Posts Categorized Opinion

This Can’t Be Said Enough

In Opinion, Politics on Sep-3-2010 with
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Paul Krugman nails it in his NYT op-ed:

Next week, President Obama is scheduled to propose new measures to boost the economy. I hope they’re bold and substantive, since the Republicans will oppose him regardless —if he came out for motherhood, the G.O.P. would declare motherhood un-American. So he should put them on the spot for standing in the way of real action.

David Broder Has Lost His Mind (Again)

In Opinion, Politics on Aug-26-2010 with
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Via his column today in the Washington Post:

Now that John McCain has taken care of his political business in Arizona, it is time for him to return to Washington and the responsibilities he bears as a leader of the Republican Party and the nation.

Exactly why is he still writing for the Washington Post.

The Torture “Crew” Weighs In On Kagan

In Opinion on May-19-2010 with
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I am sure like me you’ve be waiting to hear what John Yoo thinks about Elena Kagan. It appears the Philadelphia Inquirer must have been curious so they gave him a few column inches today.

Rove a “Proud” Torture Cheerleader

In Opinion on Mar-13-2010 with
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Words fail me here.

In a BBC interview, Karl Rove, who was known as “Bush’s brain”, said he “was proud we used techniques that broke the will of these terrorists”.

He said waterboarding, which simulates drowning, should not be considered torture.

Perhaps Rove should have been waterboarded by investigators to determine his role into lying us into a war that has caused the deaths of thousands of Americans and untold numbers of Iraqis. Maybe it’s not too late to give that a try.

Lamar Warns Of “The End of The US Senate”

In Opinion on Mar-2-2010 with
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Sen. Lamar Alexander’s (R-Tenn.) appearance on ABC’s This Week Sunday was a pretty darn dishonest display to say the least. One argument, in particular, was pretty hard to overlook.

“The reconciliation procedure is a little-used legislative procedure—19 times it’s been used. It’s for the purpose of taxing and spending and reducing deficits.

“But the difference here is that there’s never been anything of this size and magnitude and complexity run through the Senate in this way. There are a lot of technical problems with it, which we could discuss. It would turn the Senate—it would really be the end of the United States Senate as a protector of minority rights, as a place where you have to get consensus, instead of just a partisan majority, and it would be a political kamikaze mission for the Democratic Party if they jam this through [....]“

The very next question host Elizabeth Vargas asked was, “Why political kamikaze, though?”

So let me see if I go this right. No effort at all to push back against Alexander’s dishonest claims much less set the record straight for viewers. No, the question focuses on the electoral consequences of the legislation, rather than the substantive. Instead the senator’s straight right policy lies were allowed to pass, while the senator’s campaign predictions drew scrutiny.

With that in mind, lets just explain how flat out dishonest about his comments actually were. (1) For Alexander to dismiss reconciliation as a “little-used legislative procedure” is disingenuous. Reconciliation has been used, legitimately, to pass everything from welfare reform to COBRA (the “R” stands for reconciliation), Bush’s massive tax-cuts to student-aid reform, nursing home standards to the earned income tax credit.

In fact, in the not to distant past, Senate Republicans even considered using reconciliation to approve drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. So it is a little too late to characterize the same procedural measure as some kind of outrage, after Republicans relied on it extensively.

(2) To insist that reconciliation’s purpose is to “reduce deficits” is wrong on like ten different levels. As Paul Krugman noted, “[R]econciliation was used to pass the two major Bush tax cuts, which increased the deficit—by $1.8 trillion.”

(3) Even if we concede that health care reform is bigger in “size and magnitude” than the other bills approved through reconciliation, the plan isn’t to pass health care reform through reconciliation. The Health Care Reform bill passed the Senate with 60 votes. Reconciliation will be utilized to makes minor tweaks and changes to that bill after the House passes the Senate bill.

And finally, (4) To suggest passing a budget fix by majority rule “would really be the end of the United States Senate as a protector of minority rights” is comically ridiculous.

It was a rather depressing and pitiful display all around. But here’s the real kicker: there will be no consequences. Lamar Alexander, who may actually know better then most on his side of the aisle, made a variety of demonstrably false claims on national television. Not only was he not called on it, Alexander will almost certainly be invited back, rewarded for his dishonesty with more opportunities to mislead the public.

Will They Ever Stop Whining?

In Opinion on Feb-28-2010 with
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I think most of our politicians in DC and reporters live in a bubble where they have no clue what the rest of the world outside of it is like. But I swear, folks that work on Wall Street live inside of a bubble inside of a bubble.

Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, says he believes Washington has become increasingly erratic and unfair in its treatment of the banks over the last few months, and he now has some regrets about participating in the government’s Troubled Asset Relief Program.

“F.D.I.C. is going to cost us a lot of money. TARP cost us a lot of money. This bank tax, my first reaction was, ‘That will cost us a lot of money,” Mr. Dimon said Thursday at the bank’s annual Investor Day conference in New York. “I think we are getting into the capricious, arbitrary and punitive behavior.”

Oh boo fucking hoo dude, you got a $17 million dollar bonus last year, not to mention billions from the tax payers to bail your sorry ass out. For the first time in my life I’m really beginning to understand why the French went so nuts with the guillotine. They were just sick to death of having to watch spoiled, super rich aristocrats behave like a bunch of assh0les and decided to put an end to it.

Progressives Get Played Again By Their Own

In Opinion, Politics on Feb-23-2010 with
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Many progressives often like to point out to the religious right that many Republicans play them for fools. They talk about the abortion issue and a “right to life” to obtain their votes and contributions, but do little if anything to change the laws once in power. Well sadly the same thing often happens to my party and we often can’t/won’t admit it either.

Politics Daily, October 4, 2009:

Jay Rockefeller has waited a long time for this moment. [....] He’s a longtime advocate of health care for children and the poor—and, as Congress moves toward its moment of truth on health care, perhaps the most earnest, dogged Senate champion of a nationwide public health insurance plan to compete with private insurance companies.“I will not relent on that. That’s the only way to go,” Rockefeller told me in an interview. “There’s got to be a safe harbor.”

President Obama often says a public option is needed to drive down costs and keep insurance companies honest. To Rockefeller, it’s both more basic and more vital: The federal government is the only institution people can count on in times of need.

The Huffington Post, yesterday:

Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.V.) threw a wrench into Democratic efforts to get a public option passed through reconciliation, saying that he thought the maneuver was overly partisan and that he was inclined to oppose it [....]

“I don’t think the timing of it is very good,” the West Virginia Democrat said on Monday. “I’m probably not going to vote for that” [....] In making his sentiment known, Rockefeller becomes perhaps the most unexpected skeptic of the public-option-via-reconciliation route. The Senator was a huge booster of a government run insurance option during the legislation drafting process this past year.

Rockefeller seemed to be on CNN and MSNBC almost daily throughout much of 2009 saying what a righteous champion he was for the public option. That it was basically the cause of his life. Doing all of this while he knew it had no chance to pass with 60 votes.

But now that Democrats are considering the reconciliation process—which will allow passage with 50 rather than 60 votes—Rockefeller is all of a sudden “inclined to oppose it” because he doesn’t “think the timing of it is very good” and it’s “too partisan.” Pretty strange excuses for Rockefeller to make with regard to something that he claimed, just a few months ago (when he knew it couldn’t pass of course), was such a moral and policy imperative that he “would not relent” in ensuring its passage.

“Sure,” The POTUS Could Order A Village Massacred

In Opinion, Politics on Feb-22-2010 with
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This is just hard to comprehend. Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff found this little exchange in the DoJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) report’s discussion of John Yoo’s August 2002 memo (.pdf) that is widely seen as one of the key legal opinions authorizing the use of torture by the Bush White House. On page page 64 of the report you get this exchange:

Q: I guess the question I’m raising is, does this particular law really affect the President’s war-making abilities ….

Yoo: Yes, certainly.

Q: What is your authority for that?

Yoo: Because this is an option that the President might use in war.

Q: What about ordering a village of resistants to be massacred? [....] Is that a power that the president could legally [.....]

Yoo: Yeah. Although, let me say this. So, certainly, that would fall within the commander-in-chief’s power over tactical decisions.

Q: To order a village of civilians to be [exterminated]?

Yoo: Sure.

Just hard to comprehend on so many different levels. And John Yoo is actually a law professor and has not been disbarred. I mean what exactly do you have to do these days to lose credibility?

Update: In an interview today with San Francisco radio station KQED did not back away from his previous statements and added that congress cannot stop the President from using nuclear weapons.

Look at the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. [....] Could Congress tell President Truman that he couldn’t use a nuclear bomb in Japan, even though Truman thought in good faith he was saving millions of Americans and Japanese lives? [....] My only point is that the government places those decisions in the President, and if the Congress doesn’t like it they can cut off funds for it or they can impeach him.

Oh Sure, Our Media Is So Darn Liberal

In Media, Opinion on Feb-11-2010 with
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As a progressive I get so sick of hearing from the right about our liberal “mainstream” media, cause I sure don’t see it often via the New York Times, MSNBC, CNN, or the Washington Post. Lets take the Washington Post op-ed page today.

Washington Press Corps Dean David Broder starts us off by penning a love letter to Sarah Palin telling me and my fellow liberals we need to take her seriously, even as a poll in the same paper highlights more than seven in 10 Americans now say she is unqualified  to be President (including a majority of Republicans). But it doesn’t stop there, not even close.

The Post‘s CIA spokesman, David Ignatius, writes a column arguing that Europe is in desperate need of a “tea party movement,” which would do all the great things for Europeans that it is doing for the U.S.   The pro-war Post Editorial Page excitedly announces a “Showdown in Tehran,” calling—yet again—on the Obama administration to do more to confront and subvert Iran’s government.  George Will touts a GOP resurgence in California.  And earlier this week, it was revealed that Post editors actively solicited someone to write an Op-Ed complaining that liberals—unlike conservatives—are arrogant, condescending, and smug.

The power of myth and propaganda is well-documented.  Still, even with that in mind, how could any conservative look at the messages sent from the Post Op-Ed page just in the last few days alone—Palin is awesome!; Europe needs a tea party movement!  Confront Iran!  Liberals are patronizing losers! —and still go on chattering about The Liberal Media, of which, in their minds (and in the mind of that paper’s “media critic”), the Post is a charter member?  And it’s far from unusual for the Post to deliver an almost uniformly right-wing (particularly neoconservative) message; in fact, it happens quite frequently.  “Liberal media” has basically come to mean:  ”anyone who doesn’t sound like Rush Limbaugh,” but even using that definition, the Post Op-Ed page comes very close and often, as today, meets it.  That’s not news, but the persistence of the Liberal Media myth—not just among the Right but among media figures themselves—is quite remarkable.  Not even the complaint by George Bush’s own Press Secretary that the media was “too deferential” to the Bush administration undermined it at all; if that didn’t, what could?

Gosh I can barely even handle all these liberal voices all at once. Long live the “liberal” media.

An Op-Ed About Supporting The Troops

In Opinion on Dec-8-2009 with
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Bob Herbert via the New York Times points out that:

The idea that fewer than 1 percent of Americans are being called on to fight in Afghanistan and Iraq and that we’re sending them into combat again and again and again—for three tours, four tours, five tours, six tours—is obscene. All decent people should object.

[....]

The air is filled with obsessive self-satisfied rhetoric about supporting the troops, giving them everything they need and not letting them down. But that rhetoric is as hollow as a jazzman’s drum because the overwhelming majority of Americans have no desire at all to share in the sacrifices that the service members and their families are making. Most Americans do no want to serve in the wars, do not want to give up their precious time to do volunteer work that would aid the nation’s warriors and their families, do not even want to fork over the taxes that are needed to pay for the wars.

To say that this is a national disgrace is to wallow in the shallowest understatement. The nation will always give lip-service to support for the troops, but for the most part Americans do not really care about the men and women we so blithely ship off to war, and the families they leave behind.