of the media and the populace. From the Globe article:

Juliette N. Kayyem, a Globe columnist and lecturer at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government who has spent years working on counterterrorism and homeland security, said she thought the bombing was probably the work of a terrorist in the Boston area who would appreciate the race’s importance to the local culture.

“It is probably home-grown, someone with a political cause from the right or the left,” said Kayyem, “someone who knows how appealing the Boston Marathon is to citizens here.”

“Even though it’s an international event, it is still a local event,” she said.

Of course, none of this is to say it isn't an Islamic terror attack -- which was why I approached the piece with a healthy amount of caution and a grain of salt. What people surmise and what people know are two entirely different things.

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But a piece by David Sirota caught my attention. In it, he argues that it would be better for the nation if the bomber were some sort of white extremist, rather than a foreign national. Because white privilege would kick in and guarantee we don't overreact as we did after 9/11; with war and the PATRIOT Act and government torture chambers.

As we now move into the official Political Aftermath period of the Boston bombing — the period that will determine the long-term legislative fallout of the atrocity — the dynamics of privilege will undoubtedly influence the nation’s collective reaction to the attacks. That’s because privilege tends to determine: 1) which groups are — and are not — collectively denigrated or targeted for the unlawful actions of individuals; and 2) how big and politically game-changing the overall reaction ends up being.

This has been most obvious in the context of recent mass shootings. In those awful episodes, a religious or ethnic minority group lacking such privilege would likely be collectively slandered and/or targeted with surveillance or profiling (or worse) if some of its individuals comprised most of the mass shooters. However, white male privilege means white men are not collectively denigrated/targeted for those shootings — even though most come at the hands of white dudes.

Likewise, in the context of terrorist attacks, such privilege means white non-Islamic terrorists are typically portrayed not as representative of whole groups or ideologies, but as “lone wolf” threats to be dealt with as isolated law enforcement matters. Meanwhile, non-white or developing-world terrorism suspects are often reflexively portrayed as representative of larger conspiracies, ideologies and religions that must be dealt with as systemic threats — the kind potentially requiring everything from law enforcement action to military operations to civil liberties legislation to foreign policy shifts.

He goes on to cite anti-racist author Tim Wise, who spelled out the argument explicitly: "White privilege is knowing that even if the bomber turns out to be white, no one will call for your group to be profiled as terrorists as a result, subjected to special screening or threatened with deportation. White privilege is knowing that if this bomber turns out to be white, the United States government will not bomb whatever corn field or mountain town or stale suburb from which said bomber came, just to ensure that others like him or her don’t get any ideas. And if he turns out to be a member of the Irish Republican Army we won’t bomb Dublin. And if he’s an Italian-American Catholic we won’t bomb the Vatican."

In other words, if it turns out to be another Timothy McVeigh, the people from his hometown won't wonder when the drone strikes will be coming and we won't be experiencing a rise in hate crimes against young white males. Institutional racism is amplified in these situations and we tend to throw caution to the wind.

As a result, it might be tempting to believe that this was a white political extremist of one of the many flavors of extremism out there. But you can't make it be. That's where the rightwing bloggers get it so completely wrong. They're so used to spinning stories to try to make people perceive news a certain way, that they're busy trying to spin this into something it may later be proven not to be. If they manage to make us certain that we're looking at some foreign terrorist attack and that gets proven untrue, not many are going to continue to believe it was a foreign terrorist attack. You can't make the event conform to what you hope it is or isn't. In these case, spin is pointless and only serves to make you look like a shameless opportunist and a fool -- which is exactly what you would be.

Right now, the truest thing in the world is to say we don't know. Looking ahead to possible consequences is probably wise -- it's better to be prepared. But predicting consequences and identifying culprits is, at this point, inviting failure. We'll know who do it and why soon enough. Until then, let the perpetually fearful and wrong wingnut bloggers cover themselves in clown paint. Leave your own face alone.

-Wisco

[photo by hahatango]

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Tea Party Bloggers, the Boston Bombing, and the Cult of Perpetual Victimhood

2013-04-16T09:21:00.000-05:00

It's a shocking and terrible crime. A blast that was almost certainly terrorism (run of the mill mass murder can't be ruled out yet) rocked the finish line at the Boston Marathon, followed quickly by another. The brutal carnage has resulted in the death of three, with the real possibility of that number rising still -- many of the injuries were horrific.

The smoke had barely cleared before the speculation began -- and with it, the idiocy. Reports were confused, unclear, sometimes contradictory. But one group of Americans felt they had a firm grasp one the true story in Boston. And that story was that they -- the rightwing, Tea Party, wingnut bloggers -- were the real victims in the day's tragedy.

Leading the charge was the blog "Fire Andrea Mitchell," claiming that CNN's Wolf Blitzer had blamed the Tea Party for the bombing. The right went insane on Twitter, which is where the right goes to go insane these days, and the story spread like widlfire. "CNN's Wolf Blitzer just speculated if anti-tax groups were behind the bombing WITH ZERO EVIDENCE," one tweeted -- which turned out to be a massively hypocritical statement.

Blitzer's supposed "blaming" of the Tea Party right consisted of one sentence, "It is a state holiday in Massachusetts today called Patriots' Day and, uh, who knows if that had anything at all to do with these explosions." The only way you to take that as an attack on the right is if you wanted so badly to wear the mantle of victimhood that you'd twist anything anyone said in order to take offense. If you were so self-absorbed as to be able to do that, then the victims weren't those people bleeding on the streets of Boston, the real victims were the wingnut bloggers and their audience.

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Meanwhile, gun nut and professional conspiracy theorist Alex Jones decided the story "stinks to high heaven" and he thought it was a "false flag." Later on his radio show, he claimed that this was all connected somehow to the massive drop in gold prices the same day. Of course, none of that makes any sense at all, but that's never stopped Jones before. The one consistent, underlying theory rattling around in Jones' head was familiar, though: the "false flag operation" was carried out by the government to create an excuse to crack down on the Tea Party.

This particular brand of idiocy found it's way into a press conference held by Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, where a "reporter" for Jones' Infowars website asked the governor about a "false flag staged attack." Patrick gave him all the attention he deserved, immediately blowing him off.

When the bombs went off in Boston, the right immediately politicized the event and made themselves the real victims in this tragedy. But that's what they always do. If you've ever had the misfortune to visit Michelle Malkin's site, the lasting impression you take away is one of unending whininess. The right is in perpetual search of some reason to play the victim. When they find it, they go all echo chamber, announcing their victimhood to the world in the most strident tones possible.

And the strangest part about it is that nobody cares. Their little daily freakouts accomplish nothing, they change the political landscape in no way. There's a desperate pointlessness to it all, reinforced by the fact that on your average day, no one else is paying any attention to it. They're locked in perpetual outrage -- mostly over things they've taken completely out of context and proportion. That is, when the source of the outrage isn't just some BS of their own invention.

Yesterday was really no different from any other daily in Wingnutistan. Every day is Victim Day and everything -- every goddam thing that happens to anyone, anywhere -- is all about them. Because they're the most important people in the entire world.

And if you don't recognize that, they'll whine endlessly until you do.

-Wisco

[photo by jaredeberhardt]

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War on Women May Be More Wide-Ranging Than the GOP Realizes

2013-04-15T10:53:00.002-05:00

I'm not a big fan of the headline Mother Jones chose for Kate Sheppard's piece on the GOP's ongoing attacks on reproductive freedom. "Progressives Advise GOP: Back Off On the War on Women" has the distinct flavor of concern trolling. But it turns out to be accurate; two progressive groups have advised the Republican Party to knock off the War on Women, because it's losing them elections.

It was clear in both the lead up to and the aftermath of the November 2012 election that Republican candidates are not faring well among women voters. From Todd "Legitimate Rape" Akin to Mitt Romney's 11-point loss among women voters, it became painfully clear that the GOP has a lady problem. A new memo from a pair of liberal groups that pulls together some of the polling figures makes a strong case for paying more attention to this divide.

The memo, from Stephanie Schriock of EMILY’s List and Neera Tanden of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, notes that even the Republican National Committee's own post-election report found that, "[Women] represent more than half the voting population in the country, and our inability to win their votes is losing us elections." But while Republicans have made some effort to soften the party's positioning on issues like immigration and LGBT rights, the party has not moderated its stance on reproductive rights or other issues of interest to many women voters.

The memo points to the unprecedented attack on access to abortion underway in states like North Dakota and Arkansas, the 160 Republicans that voted against the Violence Against Women Act at the federal level, and the ongoing fights over both contraception coverage and cuts to the federal family planning budget.

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"If the GOP wants to move forward, help its image and win elections, it should halt its embrace of extreme and out-of-touch policies that attack women and their families," the memo states [pdf]. "Ending attacks on abortion rights in the states would be a start."

But the fact is that these attacks on reproductive freedom hurt more than just the shortsighted party launching them. They hurt the women in those states. Even in the best-case scenario, 2014 isn't going to be a Democratic march to victory in all 50 state legislatures and governorships, getting them to realize their folly is at least worth a shot. If we can get the GOP to stop attacking women's health, there would be a lot less misery in this country.

And the issue is killing them.

"NARAL Pro-Choice America's polling right after the election found that Romney's view on abortion was the top reason for voting against him that swing-voting women cited in their survey," Sheppard reports. "Planned Parenthood also used this issue to attack anti-choice politicians. Another post-election poll from Democracy Corps found that 33 percent of unmarried women listed the attacks on Planned Parenthood and women's preventative health services as a top reason for voting against Romney."

But it's not just reproductive rights, it's pretty much the GOP ideology in general that's hurting them with woman voters.

First Read, NBC News: Women are a key driver of support for legislation overhauling the nation's gun and immigration laws, according to new data in the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, just as Congress prepares to take up major legislation on both of those issues.

Women outpace men in their support for stricter gun laws and immigration reform that provides undocumented immigrants a pathway to citizenship, data which becomes more salient in light of the Republican Party’s effort to regain its footing with women voters after last fall’s elections.

The gender gap is most pronounced when it comes to the issue of stricter gun controls, legislation on which the Senate voted to begin consideration this Thursday.

65% of women (including 70% of self-identified mothers) want stricter laws on gun sales, compared with 44% of men. The War on Women is spreading to gun laws; not because Republicans are choosing to attack women over the issue, but because women are the ones showing up to fight.

And still doesn't end there. Women are also more likely to be environmentalists and are more likely to support the idea of an "activist government" -- i.e., to "say that government should do more for the poor, children and the elderly."

If the GOP wants to win over more woman voters, they'll need to realize that their problems with women are a lot deeper than just traditional "women's issues" like reproductive health and freedom, equality, and education. To listen solely on choice issues and to ignore everything else would be to make the same mistake the party's currently making with Latinos -- that is, assuming that they're single issue voters and that immigration is all they care about. Each demographic has a wide range of concerns and focusing solely one is to focus all your energy on merely making a dent. It's a simpleminded 2D approach to intelligent people living in a complex 3D world.

Of course, it's always possible that the GOP has just given up on women for precisely these reasons. That they've seen the same numbers and have decided they'd have to give up too much. Or that they think listening to what women have to say is just "pandering." But this would be foolish. The Republican base is rapidly shrinking and the focus has to be on expanding that base. They're going to have to give up some of their most cherished wedge issues.

If not, then they resign themselves to becoming a party of crackpots, cranks, and anachronisms. So far, that seems to be their preferred route.

-Wisco

[photo by League of Women Voters of California]

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Obama's Chained CPI Offer is Genuine

2013-04-11T10:22:00.000-05:00

It's a rare thing these days when right and left agree in Washington, so take a moment to appreciate the bigfoot sighting. Although they both have arrived at this point of agreement for wildly different reasons, the fact remains that they are there, sharing the same space, breathing the same air. This isn't exactly a moment of blissful brother- and sisterhood, but they are joined together in common purpose -- kill the President's proposed budget.

The right doesn't like it simply because it's from Obama. They'd reject renaming Washington "The Ronald Reagan Memorial Gun Refuge" if Obama proposed it. Their opposition is a given. These are not serious or honest people, they're spoiled children holding their breath until they get exactly what they want. And what they want is a nuclear strike on our recovering economy; no new revenues, only deep, deep cuts to spending -- which means hacking off demand at the knees. They'd practically guarantee a second recession. Luckily for us, if they can't do this then they don't want to do anything -- including pass the president's budget.

Which is where right meets left. The President's chained CPI proposal is a smoke-and-mirrors cut to Social Security benefits. And Obama proposes cuts to other entitlements as well. Lefty dems say there are quite enough gaps in the social safety net already, thank you very much. We don't need to take a scissors to it and start cutting more. Centrist and moderate Democrats, seeing that right and left hate Obama's budget, are keeping their opinions to themselves -- probably wisely.

The question is why would Barack Obama, a Democratic president, attack Social Security -- one of his party's greatest and most lasting achievements -- in a budget proposal. What gives?

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Some of what I'm seeing is an argument that Obama's playing poker. He offers what should be a compromise they can live with to the Republicans, only to have them slap his hand away and reject the offer. This, the theory goes, proves that Republicans aren't serious and will simply oppose anything Obama proposes for the simple fact that Obama proposed it. It's supposed to be the final act in an episode of Scooby Doo, where Pres. Barack Fred tears the mask off the Phantom Prospector and shows it was just old man Boehner all along. With Republicans revealed as obstructionists, President Obama can turn to the American people and say, "Give me someone else to work with here."

The problem with this theory is that it relies on an overly complicated plan and some inside baseball. This is the sort of explanation a beltway insider would come up with, because they don't seem to realize that the average person doesn't pay much attention to Washington at all. They're not going to follow this whole roundabout good faith/bad faith stuff, they've got better things to do with their lives than stay glued to CNN to watch this whole drama unfold.

No, if you wanted to demonstrate GOP obstructionism, you'd do some polling, find the very most popular things in America, bundle them all up into a "free ice cream" budget, and let Republicans oppose that. Nobody knows what the hell chained CPI is, but they know what increased funding for schools, police, and firefighters is. They're familiar with a raise in the minimum wage. They'd understand job creation programs. If you wanted to get Republicans on record as opposing something, you'd get them on the record as opposing things like these -- not some arcane bit of bookkeeping mumbo-jumbo designed to hide cuts to entitlement benefits.

Barack Obama chose to make chained CPI the opening bid in budget negotiations because he's cool with it, not because he wants to embarrass Republicans with it. Obama's budget is exactly what it seems to be: a betrayal of the core Democratic principles of protecting the most vulnerable in America and providing at least some modest guarantee that seniors won't go hungry when they can no longer work.

When the President formally unveiled his budget proposal, he told reporters, "There's not a lot of smoke and mirrors in here." That's BS. Chained CPI is the very definition of smoke and mirrors. You don't try to hide a cut when the plan is to bring it out in the open to show up Republicans as obstructionist. This is the President once again beginning negotiations by undercutting his own position -- i.e., negotiating with himself and negotiating away protecting entitlements. He's ready to do this, for real.

Thank goodness this budget is pretty much DOA. It hasn't exposed Republicans as unserious, but it has exposed Barack Obama as untrustworthy. I'm afraid any other take is wishful thinking. That's a shame, but that's a reality. It's up to congressional Democrats to protect Social Security, because the White House has completely dropped the ball.

-Wisco

[photo by faul]

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It's All Just a Game: How the Political Media Make Heroes Out of Jerks

2013-04-10T10:04:00.002-05:00

Hey, want to see some journalistic malpractice? Then head over to Buzzfeed and take a look at Evan McMorris-Santoro's latest steaming pile of fly food.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell put on a clinic in crisis communications Tuesday, turning a potentially explosive secret recording of his campaign's strategy session into a political bludgeon to beat Democrats — and the campaign cash bushes.

"Last week they were attacking my wife's ethnicity and apparently also bugging my headquarters, much like Nixon and Watergate," McConnell told reporters on Capitol Hill. "That's what the political left does these days."

If the press conference were an episode of the camp-era "Batman" that's where the "biff!" titlecard would show up. McConnell had gone from a man on his heels after a recording of an oppo research session on Ashley Judd was published by Mother Jones to the master politician driving the story to his own benefit.

It doesn't get any better. But you don't have to trust me on that, Buzzfeed left it right out there in the open, like they're not ashamed of it at all. Mitch McConnell was planning on attacking a woman for speaking openly about depression, thoughts of suicide, and her religious beliefs. But instead of manning up and taking responsibility for his actions when they were made public, McConnell released a blizzard of whining over likely-imaginary wiretaps. Suddenly, the villain is the victim and McMorris-Santoro responds with wild applause. "Masterful politics! Brilliant dishonesty! Behold the amazing shamelessness!"

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Pieces like this are a big reason why our political discourse is broken in America. It's a symptom of what journalism critic Jay Rosen calls "the cult of savviness." Political journalism in America isn't about good policy or solid numbers or proven facts. It's not about right or wrong, ethical or unethical. American journalism sees politics not as democracy's method for serving the nation, but as a season of Game of Thrones. Who comes out on top is more important than the pile of bodies it took to come out on top -- or the policy the the person who "won the day" was advancing in the first place.

In American journalism, politics isn't about the nation or you, it's some arcane sport journalists pride themselves on being able to understand and explain.

"In politics, our journalists believe, it is better to be savvy than it is to be honest or correct on the facts. It’s better to be savvy than it is to be just, good, fair, decent, strictly lawful, civilized, sincere, thoughtful or humane. Savviness is what journalists admire in others. Savvy is what they themselves dearly wish to be. (And to be unsavvy is far worse than being wrong.)," Rosen said in 2011. "Savviness is that quality of being shrewd, practical, hyper-informed, perceptive, ironic, 'with it,' and unsentimental in all things political. And what is the truest mark of savviness? Winning, of course! Or knowing who the winners are."

In other words, savviness is an appreciation and understanding of hopelessly cynical gamesmanship. And, by that measure, Mitch McConnell -- in managing to weasel out of a damning exposure as a real prize prick -- is a hero. Because politics is an amoral enterprise and winning is all that matters. Who they crushed, why they crushed them, what lies they told, what the facts actually are, etc., are all unimportant trivia, because the whole thing is just a game and if it winds up ruining lives... Well, that's just the way things are. If you want another example of this, think back to how Paul Ryan was hailed as "courageous" by the political media for having the guts to attack entitlements -- despite the fact that almost everyone who looked at his budget plans concluded they were muddled nonsense. Ryan was openly plotting to screw millions of Americans for no good reason and the press put him on a pedestal.

And so our political discourse gets coarsened daily, because people like Evan McMorris-Santoro give that coarseness a standing ovation. It's a good thing these people don't work the crime beat or they'd be making heroes of the criminals who evade capture.

-Wisco

[photo by sourabhmassey]

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GOP Loser-Heroes and the Conservative Cult of Victimhood

2013-04-09T10:07:00.000-05:00

One of the more overlooked hurdles to the big Republican Party rebranding project is the fact that the base loves victims. Sarah Palin perfected cashing in on this tendency, making a career out of being a victim of the "lamestream media." And their love of victims necessarily makes them lovers of losers. Anyone who can play the victim card while saying, "I just might've won if it wasn't for..." is a hero. As is the case with Mike Huckabee, you can even get a show on Fox News. This isn't universally true, of course -- neither John McCain nor Mitt Romney are too beloved by the base these days -- but that's more a case of taking their losses with a measure of dignity and grace than anything. To be a rightwing loser-hero, you have to complain and gripe and whine and basically throw a child's "It's not fair!" sort of tantrum. For whatever reason, poor losers are winners in wingnuts' eyes. Graceful losers are RINOs.

But how constructive is it to continually refight the last battle? No matter how much she complains and whines, the 2008 election isn't going to be overturned somehow and Sarah Palin made vice president. Nursing grievances serves no useful purpose -- especially when you seem completely unwilling to learn a damned thing from your loss. At heart, the rightwing loser-hero represents as big a hindrance to the GOP as their runaway racism, sexism, homophobia, and Christian supremacism. When you're trying to win elections, it probably is a good idea to listen to losers -- provided the purpose is to learn from mistakes. But it's a bad idea to listen to losers who blame everyone in the world but themselves. The belief that your campaign was perfect and the media, voters, and opposition was flawed is no way to get ahead in politics. Which means this tendency among Republican voters to idolize losers is a tendency Democrats should applaud.

Behold the stupid:

NationalJournal:

Since Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus introduced the “Growth and Opportunity Project” in mid-March, the party has proven over and over and over again that it just isn’t ready to change.

The latest example of the GOP being intellectually and politically stuck in the 2012 presidential primaries comes courtesy of one of the stars of those disastrous contests: former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum. According to Santorum, the Republican Party’s path to revitalization is not a new round of engagement with women, young voters, and other groups that delivered an electoral landslide to President Barack Obama in November. No, Santorum has a different plan for saving the GOP: defunding Planned Parenthood.

The Raw Story reports that Santorum presented his three-point plan to save the party in a fundraising email over the weekend: mobilizing “pro-family conservatives,” “refuting the lies and half-truths that our detractors in the GOP are spreading about us,” and attacking the women’s’ health care provider.

Yes, let's go with Rick Santorum's ideas, seeing as how they worked so well the last time. He's got the plan to win over those lady voters.

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Also joining in on the fun is former GOP Rep. Jeff Landry of Louisiana, who announced with much fanfare that he was starting a SuperPAC called Restore Our Republic. ROR will, according to Politico, "give conservatives aligned with the GOP’s activist base the same outside support that establishment-side Republicans get from independent expenditure groups." Without saying so explicitly, Landry makes it clear that his group is basically a RINO hunting safari, with establishment incumbents as the prey.

"Incumbents who are out there who are conservatives will never have to worry about us," Landry said. "And if you’re a Republican, you’re supposed to be conservative." Landry's effort will be co-helmed by Republican strategist Nachama Soloveichik, a former spokesperson for the Club For Growth, another RINO hunting camp. The end effect of all of this is that ROR would promote the sort of candidates that makes rebranding impossible.

Did I mention that Landry lost reelection n 2012? Yeah, the guy who just lost an election has the magic formula for winning elections. And people take these guys seriously.

Maybe the conservative movement shouldn't have been so accepting of the "help" offered by self-serving grifters like Sarah Palin. Because somewhere along the line, they've taught their base to believe that it's the losers who hold the keys to winning elections. This reasoning has it that -- for example -- immigrant bashing isn't the problem, the problem is that they aren't bashing immigrants enough. And it's the same on down the line: the War on Women, scapegoating minorities, the homophobia, the Islamophobia, etc. The problem isn't that there's too much of this in the GOP -- the problem is that there isn't enough. Turn on talk radio or Fox News and you'll hear it over and over and over -- people didn't vote Republican because they didn't see "true" conservatism. The old Republican rule comes back: if what you're doing isn't working, you just need to do more of it. You need to hate more and smear more and scapegoat more, because that's what voters really like.

If the GOP rebranding effort is going to work, they're going to need to take these regressive loser-heroes head on. They need to realize that, by pushing incredibly unpopular stances in the name of "true conservatism," these victimhood-mongers are actively working against the party. Because these people practice the politics of exclusion -- and they've excluded so many voters that they can't possibly win national office. Exclusion and alienation are, after all, practically the same thing.

Their big advice for winning more election is basically to actively drive more voters away. If they had any brains at all, Republican leadership would treat these fools like political lepers. Instead, they put them in their Hall of Heroes.

-Wisco

[photo by Gage Skidmore]

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Harry Reid Needs to Put Up or Shut Up on Filibuster Reform

2013-04-08T10:15:00.001-05:00

File under "I wouldn't get my hopes up"; ThinkProgress' Ian Millhiser reports that Senate majority leader Harry Reid is talking filibuster reform again, after the last stab at it turned out to be a completely inadequate joke. In an interview with a public radio station, Reid threatened once again to bring democracy to the US Senate.

“All within the sound of my voice, including my Democratic senators and the Republican senators who I serve with, should understand that we as a body have the power on any given day to change the rules with a simple majority, and I will do that if necessary,” Reid said on Nevada Public Radio.

...“I’m a very patient man. Last Congress and this Congress, we had the opportunity to make some big changes. We made changes, but the time will tell whether they’re big enough. I’m going to wait and build a case,” Reid said. “If the Republicans in the Senate don’t start approving some judges and don’t start helping get some of these nominations done, then we’re going to have to take more action.”

Yes, Harry Reid is a "very patient man." In fact, on the issue of Republican obstructionism, Harry Reid has been far too patient.

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Greg Sargent:

By my count, this is at least the third time a Dem Senate leader has threatened to revisit rules reform. Yet the obstructionism continues with no action on Reid’s part.

Reid needs to stop threatening to revisit the filibuster unless he actually means it. Empty threats accomplish nothing. Indeed, they’re counterproductive. They make Dems look weak. They inflate expectations among Dem base voters — and supporters who worked hard to reelect Obama and Dems to Congress — that we may soon enjoy a functional Senate.

I couldn't agree more. Something needs to be done. And talking about doing it is counterproductive. GOP filibustering over the past decade has gotten so bad that the media has taken to reporting failures to break one as if the filibuster didn't even exist. "The Senate failed to reach the 60-vote threshold today..." has become a routine opening sentence, as if this is all so very normal and democracy in the Senate is supposed to be a sham. As if the filibuster were some grand constitutional design -- part of the founders' "checks and balances" -- instead a mere obstructionist tactic that could easily be reformed or even done away with.

I understand the concern very well: if Democrats lose the Senate and there's no filibuster, things could get ugly. Take it from a guy from a state where Democrats can only offer token resistance at the moment.

But that's only a real worry if there's a Republican president who won't veto crazy GOP bills and who'll nominate terrible candidates to courts, cabinet positions, and ambassadorships. And that doesn't seem very likely for the foreseeable future. Demographically, the major qualification required to become president right now is that the candidate not be a Republican. So if dems own the White House, they own the veto. It takes a 2/3 majority to override a veto, so that's virtually the same as overcoming a filibuster in the Senate, plus the additional hurdle of a 2/3 majority in the House; i.e., a "super-filibuster" of sorts.

In fact, the current political landscape makes this the perfect time to reform the filibuster. Personally, I'm torn on whether or not to do away with it altogether (leaning toward no, the minority party should never be completely powerless) . But there's no reason just to leave it as it is. Washington is deeply, deeply broken and dysfunctional and the Senate filibuster has a lot to do with that. If there's one thing I'm not torn about, it's that the current version of the filibuster must die -- preferably painfully and with a stake through its heart.

Harry Reid should stop with the threats and grab up a hammer and that stake.

-Wisco

[photo by Steve A Johnson]

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The Holy Threats and Sacred Lies of the Anti-Choice Movement

2013-04-05T10:28:00.001-05:00

The "pro-life" side of the abortion argument always claims the moral upper hand. Mostly Christian, they cite their religion as the sole measure of their moral and ethical beliefs and wave the Bible around as proof of their righteousness. But, as is so often the case with fanatics, they don't actually follow their religion, so much as twist it and pervert it in order to force it to follow them. Their moral upper hand never stays up for long before it comes to slap the crap out of benighted unbeliever. These people are Bible-thumpers, sure. But when they thump that Bible of theirs, it's generally over someone's head.

Raw Story:

The life of a Latina assemblywoman in Nevada has been threatened after she used a story about her own personal abortion experience at age 16 to make a point about the importance of sex education.

“I’m going to say something I’ve never said publicly before, because — Why not? I’ve been open about everything else?” Democratic Assemblywoman Lucy Flores reportedly told the state Assembly Education Committee on Monday. “I had six other sisters, all of them became pregnant in their teens — all of them. One was 14 years old when she got pregnant with twins. That is what I had to learn from.”

“I had an abortion because I didn’t have access to birth control, or even an understanding of what that meant,” she explained. “I didn’t even understand that my worth did not come from men, or sex with men, trying to fill up a hole in me from so much pain.”

So yeah. Followers of the "Prince of Peace." If these people are so pro-life, then why doesn't the fact that Flores is getting death threats surprise anyone?

Flores was testifying as to the stunning (and entirely predictable) failure of her state's abstinence-only education policy. Her personal story is a story that's been repeated over and over in Nevada and other states, where the educational system has failed kids by leaving them almost entirely ignorant about reproductive health. She wants to reduce teen pregnancy -- and with it, rates of abortion -- through honest education and access to birth control. For the most part, she's actually on the pro-lifer's side. They merely disagree about the method.

And for that, the heretic must die.

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It's the movement itself that tries to stoke up this level over anger over things like this. Shameless spin went immediately into gear, with "conservative websites like Life News [getting] the message out to anti-abortion activists with headlines like: 'Democratic Legislator: I Don’t Regret Killing My Baby in Abortion.'"

Of course, that's not what she said at all, but the morally superior anti-choicers have never had any qualms about lying. In fact, that's not the only lie Life News would tell about the incident.

“Unlike Flores, most women regret their abortions and tell painful stories of how they are often unable to come to grips with taking the life of their child,” Life News’ Steven Ertelt wrote.

This is an old lie of the anti-choice movement. The fact is that women abort because they feel it's necessary (proven by the fact that when abortion is illegal, women die) -- in fact, it's hard to think of another reason why someone would have an elective abortion. People tend not to regret doing necessary things. In fact, most women report feeling relieved. But the truth doesn't serve the cause, so the truth is of no use to them.

So much for their moral superiority.

-Wisco

[photo by DaveFayram]

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Stolen Seats, Unresponsive Government

2013-04-04T10:17:00.001-05:00

Good news, at least one poll shows that Democrats are poised to take the House of Representatives and with it John Boehner's gavel. In an eight point landslide. There are few outcomes that would be better for America. After all, it's Boehner and his willingness to be led around by the nose by Tea Party Republicans that most stands in the way of progress in America. It's they who believe that up is down, that black is white, and that undermining demand at every opportunity is good for the economy. No wonder Americans reject them.

There's one little hitch: the poll is a bit optimistic and even if it's merely close to being correct, Republicans have so rigged House elections that it wouldn't be enough.

ThinkProgress:

According to a Quinnipiac poll released today, if the election were held today 43 percent of the electorate would support a Democratic U.S. House candidate, as opposed to just 35 percent who would back a Republican. That 8 point lead for Democrats is significantly more than the GOP’s margin of victory during the 2010 Republican wave election (6.6 percent) and even more that the Democratic margin of victory during the 2006 wave (7.9 percent) — when Democrats were bolstered by both an unpopular Republican president and a failing war in Iraq.

And yet, if Democrats succeed in maintaining this substantial lead through next year’s congressional election, they will likely emerge with a tiny majority of just 5 seats.
Last January, the Republican Party published a triumphant report bragging that “Republicans enjoy a 33-seat margin in the U.S. House seated yesterday in the 113th Congress, having endured Democratic successes atop the ticket and over one million more votes cast for Democratic House candidates than Republicans.” The report touts the role GOP gerrymandering played in enabling Republicans to keep the House despite losing the popular vote, citing states like Michigan, where “Michiganders cast over 240,000 more votes for Democratic congressional candidates than Republicans, but still elected a 9-5 Republican delegation to Congress.”

See, that's why I always call Republicans shameless. When you're actually bragging about how great a job you did of stealing elections, no other description fits quite so well.

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"Indeed, Republican gerrymandering was so successful during the last redistricting cycle that Democrats would likely need to win the national popular vote by more than 7 points in order to win the barest of majorities in the House," the report tells us. So that eight point popular vote landslide Quinnipiac predicts? In practice, that would be a squeaker. Gerrymandering is like a filibuster launched against the will of the American people and it is profoundly undemocratic.

There's a consequence to this sort of election shenanigans, beyond just having the voters cheated at the polls. When people vote for candidates, they're actually voting for things (and perhaps more often against them). These things are policies, proposals, ideas, and values. And if the person you voted for gets robbed of victory by election rigging, then the things you voted for are robbed as well. For example:

MSNBC:

Strong majorities of Americans say they favor stricter gun laws, including an assault-weapons ban and universal background checks for private gun sales, according to a new national Morning Joe/Marist poll.

[...]

What’s more, the Morning Joe/Marist poll finds that 87 percent of Americans support background checks for private gun sales and sales at gun shows, and 59 percent favor legislation that would ban the sale of assault weapons.

But of course, if that support of common sense gun regulation is influencing voters in the 2014 election cycle, those lopsided numbers likely won't be lopsided enough.

The poll also found that most people are more interested in creating jobs than cutting the deficit -- the opposite of Republican priorities.There again, GOP gerrymandering will probably screw you.

So Americans keep voting on certain ideas and then wind up getting the opposite ideas jammed in their face by a party with absolutely no respect or reverence for democracy. In other words, the result is non-responsive government. No matter how you vote, you're getting what the GOP wants, since we still live in a largely Republican-constructed status quo. By obstructing everything and impeding any progress, House Republicans can get most of what they want, because most of what they want is the status quo -- loose gun laws, an unaccountable Wall Street, staggering wealth inequality, ignoring climate change, etc. They've even gotten drastic and foolhardy spending cuts, by obstructing all efforts to avoid sequestration. Washington may be mostly Democrats, but they're Democrats unable to change anything, because Republicans block their every move from stolen House seats.

-Wisco

[photo by Vox Efx]

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On Sequester, GOP Beginning to Regret Believing the GOP

2013-04-02T10:20:00.000-05:00

One of the dangers of a long campaign of BS is that you stand a real danger of beginning to believe your own lies. Especially when that long campaign is carried out by an institution, not individuals. People who believe the lie will join the organization to support the lie and the whole thing just snowballs. What began as spin or propaganda for political advantage becomes a guiding principle. And when you go to war against your imaginary enemy, firing blindly into the dark because you know it's there someplace, you're going to have real casualties.

In this case, the lie is the GOP claim to runaway government waste. That was why Republicans pushed the supposed "nothing-burger nature of the sequester," in the words of Ed Kilgore. The GOP ran around parading the sequester as a war trophy because "of course there’s so much waste, fraud and abuse that big cuts can be absorbed without pain."

But of course, there is not. Kilgore's commentary is in reaction to a report by two of the Huffington Post's best political journalists: Amanda Terkel and Sam Stein. Terkel and Stein took a look at sequester cuts and found them to be much more severe than they'd imagined.

The Huffington Post set out to do an extensive review of sequestration stories from the past week, with the goal of finding 100. What seemed like a daunting task was completed in hours. No one region of the country has been immune. Rural towns in Alaska, missile test sites in the Marshall Islands, military bases in Virginia, university towns across the country, and housing agencies in inner cities are all beginning to feel the cuts.

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It's a disturbing list of hits to essential programs, of job losses, of decreasing demand. The only person in America who could believe this was good news is Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, whose love of European-style austerity and stick-it-to-the-worker policies has dropped his state's level of job creation from 11th in the nation to 44th -- in just two years. Finally, Walker will have more competition way down there at the bottom, as state after state is forced to emulate his idiotic and destructive economic policies. When everyone is forced to suck as hard as he does, maybe he won't look so bad.

European-style austerity is here, there isn't a huge buffer of government waste that can soften the blow, and Republicans have greeted it all with an enthusiastic round of applause, because they've bought their own lie.

So how is this all going to work out for America? Well, it's called "European-style" for a reason, so there's a place look to answer that question.

ThinkProgress:

The 17-nation Eurozone set another dubious record in the opening months of 2013, as its unemployment rate continued to climb from its already record-high rate. The jobless rate also rose for the European Union as a whole as austerity efforts continue to plague the continent’s recovery from the Great Recession:

The jobless rate reached 12 percent in both January and February, the highest since the creation of the euro in 1999, Eurostat, the statistical agency of the European Union, reported from Luxembourg.

The January jobless rate for the 17-nation currency union was revised upward from the previously reported 11.9 percent.

For the overall European Union, the February jobless rate rose to 10.9 percent from 10.8 percent in January, Eurostat said, with more than 26 million people without work across the 27-nation bloc.

Not well. It's not going to work out well. Already, Republicans are starting to feel the sequester's pinch and beginning to get cold feet about it.

That whole thing about billions in waste that can easily and painlessly be cut from federal spending is turning out to be a fairy tale. You hope enough Republicans realize they've bought a bill of goods before their chumpishness does too much lasting damage.

Hoping they learn a lesson about believing their own propaganda, however, is probably too much to ask.

-Wisco

[photo from Wikimedia Commons]

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