More Deep (?) Thoughts On the 2016 Election (updates)

(Which has ultimately led to the behavior shown in this pic, by the way – this ties into a bit of what I got into here.)

I saw this item from Hillary Clinton, and I thought I needed to respond.

Yes, Hillary Clinton is right to say that the despicable actions of FBI Director James Comey contributed to her loss to Donald Trump (ugh) in the presidential election. But I think the following needs to be pointed out also.

I previously decried low-information voters who don’t pay attention to this stuff like they should, and I said they were partly to blame. I stand by that, with some caveats particular to Hillary Clinton that I’ll try to discuss, for what it’s worth. I also said that it’s pointless to engage in a circular firing squad on this stuff, but I’m going to break my own rule on that a bit.

With everything having settled in a bit, here is my number one reason why Hillary Clinton lost the presidential election:

She didn’t close the deal with the voters of this country on how she would manage the economy on their behalf.

The irony of this, to me, is utterly stupefying, because that is pretty much how her husband won election, particularly in 1992. And when it comes to voting psychology in this country, voters ALWAYS vote first and foremost on the economy.

Memorize this and burn it into your collective brains once and for all, Democrats – voters vote first and foremost based on the economy. Every time (I would put a bit of an asterisk on that next to 2004, though, since the Repugs beat 9/11 to death for political purposes and the economy hadn’t tanked yet).

The economy was teed up as THE political issue for Obama in 2008 since it was going all to hell, and the McCain/Palin team kept missing the proverbial boat on that issue over and over, particularly concerning the auto industry. So Obama almost couldn’t help but wrap his campaign around that. And in 2012, he had a record of success with the stimulus to run on (versus Willard Mitt Romney, who the Obama campaign had painted as a thoroughly out-of-touch elitist, which to me was an accurate portrayal). That year, Obama also had the power of incumbency on his side, and it’s hard to overestimate how important that is.

The Clinton team had none of these advantages. And they didn’t campaign as if they realized that. And that created the tiniest bit of an opening for that moron Gary Johnson and that nothing Jill Stein to jump in and claim that mantle instead (even Trump himself, laughably trying to act like he actually gives a damn about workers’ wages and that he actually knows something about creating jobs when he had experienced multiple business bankruptcies; of all of the corporate media stupidity during the campaign, the failure to point that out over and over was probably their biggest blunder).

Returning to the prior presidency of Bill Clinton (and why in God’s name didn’t Hillary remind voters of that era of economic success??), Hillary could have brought back the 1993 Bill Clinton budget that did a lot towards kick-starting a pretty solid era of job and wage growth. More than that, she could have reminded voters that it passed without a single Republican vote, and she could have tied that into a message about electing down-ballot Democrats to Congress!

(For the life of me, I will NEVER understand why Democrats seem to run away from their past record of success, but Hillary and her campaign did that. She did a really good job of portraying Donald Trump as the utterly narcissistic, intellectually lazy sexual predator that we all knew he was, but again, as her supporters, we knew that. She definitely didn’t appear to understand what it took to win over independents, who are the people that, for better or worse, decide our elections…something particularly galling given the fact that she probably had an army of people in her campaign who were supposed to know that in their sleep! Of course, the “Elizabeth Warren wing of the Democratic Party” knows better, I firmly believe – I’m sure that theory will be put to the test before too much longer.)

Or how about this – after defeating Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary, she could have said “I’m Bernie Now,” and brought EVERYONE from the Sanders campaign on board and thrown out this band of DNC Beltway sycophants who seem to do absolutely NOTHING but lose elections! And she could have run her campaign accordingly (“go to the left,” as Kyle Kulinksi, among others, pointed out).

OK, enough of this exercise. We are where we are. Let’s take some down time for ourselves to try and regain our sanity and our strength. Because we’re going to need it.

Starting next January 21st, it’s probably going to be Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride every day. We just have to hang on for dear life and keep fighting in hope of a better future, eventually.

Update 11/13/16: I respect Joan Walsh a lot, and she’s right in a lot of what she has to say here about how our corporate media favored President Big Orange Cheetoh over HRC (and I suppose it’s just part of the cycle that the Dems have to try to make nice with this monstrosity who is now president – though I definitely would offer this in response).

However, I believe the Clinton team should have foreseen that they would get this kind of treatment from the news networks with initials for names. Was it fair? Of course not. But it was good for ratings, which is all they cared about, and EVER WILL care about.

But when faced with that, the Clinton team should have made THEIR OWN media. There were some very well done videos that they produced, but I couldn’t find anything approximating an “elevator pitch” on the economy. And yes, I looked.

There’s no shortage whatsoever of social media at our disposal – in addition to videos, there’s also Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter of course, other blogs sympathetic to the cause, etc. If you don’t like what the corporate media is doing, you make your own damn media! God knows the wingnuts don’t have any trouble propagating their garbage (always angers me that they have no problem getting out their lousy messages across scores of simpatico blogs and other sites and we have so much of a damn issue with getting out our good ones).

Besides, you generate enough of your own buzz, then the “news” networks WILL BE FORCED TO PAY ATTENTION TO YOU, if for no other reason that they’ll have potentially a ripe new audience for their advertisers.

Also, Walsh is sadly correct about those who purport to be on our side who demonized HRC regardless of what she did, and that was no help either of course (you reading this, Jimmy Dore?).

Update 11/14/16: I know I’m beating this to death and I swore I wouldn’t do that, and I apologize, but here is another observation from last Tuesday’s electoral hellscape, and it is this:

Hillary Clinton spent way, WAAAY too much time beating up on “Donald Drumpf.” The irony is that that fired up the Democratic base, but again, it did absolutely nothing for independents.

Yes, Trump deserved all of that invective and more. But here’s the thing: the person at the top of the ticket is supposed to leave it up to his or her surrogates to do that while the nominee for prez articulates the “vision thing,” as it was once called (I wish I has a nickel for every time I saw Bill Burton go at it with “Maniac Megyn” Kelly when Obama ran in ‘08, but that was his job).

Yes, our corporate media blocked out anything Clinton did on that time and time again. And yes, it was a scummy and lowdown thing to do. But you know what? That would have happened for ANY Democratic presidential nominee.

The media has been pulling this garbage for years. Back when we had Comcast Cable, I can recall an otherwise pretty solid news guy named Arthur Fennell who used to give us campaign updates on Bush and Kerry, and EVERY SINGLE TIME John Kerry gave a speech, Fennell would talk over what Kerry was saying to give his “spin” on what was going on and we never heard Kerry say a word. Now I think Fennell was just following orders, as it were, but it was still a dirty trick.

There are a bunch of solid presidential candidates I can recall who didn’t win because they were lousy campaigners. Is that fair? Of course not, especially considering the consequences. But I believe HRC thought the power of her personal narrative, as it were, would be good enough to win. It wasn’t.

Update 11/15/16: There aren’t too many people out there as far as I’m concerned who I would call studious observers of exactly what kind of electoral devastation took place a week ago, but I would say that Kurt Eichenwald is definitely one of those people, and I think he administers a dose of reality here (I had a feeling the Repugs had some “oppo” stuff on Sanders they would use if they had to, and believe me when I tell you that the stuff Eichenwald tells us is eye-opening…not saying it should have turned the election or how much of it is actually true, but to say it would have been a shot of hate-filled adrenaline to the wingnutosphere is a huge understatement).

Friday Mashup (9/6/13)

I give you the following from the Bucks County Courier Times earlier in the week:

Congressman Mike Fitzpatrick used the national Republican Weekly Address on Saturday to criticize President Barack Obama’s policies for health care and energy.

“Nearly five years into the Obama presidency, the workers who drive our economy see nothing but roadblocks coming out of Washington,” Fitzpatrick said in the Labor Day weekend speech.

The 8th District Republican, who recorded the talk Thursday in Philadelphia, has been critical of Obama’s Affordable Care Act in visits to several area chambers of commerce in recent months.

No word on whether or not Mikey the Beloved has spoken to actual non-Chamber of Commerce residents of PA-08 for their feedback on the Affordable Care Act, by the way (I’ll address his comment about the ACA and the alleged increase in premiums shortly…and in the matter of the Keystone XL pipeline which Mikey also supports, I give you the following from here and here).

I wonder if it’s supposed to be a bit of a backhanded compliment to Mikey that he was asked to give the Repug response to Obama’s weekly address on what probably is the day when people are least likely to pay attention to it because it’s the last unofficial weekend of summer (and by the way, to respond to “roadblock Mikey” properly, click here).

And keeping with the theme of the health care law, I give you the following from here (looks like The Weakly Standard needs a copy editor)…

A local report from Green Bay, Wisconsin says that health care premiuns (sic) could increase up to 125 percent because of Obamacare:

…

Half a million Wisconsinites will soon have to open up their pocket books for health care coverage,” says a local anchor. “And new estimates show, it may be costly. … The state’s office of the commissioner of insurance released estimates of how premium rates for individuals will be changing under the Affordable Care Act.”

In response, I give you the following from here…

(A Rand Corporation) Analysis suggests that comparisons of average premiums with and without the Affordable Care Act may overstate the potential for premium increases. Sweeping statements about the effects of the Affordable Care Act on premiums should be interpreted very carefully because the law has complex effects that differ depending on individuals’ age and smoking status, the actuarial value of the plan chose, individuals” eligibility for federal tax credits, and state implementation decisions. Once we adjust for age, actuarial value, and tobacco use, nongroup premiums are estimated to remain unchanged at the national level and in many states. Further, after accounting for tax credits, average out-of-pocket premium spending in the nongroup market is estimated to decline or remain unchanged in all states considered and in in the nation overall. [RAND Corporation, Accessed 9/4/13]

In addition, this may be the most definitive post I’ve seen yet on supposed rate increases under HCR (with further “food for thought” here).

Next, I know I’m a little late with this Labor Day-related commentary also based on this from The Philadelphia Inquirer, but here it is anyway…

Organized labor is so powerful in Philadelphia that people in this town might not realize unions are in real trouble nationally. Labor Day is a good time to reflect on that reality.

Just a few days ago, union picketers made the local TV news by blasting the amplified sound of a baby’s recorded cries during daily protests of nonunion work at a hotel, disturbing guests and a Center City neighborhood. Weeks earlier, a strike at the Pennsylvania Convention Center threatened a major convention.

Meanwhile, the political clout of labor leaders such as electricians boss John “Johnny Doc” Dougherty can be calculated by the number of Philadelphia officials who all but genuflect in the presence of a man who controls a significant source of campaign contributions.

Far be it for me to leap to the defense of “Johnny Doc,” but to say that the Inky is “painting with a broad brush” here is an understatement (a bit surprised that the Inky didn’t also blame the Teamsters for blowing up the inflatable rat that they often do in an effort to shame companies that hire non-union workers; as far as I’m concerned, that’s free speech and I have no problem with it).

I would only point out once more the contributions of the union movement to workers of all sectors of our economy, some of which are noted here. And I would say that the video noted here shows pretty well that the decline in union membership and the rise of income inequality pretty much go hand in hand.

The Inquirer points out that the downward trend in union membership began in 1983, which is two years after perhaps the most catastrophic anti-union event perpetrated by our government, and that was the firing of the air traffic controllers as part of the showdown with PATCO (their union at the time) by The Sainted Ronnie R, as noted here, the reverberations of which we are still feeling today.

Continuing, I give you some genuine hilarity from Erick (“Son of Erick”) Erickson of Fix Noise here, in response to Number 44 on Syria…

George W. Bush, getting congressional approval for military operations seven days after the September 11th attack was not bending the arc of history, but John Harwood will probably spend the next week of reporting telling us all exactly how arc bending Barack Obama is.

Sooo…is “Son of Erick” actually beating on John Harwood for supposedly carrying the water, as they say, of President Obama? And not doing the same for Former President Nutball? Really???

As noted here, Harwood said the following about Number 43…

…the 9/11 attacks gave (Bush) enough standing eventually to take the nation to war against Iraq.

Oh, and as noted here, Harwood also once criticized Obama when Number 44 decided to “move…out from behind speechmaking lecterns.” And as far as Harwood supposedly sucking up to Obama goes, I also give you this.

And is Erickson referring to the same Harwood who once claimed that Dubya was “doggedly advancing conservative goals on taxes and national security” here? Oh, but according to “Son of Erick,” Harwood should have claimed that Dubya was “bending the arc of history,” or something.

And as we know, Erickson is always a model for prudence and discretion in his “reporting” of the news stories that touch our lives on a daily basis. Right?

Gosh, if I didn’t know better, I’d swear Erickson is taking hallucinogenic drugs (and no, I won’t stop linking to that until Harwood apologizes, something I’m sure he’ll never do).

Further, I give you the following from former Repug U.S. House Rep Pete Hoekstra, also on the Syria crisis (here)…

Why did partisanship disrupt our foreign policy unity? Was it due to political opportunism or genuine policy differences?

We may never know.

Actually, I think we know right now – as noted here, Hoekstra and Former PA Senator Man-On-Dog tried to circulate a discredited claim about Saddam Hussein’s WMD. Also, as noted here, Hoekstra opined in April 2009 that the reaction of the Obama Administration to the ”enhanced interrogation” methods of our prior ruling cabal “are demonstrating how little President Barack Obama and some Democratic members of Congress understand the dire threats to our nation,” which was particularly stupid on Hoekstra’s part because all Obama wanted to do basically was to “turn the page.”

(By the way, the same prior post from yours truly notes the truly wretched “sock puppetry” of Hoekstra in the matter of feeding the bogus claim to Time’s Joe Klein that the version of the FISA bill from the Democrats required warrants for every foreign terrorist’s call and that the bill thus gave the same rights to foreign terrorists as American citizens…yes, the Dems eventually caved on FISA, to their shame, but that doesn’t make the Hoekstra/Klein episode any less galling.)

As noted here, Rachel Maddow basically said that everyone from Bushco should just go away when it comes to opining on Syria, since they were so catastrophically wrong on Iraq (I would argue that that extends to all other foreign policy issues also). Based on this bit of wankery from Hoekstra, I think that goes for him too.

Finally, I should note that BP ran a full-page ad in the Murdoch Street Journal on Thursday with quotes from Tom Donahue of the “U.S.” Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers whining about how BP has already paid $10 billion in damages and blaming those dastardly trial lawyers once again – typical.

In response, I give you the following:

This tells us a bit about the lawsuits currently pending against BP, including Florida joining a four-state suit.

This tells us that, maybe and just perhaps, the reason why those dastardly trial lawyers are involved is because BP is suing the EPA (so I guess the government isn’t entitled to represent itself?).

This basically tells us that accusing settlement victims of “taking money they don’t deserve” isn’t exactly going to “win hearts and minds” either (and the Journal ad cites the “U.S.” Chamber, but doesn’t note that BP is a member).

This tells us that the gulf oil spill’s settlement administrator has said that BP’s claims of fraud are “spurious” and “unfounded.”

Oh, and by the way, BP wants to “halt the Deepwater Horizon claims process” altogether, as noted here.

That makes them the scum of the earth as far as I’m concerned.

Friday Mashup (4/5/13)

This tells us that the crybabies were out in force recently (for anyone unfamiliar with the admittedly dated boomer reference in the pic, rest assured that it’s appropriate)…

The Bucks County commissioners should officially vote to assure all residents of its unwavering support of legal gun ownership in America.

That was the request put forward Wednesday by gun-rights advocates stirred up by a recent inquiry led by Commissioner Diane Marseglia.

During a retirement board meeting in March, Marseglia asked for and received support for a review of pension plan investments in companies that manufacture, distribute or sell guns.

No further action was taken by the board, though the move has sparked outrage from some gun owners.

Andrew Rumbold of Perkasie said Marseglia’s inquiry was only further evidence that “our constitutions, both federal and state, are coming under attack.”

Oh yes, how dare that baaad Dem Bucks Commissioner Diane Marseglia try to get the county out of the business of helping to subsidize the wholesale death and carnage industry.

And the outcry from the methane dispensers in attendance yielded the following reaction from Mr. “I Have A Semi-Open Mind” and his accomplice…

The commissioners quickly responded. During the meeting, Charley Martin put on his National Rifle Association ball cap. Rob Loughery spoke briefly about his 12-gauge shotgun.

And as they did so, the process of human evolution no doubt came to a standstill for an unspecified period (somewhere, Barney Fife is smiling as he forgets to load the bullet into his gun).

And speaking of Andrew Rumbold (pictured above), it should come as absolutely no surprise that he once ran for the PA Republican committee along with Simon Campbell and Jennifer Stefano (if it sounds like the Teahadists and reeks like the Teahadists…) but was apparently sued for his efforts by the three “endorsed” Repug committee candidates, George F. Komelasky, Joseph Cullen and “Skip” Goodnoe (here).

Nothing like a wingnut circular firing squad, is there?

And in other Bucks County political news, it looks like Mikey the Beloved has his first Dem challenger for 2014, and that would be Iraq and Afghanistan war veteran Kevin Strouse, as noted here (more info is here).

Next, this tells us the following (speaking of weaponry)…

“The U.S. has a system for controlling arms exports that, though too complex, is basically reasonable.”

According to HuffPo here, the “basically reasonable” U.S. exported about $66 billion in arms in 2011, while Russia, our nearest competition in that area, sold $4.8 billion.

This is tied into the following story as noted by Think Progress of an Arms Trade Treaty that was recently passed by the U.N., which, by all appearances, seems to have been necessitated by our cornering of that market all over the world (“We’re Number One! We’re Number One! U-S-A! U-S-A!”).

And keeping with the theme of world stuff, Claudia Rosett of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies recently opined as follows in the Murdoch Street Journal (here, about how Iran is trying to win favor throughout the U.N. – I’m sure there’s at least a kernel of truth here, but as far as I’m concerned, Israel should manage its own problems and leave us out of it)…

Unlike in the case of Iraq—where the 2003 toppling of Saddam Hussein exposed troves of financial records that helped explain how Baghdad persuaded the U.N. to ignore its own sanctions against Iraq—there is no access right now to Iran’s internal records. Perhaps with time, more will become clear.

In the matter of U.S. sanctions against Iraq, this from John Pilger of antiwar.com tells us the following…

In 1999, I traveled to Iraq with Denis Halliday, who had resigned as assistant secretary-general of the United Nations rather than enforce a punitive UN embargo on Iraq. Devised and policed by the United States and Britain, the extreme suffering caused by these “sanctions” included, according to Unicef, the deaths of half a million Iraqi children under the age of five.

Ten years later, in New York, I met the senior British official responsible for the imposition of sanctions. He is Carne Ross, once known in the UN as “Mr.Iraq.” I read to him a statement he made to a parliamentary select committee in 2007: “The weight of evidence clearly indicates that sanctions caused massive human suffering among ordinary Iraqis, particularly children. We, the US and UK governments, were the primary engineers and offenders of sanctions and were well aware of this evidence at the time but we largely ignored it or blamed it on the Saddam government. [We] effectively denied the entire population a means to live.”

I said, “That’s a shocking admission.”

“Yes, I agree,” he replied. “I feel very ashamed about it.”

So should we all (And nothing like creating a whole new generation of terrorists that we can arbitrarily decide to kill with our flying death robots, is there?).

Further (and returning to this country), this tells us of the consequences of PA’s illustrious governor Tom (“Space Cadet”) Corbett’s refusal to accept additional billions of dollars in Medicaid funds for our beloved commonwealth (though this does tie into the theme of victimizing those who can afford it the least…not much else to add here except maybe this).

Continuing, it looks like Dennis Miller has some competition in the “wingnut alleged comedian” category based on this…

Comedian Evan Sayet says he transformed from a self-described “brain-dead liberal” to a “9/13 Republican” because of his liberal friends’ failure to recognize the evil that motivated the terrorists who carried out the 9/11 attacks on America.

“What surprised me, what rocked my world, is what I metaphorically call 9/12. That’s the days, the weeks, the months and now the years after 9/11 and my liberal friends’ response to it,” Sayet told The Daily Caller’s Ginni Thomas.

“Here’s the most obvious case of good versus evil of my lifetime — perhaps the only case of good versus evil that hit anywhere close to home — and not only were the liberals on the side of the terrorists, but they were engaging in the most horrible slanders against the victims.”

Oh, and for good measure, “Political analyst Michael Barone says Sayet has ‘crossed the line from funny to important’” according to The Daily Tucker.

Yep, I would say that Sayet has crossed a line all right, but not in the way that he imagines (of course, he offers no proof whatsoever to back up his utterly scurrilous charges, and I for one have no desire to do the research on this that he should have done himself).

Also, this tells us that Sayet was to have been featured on the right-wing comedy network sponsored by Ed Snider, owner of the Philadelphia Flyers (as far as I’m concerned, the concept itself writes its own punch line…and yes, kudos to the team for playing better recently, but I can’t get excited about a possible first-round win and likely second-round loss in the playoffs, assuming they even make it).

We also learn from the Daily Caller post that Sayet is (or, at least, was) a fan of that dastardly liberal Bruce Springsteen, particularly in reference to songs by “The Boss” about cars.

This brings to mind the following lyric: “The highway’s jammed with broken heroes on a last-chance power drive” (I’ll admit, however, that it’s a stretch to consider Sayet to be a “hero” about anything).

Staying with Tucker Carlson’s Crayon Scribble Page, this tells us the following…

Convicted murderer Mumia Abu-Jamal has received three nominations on a web page for the “Unsung Hero” project from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

The project, launched during Black History Month, allows users to highlight influential civil rights leaders in exchange for an email address and postal code.

The NAACP displays about 100 nominations, including the pro-Mumia nominations, on the website for its 2013 “Unsung Heroes” project, which asks the public for nominations, under the title, “Your Heroes.” Abu-Jamal, a former member of the Black Panther Party, was convicted for the December 1981 murder of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner, stemming from a shootout that resulted after Abu-Jamal approached Faulkner, who had pulled over Abu-Jamal’s younger brother at a traffic stop.

Of course, let’s forget shall we that the NAACP page has nominations of many other meritorious individuals as well as that of the convicted killer of Officer Faulkner (this reminds me of the urban legend of MoveOn.org supposedly awarding first prize to a commercial about an attempt to assassinate George W. Bush, or something). The post from The Daily Tucker also tells us that, as a test, this Patrick Howley person submitted a couple of bogus nominations but they were filtered, while the Mumia Abu-Jamal nominations weren’t.

I just have a couple of points in response:

1) Is Howley prepared to state, once and for all and on the record, that neither he nor anyone else at The Daily Tucker had anything to do with the three M A-J nominations?
2) Does this Howley person realize that he has done far more to publicize the cause for M A-J than any other left-wing site that I have yet seen? The post tells us about a “Free Mumia” rally in Philadelphia on April 24th and a new documentary about Jamal that has just been released.

The best thing to do about Mumia Abu-Jamal is ignore him and let him rot, especially since the question about capital punishment is no longer in play.

Finally, I have to tell you that I’m currently boiling mad at this guy, for the reasons noted here.

It’s not enough that, as noted here, his administration didn’t bother to investigate fraudulent lending practices as he said he would. Now, he’s putting proposals to cut Medicare and Social Security on the table in an effort to make Republicans (and by extension, the Beltway media-political complex) like him at long last (of course, Social Security doesn’t have a damn thing to do with the deficit or the debt, but this is where we are).

Congressional Republicans are truly lucky. They have at their disposal, between Obama in the White House and Harry Reid in the Senate, the most utterly feckless Democratic “opposition” on the federal level that I have ever seen.

Mr. President, you’re a smart man. Try to get this through your head. Follow through on these boneheaded ideas (which Congress probably won’t do anyway, since they apparently know the electoral calculus better than you do) and, at the very least, you will give over all branches of the federal government to the Republicans by 2016 by utterly and completely demoralizing your base to the point where they won’t turn out to the polls in the numbers that will be needed. And this country can’t survive another turn like that.

Try representing the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party for a change.

Update 1: And once more, the Obama Administration gives me grist to justify my griping (here).

And by the way, I want to emphasize something. It’s not just the fact that the supposed effort to investigate mortgage fraud was an utter sham. It’s not just the cave-in on what has been referred to as “chained CPI.” And it’s not just the administration’s opposition to contraception for women under 17.

It’s part of the whole bloody, stinking pattern of this administration to often (and usually on crucial issues) run against the needs and wishes of its base (and as I’ve said in the past, as much as I detested Dubya and our prior ruling cabal in the White House, they had a laser focus on the people who got them where they were and they acted accordingly, at least as long as Turd Blossom took up residence there also).

No, I don’t expect the Obama Administration to do everything I want. I couldn’t possibly expect that out of anyone in good conscience. But I DON’T expect them, nor should anyone expect them, to cater so slavishly to an opposition constituency that HAS ONLY HATED THEM IN THE PAST and WILL DO NOTHING BUT HATE THEM NOW AND FOR ALL TIME, and in the process, tie the proverbial millstone around the neck of the Democratic Party that it will have to carry through election cycles in the immediate and forseeable future.

Update 2: And oh yeah, remember the economy (here)?

Update 4/10/13: So let me guess…2.3 million people are wrong and you’re right (here)?

Thursday Mashup (1/24/13)

The Bucks County Courier Times decided to give column space to Mikey the Beloved recently; I’m sure you can guess what happened next (here).

He leads off as follows…

Each morning, like so many parents across Bucks and Montgomery counties, when I drive my children to school and drop them off, I expect them to spend their day in a safe environment where their biggest concern is a test they have that day.

OK, we have a problem right away…

As a member of the U.S. Congress, Mikey spends most of his time during business hours in Washington, D.C. Does he honestly expect us to believe that he is also dropping off his kids each morning also? What, does he have some kind of private air transportation that takes him from Bucks County to the Capitol each morning too?

Mikey then fills us this column almost entirely with platitudes and self-referential nonsense, as well as stuff he could have easily lifted from other news accounts, before he gets to the following…

I am focused on effective responses. I am currently working on legislation to strengthen the national background check system and close the loopholes to ensure that dangerous people will not be able to purchase any firearm in any state.

In addition to the legislation I am currently working to introduce, I have expressed my willingness to examine the president’s proposals and work with him on achieving common-sense reforms that will truly make our communities safer.

As usual, Mikey is desperately short on specifics, but I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt, for now.

However, he also tells us the following…

The president’s solution is to ban every citizen from being able to purchase some guns. I believe a more effective approach will be to ban some citizens from being able to purchase any guns. A study by our own University of Pennsylvania commissioned by the United States Department of Justice, the same type of study President Obama has vowed to fund, has concluded that the firearm controls of the 1990s were not effective.

I can’t find the study Fitzpatrick is referring to – I’m not alleging that he’s lying, I’m just saying I can’t find it (would have been nice if it had been linked to the Courier Times column, but as I’ve pointed out, we’re talking about the fourth estate freak show here). I couldn’t find the study at Fitzpatrick’s U.S. House web site either.

I will cede Mikey’s point a bit by saying that it has been hard to quantify the benefits of the 1994 ban (pointed out by David Corn here), but I will say that there is a body of evidence out there that at least can raise some questions one way or the other, as noted here (besides, as noted here, one reason why we don’t have the most reliable data on this is because the NRA fights our efforts to obtain it…nothing but the sound of crickets from Mikey on that one).

And as far as I’m concerned, the “takeaway” from this is the graph of “Guns per 100 people” in various countries, with a lot of other give-and-take stuff, but to me, what matters is just how many guns there are in this country per citizen, which definitely doesn’t make me happy (“U-S-A! U-S-A!”).

Yep, this is pretty much nothing but another piece of PR fluff from Mikey’s press service. No doubt he’ll be back with more in about a month or so, so stay tuned.

Next, I give you the following from what purports to be an actual news story (here)…

Obama secured a $787 billion stimulus package, an auto-industry bailout, new Wall Street regulations and health-care legislation that, for the first time, promised insurance coverage for nearly all Americans.

But the political cost of moving that agenda was steep. The partisanship he had pledged to end only deepened, and many of the independent voters decisive in his election abandoned him.

…

In his news conference last week, Obama blamed his reputation for aloofness in Washington on the partisan divide he once pledged to mend.

Republicans, he said, believe it is politically dangerous to be seen with him given the antipathy many in their deep-red districts feel toward him.

Even his supporters say he should attempt to change that, using those Republicans who supported the final fiscal cliff deal as an initial call sheet that could also include GOP governors and business leaders and others who may offer help.

…

…many supporters say Obama, preoccupied with reelection, has withdrawn from the world over the past year at a dangerous time and must step back in quickly.

Are you starting to smell the same journalistic trick that I do here, people? Lots of anonymous attribution in support of utterly wankerific talking points?

It’s Obama’s fault that he failed to “end…partisanship” (as if anyone could do that in Washington, D.C.).

It’s Obama’s fault that he has a “reputation for aloofness” to the point where Republicans “believe it is politically dangerous to be seen with him,” which “even his supporters” say he should “change” (as if Obama is supposed to be concerned about how his governance affects the electability of Republicans).

It’s Obama’s fault that “many supporters say” he has “withdrawn from the world” (which, to me, is a pretty serious insinuation that he lacks the capacity for governance, which is not just wrong, but calumnious).

The author of this steaming pile of dookey, by the way, is Scott Wilson (and of course, since we’re talking about the WaPo as part of Corporate Media Central, the Repugs aren’t criticized at all for their antics… there’s a reminder later that Obama was a community organizer, which is true. He was also a U.S. Senator, which doesn’t get mentioned nearly as much as it should).

And as it turns out, Wilson is a serial offender – here, he took a quote and turned it inside out to give the impression that Obama doesn’t like people (please), and here, he definitely sanitized the wingnuttery also.

And as noted here…

Additionally, in a May 6 Washington Post article, staff writers Scott Wilson and Robert Barnes wrote that “[a]s White House press secretary Robert Gibbs put it, Obama is looking for ‘somebody who understands how being a judge affects Americans’ everyday lives.’ Congressional conservatives have reacted anxiously to that qualification, fearing that it means a nominee who is more interested in making the law than in interpreting it.” But the Post did not note Obama’s statements indicating that he supports a nominee who “honors our constitutional traditions” and “respects … the appropriate limits of the judicial role.”

Looks like Wilson and his pals at the Post (and elsewhere) try to provide the openings in the “mainstream” reporting that the wingnuts can enlarge exponentially to propagate their right-wing BS (just thought I should point that out, that’s all).

Continuing, it looks like “Blow ‘Em Up” Bolton is at it again (here)…

The US and Western response to date has been disjointed and with decidedly mixed results. If President Obama doesn’t soon jettison his ideological blinders about the threat of international terrorism, we could see a series of further attacks — not unlike the 1990s series that culminated in the 9/11 strikes.

It’s typically disingenuous and cowardly (to say nothing of inaccurate) for Bolton to assume some linkage between the Clinton Administration and the ruinous one that followed on the 9/11 attacks…perhaps in terms of facing a threat from the same foe, but that’s all (and speaking of the Clintons, I’m sure there’s no apology in sight from Bolton for this).

Oh, and while arguing that Obama is allegedly soft on al Qaeda, or something (pretty funny when you consider who got bin Laden in comparison with Bolton’s former boss), Bolton also downplayed the fact that Obama got Anwar al-Awlaki (yes, it’s a slippery slope since Awlaki was an American citizen, but it’s typically preposterous for Bolton to argue that Obama is supposedly soft on al Qaeda and omit this… also particularly disingenuous since Bolton gave Obama credit for it here – of course, Bolton contorted himself to try and find a way to give Dubya props too).

Here is more on Bolton, including the targets he wanted to go after following Dubya’s pre-emptive war in Iraq (as I once said about Charles Krauthammer, Bolton is awfully generous with the blood of other people’s kids). Also, Bolton makes it sound like a question as to whether or not the Taliban is really in charge in Afghanistan, even though the headline here says it all about the potential for the Taliban to rule in at least parts of Afghanistan as part of a possibly brokered peace deal (regarding Bolton’s claim that Obama’s policies have led to a Taliban resurgence – I don’t think they’ve had to “resurge,” or something, since they’ve been players all along since Bolton’s boss outsourced the Afghan war to Pakistan in the prior decade).

We all know what a “true believer” Bolton is, people. I just think we need to remind ourselves of that fact from time to time (and let us not forget that, as noted from the article in The Nation, Bolton would have been in a position to actually create further chaos in the world once more instead of mere propaganda had we – gulp! – sworn in Willard Mitt Romney recently instead of President Obama for a second term).

Finally, in a thoroughly logical career progression, this tells us that former Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska, allegedly a Democrat, will now become a lobbyist for the insurance industry…

Nelson is joining a public affairs firm and becoming the chief of an insurance commissioners’ group.

The former senator has been named CEO of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC). He will be the group’s chief spokesman and primary advocate in Washington. NAIC is made up of state insurance regulators and helps coordinate their oversight across the country.

And for the occasion, I thought I’d bring you a sample of what you might call Ben Nelson’s Greatest Hits…

This tell us that Nelson was the only Dem senator to vote against confirming Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court.

Along with Max Baucus, Jon Tester and Mark Warner, he voted to block tax legislation that would have punished U.S. firms that export jobs here.

Here, Nelson engaged in typically pointless obstruction that delayed jobless benefits.

Nelson also blocked financial reform legislation here.

Here, he was offered a job within the Dubya White House in order to step aside so it would be easier for Mike Johanns to get elected instead, which ultimately happened anyway (can’t remember too many Democrats so “graced” by Former President Highest Disapproval Rating In Gallup Poll History; the story is a response to the alleged job offer from the Obama Administration to “Admiral Joe” Sestak…I honestly don’t remember what that supposed scandal was all about).

It should also be pointed out that Nelson actually has a background in insurance, particularly with NAIC, who are guilty of the following as noted here…

The NAIC’s resolution urged Congress and the White House to gut the only real consumer pricer (sp) protection in the Affordable Care Act. That protection, the “medical loss ratio” rule, requires insurers to spend 80% to 85% of their premium income on health care, and limit overhead, commissions and profit to 15% to 20%. The idea is to get insurers to operate more efficiently and cut bloat to keep premiums down. It’s already working–for instance in Connecticut, where regulators report major insurers filing for premium reductions, not increases.

Such relief will be over if Congress or the White House do what the NAIC asked–to remove broker sales commissions of a few percent up to 20% of the premium from the overhead percentage. Premiums would shoot up, profits would grow and consumers would pay.

Consumer advocates are counting on the White House and Congress (at least the Senate) to reject the fake arguments and arm-twisting of the industry, and listen to actual consumers.

Yep, it sounds like the would-be beneficiary of the “cornhusker kickback,” had it ever come to pass in final legislation for the Affordable Care Act, will be right at home.

Lather, rinse, repeat (sigh).

A Remembrance

Update: Please read this; also, if you possess an American flag, today is a good day to fly or display it.

Paging Elin Nordegren – Someone Else Needs To Be Smacked With A Club

(And I don’t mean Tweety here…)

OK, so let me get this straight – Chris Matthews asks Ari Fleischer if the latter is satisfied with the economy Bush handed to Obama, and Fleischer immediately goes all “Terra! terra! terra! Saddam Hussein was a BAD MAN, terra! terra! terra!,” and Matthews reminds him that 9/11 happened on Dubya’s watch, and Fleischer goes all “How dare you! SADDAM HUSSEIN 9/11 9/11 9/11!!!”

Before I actually felt a bit sorry for Tiger Woods – I thought he was monumentally stupid and hurt his family and himself more than anyone else by his actions. However, if he thinks that hiring Fleischer as a spokesman will enhance his image, then he’s a total idiot and I feel no sympathy for him whatsoever.

Update 3/22/10: HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

Monday Mashup (9/28/09)

Yes, I know William Safire is dead.

Aside, from the fact that he once called Hillary Clinton a “congenital liar” (to which HRC famously replied that she didn’t feel offended for herself, “but for her mother’s sake”), and aside that he brought up the thoroughly debunked claim that Mohammed Atta, one of the 9/11 hijackers, met with “an Iraqi intelligence agent” in Prague, he also claimed that the Iraq war would be “quick,” with “Iraqis cheering their liberators.”

Bill Moyers called him out on this here, but, like Thomas Friedman, Bill Kristol, Roger Ailes, Charles Krauthammer and Judith Miller, Safire chose not to stand up and try to defend that which is indefensible.

Also, this tells us that Safire once claimed that “nobody was telling (President Obama, on the occasion of his acceptance of the Democratic Party nomination for president last year) or the voters that Democrats preferred abject surrender,” when in fact Dems are routinely vilified by Safire and his like-minded brethren in that manner.

Good riddance.

This tells us that former John McCain Presidential Campaign Adviser Carly Fiorina, currently debating whether or not she’ll challenge California Dem U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer next year, discussed her battle with breast cancer in this interview with Karen Tumulty of Time Magazine. I give Fiorina credit for enduring this and trying to turn her struggle into something positive.

However, as noted here, Fiorina has claimed that “There is no job that is America’s God-given right anymore,” an interesting remark for someone who, as former CEO of Hewlett Packard, turned a blind eye to that company’s trading with Iran (at the very least), as noted here.

And as Mike Morrill of Keystone Progress tells us here (noting, among other things, HP’s disastrous merger with Compaq):

Fiorina Laid Off Nearly 18,000 HP Workers During “Restructuring.” According to the Omaha-World Herald, “Hewlett-Packard, based in Palo Alto, Calif., had a $ 903 million loss on revenue of $56.6 billion for its fiscal year that ended last Oct 31. According to a summary by Hoover’s Inc., an Austin, Texas, provider of business information, Hewlett-Packard has undergone extensive restructuring under Chief Executive Officer Carly Fiorina. The company announced earlier this year that it planned to cut 17,900 people by October because of a weak economy and its merger with Compaq.” [Omaha-World Herald 9/29/03]

Fiorina Suggests Her Biggest Mistake Was Not Firing More People More Quickly. In 2005, Fortune magazine reported that “Fiorina does not agree, naturally, that there’s been a brain drain (at HP). In fact, she believes that one lesson she’s learned while running HP is that she should have moved more quickly in ejecting certain people. Smartened up now, she says, “I would have done them all faster. Every person that I’ve asked to leave, whether it’s been clear publicly or not, I would have done faster.” [Fortune, 2/7/05]

Despite Being Forced Out, Fiorina’s Severance Package Was Reportedly More Than $42 Million. CNNMoney reported, “Ex-Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina will get a severance package worth about $21.4 million, but stands to reap another $21 million after she was forced out by the computer maker’s board last week, a newspaper reported Saturday. The additional amount reflects the estimated value of her Hewlett stock and options as well as her pension, which were not included in her severance package, the New York Times reported.” [CNNMoney.com, 2/12/05]

Fiorina Was Paid $10.7 Million In 2002, But Was Decreased To $6.6 Million In 2003 Due To Poor Performance. As reported by the San Francisco Chronicle, “Hewlett-Packard has slashed the pay of chief executive Carly Fiorina after she missed some performance targets last year, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission… Fiorina’s total pay — including salary, bonus and stock options — dropped about 38 percent from $10.7 million in fiscal 2002 to $6.6 million last year.

While her base salary went up from $1 million in 2002 to $1.24 million in 2003, her performance-based bonus dropped from $2.9 million to $2.1 million and the value of her stock option grants declined from $6.8 million to $3.3 million.” [San Francisco Chronicle, 1/24/04]

If Fiorina is serious about making a run for the Senate, she should expect some sympathy for overcoming the odds on her personal health.

However, that would be grossly overshadowed by the monstrous incompetence she has demonstrated in her corporate career, a frightening harbinger of what she would do in “the world’s greatest deliberative body.”

And finally, I’m going to do something I’ve been meaning to do for some time; that would be bringing us up to date on that political piñata running for governor of New Jersey as the Republican standard bearer (from here):

Hmmm, Christie and Turd Blossom, huh?

Christie’s bad week (8/18) continued.

Somehow I don’t quite think “oops” covers this on Christie.

Is it just me, or does Christie’s whole “law and order” facade start to crumble (here)?

Is the Christie juggernaut “off the rails” (here)?

Christie is nothing but a bully and a thug (here – h/t The Daily Kos).

It’s getting harder to keep up with all of the Christie revelations (here and here…this guy shouldn’t be running for dog catcher, let alone governor of New Jersey).

And it sounds like Christie’s running mate has a case of foot-in-mouth disease herself (here).

Not an appearance of wrongdoing by Christie on this, but worth considering anyway…

It should be an interesting fall.

Update 10/14/09: No “small dive” is good enough for Christie, it seems, based on this, unless you’re talking about his polling numbers.

Update 10/19/09: At least Christie is honest in acknowledging his debt to Bushco; I’ll give him that much based on this.

A Remembrance

Friday Mashup (7/31/09)

First of all, best wishes to Sen. Chris Dodd for a full recovery from upcoming prostate cancer surgery (here).

Also in a medical vein, the Bucks County Courier Times tells us the following from its “Thumbs Up, Thumbs Down” segment today…

(Thumbs Up) to Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey, who’s lobbying City Council for a law that would require bars to report fights to 911. The proposal follows the beating death of a Lansdale man who was pummeled and kicked outside a sports bar at Citizens Bank Park.

Oh sure – this is great. Pass a law obligating the police to call 911 and divert precious, comparatively scarce resources that could be used to save lives to break up tend to the victims of bar fights started by a bunch of drunks.

You want a more constructive idea? Well then, as noted here by Philadelphia City Controller Alan Butkovitz…

“Tele-nursing allows better prioritization of emergency responses,” said (Butkovitz). “Our fire commissioner says that 80 percent of the city’s 220,000 emergency calls each year should not be getting rescue squad response. With tele-nurses handling non-emergency 911 calls, those who have ‘drop-everything’ emergencies will have more rapid responses.”

“It is possible that the use of tele-nurses could save the city as much as $2.5 million per year and save lives,” Butkovitz reported.

Memo to the Courier-Times editorial board: stick to opining on matters “closer to home” in your typically provincial manner, since that seems to resonate better with your predominantly-right-wing audience.

Also, I’m still waiting for the howls of outrage from our corporate media punditocracy over the recent comment from departing Repug Sen. George Voinovich of Ohio that the downfall of the Republican Party has occurred because, as noted here…

“We got too many Jim DeMints and Tom Coburns,” Voinovich told the Columbus Dispatch. “It’s the southerners.”

That is easily one of the most astute remarks I’ve heard from a politician of either major party affiliation in a loooong time.

And yes, while it’s true that there are some random blog posts I found out there on the subject, I have yet to hear Messrs. Krauthammer, Kristol, Will, Cohen and their brethren weigh in (a few Google searches produced nothing).

This is typical, though; as Media Matters notes here, it is much easier for the news organizations with initials for names to focus on real or alleged Democratic missteps than it is for the Repugs.

Also, as long as we’re talking about the South, this post from kos tells us that they are primarily the individuals comprising the Obama “birthers” out there (the life forms who still agitate themselves over the fantasy that our president was not born in this country).

I would give Voinovich credit for interjecting some much-needed reality into the political discussion, but since he’s leaving, what he says really isn’t going to matter. Now saying it and then defending his words in Congress in the midst of a re-election campaign – that would be truly admirable.

I must point out the following amusing item from The National Review Online pertaining to Repug Tennessee Senator Bob Corker (here)…

Corker says President Obama recently met with him, something he appreciates. But Corker doesn’t think Obama “has his feet on the ground with regard to what appropriate health reform is.” He adds, “And he personalizes everything, it’s all, ‘I, I, I.'” Corker suspects that for Obama “doing this with some massive bill is about politics…To him, it’s about a political victory, not about doing what’s in the long-term interest of citizens.”

Here is Corker’s statement on the matter of whether or not he will vote to confirm Judge Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court…

“Judge Sotomayor has an impressive background and an inspiring American story. I enjoyed meeting with her in June and let her know I would reserve judgment on her nomination until the conclusion of a fair and thorough hearings process,” said Corker. “After much deliberation and careful review, I have determined that Judge Sotomayor’s record and many of her past statements reflect a view of the Supreme Court that is different from my own. I view the Supreme Court as a body charged with impartially deciding what the law means as it is applied to a specific case. I believe Judge Sotomayor views the Supreme Court as more of a policy-making body where laws are shaped based on the personal views of the justices. Unfortunately, nothing I heard during Judge Sotomayor’s confirmation hearings or in my meeting with her in June sufficiently allayed this concern. For this reason, I’m disappointed to say, I will not be able to support Judge Sotomayor’s nomination.”

And we’re supposed to deal seriously with these people on matters of legislation critical to our economy, our health care, and our planet in general…

And finally, I must communicate this even-more-absurd item from former Laura Bush employee Andrew Malcolm at the LA Times…

According to a new Washington Post survey, a clear majority of Americans (55%) approve of the job (Vice President Joe) Biden’s doing, perhaps because thanks to schedules like today’s, they can’t know much about what that job he’s doing actually is.

Biden’s numbers are tied closely to Americans’ belief in the economic efficacy of President Obama’s stimulus package. Those who think it’ll work, like him; those who don’t, don’t.

Those Biden approval numbers still aren’t quite as good as Dick Cheney’s April approval of 64% from a 2001 Post poll.

Oh mah gawd…

To communicate a more up-to-date approval rating on “Deadeye Dick” that actually isn’t AT LEAST EIGHT YEARS OLD, this tells us that the former veep is only slightly less popular than Cuba and Venezuela (though, as Matt Yglesias points out, “China and Russia are kicking his ass”).

Well, as least “Big Time” can look on the bright side; he’s bound to be more popular than Iran and North Korea.

“Darth” Cheney, Fave Repug Spokesman Of All Time

And NOW he tells us there was no Saddam Hussein/9-11 link? After he and his former boss tell us the former Iraqi leader had al Qaeda ties (which is more or less telling the same lie)?

Paging Eric Holder…paging the Patrick Leahy Truth Commission…