Republicans working hard to get Obama re-elected

All the hard work by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to sabotage the Obama administration — as well as the American public, American business and the American economy — may be undone by the buffoons running for president.

Amen to that.

For their part, congressional Republicans may be helping out by overplaying their hand. It remains to be seen how boneheaded Cantor and House Speaker John Boehner will be about deficit cutting as the super-committee deadline approaches. Whether they realize it or not, Obama has made a successful end run on the tax issue, and the Republicans can only lose ground with their insistence that there will be no new taxes. A new poll by Politico shows that Americans — we, the voters — support increasing taxes on the wealthy and corporations 66% to 31%, with a majority, 52%, strongly supporting increases. That same poll shows that Americans — yes, the people for whom this government is supposed to be working — oppose cuts to Medicare 76% to 19%, again with 52% strongly opposing such cuts. If the congressional Republicans persist with their blinkered ideology, then the Democrats truly will have a chance to win back many of the House seats they lost in 2010 and retain control of the Senate. 

Maybe, maybe not. One can only hope.

Occupy Wall Street ?

Watching them every moment.

Does government do any good?

Over the High-Tech Rainbow
In this piece, Sue Halpern writes: Siri [embedded in Apple’s iPhone 4S] “was incubated at the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), alongsidfe predator drones and driverless combat vehicles, and where the seeds of Apple’s original Macintosh computer were sowed.”

Perhaps government does do some good, no?

Killing Our Citizens Without Trial

In a New York Review of Books article, David Cole writes: Whatever one thinks about the merits of presidents ordering that citizens or noncitizens be killed by remote-controlled missiles, surely there is something fundamentally wrong with a democracy that allows its leader to do so in “secret,” without even demanding that he defend his actions in public.
 
    And he’s quite right. We abdicate our rights, and the obligations of our leaders, so we can debate whether Kim Kadashian should keep the ring, or not.

No brain needed

After explaining that he opposes Herman Cain's 9-9-9 tax scheme, Grover Norquist lays it on the line.


Asked about the "intellectual heft" of Cain's plan in light of the candidate's refusal to name the members of his economic team, save Rich Lowrie, an accountant for Wells Fargo in Ohio, Norquist said that the next Republican president "doesn't need to come up with ideas."


"The good news is the next Republican president only needs a forefinger and then pen and the capacity to hold a pen, he doesn't need to come up with ideas," Norquist said. "We have a Republican House, we will have a Republican Senate, they will fix the tax code and send them stuff to sign. He can fly around in a cool big plane and hang around the White House and he can sign the legislation that [House Speaker John] Boehner and [Senate Minority Leader] Mitch McConnell send him, and we'll be fine."

Just like Reagan? That's wonderful: President wanted, no brain needed.

Go, Herm, go!

Cain names Jim DeMint, Paul Ryan as possible 2012 vice presidential picks. That'd be a balanced ticket, fair and balanced (get it?).

An offer; who could refuse?

Herman Cain appears to be the latest Tea Party sensation. A new poll from Public Policy Polling has the one-time Godfather's Pizza CEO leading Mitt Romney by eight percentage points, 30 percent to 22 percent. Those are the exact same percentages the very same polling outfit reported yesterday for Cain and Romney in Iowa where the first formal GOP presidential preference caucuses will occur in early January.

Aside from the startling fact that were Mr. Cain to actually get the Republican nomination both candidates for the Presidency of the United States would be black (Cain was quoted in a story I glanced at yesterday that Obama is not part of the African American experience, whatever that means), Barack Obama could nto possibly wish for a better opponent – except, perhaps, Michelle Bachmann, but her star has faded.

Before Cainiacs get too excited, this is still just one poll. And recall that both Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Rep. Michele Bachmann rode the Tea Party wave for a while before it beached them. (Bachmann is now at five percent, the same as Rep. Ron Paul in the national poll.)

Too bad. Bachmann would have made some candidate.

... it's a striking and historic result even if it's transitory. It is the first time an African American who is a declared candidate for the Republican presidential nomination tops a national poll from a reputable public opinion organization. 

Too bad it won't last. 

Savior?

Anti-Islam rhetoric has replaced anti-communism as the right wing's ideological underpinning.

Not all Republicans, however, have embraced the anti-Islam rhetoric that has colored the GOP primary. Last week, for example, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, seen as a leading contender for president in either 2012 or 2016, offered a forceful and widely praised defense of a Muslim judge, Sohail Mohammed, whom he had appointed to a state judicial post.“The folks who criticize my appointment of Sohail Mohammed are ignorant,” Christie said. “They’re criticizing him because he’s a Muslim-American.” Of the anti-Shariah movement, Christie added: “This Shariah law business is crap. It’s just crazy. And I’m tired of dealing with the crazies.”

This is the Republican party's savior for 2012? How many right wingers are going to accept such a point of view? Well, it turns out even Governor Perry has Muslim friends.

as Salon has reported, Perry has also cultivated an intimate friendship with the Aga Khan, the spiritual leader of a sect of Shia Muslims known as the Ismailis. The relationship has produced not only mutual praise but a pair of Islam-friendly programs in Texas, such as an initiative to train high school teachers in Muslim history and culture.

Whoa, there. Has the right wing heard of this?

Unattached, and available

Now that Texan Perry has been deflated (even Republican right-wing pundits are criticizing him), and that Bachman's standing is back to being just a fringe figure, Republicans with billions are seeking out a figure to carry forth their dreams of less government, lower taxes, discredited liberals and defanged unions: a veritable conservative utopia. Their new sweetheart is governor Christie of New Jersey. A tough-talking, abrasive, yet attractive Republican, this governor embodies the latest hopes of those who want a credible challenger to president Obama.

They are rich. They are unattached. They are looking for a little excitement. Meet the Draft Christie committee, a small but influential group of Republican-leaning donors and activists, many based in New York, united by a shared desire to see Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey run for president. There is Kenneth G. Langone, the billionaire Home Depot founder who is perhaps Mr. Christie’s most fervent booster; Paul E. Singer, the publicity-shy hedge fund magnate and Republican activist who is among the most-sought-after Republican donors in the country; and David H. Koch, the industrialist, Tea Party benefactor and, according to Forbes, the richest man in New York. Charles R. Schwab, the personal investment guru, is also among those who have shown interest in seeing a Christie presidential bid, according to published reports and people familiar with the discussions, as is the financier Stanley F. Druckenmiller. So are the hedge fund managers David Tepper and Daniel S. Loeb, a onetime supporter of President Obama. In recent months, Christie enthusiasts have lighted up the phone lines between Manhattan and Trenton trying to persuade the governor to enter the Republican field amid growing concern about the current contenders.

Now, when financiers are willing to put their money where their ideology is, somehow that does not equal when unions do the same; unions are called special interest, are charged with holding the Democratic party hostage to their ideology, and bad for capitalism. When billionaires do it, what is it called?

Whatever they call it, these men simply do not like Mitt Romney. Why that is, I do not particularly care, but I do wonder.


Buzz about Mr. Christie’s presidential prospects intensified in recent days after a previously unknown group, the Committee for Our Children’s Future, unveiled a $1.5 million television advertising campaign in New Jersey promoting Mr. Christie’s accomplishments. “Runaway spending. Record debt. Gridlocked government. Washington is backwards,” the script reads. “But Chris Christie, with bipartisan support, is taking New Jersey in another direction.” The group was formed by Christie friends dating back to his undergraduate days at the University of Delaware. A Republican affiliated with the group, who agreed to speak in detail about its origins in return for anonymity, said it was formed as a way to defend against labor union attacks in New Jersey.

They do it anonymously, hiding behind their millions and pseudo-patriotic names, for they know that if the rabble knew that it is billionaires who owns industries in the Midwest but live in New York who finance the teabags, they might not like it quite so much as they do when it is a committee for our children's future that does it.

“I was at a conference this week with a lot of high-powered people,” said Bradford M. Freeman, who led California fund-raising for George W. Bush. “People just said he was fantastic. Those that know him or have heard him speak are very enthusiastic. He’s articulate, he’s done a good job in New Jersey, he has good charisma.”

High-powered people are not a special interest, of course. And what they like about his record is that he is anti-union.

Many have ties to the Manhattan Institute, an incubator of the brand of urban conservatism — heavy on criticism of public employee unions and runaway state budgets — to which Mr. Christie is the country’s most visible Republican heir.

They hate unions. That is a common theme. Unions are evil. Plutocrats are patriotic. But, perhaps there is another side of the issue to consider as accurate.

'Fiscal conservative’ masks anti-tax agenda, writes Darrell Delamaide.

David and Charles Koch, owners of the privately held energy firm Koch Enterprises, have long since been revealed as the main funders of the “grassroots” Tea Party movement, which cloaks an anti-tax agenda in a small-government Libertarian camouflage. Mitt Romney’s biggest liability as a candidate, aside from the fact that he may be too bland and too fake to defeat Barack Obama, is that he’s not sufficiently on board with this anti-tax agenda. 

Perhaps Romney knows that the anti-tax agenda is a recipe for disaster; Ronald Reagan found it. But these plutocrats and their lackeys want to ignore historical truths.

Pundits have tried to figure out how people who say they want to reduce deficits can claim, against all notions of financial physics, that they can do so by lowering taxes. That’s because they aren’t really interested in reducing the deficit. They are just interested in lowering taxes.

They want someone who will do their bidding, get government out of their way, and maybe even turn the clock back a century.

The Koch brothers could have written the speech Christie gave Tuesday night at the Reagan library in California. Interspersed with barbs about President Barack Obama’s lack of leadership, Christie recited the familiar litany of the anti-taxers — unleash our entrepreneurial energies, favor accomplishment instead of entitlement, remove the “uncertainties” of the tax code, and so on and so on. Beneath all the apple-pie-and-motherhood talk of American exceptionalism and the greatness of Ronald Reagan, the key line of Christie’s speech was the attack on Obama for suggesting that a return to the modest Clinton-era tax rates would be a fair burden-sharing in restoring fiscal balance. 

Bush and Cheney sent soldiers to war without adequate equipment, to accomplish abstract ideological goals and feed billions of dollars to the military-industrial complex, created an economic imbalance that nearly sent the nation into an economic depression, the standard of living of the middle class has stagnated for a decade, more than 40 million people are below the poverty line (itself a laughably inadequate sum), and what these people want is yet more money for themselves.

It would be hard to imagine a better way to mobilize the Democratic base than to nominate Christie and pair him with, say, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio as a vice presidential candidate to create the Tea Party dream ticket. Money counts for a lot in our battered democracy, but not yet everything.

Perhaps.

Warren announces candidacy

In fact, on issues of middle-class quality of life, she’s miles ahead of Obama, whose acquaintance with economic principles is, let’s say, minimal and whose grasp of the problems facing the middle class is at best abstract. More to the point, Obama has done virtually nothing to fulfill his promise about reining in the influence of lobbyists in the national capital.

Many promises broken, many disappointments delivered.

For the coming year, at least, Warren has a new platform to preach her message of restoring the middle class, and it’s one this country desperately needs to hear.

Someone has to start making sense. But the same old pap won't cut it.

GOP divided over tea party movement

That not all Republicans support the right wing ideology of the teabags is no surprise, but how many do believe in the ideology is surprising.

"Demographically, the tea party movement seems to hearken back to the 'angry white men' who were credited with the GOP's upset victory in the 1994 midterm elections," says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. "Ideologically, it effectively boils down to the century-old contest between the conservative and moderate wings of the party." Full results (pdf)

That division is more than a century old; even he revolutionary generation had it.

According to the survey, roughly half (49 percent) of Republicans and independents who lean towards the GOP say they support the tea party movement or are active members, with roughly half (51 percent) saying that they have no feelings one way or another about the tea party or that they oppose the movement. 

Almost half, nearly half, of Republicans are leaning right, and that implies hard-line views: the "science" issue is also a strong divider. Nearly six in ten tea party Republicans say that global warming is not a proven fact. Most non-tea party Republicans disagree. Six in ten tea party Republicans say that evolution is wrong. Non-tea party Republicans are split on evolution. Six in ten tea party Republicans say the Department of Education should be abolished, but only one in five of their GOP counterparts holds that same view.

Teabags tend to be white males: The poll indicates that demographically, tea party Republicans are more likely to be male, older, and college educated, with non-tea party Republicans more likely to be younger, less educated, female, and less likely to say they are born-again or evangelical. Both groups are predominantly white.

College graduates want to see the Education Department abolished. They are very angry, and they have targets for their anger.

Tea party Republicans are roughly twice as likely to say that abortion should be illegal in all circumstances and roughly half as likely to support gay marriage. Tea party Republicans are also roughly twice as likely to believe that the Social Security system should be replaced, and although most Republicans on either side disagree with the assertion that Social Security is a lie and a failure, tea party GOPers are much more likely to embrace that view.

Doctrinaire ideologues, yet Eight in ten tea party Republicans say that they would prefer a candidate who can beat Obama over one who agrees with them on top issues, so ideological purity may take a back seat to pragmatic politics in 2012 even if the GOP nominee is not a tea party favorite.

 So if a moderate (well, in terms of the Republicans party these days) wins the nomination, the party will unite behind him. That will allow the nominee to tack to the center, appeal to independents, and ... win?

Commentary: Obama’s speech will show government isn’t answer

Darrell Delamaide is an unusual commentator: while he clearly has his own politics, he tries to provide analysis, and not just talking points. Case in point, this column.

The measures being previewed (leaked) — extending payroll tax cuts, business tax credits for hiring, patent reform (huh?) — are just so much small ball, which is all that Obama can play now because of political and budget constraints. He’ll detail the plans in a prime-time speech before Congress on Sept. 7, the White House said Wednesday. So Ronald Reagan and the Republicans are right: Given the current state of play, government is definitely not the solution. Republican obstructionism and Democratic timidity over the past 2 1/2 years have seen to that. 

Not sure what that Reagan reference means, but certainly Republican obstructionism and Democratic timidity over the past 2 ½ years have accomplished nearly nothing.

But here’s the real irony: Private business, without the benefit of significant government help, may step up and give the economy enough lift to get Obama re-elected.

Not exactly without government help: the low level of taxation and the effectiveness of lobbyists in tailoring legislation for the benefit of business are of big help.

Historians can bewail the fact that enlightened policies were available that could have ameliorated the situation. But in a climate where widely accepted scientific theories like evolution and global warming are rejected by willfully ignorant politicians, it’s no surprise that Keynesian management of aggregate demand — one obvious solution to our problems — would also be spurned.

When major political candidates speak of doubting the reality of human causes of global warming to audiences who also do not believe in evolution, mature and effective economic policies are not going to be forthcoming.

So we are left with Adam Smith’s world, with its harsh business cycle and merciless treatment of the working class. Fortunately, some of the shock absorbers, built in by Keynes and other enlightened policy makers before the new Dark Ages of economics descended on us, continue to function and shield us from the worst. 

It is amazing to see middle class voters support ideologues who pander to their fears and ignorance while pushing legislation that enriches the already-rich by taking wealth away from all others – or, perhaps, not so amazing.

Right wing cringes

Michele Bachmann may have won the Iowa Straw Poll, but there's a new frontrunner in town: Rick Perry, who edges out Bachmann and Mitt Romney in a new poll of Republican voters in the state. Perry would take 22 percent of the vote, just ahead of Romney at 19 percent, Bachmann at 18 percent, and Ron Paul at 16 percent. Sarah Palin pulled in 10 percent, only beating the bottom tier of the race, which includes Herman Cain, Rick Santorum, and Jon Huntsman. Only 33 percent of Iowa Republicans call themselves Tea Partiers, but Perry dominates among that bloc, taking 32 percent to Romney's 6 percent. In other news, only 35 percent of Iowa Republicans believe in evolution, and 32 percent still believe President Obama was not born in the United States.

Well, that proves that (at least) a third of Iowan right wingers are idiots.

Conservative intellectuals don't have a candidate in the 2012 GOP primary, and they're making their worry more and more public. "To many conservative elites, Rick Perry is a dope, Michele Bachmann is a joke, and Mitt Romney is a fraud," Politico reports, citing a series of Wall Street Journal editorials that wrote Romney out of the race and dismissed Bachmann and Perry as unelectable. The Journal's editors wrote that it was time for "someone still off the field to step up." But the options are short: Rep. Paul Ryan shot down conservative pundits' fantasizing about a run when he said definitively that he would not enter the race. Mitch Daniels, right-wing intellectuals' previous crush, also decided not to run, and Tim Pawlenty, whom they saw as a serious policy thinker, dropped out of the race. Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol said there were still "leading lights" who aren't in the race, and wore a Ryan-Rubio button on Fox News last week.

Paul Ryan? The one who wants to dismantle Social Security? O, please nominate him!

“I would hope that whoever the Republican candidate is, he or she will not tell us that creationism or intelligent design is the equivalent of evolution — just another theory about the origins of the biological man,” said the syndicated Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, who declined to weigh in on specific candidates, though Perry was recently recorded telling a young boy on a rope line that Texas schools teach both theories. “To put intelligent design on that level is like offering grade-school children a choice between astronomy and astrology,” he said.

But that is what these bozos consider important, and they pander to the extreme right wing of the Republican party.

Regaining mantle of campaigner

As he did four years ago when he found his back against the wall in his Democratic primary fight with Hillary Rodham Clinton, Mr. Obama seemed intent on showing that he is the partisan fighter that some of his supporters fear he is not. That is the essence of the Obama problem: he is a campaigner, not a governor. He ran a great campaign, and has run a disappointingly mediocre government. As a result, it is difficult to work up enthusiasm for his reelection.

He signaled that he intends to use the rising influence of the Tea Party movement as a chance to undermine Republicans with independent voters. And he bluntly asked voters to begin considering what he believes the consequences would be if Republicans won the White House.

There is no question that the right wing has hijacked the Republican party, and no doubt that combination bodes ill for liberals, for the not-wealthy, not-corporate, not-extremist, but is that all he can offer?

It is premature to suggest the enthusiasm gap is permanent. Democrats are confident that when the general election battle begins — with Mr. Obama matched against a single opponent — the fervor surrounding the 2008 campaign will return.

To wait until the game starts to bring out one's best effort is a dangerous tactic. Fervor? Not again, no. Resignation.

“Everyone was so hopeful with him, but Washington grabbed him and here we are,” said LuAnn Lavine, a real estate agent from Geneseo, Ill. “I just want him to stay strong and don’t take the guff. We want a president who is a leader, and I want him to be a little bit stronger.”

Agreed. He went in with an agenda for change, and compromised every single time, and looked weak.


With his own approval ratings hovering near their lowest point since he became president, and with a new Gallup poll showing that only 26 percent of Americans approve of his economic policies, Mr. Obama singled out one element of Washington that is viewed in an even more unfavorable light: Congress. “You’re supposed to be in public service to serve the public,” Mr. Obama said. “And that means that, yes, you don’t get your way 100 percent of the time. It means that you compromise.  It means you apply common sense.”

Perhaps they are supposed to, but Republicans do not agree with his rules, they do not apply common sense, they apply political sense. And while he waits for his opponents to play fair, they are working to defeat him, as they have for 31 months.

Tea Party: The Christian Right in Disguise?

Without doubt.

Tea Party candidates like O’Donnell and Bachmann have campaigned on libertarian economic platforms, leading some commentators to dig into old Ayn Rand novels for the source of this new economic populism. But what they’ve missed is that the Tea Party’s obsession with the size of government has been part of Christian conservatives’ platform for decades. The Tea Party was just a new name coined by clever activists and the media—a rebranding that has made it much easier for Christian-right candidates to run for office without having to air their views on social issues, which are increasingly viewed in a negative light by the general public.

Science? Just a theory

Rick Perry calls global warming an unproven, costly theory. The Texas governor says scientists have 'manipulated data' to win research dollars. And maybe the earth is flat, in fact.

Without citing his sources, Perry added that the cost of implementing what he called "anti-carbon programs" is billions of dollars: "I don't think, from my perspective, that I want America to be engaged in spending that much money on what is still a scientific theory that hasn't been proven, and from my perspective is more and more being put into question."

O, it gets better.

One of his questioners was Jim Rubens, a Republican from the village of Etna who works as a consultant for the Union of Concerned Scientists. If both "observed scientific data" and the National Academy of Sciences are wrong on the issue, Rubens asked Perry, "doesn't that call into question the entire science discovery process that is the basis for America's status as an advanced technological society?"

That is, if science is hokum, then what does that make the US?

"You may have a point there," Perry quipped, adding that he believed the issue had become politicized. Without citing any specific examples, the Texas governor charged that "there are a substantial number of scientists who have manipulated data so that they will have dollars rolling into their projects."

So, the Guv'ner politicizes the issue, says it has been politicized (which is bad), and it might all be a bunch of nonsense. First he calls the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank a traitor, then backs off slightly, now he calls global warming (and evolution) unproven theories. These are code words to the right wing fringe: all this liberal crap is nothing more than that: crap, and you can count on this good old boy to throw it out, once he get into office.

But the Guv's battles is not just with lefties; he also has a feud with the Bushes and their Bushies.

GOP's Texas bully

Now that he’s declared his candidacy, odds are Republicans will nominate Texas Gov. Rick Perry for president. They won’t be able to help themselves. If Hollywood put out a casting call for an anti-Obama, Perry would get the role. Democrats have been chortling about running against yet another swaggering Texas governor. Mother Jones blogger Kevin Drum explains why Perry can’t win:

"He's too Texan...Even in the Republican Party, not everyone is from the South and not everyone is bowled over by a Texas drawl. Perry is, by a fair amount, more Texan than George W. Bush, and an awful lot of people are still suffering from Bush fatigue."

I think this is wrong. The cowboy archetype runs so deep in American culture that even George W. Bush couldn’t ruin it. Besides, the Connecticut rancher was a trust fund poser who rode bicycles, not horses. Deep down, everybody knew that. Now that he’s no longer president, Republicans no longer have to pretend they believe the brush-cutting charade.

I don't see Perry even winning the nomination. He's too much of too many things. He's too openly religious, he's too openly macho, and he's too right-wing. He is the one early primary voters might prefer, but he is not electable.

Perry’s sectarian religiosity and loose talk about Texas seceding might not play among Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania voters whose ancestors fought to save the union. Calling Social Security an unconstitutional Ponzi scheme would doom most candidates, although it’s the kind of big talk that thrills them down at the Tea Party corral.

Exactly. The tea party might love him, but the rest of the Republican party want to defeat Obama, and Perry can not do it. Except for the fringe, people generally do not look at Social Security as expendable.

Another piece in Salon discusses Perry's electability.

The Clinton '92 story speaks to the preeminent role that the economy plays in presidential races. One of the reasons Clinton was able to rebound so easily from his spring nadir was that voters were unsually restive and eager to throw out the incumbent, George H.W. Bush. Thus, they were inclined to give the challenger the benefit of the doubt, and Clinton was able to earn it. Could Perry, despite his early stumbles, do the same thing under similar conditions in 2012? Sure.

even if concerns about his electability are unfounded, that won't stop Republican Party leaders from worrying -- and, if they feel the need, working hard to prevent him from winning their nomination. That's what we've started to see this week, with influential, opinion-shaping voices on the right weighing in to express concerns about Perry's campaign trail antics -- and to call for new candidates to enter the race. Clearly, the "elites" of the Republican Party, who play a vital role in crafting the talking points that shape mass GOP opinion, are fearful that Perry might be a general election liability. And if he keeps behaving as he has these past few days, their concerns will only grow -- as will the number of GOP elites willing to express them publicly.

Just how influential are/will Perry's big-money backers?

Promises, promises

Bachmann: If elected, gas prices would fall to less than $2 per gallon Perhaps she can also get the tooth fairy to up her rewards for lost teeth.

McConnell’s message to Obama: Stop pushing your failed economic policies Those would be the ones that Republicans made sure failed, surely.

Perry: Scientists are manipulating data to prove climate change And they would not get to do so in Texas, coz the Guvner would kick their asses.

Intransigence

Hardly a voice of moderation (pun intended), Senator Kyl strikes an uncommon chord: conservatives have to remember they are not in charge.


Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) warned that conservative Republicans shouldn't expect to get exactly what they want on a compromise in a deficit-reduction and debt-ceiling-increase package. "My Tea Party friends I’m sure appreciate this, but we have to keep reminding ourselves, we don’t control the government. Conservatives are not in charge," Kyl said Friday on Fox News. "And therefore we are not going to get exactly what we want; we have to craft something that leads us in the right direction." Kyl said the question for Republicans is what kind of bill they can entice Democrats to agree to.

Or get the President to cave in to, as they have in other matters.

26% approval rating

A new low of 26% of Americans approve of President Barack Obama's handling of the economy, down 11 percentage points since Gallup last measured it in mid-May and well below his previous low of 35% in November 2010.

 His solution? Go on the road, attack Congress as ineffective, and promise a major something in September. I don't think they quite get it, his political team: attacking Congress is more of the same tried and failed strategy of not taking responsibility, but simply casting blame.

President Obama's approval rating has dwindled in recent weeks to the point that it is barely hugging the 40% line. Three months earlier, it approached or exceeded 50%. History will remember this period for the messy political debate in Washington over the debt ceiling, followed by distress on Wall Street and tragedy in Afghanistan. How much each of these factors is responsible for the overall decline in Obama's approval rating is unclear. But Americans' unhappiness with each of them is reflected in recent declines in Obama's specific job ratings for the economy, the federal budget deficit, and various foreign policy measures, as well as in his markedly low rating for creating jobs.

Of course, as Rick Perry and his Texas swagger jump to the lead in the early Republican line, and push the Republican party decidedly to the right, the president benefits. it might work, to rely on the Republican Party losing the election and his winning reelection, but it won't do a damned thing to help the nation improve.

What would Hillary have done?

As disappointed and disillusioned as I am with President Obama, I am uncomfortable with all the braying from disappointed liberals. I have not understood why liberals were so ready to undermine him, as if they did not realize that the Republican and, especially, the right wing relished their attacks. Now they are, some of them, saying that Hillary Clinton would have been a better choice, that she would have handled her presidency in a better fashion, would have negotiated and shown more spine, than Barack Obama.


Rather than reveling in these flights of reverse political fancy, I find myself wanting the revisionist Hillary fantasists — Clintonites and reformed Obamamaniacs alike — to just shut up already. I understand the impulse to indulge in a quick “I told you so.” I would be lying if I said I didn’t think it sometimes. Maybe often. But to say it — much less to bray it — is small, mean, divisive and frankly dishonest. None of us know what would have happened with Hillary Clinton as president, no matter how many rounds of W.W.H.H.D. (What Would Hillary Have Done) we play.

It is a kind of piling on that liberals are engaged in now that it is acceptable to admit that perhaps we made a wrong choice. It's too easy. It is almost as if they were confessing their sins in hope of purifying their souls, only waiting for someone to absolve them, tell them to recite I will not vote foolishly again two hundred times, and promise that everything will be better in the morning.

I believe she was better prepared to navigate the vast right wing of our political system? Yes, sir, that’s part of why I voted for her over Obama. Do I wonder if she might not also have taken us to war with Iran by now? Well, that’s part of why I almost voted for Obama over her.

Obama seemed the candidate of change, of hope for a different way of conducting ourselves in the world and of ending the trend toward greater and greater economic disparity at home. Clinton seemed a tired choice, and then there was Bubba.

The visions — in 2008, of Obama as a progressive redeemer who would restore enlightened democracy to our land and Hillary as a crypto-Republican company man; or, in 2011, of Obama as an appeasement-happy crypto-Republican and Hillary as a leftist John Wayne who would have whipped those Congressional outlaws into shape — they were all invented. These are fictional characters shaped by the predilections, prejudices and short memories of the media and the electorate.

Wailing and hoping they, we, had voted for Hillary and thus wound up with a President we would still be supporting fervently, who would have already closed Guantanamo and withdrawn our military forces from Afghanistan and Iraq, who would not have agreed to extend the Bush tax cuts, would have ended torture definitively ... it is pure fantasy.


If she had won her party’s nomination and then the general election, Hillary Clinton’s presidency would probably not have looked so different from Obama’s. You think Obama’s advisers are bad? Hillary Clinton hired, and then took far too long to get rid of, Mark Penn. And her economic team probably would have looked an awful lot like Obama’s.

Excellent point. Obama drew his administration from the Democratic establishment, and the prior Democratic president was Bill Clinton: Panetta and others. Would Hillary have ditched Bob Gates as Defense Secretary? They are false choices we imagine.

It’s just that her similarities to Obama never seemed to register with those who saw in our current president a progressivism that he himself wasn’t advertising, and saw in her a drive and ferocity that — far from being the salvation some are now imagining — made her a harpy, a monster and a bitch. Her storied toughness was then read as craven ambition that was going to tear her party apart. Her knowledge of how Congress works was seen as part of her dynastic and corrupt Beltway privilege.

I certainly felt that she did not deserve to be the nominee ; I hated the idea that Bubba would be back in the White House, in any capacity.

Barack Obama walked into the White House in January 2009 with his own set of structural and strategic challenges: an economy in free fall; a 24-hour cable-news and talk-radio-fed culture eager to blare “crisis!” headlines every 12 minutes, making long-view evaluations of a presidency impossible; and most important, an obstinate Congress. On every major vote, from the stimulus to uncompromised health care reform, Obama needed 60 (not the historically customary 50) to get anything moving, a practical impossibility, thanks both to Republicans, whose stated goal was not to fix things but to keep the president from fixing anything, and to conservative Democrats, who made the party’s majority a false promise to begin with.

Yes, quite very true, but he wanted the job, just as she did. And his strategic and tactical choices were bad ones: let Congress hash out legislation out in the open, get only marginally involved during the legislative process, and wait for the end of the process to step in and close the deal. And go for health care first. Still, the Republican campaign to destroy his presidency, even if it damaged the country (in effect, especially if it damaged the country, for then they could really blaming for screwing up), and their ability to prevent any defections, hurt him badly. But his inability to overcome such intransigence is a key part of his defeats.

Run, Paul, run

Republican Congressman Paul Ryan is strongly considering a 2012 presidential run, according to the Weekly Standard. The magazine claims the Wisconsin representative is on vacation in Colorado to discuss the possible campaign with his family during the congressional recess. He’s also reportedly been in talks with political strategists about the bid. “He’s coming around,” a Republican source close to Ryan reportedly told the publication. Ryan, as the House Budget Committee chairman, has been a powerful voice on conservative economic policy, and he’s stated that he isn’t satisfied with the current crop of GOP candidates, especially when they debate deficit issues.

The more, the better. All of these (Ryan, Perry, even Palin) will push the Repoublicans further to the right, and will show them for what they are: defenders of the privileged and the corporate.Now they are even talking about putting the US back on the gold standard. Maybe they'll do away with the anti-trust division of the Department of Justice, as well.

Stop the bickering

On Tuesday, Starbucks Corporation CEO Howard Schultz called on business leaders to stop funding political campaigns until Congress stops the partisan bickering. A CNBC poll on political donations in light of the debt debate fiasco last month showed that 89% of respondents agreed with Schultz. Shortly after, CNBC showed a comment by political commentator Robert Reich saying that the reason companies contribute to U.S. politicians is because they see it as an investment. With that in mind, will Schultz’s view prevail? Unlikely.

It is heartening, and discouraging, that it has gotten to the level of a CEO to voice this complaint. Witness the 89% who agree. Despite these voices, politicians continue to rail that they represent the voice of the American people and that it is for them that they are fighting. Nonsense. The vaunted American people for whom they claim to be fighting are sick of their posturing and ineffectiveness, of their bromides anc clichés. Yet things continue the same as always. Why? The answer is simple: money.

Here is the “best way” to understand U.S. politics in four bullet points.

• Republicans and Democrats both play to the rich 1% and to the following industries: big oil, big pharma, defense contractors, and banking and insurance. Add the NRA.

• Republicans take their talking points from Fox News, but are really laser focused on bullet no. 1. Fox talking heads berate the Democrats and the President, both of whom take money from the same donors as the Republicans, but who argue a different ideology.

• No matter who is elected, it is never as good, or as bad, as voters expect it to be. President Bush never banned abortion and we didn’t get Martial Law. President Obama failed to save the economy and we didn’t go socialist (or soshilist; same thing). Well, for the most part that might be true, but many people have suffered, and continue to suffer under a Democratic president, as badly, if not worse, than under a Republican president.

• The vote that matters is the vote that’s local, like a town hall vote for the school budget or a zoning law. As a result, voting for selectmen, city council and maybe the mayor and governor, matters and voting actually changes things. For Congress and the Senate, see bullet points 1 and 2. Well, abdicating national politics to the rich and powerful only confirms their domination and power.

CNBC “Squawk on the Street” hosts asked why Schultz was making these statements and not bigger name CEOs. In particular, they asked why executives like Jamie Dimon, JP Morgan Chase CEO, are not coming forward to complain about Washington, too. After all, lack of confidence in Congress has been something nearly every average trader and money manager in the market has been talking about all summer long, including in interviews here at Forbes. For that answer, see bullet point No. 1.

Dimon wants less regulation, even after the financial crisis. That lack of confidence is a smoke screen.

“I’m not a politician and I’m not here to prescribe policy. But as a business man who employs over 100 thousand people…I want to see congressional leadership,” Schultz told CNBC Tuesday morning. “We have a profound crisis of confidence in America and that problem stems from Washington,” he said. Stems? I doubt it. Washington excacerbates the problem, but the fault is not in our politicians, but in ourselves.

A new face, an old face

Enter Rick Perry, Formidable Fund-Raiser - The Texas governor has a vast network of wealthy supporters eager to bankroll his presidential ambitions - In exchange for?


G.O.P. on Defensive as analysts question Party’s fiscal policy: They just figured this out? The boasts of Congressional Republicans about their cost-cutting victories are ringing hollow to some well-known economists, financial analysts and corporate leaders, including some Republicans, who are expressing increasing alarm over Washington’s new austerity. Bachman, for example, continues to insist on her fictitious and offbase ideas, including using the tactic of bringing the country to default on its debts and obligations as a negotiating tactic. These critics include onetime standard-bearers of Republican economic philosophy like Martin Feldstein, an adviser to President Ronald Reagan, and Henry M. Paulson Jr., Treasury secretary to President George W. Bush, underscoring the deepening divide between party establishment figures and the Tea Party-inspired Republicans in Congress and running for the White House.

Debate Showed Why Americans Hate Government

GOP free-for-all

This should be good: Bachman is nipping at Romney's percentage-of-popularity heels, Rick Perry is about to announce that Jesus, er, that is, he's also runnin' for the nomination, and now the grizzly momma is showing up in her bus. Palin bus tour to roll into Iowa.

After a more than two-month hiatus, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is planning to crash the presidential party once again with a heartland-themed re-launch of her "One Nation" bus tour this week in Iowa, according to a Palin fundraising email obtained by CNN. Palin is bringing her Constitution-draped bus to the Iowa State Fair, just 30 miles south of where the Republican presidential field will take the stage on Thursday for a presidential debate in Ames.

It's not yet clear which day the tour begins, but her surprise arrival in Iowa will happen before the closely watched Ames straw poll. Palin is not on the straw poll ballot. According to a video link included the fundraising solicitation for Palin's political action committee, Sarah PAC, it appears the bus will also take Palin to Missouri and Illinois to visit the respective hometowns of former presidents Harry Truman and Ronald Reagan.

That's rich: Reagan and Truman

How dare he?

Tavis Smiley: Obama Is First President In My Career Not To Invite Me To The White House So?

One-Term Presidency?

It was a year and a half ago when President Obama told Diane Sawyer of ABC News in an interview that he would rather be a good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president. Now, coming off one of his worst weeks since taking office, Mr. Obama is nearing a decision on whether he really meant that. Is he willing to try to administer the disagreeable medicine that could help the economy mend over the long term, even if that means damaging his chances for re-election?

Who is kidding whom? He has a reelection committee. His advisers are leaking all over the place, theorizing about the next election, about possible opponents. C'mon, give us a break.

Obama plan: Destroy Romney

Barack Obama’s aides and advisers are preparing to center the president’s reelection campaign on a ferocious personal assault on Mitt Romney’s character and business background, a strategy grounded in the early-stage expectation that the former Massachusetts governor is the likely GOP nominee. The dramatic and unabashedly negative turn is the product of political reality. Obama remains personally popular, but pluralities in recent polling disapprove of his handling of his job, and Americans fear the country is on the wrong track. His aides are increasingly resigned to running for reelection in a glum nation. And so the candidate who ran on “hope” in 2008 has little choice four years later but to run a slashing, personal campaign aimed at disqualifying his likeliest opponent.


This is part of the pattern that has emerged during the Obama presidency: blame the other guy. But this could blow up in their face: the candidate who ran on hope can not be the candidate running on a slash-and-burn platform and hope to retain support. He will lose supporters. And while many of those would not vote for Romney, they might well stay away from the presidential election polls, as a means to vote against Obama.

The onslaught would have two aspects. The first is personal: Obama’s reelection campaign will portray the public Romney as inauthentic, unprincipled and, in a word used repeatedly by Obama’s advisers in about a dozen interviews, “weird.”

The Obama campaign might well be careful about portraying the other candidate as inauthentic and unprincipled, as Obama increasingly comes across as, yes, inauthentic and unprincipled. Weird? Is that a code word for Mormon?

I'm responsible ... right?

Obama says he inherited economic problems - President Barack Obama said on Monday he inherited many of the country's problems with high debt and deficits when he entered the White House, sounding a theme likely to dominate his 2012 re-election campaign. Speaking at a Democratic fundraiser, where families paid $15,000 to get a picture with him, Obama defended his economic record and noted that problems in Europe were affecting the United States. "We do have a serious problem in terms of debt and deficit, and much of it I inherited," Obama said. The financial crisis, he said, made the problem worse.

But, I'm in charge now, so it is my responsibility, and it is time to stop blaming someone else for the troubles I should be fixing. He might have said something along those lines, but did not. And that is the crux of the matter: it is somebody else's fault, not his, the preasident maintains. But 2½ years into his term, it is time he accepted responsibility.

87% disapprove

In the wake of the debt-ceiling debate, 82 percent of Americans disapprove of the way Congress is doing its job—the highest ever, according to a New York Times/CBS News poll. I'd like to hear what the other 18% think.

N.R.A. to Sue Over Bulk Gun Sales Rule

The National Rifle Association on Wednesday filed a lawsuit challenging a new federal regulation requiring gun merchants along the border with Mexico to report bulk sales of certain semiautomatic rifles, contending that the Obama administration exceeded its powers by imposing the rule last month without Congressional permission.

The NRA opposes all restrictions on gun ownership, operating under the rubric that any restriction is the beginning of outright banning of gun ownership. Stupid and nonsensical, but that is their ideology.

“We will vigorously oppose that lawsuit,” Mr. Holder told reporters on Wednesday. “We think that the action we have taken is consistent with the law and that the measures that we are proposing are appropriate ones to stop the flow of guns from the United States into Mexico.”

Unless, of course, as with Operation Fast an Furious, it is the policy of the government to flood Mexico with guns.

We got a deal

I am not a fan of declarations of things will never be the same, or of the current penchant to include the words Here's how in any pronouncements, but perhaps this article does have quite valid points. In the aftermath of the deal worked out between te Three Stooges (namely, Obama, Democrats and Republicans), all talking heads are in a rush to provide instant, profound analysis.

My judgment is that all the Three Stooges look worse now than before the most recent crisis: Obama looks indecisive, seems to have no spine, to not understand how to use power, to be reluctant to twists arms (let alone kick a little ass), and to have no guiding principle other than reelection; the Democrats seem timid, weak, ignored by a president of their own party, and unable to fight the opposition effectively; and the Republicans look to be hostages of their right wing.

Nonetheless, perhaps the Republicans came out looking the best of the three. Speaker Boehner resisted the Tea Party dictates in the end, and he got his party to vote for the legislation.

Debt-ceiling increases are now tied to deficit reduction. With President Obama's signature, every future president until America's debt monster is tamed must come to Congress on bended knee and plead for the privilege of avoiding default.

Obama looked weak an dineffective, and was unable to impose his will. Then again, he does seem to believe he should be imposing his will. Score one for a weak president.

Bipartisan entitlement protection lives on. No one has the nerve to cut spending in any meaningful way. For all the GOP fervor to rein in government spending, the agreement defers all decisions about entitlement spending to a so-called super committee with an internal architecture almost built for stalemate. The legislationcreated a committee to com eup with cuts. Last year's Deficit Reduction Commission, already all but fiorgotten, is an indicator of how this new committee will fare: badly.


Congress's back-loading of spending cuts lives on. A Democratic president and a tea party-inspired Republican Party will mutually agree to cut domestic discretionary spending (defined by budget authority) by $10 billion compared with 2011 budget totals. That's out of projected domestic discretionary spending of just more than $2 trillion for fiscal 2012 and 2013. Crumbs.Half of one percentage point.

Speaker John Boehner wobbled but didn't fall. Does that make him a force to be reckoned with? Well, he still has the Sperakership. And he did get the votes.

Good news?

The debate to raise the federal government's debt ceiling has exposed, or shone a spotlight on what was already obvious, namely, the incompetence and ideological intransigence of Democrats, Republicans and the President. No one looks good, and the bad of it is that we the people are the ones suffering; these jerks get to keep their jobs – for now, at least. One idea that died quicker than ethics do in Washington was a grand bargain.


After all, who really wants a deal struck by one of the most inept bargainers-in-chief ever to live in the White House and a Republican leadership trapped by the ideological intransigence of right-wing extremists?

Obama looks awful. He would have a difficult time convincing a baseball player to spit. The Republican dog is wagged by the right-wing tail.

We don’t need a grand bargain — not now, or six months from now, or ever. What we need are responsible politicians who understand a little bit about economics and who are willing to work in the public interest day after day, year after year. Even a short-term debt-ceiling reprieve that kicks the can down the road would be preferable to an ill-advised grand bargain that locks in harmful spending cuts for a decade.

Obama has caved in to the right wing. The Republican party has caved in to the right wing. So we have the nation's politics dominated by a hundred right wing nuts who actually believe that it is better to have the nation lose its credit rating than to compromise.

any spectacle that sees McConnell and Reid emerge as the heroes is a sorry one, indeed. 

Indeed. Those two have to be some of the most mediocre politicians in modern US history. Where is Roman Hukstra when we need him?

it’s important to have no illusions going into an election year. Obama, as noted, has confirmed his reputation for ineptitude. Voters may choose to return him to office, but they will have to adjust their expectations downward.

What a disappointment, too. So much promise, so much hope, and so little done.

House Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor, meanwhile, can continue their internecine warfare, and congressional Republicans can bicker their way out of majority control of the House.

That used to seem exciting, but what would be the alternative? Democrats in control? They're as bad.

It would be sad if the Republicans, who have shown themselves willing to sacrifice the welfare of the American people in order to sabotage the Obama presidency, succeeded in their plan.

They will do everything to sabotage Obama, including screwing the country, arrogant in their belief they will get into power and fix things.

But Obama, who suffers from the hubris of thinking always he’s the smartest guy in the room, walked right into their trap in accepting the debt-ceiling debate on their terms instead of exercising leadership and keeping the focus on unemployment.

His idea of leadership is to wait, wait some more, and see what happens.

It would be a long shot for Bloomberg or anyone else to step up as a third-party candidate and a much longer shot for such a candidate to capture the White House. It’s never happened since our two-party system became the norm, but then the U.S. has never defaulted before, either. 

Bloomberg? I just don't see him appealing to enough voters. I think he's arrogant, self-centered, aloof, and convinced he is about as smart and effective a leader as is possible. But, hey, who knows?

It depends in the end on how severe the political backlash to this debacle will be. At present, regardless of the actual outcome of this nauseating debate, it looks like the public frustration and disgust with Washington that has been simmering for some years is ready to boil over.

It would be nice if there was some public anger, but it ain't gonna happen.

Washington swaps magic show for vaudeville

The Gang of Six, breathless reporters told us this week, has found a solution that tons of senators in both parties are willing to go along with. It will cut $3.7 trillion from the deficit over the next 10 years while lowering taxes. Wow! How did this group of Democratic and Republican senators do it? Well, for starters they’re going to save $500 billion just by changing the way inflation is calculated. And the rest will be put out to committee — you know, with six-month deadlines and specific targets and such.

Lower the deficit and cut taxes? Perfect. Except for the details: accounting sleight of hand generates half a trillion dollars, and the other three trillion? Figure that out later, of course.

The Gang of Six plan has now replaced the one proposed last week by Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell to simply abdicate responsibility for the debt ceiling as the favored way for Republicans to get out of the corner they’d painted themselves into.

I considered that proposal unconstitutional: it would give the president the right to change the debt limit, a congressional constitutional duty, so the Congress could avoid having to vote on it. Why not just get rid of the debt limit? Why, that would take away the opportunity for congressional posturing and media performance.

We all know how important it is to keep cutting taxes, so that we have more of our own money to spend on the resulting higher costs for health care, education, personal security and all those other needs that most countries take care of by, well, paying taxes.

But, we couldn't do that ... that's, that's ... socialism, that's what that is.

A pot of money

Could something other than Rick Perry’s business-friendly policies be keeping the Texas economy buzzing?

Governor Perry and his spin machine, while not openly declaring his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination, are extolling his record of jobs creation in Texas as proof of his economic acumen, one of the many purported qualities that make him presidential timber. Is he really that good?

Texas is a jobs monster. Over the past two years, 37 percent of the net new jobs in the country were created in the state, a track record that governor and maybe GOP presidential candidate Rick Perry is quick to tout. He credits his conservative, pro-business policies; skeptics say it’s mainly owed to immigration and the high prices the state is getting for its oil. But there’s another possible contributor to Texas’s growth that no one is talking about: the drug trade.

How so? Well, money pours across the US-Mexico border, proceeds of drugs sales in the US going back to Mexican cartels. Does the money then stay in Mexico?

Jack Schumacher, a recently retired Texas-based DEA agent, says that at least half the drug shipments coming from Mexico stop and offload in Texas. The product is repackaged in small units and resold at a considerable markup, with a share of the gross staying in the state. Even some of the money that gets expatriated to Mexico winds up back in Texas, laundered through Mexican currency exchanges. The state’s relative security is the draw. “If you have a few million,” says Schumacher, “would you invest in a war zone or a bank in San Antonio?” The DEA warns that traffickers are cleaning up their proceeds by buying businesses in South Texas. They also spend on guns, warehouses, security guards—and on luxury cars and houses.

Yet there is more, and the rest is not as intuitive as this example.

Mexicans in Texas are hardly new, but in recent years it’s middle- and ­upper-class families in Mexico’s north who have also made the exodus, bringing their savings and businesses with them. While most seem to be fleeing the kidnapping and extortion back home, one observer has a different take: “Some people, including me, suspect that some of these people come with funds from the drug trade,” says Michael Lauderdale, a professor of criminal justice at the ­University of Texas.

Can Obama Pull a 'Clinton' on the GOP?

Professor Reich is the most outspoken, highest profile liberal in American politics today. He is unabashedly liberal. Thank goodness.

It's no accident that President Obama appears to be following the Clinton script. After all, it worked. Despite a 1994 midterm election that delivered Congress to the GOP and was widely seen as a repudiation of his presidency, President Clinton went on to win re-election.

Clinton triangulated, pitting himself  in the middle of the liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans.


Republicans have obligingly been playing their parts this time. In the fall of 1995, Speaker Newt Gingrich was the firebrand, making budget demands that the public interpreted as causing two government shutdowns—while President Clinton appeared to be the great compromiser. This time it's House Majority Leader Eric Cantor and his Republican allies who appear unwilling to bend and risk defaulting on the nation's bills—while President Obama offers to cut Social Security and reduce $3 of spending for every dollar of tax increase.

And the Newt is still convinced he can win the presidency.

Standoff, or stalemate?

President Obama will not promise that Social Security checks will go out on August 3 unless a deficit-reduction deal is struck. "I cannot guarantee that those checks go out … There may simply not be enough money in the coffers to do it,” he told Scott Pelley of CBS News on Tuesday. “This is not just a matter of Social Security checks,” he explained. "These are veterans’ checks, these are folks on disability and their checks. There are about 70 million checks that go out.” Meanwhile, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said that he does not think a significant reduction deal can be reached as long as Obama is in power. He said, “After years of discussions and months of negotiations, I have little question that as long as this president is in the Oval Office, a real solution is probably unattainable.”

The president probably has the upper hand in this matter, but both sides smell pretty bad.

Who is serious?

Now we’re being told we have to take Michele Bachmann seriously as a presidential candidate. Why should we take seriously a woman who has been caught out repeatedly in her misstatements and seems to think capturing media attention with her looks and outlandish statements is a political platform?

I agree entirely. The woman is a flake, an extremist who is toning down her ridiculous assertions to appeal to more than the right-wing fringe that is her natural constituency.her chances of winning the Republican nomination are infinitesimal, at best. And her chances in a national election are worse. For some reason journalists are quick to jump on any bandwagon, lest they have to defend their judgement that someone as absurd as Bachmann merits attention.

While the Republicans continue to add candidates and further fracture a riven party, Obama is putting together a staff in Chicago that eventually will number 5,000. He is on his way to signing up what will become 1 million volunteers down to the precinct level. Most observers expect him to top $1 billion in campaign donations this time around. Who said community organizing — in Chicago, no less — isn’t a good preparation at least for running for president?

A billion dollar campaign coffer. Absurd.

No, there is no reason to take Bachmann seriously. Rather, it is the media playing their game in political coverage. It used to be only sportscasters who tried to keep you tuned in by claiming that the team that’s behind 52-3 really has a chance to come back in the second half, but now political writers want you to keep reading by claiming that there’s a contest going on.

'Xactly..

Many of Bachmann’s tenets are indeed dangerous and inimical to American values and no laughing matter. While she seems to have a phobia about Islamic law, she apparently shares the notion with Iran’s mullahs that theocracy is the best form of government. She has said on numerous occasions that she has been personally called by God to crusade for Christian truths as a politician.

Imagine that: Representative Bachmann and  Ayatollah Khameini share values.

Hudson Utopia

Of Governor Andrew Cuomo, Maureen Dowd writes: Andrew calls himself “an aggressive progressive” and thinks liberals have to reorient themselves toward a government with goals and effective service, rather than big government. 

Hear, here. I agree.

Debatin' or sloganeerin'?

A debate requires two opposing points of view, yet the seven Republican hopefuls on the stage, mindful that they must reach the lowest common denominator on policy in order to have a chance in the primaries, were in agreement on virtually everything – especially that Barack Obama must become a one-term president. Part of the problem was the format. CNN’s decision to allow participants only a half-minute to answer turned the whole event into a breathless political version of “Jeopardy,” with the difference that the game show is largely based on fact.

Darrell Delamaide has a better feel for politics than most anyone I know of, and he's a liberal. And he does not accept the theory being bandied about by others that Bachman succeeded in presenting herself well.

Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, for instance, blithely stated that the Congressional Budget Office determined that Obama’s healthcare reform would destroy 800,000 jobs. Politifact quickly pointed out that the actual finding by the CBO was that 800,000 people might leave the workforce because they no longer needed to have a job to get affordable healthcare – a totally different kind of number – and the fact-checker branded Bachmann’s statement misleading and “barely true.”

She does not let facts stand in her way. Yet media pundits declared that Bachmann had established her “credibility” as a presidential candidate and was one of the winners of the debate. Bill Maher, whom I usually don't have much use for, last night commented, on AC 360, that given her standards, and where she started from, well, yes, maybe she did do well. But, he asked, compared to what?

The combination of Republican presidential candidates attacking weakness in the economy and congressional Republicans insisting on budget cuts that will further weaken the economy lends credence to the Democratic suspicion that the whole deficit debate is a cynical ploy by GOP politicians to damage Obama’s reelection chances by sabotaging the economy, regardless of the pain that causes the American people.

Is that any way to choose a president?

Perhaps we get what we deserve.

Shuttle’s end leaves NASA a pension bill

This is a perfect example of governmental inefficiency, to say the least.

The nation’s space agency plans to spend about half a billion dollars next year to replenish the pension fund of the contractor that has supplied thousands of workers to the space shuttle program. The shuttle program accounts for a vast majority of the business of United Space Alliance, originally a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin. With the demise of the shuttle program, United Space Alliance will be left without a source of revenue to keep its pension plan afloat. So the company wants to terminate its family of pension plans, covering 11,000 workers and retirees, and continue as a smaller, nimbler concern to compete for other contracts.

United Space Alliance hired the workers, so they were not employees of Boeing or L-M. But United Space was a joint venture of the two companies, so, in effect, they were employees of both. Or none. Infinitely fine legerdemain.

Normally, a company that lost a lifeblood contract would have little choice but to declare bankruptcy and ask the federal insurer, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, to take over its pensions. But that insurer limits benefits, meaning not everyone gets as much as they had been promised. United Space Alliance’s plan also allows participants to take their pensions as a single check and includes retiree health benefits, neither of which would be permitted by the pension insurer.

Not everyone gets as much as promised; that is a familiar phrase: private companies screw their workers, and now states are doing the same. But United Space Alliance workers are going to get corporate welfare, courtesy of NASA.

United Space Alliance, however, has a rare pledge from a different government agency to pay the bill. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration says in its contract with the company that it will cover its pension costs “to the extent they are otherwise allowable, allocable and reasonable.” NASA interprets this to include the cost of terminating its pension plans outside of bankruptcy. The pension fund now has about half the amount needed. The president’s budget proposal for the 2012 fiscal year requests $547.9 million for NASA to provide the rest. That is nearly 3 percent of the agency’s total budget and just about what the Science Mission Directorate at NASA spent last year on all grants and subsidies to study climate change, planetary systems and the origins of life in the universe.

Welfare, or science? Why, welfare, of course.


Although NASA was reimbursing the contractor for the annual pension contributions, it had no say over how the money was invested. United Space Alliance put most of the money into stocks. The backstop will be unusually costly because of market conditions. While United Space Alliance has made its required contributions every year, the fund lost nearly $200 million in the market turmoil of 2008 and 2009. When interest rates are very low, as they have been, the cost of the promises rises rapidly as well, creating a bigger shortfall.

That is inefficiency bordering on corruption: NASA agreed to pay, and had no further say on tax-payer dollars.

The cash infusion is also being readied at a time when some members of Congress are demanding cuts in spending and threatening to block anything that could be construed as a taxpayer bailout. “It’s unfortunate that it’s coming in this fiscal environment,” said Bill Hill, NASA assistant associate administrator for the space shuttle.

Very unfortunate. So are many other things, including States Lean on Public Workers for Bigger Pension Contributions. Very unfortunate.


He said that he hoped Congress would appropriate the money before the fiscal year ended on Sept. 30. If not, he said, NASA will have to divert funds from space-related activities.

Or maybe lay off some financial wizards it employs, the very bozos that worked out such an agreement with United Space Alliance.

Is it war, or not?

War Powers Act Does Not Apply to Libya, Obama Argues - The White House says the act requiring approval by Congress doesn’t apply to the Libya operation because what United States forces are doing there doesn’t amount to “hostilities.”

Than what is it? Is not bombing hostile? It sure ain't a nicety

Republican doves?

Republicans as anti-war candidates challenges belief.

The hawkish consensus on national security that has dominated Republican foreign policy for the last decade is giving way to a more nuanced view, with some presidential candidates expressing a desire to withdraw from Afghanistan as quickly as possible and suggesting that the United States has overreached in Libya. The shift, while incremental so far, appears to mark a separation from a post-Sept. 11 posture in which Republicans were largely united in supporting an aggressive use of American power around the world. A new debate over the costs and benefits of deploying the military reflects the length of the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, the difficulty of building functional governments and the financial burden at home in a time of extreme fiscal pressure.


The evolution also highlights a renewed streak of isolationism among Republicans, which has been influenced by the rise of the Tea Party movement and a growing sense that the United States can no longer afford to intervene in clashes everywhere.

Not that the Democrats are exempt, but the Republican party has a great tradition of isolationism. Robert Taft a favorite of conservatives in his day was noted for an isolationism so deep-set that he opposed aid to Britain during World War II, and the creation of NATO after the war’s conclusion.” (Justice for all : Earl Warren and the nation he made : Newton, James S., p. 241

All Nixon crimes now legal

40 years to the date, the full Pentagon Papers are finally being published ... by the Nixon Library. Small irony there. Daniel Ellsberg is still around, of course has a website, and is not short of opinions. SOme of what he has to say is thought-provoking, indeed.

The "declassification" of the Pentagon Papers–exactly forty years late–is basically a non-event. The notion that "only small portions" of the report were released forty years ago is pure hype by the Nixon Library. Nearly all of the study–except for the negotiations volumes, which were mostly declassified over twenty years ago– became available in 1971, between the redacted (censored) Government Printing Office edition and the Senator Gravel edition put out by Beacon Press.

A big tragedy is that the word redacted actually has to be interpreted for readers. It is equivalent to teevee showing subtitles for people who speak English with an accent. How dumb are we getting?

One source of the Papers is the website of a Clemson university history professor, Edwin Moïse.

What that comparison [between the 1971 edition and today's] would newly reveal is the blatant violation of the spirit and letter of the FOIA declassification process by successive administrations (including the present one), in rejecting frequent requests by historians and journalists for complete declassification of the Papers over the years.

Each new President quickly becomes a roadblock for declassification and a fanatic for secrecy.

Our Founders sought to prevent this. Article I, section 8 of the Constitution, for the first time in constitutional history, put the decision to go to war (beyond repelling sudden attacks) exclusively in the hands of Congress, not the president. But every president since Harry Truman in Korea–as the Pentagon Papers demonstrated up through LBJ, but beyond them to George W. Bush and Barack Obama–has violated the spirit and even the letter of that section of the Constitution (along with some others) they each swore to preserve, protect and defend.

It certainly is true in Obama's case, as well as the others. US air forces have been involved in offensive military actions for months. Such are otherwise known as war. To pretend they are not is what Truman, Johnson and Bush did.

However, as has been pointed out repeatedly by Glenn Greenwald,  and Bruce Ackerman , David Swanson and others, no president has so blatantly violated the constitutional division of war powers as President Obama in his ongoing attack on Libya, without a nod even to the statutory War Powers Act, that post-Pentagon Papers effort by Congress to recapture something of the role assigned exclusively to it by the Constitution.

When Kucinich and others introduced and gained support for a bill to end US military action in Lybia without Congressional sanction, Speaker Boehner covered his flank.

Boehner's amendment -- demanding that Obama more fully brief Congress -- ultimately passed, also with substantial bipartisan support, but most media reports ultimately recognized it for what it was: a joint effort by the leadership of both parties and the White House to sabotage the anti-war efforts of its most liberal and most conservative members.

Some call it bipartisanship; others might call it collusion.

Richard Nixon, if he were alive today, might take bittersweet satisfaction to know that he was not the last smart president to prolong unjustifiably a senseless, unwinnable war, at great cost in human life. He would probably also feel vindicated (and envious) that ALL the crimes he committed against me–which forced his resignation facing impeachment–are now legal.

War on terror? Or on what? Whom? Obama continues the same policies, and deepens them, that prevailed under Bush. Whether he has been coopted, or has chosen to be as conservative (or more) than his predecessor, the fact is that he has and is. Consequently, he has betrayed the trust he asked for and was given by those hoping for change from the prior administration. Yet the fault lies as much with us, who believed, as with him who lied.

Don't publish THAT

The government has issued warnings that formaldehyde can cause cancer and that styrene might as well. Formaldehyde, the report says, is found in worrisome quantities in plywood, particle board, mortuaries, and hair salons, while high levels of styrene are found in boats, bathtubs, and plastic cups and plates. The government's Report on Carcinogens said consumers should avoid contact with the materials, but that they probably don't pose a serious risk to most people. The workers who make formaldehyde and styrene products, however, are at greater risk. The report was delayed for several years because of intense lobbying from the chemical industry.

Tea Party targets

Orrin Hatch is conservative by almost any measure, but these days that’s not enough to shield him from the right. There’s a credible challenger in the wings and a real possibility that the Utah senator could become the first establishment casualty of the 2012 season. The Tea Party movement first demonstrated its clout last year by knocking off Hatch’s Utah colleague, Bob Bennett. Now the movement’s activists have served notice that they are displeased with several big-name Republican senators. Hatch, like most of them, is cultivating the grassroots, moving rightward, and hoping to fend off a serious primary challenger.

In their quest for ideological purity, the right wing of the Republican party may well doom the party to election losses and pyrrhic victories. Good. Run, Michelle, run.

Others drawing conservative scrutiny and complaints are Olympia Snowe of Maine, Scott Brown of Massachusetts, and Bob Corker of Tennessee.

Corker? How conservative do they want to be? Corker makes Hatch look moderate. Or, did.

Gingrich staff quits

Do I hear the pleasant sound of a campaign deflating?

Newt Gingrich's top aides resigned en masse Thursday in the first major blowup of the 2012 campaign, delivering what could be a fatal setback to a campaign that has stumbled from the outset. The defections followed a week of heated debate within the Gingrich camp over whether the former House speaker was sufficiently committed to his bid for an unlikely political comeback more than 13 years after his resignation from Congress. The departures included campaign manager Rob Johnson, veteran spokesman Rick Tyler, and all of Mr. Gingrich's top advisers and campaign operatives in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, the first big three primary states.

Perhaps disappearing is a better term. Bye, Newt. Next.

Another dwarf

Perry Changes Tune on White House Bid - Texas Gov. Rick Perry has said for months he has no interest in running for the White House in 2012. But political advisers and friends say that in private conversations he has recently changed his tune on a possible presidential campaign.

Obama should be so lucky.

Mr. Perry is making a number of national appearances this month, including an address next week to an annual dinner of the New York Republican Party. Last week he announced an August summit in Houston and invited all the country's governors to attend. He described the event as a 'day of prayer and fasting' focused on  "the healing of our country." Mr. Perry has recently built a base among tea-party groups and conservatives by hammering on state's rights and attacking the Obama administration for its health-care overhaul and interventions in the economy. This year, he backed an array of measures appealing to social conservatives, including a requirement that all women considering an abortion have a sonogram first.In 2009, Mr. Perry caused a stir by expressing sympathy for Texans who might want to secede from the union if federal mandates became too onerous, a comment that could prove problematic in a presidential campaign, especially among general-election voters. Mr. Perry's candidacy would also test whether voters are willing to elevate another Texas governor so soon after the presidency of George W. Bush, Mr. Perry's predecessor in Austin.

Perfect: Bush III, and a Tea-Party, secession-supporting right-winger. Obama should be so lucky.

After 40 years, the complete Pentagon Papers

At first blush, it sounds like the release of one of the worst-kept secrets in history — finally unlocking the barn door four decades after the horses bolted. The study, after all, has already been published by The Times and other newspapers, resulting in a landmark First Amendment decision by the Supreme Court. It has been released in book form more than once. But it turns out that those texts have been incomplete: When all 7,000 pages are released Monday, officials say, the study can finally be read in its original form.

That it took until the era of WikiLeaks for the government to declassify the Pentagon Papers struck some participants as, to say the least, curious. “It’s absurd,” said Daniel Ellsberg, the former RAND Corporation analyst who worked on the report and later provided it to The Times. He said Tuesday that the report should not have been secret even in 1971, when newspapers first published it, adding: “The reasons are very clearly domestic political reasons, not national security at all. The reasons for the prolonged secrecy are to conceal the fact that so much of the policy making doesn’t bear public examination. It’s embarrassing, or even incriminating.”

the secrecy has persisted. Timothy Naftali, the director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, said that when he recently put together an exhibit on Watergate, he wanted to display just the blue cover of the Pentagon Papers report. “I was told that the cover was classified,” he said, adding that he was astounded. 

THAT is absurd.

This is what passes for news

as tornadoes ravage the land, as flood waters drown Louisiana, Montana and Vermont, as Congress threatens not to pay America’s creditors and as the economy teeters, “Weiner’s Pickle” as The Daily News phrased it on Thursday, dominates. CNN, ABC and CBS lead broadcasts with it. Fox News is nearly beside itself — a liberal Democrat endangered! — and so offers a Weiner extravaganza.

Fair and balanced.

Pants on fire?

Mitt Romney is at it again: lying, obfuscating, parsing, evading the truth. He has declared his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination, and began (or continued) attacking President Obama.

he blamed the president for high unemployment, rising gasoline prices, falling home values and a soaring national debt.

Rising gasoline prices are products that vaunted free market the Republicans like to give so much lip service to; no president has a direct effect on them. Unemployment and falling home values are more the responsibility of that free market and corporations. No president control them. Ditto for the national debt. Yes, economic policies have an effect, but no a pervasive one.

Mr. Romney made his candidacy official at a family farm, where he invited supporters and media to a “Cookout With Mitt and Ann.” Under clear but windy skies and with tractors and hay bales as a backdrop, Mr. Romney hopes to send the message that he intends to win New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation primary. The choice of the Bittersweet Farm for his announcement is an interesting one for Mr. Romney, who regularly argues for a smaller federal government that spends less. The rolling green hills of the farm were preserved in recent years in part with $1 million in federal money, according to a recent report in Seacoast Online.

O, Mitt. Republicans love to blame the federal government for almost everything, but never say no to federal money. A smaller federal budget would take away farm subsidies, and losing farm subsidies would make corporate farmers howl in protest.

Mr. Romney made no mention of his potential rivals. Instead, he painted a picture of a country that is in crisis. He said that he “believes in America,” but said it is suffering from the leadership of the current administration. “We look at our country and we know in our hearts that things aren’t right, and they’re not getting better,” he said.

Who doesn't believe in America? Pandering and groveling ain't gonna do it, Mitt.