This is just a real thing that a real person wrote and other real people edited and then decided to really publish in a real publication in the world: Biden Should Run on a Unity Ticket with Romney.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha no.
The author of this heap of trash is Juleanna Glover, whose author bio at the end of the piece informs us that she "has worked as an adviser for several Republican politicians, including George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Rudy Giuliani and advised the presidential campaigns of John McCain and Jeb Bush. She is on the Biden Institute Policy Advisory Board."
Cool cool cool.
Setting aside that the Biden Institute has on its advisory board a Republican operative who has presumably also found gainful employment between election cycles as a fox guarding hen houses, I suppose we can assume that her affiliation with the Biden Institute means this is a trial balloon.
If this is an indication of the sorts of ideas we can expect from Joe Biden should he run yet again, HARD FUCKING PASS.
Showing posts with label Bipartipoop. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bipartipoop. Show all posts
This Is a Real Thing in the World
Today in Terrific Ideas
[Content Note: Misogyny.]
I meant to mention this in my Primary Wrap-Up yesterday, but it slipped my mind, what with all the other misogyny care of white male commentators.
Here's Chris Matthews, he of "She-Devil" segments, giving Hillary Clinton some hot advice:
And maybe this is just me talking, but I do think if you could ever find a way to put a ticket together that would actually end some of this mishegas, to use a Yiddish word, that's been going on in this country, it might be a Clinton-Kasich ticket. Something really surprising. Because I do think there's gonna be many, many, tens of millions of Republicans who will not vote for Donald Trump in a general election, looking for an alternative.If Hillary Clinton were smart. That is a thing that noted smart person Chris Matthews just said.
If Hillary Clinton were smart, she'd make herself the alternative by putting Kasich on the ticket.
Because clearly, Hillary Clinton isn't smart. And the only way to prove she's smart is to choose as her running mate a Republican man. A man who just defunded Planned Parenthood in his state. Who, since taking office in 2011, has "quietly led his state to an almost unprecedented number of abortion clinic closures," forcing residents of Ohio to travel in droves to Michigan for abortions. Who doesn't believe maternity leave should be law. Who talks about women "leaving their kitchens" to support him. Who has a long history of saying problematic things to and about women.
Yes, if Clinton were smart, she'd put this fucking guy on her ticket and, as the saying goes, one heartbeat away from the presidency. If she were smart.
Now, I'm just a woman with a brain irreparably compromised by female hormones like Hillary Clinton, not a noted smart person like Chris Matthews, but it seems to me that if there are "many, many, tens of millions of Republicans" who won't vote for Trump, under any circumstances, then the person running against Trump doesn't actually need to provide them with a coddling alternative, but can just feel satisfied with the fact that these voters will stay home on Election Day and behold their roosting chickens.
After, you know, having rejected the alternative provided by Trump's formidable opponent with a solid platform.
And, obviously, math is hard, especially for women, but maybe Hillary Clinton has calculated that putting a rank misogynist on her ticket might actually cost her a few votes with liberal women. And liberal men who aren't fans of misogyny. Maybe she has concluded that alienating her base in an absurd bid to appeal to a base that notoriously hates her isn't actually a wise strategy.
I wonder if that's occurred to noted smart person Chris Matthews.
Perhaps he just hasn't time to think about it, what with all the brainpower he's dedicating to coming up with smart strategies for Hillary Clinton, who isn't smart enough to come up with these smart ideas on her own.
Congress Reaches Deal on Spending Bill
[Content Note: Class warfare.]
Last night, Congress reached a tentative agreement on a $1.1 trillion spending bill "that would end the threat of a year-end government shutdown and fund federal agencies through most of 2016." And, naturally, it's bipartisan garbage. Everyone loses! Unless you're rich, of course. The good news is that federal employees will keep getting paid.
Details of the massive bill had still not been posted online by the House or Senate appropriations committees late Tuesday, but House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., told GOP members that an agreement had been reached. Democratic leaders cautioned that final details were still being worked out.And of course they'll be "creating jobs" by extending massive tax cuts to the wealthy and corporations, to the tune of $750 billion.
Funding to keep the government running is set to expire at midnight Wednesday. Ryan said lawmakers will vote Wednesday on an extension to keep the government open until Dec. 22. That gives Congress time to approve a long-term bill to fund agencies through September.
Ryan promised that there will be no government shutdown and said the House will vote Thursday on a long-term agreement. The Senate will vote on Thursday or Friday, just in time for Congress to adjourn for the holidays.
Republicans wrangled with Democrats over proposed policy riders on issues ranging from the environment to the Syrian refugee crisis.
"We didn't win everything we wanted," Ryan said on Fox News, without offering details. "Democrats got some things they wanted. So that's the nature of compromises in divided government. But all told, we'll make sure that we keep government funded and that we advance some of our priorities and, namely, that's to create jobs."
Ryan said that extending tax breaks for businesses will help create jobs.We already know, because it has been repeatedly demonstrated over and over at the expense of poor and working class people, that trickle-down economics doesn't fucking work. And, as of October 2013, 10% of the companies on the S&P 500 already had an effective tax rate of 0%.
"We're going to have some good things in here for job creators," he said. "We're going to have good tax policy that helps send us in the right direction for tax reform, that helps provide certainty for businesses."
These tax breaks to corporations and wealthy individuals aren't an incentive to "create jobs." They're an enticement to corporations whose massive profits will remain unchanged and wealthy individuals whose passive earnings will keep making them richer to keep funding the Republican Party.
And they're an excuse for the Republican Party to justify cuts to federal social programs because there isn't enough revenue to fund them.
Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., said last week that extending the tax breaks would cost the U.S. Treasury billions of dollars that could be better used for social programs for struggling Americans.This is what class warfare looks like.
Ellison said it is part of a long-term Republican strategy to shrink government. With huge tax breaks in place, "It will be harder for us to pay for things next year," he said.
"We're not getting any new revenue so what is there left to do but cut, cut, cut?" said Ellison, who is co-chairman of the House Progressive Caucus.
Bipartisan Farm Bill Heads to the President's Desk
[Background: Republicans Think People Aren't Entitled to Food.]
The US Senate has passed the long-delayed farm bill:
The Senate voted with strong bipartisan support to send a nearly $1 trillion farm bill to the White House for President Barack Obama's signature.Ha ha except for the people in those rural communities who may rely on food stamps, of course, since the final legislation cut the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program by $8 billion (= 32 Romneys). Oh well! Let them eat bootstraps.
The Senate voted 68-32 to approve the five-year agricultural and food bill, following the Republican House's vote in favor of the legislation last week.
Obama said of the compromise: "As with any compromise, the Farm Bill isn't perfect - but on the whole, it will make a positive difference not only for the rural economies that grow America's food, but for our nation."
"The White House has said that Obama intended to sign the farm bill if it reached his desk." Welp.
Mind you, it wouldn't matter if the President vetoed the legislation. Republicans simply will not agree to pass the much-needed farm bill without steep cuts to SNAP. Because Republicans think people aren't entitled to food.
Grand Bargain
Obama Offers to Cut Corporate Tax Rate as Part of Jobs Deal:
President Obama, seeking to break a stalemate with Republicans, announced [in Chattanooga, Tennessee] Tuesday that he would cut corporate tax rates in return for a pledge from Republicans to invest in more programs to generate middle-class jobs.How about we not cut taxes at all when we need lots of revenue to generate lots of jobs? Oh, right. Because the Republican Party is holding the entire nation hostage on behalf of corporations who don't want to fund infrastructure and social safety in the nation whose people they're exploiting.
Using a sea of cardboard boxes in a cavernous Amazon distribution center as a backdrop, Mr. Obama described a "grand bargain" for the middle class that he said would stimulate the economy while giving businesses the lower tax rates they have long sought.
"If folks in Washington really want a 'grand bargain,' how about a grand bargain for middle-class jobs?" Mr. Obama said to a crowd of 2,000. "If we're going to give businesses a better deal," he added later, "we're going to give workers a better deal, too."
Also: As Susie observes over at C&L: "It's great that Obama continues to call for jobs, but why is he speaking about middle-class jobs at a facility that uses mostly temps, and is known for bad working conditions?"
Whoops.
Immigration Bill Passes Senate; House GOP Says No Way
This afternoon, the much ballyhooed bipartisan immigration reform bill passed the US Senate. And basically what happened is that, in exchange for meager progress for migrant workers and a path to citizenship for "eligible" immigrants, the Democrats agreed to Republicans' proposals to militarize the border and establish biometric tracking at airports.
Ultimately, senators voted on a plan that attempts to fortify the U.S.-Mexico border and other exit points across the country while also providing opportunities for millions of eligible immigrants to apply for permanent status and eventually citizenship.What a neat deal!
At a cost of roughly $30 billion, the legislation would double the number of U.S. Border Patrol agents along the U.S.-Mexico border to roughly 40,000 and require the construction of 700 miles of fencing along the southern border. In addition to a "surge" of border agents, the federal government would be required to begin using military-style technology, including radar and unmanned aerial drones to track illegal border crossings.
The Department of Homeland Security also would be required to establish a biometric tracking system at the nation's 30 largest airports and eventually at border crossings and seaports to catch people attempting to leave the country with overstayed visas.
...In an attempt to address the needs of a broad cross-section of the business community that relies on immigrant laborers, the agreement also would increase the number of visas available to high-skilled workers, most of whom work in the fields of science and technology, and lower-skilled people who take jobs in the construction and hospitality industries. Immigrant farm workers would be admitted under a temporary guest worker program.
Naturally, it's still not terrible enough for House Republicans to get behind it.
Most House Republicans have dismissed the Senate bill as providing insufficient border security measures and being too generous to the nation's illegal immigrants.We need immediate and meaningful immigration reform to provide a path to citizenship and better worker protections for migrant workers of all skill levels. What we don't need is more America 2.0 bullshit and militarized borders in a gross expansion of government spending and federal policing, proposed by the (ha ha) party of small government.
Rep. Peter Roskam (R-Ill.), a key deputy GOP whip, on Thursday labeled the Senate bill a "pipe dream" that won't come up for a vote in the House.
"The House has no capacity to move that bill in its entirety," Roskam said at a breakfast hosted by the National Review. "It just won't happen."
Congressional Libs Unimpressed by Grand Bargain
I guess these political noobs just don't understand how politics works:
Multiple reports out today suggest that Dem leaders in the House and Senate are edging towards supporting Chained CPI for Social Security as part of the "grand bargain" Obama wants to replace the sequester with — and that's already sparking sharp pushback from Congressional liberals.What is this guy—some kind of LIBERAL BLOGGER?! Looks like someone's not a member of the Congressional 12-dimensional chess club!
"Why are we doing this?" Dem Rep. Keith Ellison, a co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said to me in an interview today. Asked which is worse, continued sequestration or a grand bargain that cuts entitlement benefits, Ellison said: "It's like saying, 'Which of your kids do you want to sacrifice to the monster?' Neither one."
Ellison is backed up by over 100 other House Dems who have pledged to fight any cuts to retirement benefits, including Chained CPI, a way of indexing Social Security benefits to inflation that amounts to a real benefits cut.
..."Leader Pelosi has always encouraged members to offer their own sincerely held views," Ellison told me. "My sincerely held view is that Chained CPI is a benefit cut for people who have very little. An overwhelming number of people who are on Social Security have fixed incomes. We have a lot of people across America who agree. Most of our caucus is opposed to this."
When it comes down to it, isn't the choice just between extended sequestration and some kind of deal to replace it, and if so, which is worse? Is this the choice liberals face? I put the question to Ellison, and he rejected the framing, arguing that being drawn into it is to already cede ground to Republicans.
"Once we do that we're already in the territory of bargaining away Chained CPI," Ellison said. "We're already saying we're open to negotiating on Chained CPI. And we're not." Senator Bernie Sanders has similarly insisted that liberals must not allow the choice to be framed this way, and has instead called on the White House and Dem leaders to try to leverage public opinion to force Republicans to accept a long term deal that includes increased revenues and cuts spending judiciously without targeting entitlement benefits.
Ellison pointed out that Republicans aren't as quick as Dems to signal a willingness to trade away core priorities at the outset. "Republicans don't do that," he said.
Filibuster Deal
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell have reportedly reached some kind of bipartisan deal on the filibuster. There are a lot of additional details at the link, but this strikes me as the most important bit of reform:
The two leaders agreed that they will make some changes in how the Senate carries out filibusters under the existing rules, reminiscent of the handshake agreement last term, which quickly fell apart. First, senators who wish to object or threaten a filibuster must actually come to the floor to do so. And second, the two leaders will make sure that debate time post-cloture is actually used in debate. If senators seeking to slow down business simply put in quorum calls to delay action, the Senate will go live, force votes to produce a quorum, and otherwise work to make sure senators actually show up and debate.Digby says: "Better than nothing, but still not much. The story of our time." Yup.
Quote of the Day
"I certainly think that bipartisanship ought to consist of Democrats coming to the Republican point of view."—Indiana's new Republican Senate candidate Richard Mourdock.
This is what we're dealing with.
MSNBC Host Chuck Todd: All right, well, as you know, Senator Lugar put out a very lengthy statement—a manifesto of sorts—and he endorses you, uh, but he does so it seems like reluctantly, when he says, "I want him to be a good senator. But that will require him to revise his stated goal of bringing more partisanship to Washington." Let me just stop there: You have said that there needs to be more partisanship in Washington. How do you square that with legislating?Well, that sounds totally reasonable. Which is why the Republicans are totally "going the Democrats' way" while they've got the majority—their firm principle of deferring to the winners and not being obstructionist wankers. Ahem.
GOP Candidate Richard Mourdock: Well, what I've said is I certainly think that bipartisanship ought to consist of Democrats coming to the Republican point of view. We entered this campaign wanting to be a voice, and hoping to give more of a national voice, to the idea that Republicans, and more specifically conservatives, would be in the majority of the United States Senate, and the House, and hopefully that we have a Republican in the White House. If we do that, bipartisanship means they have to come our way. If we're successful in getting the numbers, then we will work toward that. You know, I want to confront not so much people as the issues that are really out there, that are causing us to be in the economic crisis we're in.
[Via BuzzFeed.]
Quote of the Day
[Content Note: Reference to sexual violence.]
"Obama can sit there and let all the [Bush tax cuts] lapse, and then the Republicans will have enough votes in the Senate in 2014 to impeach. The last year, he's gone into this huddle where he does everything by executive order. He's made no effort to work with Congress."—Grover Norquist.
LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
By way of reminder, Grover Norquist is the fuckbrain who once famously said: "Bipartisanship is another name for date rape."
Now he's complaining that BARACK OBAMA isn't bipartisan enough. LOL. Okay, player.
[H/T to Mustang Bobby.]
So the President Gave a Speech Last Night...
And I really hoped you watched it, because, if you didn't, you sure missed some exciting stuff! Like Speaker of the House John Boehner projectile vomiting chunks of half-digested star-spangled bald eagle at the OUTRAGEOUS suggestion that "shared responsibility" is an American Value. It was quite an alarming night.
Ha ha just kidding. It was a very routine evening of our Democratic president sounding more encouragingly populist than he'll ever actually be, Republicans being stony-faced monuments of contempt at the mere mention of raising taxes or federal spending to generate jobs for the working classes, and heaps of despair slowly engulfing every vaguely progressive viewer at the thought that even the President's discouragingly milquetoast proposals will be obstructed by the Republicans.
Yay for America!
The text of the President's address is here, and the text of my garbage governor's rebuttal address is here. Below are my Executive Summaries.
President Barack Obama: I killed Osama bin Laden! The American Dream is so dead, but I'm going to spend a long time now pretending with a straight face that I can revive it, if only the Republicans will behave like grown-ups and cooperate, because the one dream that ISN'T dead is my pipe-dream about radically changing the way our profoundly broken government works by scolding Congressional Republicans as if they have any shame, integrity, or decency. Taxes. Outsourcing. We'll stop outsourcing with MORE CORPORATE TAX CUTS! We'll fix unemployment with MORE EDUCATION, because the problem is definitely a lack of education and not that jobs which paid livable wages have been decimated by outsourcing, deregulation, the erosion of workers' rights to enable exploitation of skeleton staffs, and Wal-Mart running out of towns all over the nation any employer in manufacturing, production, distribution, or retail that prioritized community sustainability over ginormous profits. Teachers, amirite? Boots on the border! Clean energy. Let's do some nation-building at home. No more irresponsible homeowners! Oh, and irresponsible lenders, but DEFINITELY irresponsible homeowners. Freedom. I killed Osama bin Laden! Jesus.
Executive Notes: Barack Obama is definitely running for president! He also definitely does not think that a record number of restrictions on reproductive rights affecting more than half the nation's population is worthy of mention in a STATE OF THE UNION address. Does President Obama know that women are part of the union? I'm pretty sure he does, because I distinctly remember him noting that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is "a woman who ran against me for President." (GOOD DESCRIPTION!) See also: End Summary.
Governor Mitch Daniels: Welp, at least President Obama hasn't abandoned his wife and kids! I'm racist! President Obama is divisive! I am such a liar! "The plain truth" is something I would not recognize if knocked on my door begging to be privatized. Everything President Obama does is stupid, and I am obviously a genius because JUST LOOK AT INDIANA. President Obama stinks the end. Jesus.
Executive Notes: Mitch Daniels is a jerk.
I think Herman Cain also gave a rebuttal? On behalf of the Tea Party? Ha ha they are not a real party. And unlike CNN et. al., I'm not going to pretend like they are.
In Summation: It is very obvious, and disappointing, that the President still has not learned that Republicans cannot be reasoned with and convinced to do what is right for the country; he still believes they care about the quality of life of this nation's people (men) and just have good faith differences of opinion about how to achieve that goal. This is not the case. They exist only in service to profit-making corporations, and the nation's people (men) only matter insofar as they can be exploited to do the work from which their employers can reap profit.
A memo from the last election was revealed this week, in which Obama's senior adviser David Axelrod wrote of then-opponent Hillary Clinton: "She embodies trench warfare vs Republicans, and is consumed with beating them rather than unifying the country and building consensus to get things done. She prides herself on working the system, not changing it."
That was, of course, meant as A Terrible Thing, rather than evidence of her understanding a reality about the US government that its current president still has yet to embrace three years into his first term.
I don't know if Hillary Clinton would have been a better president than Barack Obama is, but, in some alternate universe where she is, it's probably because she is "consumed with beating them" instead of being consumed with a consensus that will never, ever, be built.
I can't be funny about this: If President Barack Obama is reelected, he has to give up the ghost of bipartisan dreams. He must instead consume himself with beating them, because this country, the people of this country, need him desperately to stop negotiating and start winning.
Quote of the Day
"Tonight, the President will do what he does best. He will give a nice speech with a lot of memorable phrases. ... We'll also be treated to more divisive rhetoric from a desperate campaigner-in-chief. It's shameful for a President to use the State of the Union to divide our nation."—GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, who definitely did not pay taxes on a crystal ball last year, so I guess he's just psychic.
I myself am not able to predict the future, but I'm nonetheless going to go out on a limb and assert that Romney's prognosticator is broken.
Unless, of course, President Obama, who can hardly be said to be desperately campaigning, if the words "desperate" and "campaigning" still mean the same things they meant yesterday, breaks wildly from tradition and replaces his (frankly rather tiresome) rhetoric of unity, bipartisanship, and transcending ideological differences with "divisive rhetoric...to divide our nation."
It could happen!
Spoiler Alert: It won't.
US Politics Rulezzz
Headline of the Day: "Gingrich: Mitt Romney is a liar." LOL! Perfect. But wait—it gets even better!
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, whose support in Iowa has withered after riding on top of the polls, on Tuesday called former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney a liar who would mislead the American people if elected to the White House - but added that he would still vote for him if Romney won the GOP nomination.LOL FOREVERRRRRRR!!!
On CBS' "The Early Show" this morning, CBS News chief White House correspondent Norah O'Donnell asked Gingrich about comments he had previously made about his chief rival and the Super PAC whose negative campaign ads have hurt his campaign: "You scolded Mitt Romney, his friends who are running this Super PAC that has funded that, and you said of Mitt Romney, 'Someone who will lie to you to get to be president will lie to you when they are president. I have to ask you, are you calling Mitt Romney a liar?"
"Yes," Gingrich replied.
"You're calling Mitt Romney a liar?"
"Well, you seem shocked by it!" said Gingrich. "This is a man whose staff created the PAC, his millionaire friends fund the PAC, he pretends he has nothing to do with the PAC - it's baloney. He's not telling the American people the truth.
"It's just like this pretense that he's a conservative. Here's a Massachusetts moderate who has tax-paid abortions in 'Romneycare,' puts Planned Parenthood in 'Romneycare,' raises hundreds of millions of dollars of taxes on businesses, appoints liberal judges to appease Democrats, and wants the rest of us to believe somehow he's magically a conservative.
"I just think he ought to be honest with the American people and try to win as the real Mitt Romney, not try to invent a poll-driven, consultant-guided version that goes around with talking points, and I think he ought to be candid. I don't think he's being candid and that will be a major issue. From here on out from the rest of this campaign, the country has to decide: Do you really want a Massachusetts moderate who won't level with you to run against Barack Obama who, frankly, will just tear him apart? He will not survive against the Obama machine."
Yet, when pressed by CBS News' chief Washington correspondent Bob Schieffer on whether he could support Romney if the "Massachusetts moderate" became the Republican nominee, Gingrich replied, "Sure."
"Mitt Romney is a snake-oil salesman. I mean, dude's a shady operator, a deceitful double-crosser, a villainous hoodwinker, a master of chicanery, and a flimflam aficionado of the highest order. I wouldn't trust that prevaricating fabulist any further than my butler could throw him! What I'm saying is that the guy is real lying sack of shit. GOD I HATE HIM. I am also endorsing him for President of the United States of America. I am Newt Gingrich and I approve this message."
Gingrich explained that he would support any Republican candidate "because I think Barack Obama is tearing the country apart."
It's a fair point. If there's one criticism I have of Obama, it's that he should really try reaching across the aisle a little bit more and stop alienating the Republicans with his rigid adherence to leftist principles.
By the way, I love the breathless coverage of Newt Gingrich stating the demonstrable fact that Mitt Romney is a liar. Congratulations on your continued dominance in the field of manufactured controversy, US Media.
I Guess Nostradamus Was Right
First William Shatner covered Iron Man, and now this. It's like I'm living in Bizarro World on Opposite Day:
1) There's a proposal out there "to slice $3 trillion from the [US] federal budget over the next decade through significant cuts to federal health programs, including Medicare, and as much as $1.3 trillion in new taxes."
2) That proposal is coming from Congressional Democrats.
3) Irrespective of the Democrats' push to make "significant cuts to federal health programs, including Medicare", SUPER CONGRESS! appears to be at an impasse.
4) There are only four weeks left until OMG BUDGET CRISIS! OMFG BUDGPOCOLYPSE!!! OFMGBBQ BUDGETMAGEDDON!!!1!!
5) Nobody didn't see this one coming. Nobody.
More Evidence That YOU Don't Understand 12 Dimensional Chess
In the latest Gallup poll, President Obama's job approval rating averaged 40%. But the even more important numbers are these: Support for the president is down 11% among liberals (from 79% at summer's beginning to 68% now) and down 12% among moderates (from 59% to 47%).
After months of triangulation, capitulation, and bipartisanship to appeal to the all-important moderates, their support for him is now below 50%.
Meanwhile, he's losing his liberal base just as quickly.
At some point, the administration is going to have to acknowledge at long last that is not because we don't understand politics, but because we do.
[H/T to @PeterDaou.]
The Password Is: Jobs
I never expected hope and change to feel so underwhelming:
President Barack Obama is finalizing a jobs package that could include a program to refurbish school buildings nationwide and tax breaks to encourage firms to hire workers.I mean, yeah. These are mostly not terrible ideas. But they're also not dynamic ideas, or big ideas, or bold ideas, or brave ideas. They have neither the capacity to inspire, nor to be particularly effective in reversing an economic crisis the profundity of which has not appeared to penetrate the bubble-wrapped heads of the Beltway elite.
The package, to be unveiled in early September, is Obama's chance to convince skeptical voters he can bring down the 9.1 percent unemployment rate and steer the United States away from another recession -- ahead of next year's election.
...The president is widely expected to repeat his calls for an extension of a payroll tax cut, push for patent reform and bilateral free trade deals, and suggest an infrastructure bank to upgrade the country's roads, airports and other facilities.
Retrofitting schools with energy efficient technology would allow the government to directly hire for labor-intensive work and also give a boost to the clean energy sector that Obama has said could be an important U.S. economic motor.
Other measures being considered, according to economists who have advised the White House, include tax credits for firms hiring more workers, funds for local governments to hire teachers, and retraining help for the long-term unemployed. Steps to boost the ailing housing market are also under review.
These are center-right ideas suitable for the domestic policy of a milquetoast administration during a sluggish economy. They are not pieces of a grand vision necessary for the domestic policy of a proactive administration during a time of grave need.
For someone who billed himself as a visionary agent of change, President Obama is depressingly uncreative.
"What's going to be included in this plan are some reasonable ideas that could have a tangible impact on improving our economy and creating jobs ... the kinds of things that Republicans should be able to support," [White House spokesman Josh Earnest] said. "These are bipartisan ideas that the president is going to offer up."Oh for Maude's sake.
Apparently, the president still hasn't noticed that the Republicans don't do reasonable. Maybe he should try something unreasonable by Beltway standards for a change. Like being a progressive.
Oof
And while I was writing the below, the President was giving a speech with the usual bipartisan bromides in which he failed to hold Republicans accountable for their role in our economic mess. Digby:
As far as laying the blame for the debacle at the feet of the lunatics who have promised to hold the debt ceiling as a hostage for all time, he had this to say:Yup.
This is the United States of America and no matter what some agency may says we always have been and always will be a triple A country. Despite all our challenges we still have the best universities, some of the most productive workers, the most innovative companies, the most adventurous entrepreneurs on earth. What sets us apart is not only that we have the capacity but also the will to act. The determination to shape our future. The willingness in a democracy to work out our differences in a sensible way. And move forward not just for this generation but for the next generation. And we're going to need to summon that spirit today.I'll bet the Republicans are so grateful that the President didn't blame them for the debt ceiling debacle that they will happily cooperate in future legislative initiatives. Like passing free trade deals. And cutting spending, regulations and taxes.
On Naming the Villain
When he wants to be, the president is a brilliant and moving speaker, but his stories virtually always lack one element: the villain who caused the problem, who is always left out, described in impersonal terms, or described in passive voice, as if the cause of others' misery has no agency and hence no culpability.—Drew Westen, a professor of psychology at Emory University and Democratic strategic political consultant, in a piece for the New York Times called "What Happened to Obama?"
…[H]e ran for president on two contradictory platforms: as a reformer who would clean up the system, and as a unity candidate who would transcend the lines of red and blue. He has pursued the one with which he is most comfortable given the constraints of his character, consistently choosing the message of bipartisanship over the message of confrontation.
But the arc of history does not bend toward justice through capitulation cast as compromise.
There's actually quite a lot in that article with which I don't agree—Westen virtually tasks Obama singlehandedly with the responsibility for changing the national conversation, and, while I believe Obama has failed to make maximum use of the presidential bully pulpit, even the most gifted progressive orator on the planet would still have to contend with the deadening filter of the fuck soup that is our hippie-hostile national media.
Westen also seems to believe that Obama is more progressive than I have ever regarded him to be; I believe the main reason that Obama is not a modern FDR is because he doesn't want to be one.
But I do agree with the above excerpt. One of the ways in which President Obama most infuriates me (and always has) is his refusal to hold Republicans/conservatives accountable, and his insistence on drawing equivalencies, while fetishizing bipartisanship as inherently superior to any solution even distantly associated with a partisan ideology.
It's this habit, so vividly on display during the debt ceiling negotiations, that underlies the sudden rash of musings about how things might have been different if Hillary Clinton had instead won the nomination and then the presidency. (See here, for example. TW for sexist language.) The common observation among these speculations is that Clinton would not have capitulated to Republicans—because she knows them better, because she understands them, because she has no illusions about the fact that they do not compromise, because she holds their policies in contempt.
This observation is made, naturally, as if it's a new idea. Gee, if only someone would have mentioned during the last election that showing contempt for the party who got us into this fucking mess was actually an important qualification!
Yes. If only.
Me, January 22, 2008:
[T]here's something else, tangentially related, that undermines my faith. Obama positions himself as transcending the ugliness of partisanship, but I like knowing that [John Edwards] and [Hillary Clinton] hate the goddamned Republicans as much as I do. I love it when Edwards gets into his zone and talks about corporate greed with fury at the anti-American fatcats seething so clearly just below the surface. I love it when Clinton talks about the GOP through gritted teeth and hides a snarl behind a smile when the name Bush passes her lips. I trust that. And I trust it because I can't imagine anyone who believes the things I do isn't that. fucking. angry. at the Republicans at this point. I want to see that anger. I want to feel it. I want to recognize and connect with it.Whooooooooops!
I want to see Obama at least as angry about Bush as he is about being questioned on his own voting record.
The ostensibly transcendent, politics-of-hope stuff is good, but I believe you can be optimistic and angry. My faith is pretty much built around exactly that.
I want evidence that Obama is the guy I keep hearing he is.
I know that Obama can't express himself in quite the same way, thanks to racist narratives about Angry Black Men. I know that he can't let naked fury cross his face without a cost—although I suspect, given the nature of protest against this president, it would ultimately be no bigger cost than simply being a man of color in the first place.
I just want him to name the villain, to borrow Westen's term. He can do it with a smile. I just want him to name the villain.
I want it so bad.
But the problem is that Obama doesn't seem to believe there are villains to be named—just misguided folks who are all good Americans and have different ideas about how to reach the same goals that definitely have the best interests of the American people at heart. Which is patent bullshit.
And everyone paying the slightest bit of attention knows it's patent bullshit, at least everyone who doesn't have a vested interest in continuing to engage in this fantasy about changing the tone in Washington through sheer force of will, a notion which members of the administration have admitted was arrogant and naïve, but to which they lingeringly subscribe nonetheless.
Now the people who ignored this evident folly, this unrealizable dream of hope and change, are waxing ponderous about Hillary Clinton's alternate-universe presidency, as if she had not been the obvious choice to go twelve rounds with the rancorous partisan fucks of the Republican Party in the first place.
Which just pisses me off, so hard. For reasons I am sure I do not need to explain.
(Not that I think Clinton would have been a perfect president. I'm reasonably certain I'd be just as exasperated and disdainful of her war policy as I am of Obama's, as but one example.)
I don't bring this up to say "I told you so," which gives me absolutely no pleasure. I couldn't be less pleased to have not been proven wildly and embarrassingly wrong by President Obama.
I bring it up because, as long as everyone's so keen to cast their gaze backwards and stupidly wonder just how it is that we ended up with a president who prioritizes the appearance of civility over the practice of democracy in all its frequent ugliness, rather than the other way around, I'd like to suggest that we not engage in precisely the evasive and dishonest—but so very civil, so politely non-confrontational!—dialogue that launches Daydreams of Hillary in the first place.
I'm going to go ahead and name that villain: Misogyny.
I know that villain, because I was once its minion. And I know it because once I became a traitor to its cause, I was its target, too.
The truth is, there was a candidate who does, in Western's words, "understand bully dynamics—in which conciliation is always the wrong course of action, because bullies perceive it as weakness and just punch harder the next time." But the people who said we need a candidate with that understanding, and supported the candidate who had it, were mostly women. (Or assumed to be mostly women.) And the candidate was a woman. And they were all discredited, frequently and viciously, on the basis of their womanhood.
It's no coincidence that the people who now harbor Daydreams of Hillary were also the ones most inclined to wield misogyny against her and her supporters.
I'd like to think that won't happen again, now that we can all see where it got us.
I'd like to think that.
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[Commenting Guidelines: This post is not an invitation to speculate about an alternate-universe HRC presidency or trash this-universe BHO presidency. The topic is bully dynamics, and the irony of misogynist bullies, who silenced HRC supporters when they addressed her keen understanding of bully dynamics, now wishing that HRC were president.]
Bipartisan Deal Reached to End FAA Shutdown
Reuters—Congress reaches deal to end aviation standoff. And that bipartisan solution is to KICK THE CAN DOWN THE ROAD:
Congressional leaders struck a deal on Thursday to resolve a partisan dispute and end a partial shutdown of the Federal Aviation Administration that has halted airport projects and threatened thousands of jobs.Great government we've got.
The standoff, which began on July 22, has centered on partisan differences over full funding of the agency through the middle of next month.
Because of the disruption, certain airline ticket taxes were not collected, leaving a huge hole in government revenues for aviation programs.
"I am pleased to announce that we have been able to broker a bipartisan compromise between the House and the Senate," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said in a statement.
Reid said the compromise did not resolve key differences that held up the stopgap funding legislation, leaving contentious issues until lawmakers return from recess in early September.
And Lo There Was Much Telling It Like It Is by Republicans Newly Empowered by "Bipartisanism"
Joining his BFF Mitch McConnell in some belligerent chest-beating about how unrepentantly and uncompromisingly horrible their garbage party is, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Ealasshole) said today that "Republicans will continue a push to overhaul programs such as Medicare," and that, despite the promises made to Americans as part of the social contract known as the entitlement programs into which we've paid, we're soon to be shit outta luck and had better start making alternative arrangements for our futures.
That's not hyperbole.
U.S. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R., Va.) on Wednesday suggested that Republicans will continue a push to overhaul programs such as Medicare, saying in an interview that "promises have been made that frankly are not going to be kept for many" and that younger Americans will have to adjust.So, basically, the Republican Party is interested in reforms that would take care of people over 55, i.e. their strongest voting base, and the rest of us can
"What we have to be, I think, focused on is truth in budgeting here," Cantor told The Wall Street Journal's Opinion Journal. He said "the better way" for Americans is to "get the fiscal house in order" and "come to grips with the fact that promises have been made that frankly are not going to be kept for many."
..."When we came out with our budget, we said, look, let's at least put people on notice, but preserve those who are 55 and older," Cantor said, referring to a Republican-written budget plan that would turn Medicare, now a fee-for-service program, into a program that subsidizes private health insurance. "The rest of us have got ample time to try and plan our lives so that we can adjust to reality here when you look at the numbers. Again the math doesn't lie."
That is, of course, wildly unreasonable in addition to being comprehensively compassionless.
But who's gonna stop them...?
[Via.]
