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« Liberal Outrage: February 2011 | Main | Liberal Outrage: April 2011 » Liberal OutrageAnd just a reminder By fnord12 | March 28, 2011, 12:42 PM | Liberal Outrage | Link And that's not the Democrats' final offer, either. Odds are good that the eventual compromise will see cuts somewhere between the $30 billion Republican leadership called for and the almost $70 billion the conservative wing of the House GOP demanded... But the irony is that it's entirely possible the press will report that Democrats "won" the negotiations, as Republican leadership is likely to have to lose a lot of conservative votes in the House to get any compromise, no matter how radical, through the chamber. That will make them look bad, and in the weird logic of Washington, make the Democrats look good. But if you just keep your eye on the policy, Republicans are moving towards a win far beyond anything the House leadership had initially imagined. By fnord12 | March 28, 2011, 12:35 PM | Liberal Outrage | Link Since my initial post describing my conflict, all of my posts on this subject have been on the "against" side. But here is Juan Cole, a foreign policy analyst that i respect, making the "for" case. By fnord12 | March 28, 2011, 10:43 AM | Liberal Outrage | Link Despite the set-up: With that said, Kevin Drum writes: I think it used to be the former, but has lately become mostly the latter. Back in the day, I remember a lot of people saying that it was getting harder for politicians to shade their positions -- either over time or for different audiences -- because everything was now on video and the internet made it so easy to catch inconsistencies. But that's turned out not to really be true. Unless you're in the middle of a high-profile political campaign, it turns out you just need to be really brazen about your flip-flops. Sure, sites like ThinkProgress or Politifact with catch you, and the first few times that happens maybe you're a little worried about what's going to happen. But then it dawns on you: nothing is going to happen. Your base doesn't read ThinkProgress. The media doesn't really care and is happy to accept whatever obvious nonsense you offer up in explanation. The morning chat shows will continue to book you. It just doesn't matter. And that's got to be pretty damn liberating. You can literally say anything you want! And no one cares! That's quite a discovery. I'd say this has been obvious for some time. By fnord12 | March 24, 2011, 12:52 PM | Liberal Outrage | Link Yglesias, after noting that mostly liberal New York Rep Anthony Weiner supports the Libya action by citing what we didn't do in Rwanda: By fnord12 | March 23, 2011, 10:20 PM | Liberal Outrage | Link Apple shoulda just stuck with Plants vs Zombies and Angry Birds and Fruit Ninja. No need to feature apps that "cure" anything. Please. More than 146,000 people signed a petition calling on Apple to remove the so-called "gay cure" app backed by Exodus International, a Christian group that describes itself as "the world's largest worldwide ministry to those struggling with unwanted same-sex attraction". "This is a double standard that has the potential for devastating consequences. Apple needs to be told, loud and clear, that this is unacceptable." By min | March 23, 2011, 2:17 PM | Liberal Outrage & Ummm... Other? | Link I know John McCain is a doddering old fool at this point, but he is still an actual Senator. So this can't be ignored: "[I]t does take time -- it did during the Russian occupation of Afghanistan -- but we were able to provide them with some weapons and wherewithal to cause the Russians to leave Afghanistan. So we can do it." He does know that those nice fellows we armed in Afghanistan turned out to be Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda, right? By fnord12 | March 23, 2011, 1:14 PM | Liberal Outrage | Link Quoting the entire post from Greg Sargent: A number of people have pointed to Obama's quote from 2007 in which he told the Boston Globe that he doesn't believe the President should have the power "to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation." But in a sense this is the wrong part of Obama's 2007 quote to focus on, because as everyone knows, a president can easily get around this legal problem by labeling a foreign crisis a threat to American national security, as Obama has now done in the case of Libya. Rather, the more important part of Obama's 2007 quote is this one: Putting aside the legal questions here, Obama is acting in violation of the lessons he once took from history. Along these lines, Dem Rep. John Larson of Connecticut, who added his voice to the criticism of Obama's decision, made an important point today. Larson noted that even if Obama technically is in compliance with the War Powers Resolution, he is violating its spirit: "To insure that the collective judgment of both the Congress and the President will apply to the introduction of United States Armed Forces into hostilities." Obama very well may have had his reasons for not consulting Congress as extensively as he might have -- time was of the essence; the president expects this to be wrapped up quickly; he doesn't envision this as a full-scale war; etc. But it's very obvious that Obama's approach is at odds with his own instincts and his own reading of history, at least as it stood when he was the reader and other presidents were the lead actors. I'll just add there's nothing "self-defense" or "imminent threat to the nation" about this, whatever you think of it. By fnord12 | March 22, 2011, 4:32 PM | Liberal Outrage | Link A CBS Poll shows 50% approval for Obama's actions in Libya. That seems a little low to me. Usually a president gets an immediate bump for a war action and then it starts to drop if it goes on too long or things go bad. But maybe it's different for "little" actions; not sure how Panama or Grenada were received at the time, for example (and not sure if those are fair comparisons). But what i thought was odd about the poll was this: Seems kinda odd, to me. 66% of Democrats supporting a war effort but only 43% of Republicans. Or am i over-analyzing it? By fnord12 | March 22, 2011, 3:18 PM | Liberal Outrage | Link Then why did they abstain from the vote? China's official newspapers on Monday stepped up Beijing's opposition to air attacks on Libya, accusing nations backing the strikes of breaking international rules and courting new turmoil in the Middle East. China also did not veto the U.N. resolution. By fnord12 | March 21, 2011, 12:00 PM | Liberal Outrage | Link Pros: Cons: Don't think that because i listed the Cons second that i give them more weight. That first bullet under Pros is a big one, and possibly outweighs all of the others put together. But there's a lot not to like about this. By fnord12 | March 21, 2011, 9:58 AM | Liberal Outrage | Link The group was organized by Sens. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) and Mike Johanns (R-Neb.), and was deliberately perfect in its bipartisan qualities -- it was co-signed by 32 Democrats and 32 Republicans, all of whom want the White House to back a "comprehensive" package to tackle the "critical" issue of deficit reduction. (One can apparently only dream of such an interest in job creation.) Keep in mind, the Gang of 64 didn't make any kind of policy recommendations. The letter seemed provocative by virtue of its endorsees, but the request of the president was itself bland and generic. The bipartisan senators want "a broad approach," which helps reach "consensus," and believes a White House endorsement of such an effort would send a "strong signal." Ezra Klein (via Bennen): In this letter, 64 senators manage to sound like an interest group begging the White House for support rather than a supermajority of the United States Senate -- which is to say, a coalition of men and women who could, on their own, draft and pass the very legislation they're talking about. Which raises the question: Why are they writing this letter rather than the legislation this letter claims to want? I think for now on every Friday night, min, Wanyas and i will write a letter to Bob demanding that he decide what we should order for dinner. But we won't tell him what we want. And we'll complain about it when it arrives. By fnord12 | March 21, 2011, 9:52 AM | Liberal Outrage | Comments (2)| Link Except critics of our education system, including seemingly well meaning people like Bill Gates, don't admit it. Kudos to the Washington Post for publishing that rebuttal. By fnord12 | March 18, 2011, 4:12 PM | Liberal Outrage | Link TPM: It would appear they can still go through the motions again and pass the bill without cutting the corners. By fnord12 | March 18, 2011, 11:57 AM | Liberal Outrage | Link Felix Salmon says don't do it. Here and here. People in the comments disagree, to put it mildly. By fnord12 | March 17, 2011, 4:54 PM | Liberal Outrage | Link Fnord12 tells me it's too late to invest in iodine tablets. Figures provided by Tokyo Electric Power on Thursday show that most of the dangerous uranium at the power plant is actually in the spent fuel rods, not the reactor cores themselves. The electric utility said that a total of 11,195 spent fuel rod assemblies were stored at the site. Tell me again why nuclear power's better. By min | March 17, 2011, 3:36 PM | Liberal Outrage & Science | Comments (1)| Link Reported by Steve Benen at Washington Monthly: Snyder's law gives the state government the power not only to break up unions, but to dissolve entire local governments and place appointed "Emergency Managers" in their stead. But that's not all -- whole cities could be eliminated if Emergency Managers and the governor choose to do so. And Snyder can fire elected officials unilaterally, without any input from voters. It doesn't get much more anti-Democratic than that. Except it does. The governor simply has to declare a financial emergency to invoke these powers -- or he can hire a private company to declare financial emergency and take over oversight of the city. That's right, a private corporation can declare your city in a state of financial emergency and send in its Emergency Manager, fire your elected officials, and reap the benefits of the ensuing state contracts. You might be thinking, "C'mon, that can't be right." I'm afraid it is. Michigan's new Republican governor is cutting funding to municipalities, and if they struggle financially as a consequence, he will have the power to simply takeover those municipalities if he believes he should. Note that this bill hasn't actually passed yet and is now generating some controversy. Here's a somewhat more measured review of the bill. Even by that review, it looks draconian. Governor Tarkin: The Imperial Senate will no longer be of any concern to us. I have just received word from Coruscant that the Emperor has dissolved the council permanently. The last remnants of the Old Republic have been swept away forever. By fnord12 | March 15, 2011, 11:20 AM | Liberal Outrage & Star Wars | Link Not exactly a high bar, but that's what they're saying about the nuclear reactor mess in Japan. The big fear at the Fukushima nuclear complex, 240 km (150 miles) north of Tokyo, is of a major radiation leak. The complex has already seen explosions at two of its reactors on Saturday and on Monday, which sent a huge plume of smoke billowing above the plant. In light of the fact that our government seems incapable of addressing Peak Oil or Global Warming, i'd been kind of coming around to the use of nuclear energy. The science magazines that Wanyas lends me often include articles chiding environmentalists for not embracing nuclear energy. I still had concerns about what we're supposed to do with the nuclear waste, but i'd been somewhat convinced that safety wasn't as much of an issue any more. I should have been more skeptical considering the fact that the same type of safety assurances were given regarding offshore drilling just prior to the disaster in the Gulf. Granted an 8.9-magnitude earthquake and subsequent tsunami is a hopefully unique circumstance, but with all the extreme weather we're expecting to see in the coming decades, maybe we ought to be looking at alternatives. By fnord12 | March 14, 2011, 9:38 AM | Liberal Outrage | Link I haven't been blogging about this because it's just too sputter-inducing outrageous, but in case you didn't know, the soldier who turned over some of the State Department material to Wikileaks, Pfc. Bradley Manning, is being kept in a Marine brig in Virginia. He's essentially being tortured: prolonged periods of forced nudity, sleep deprivation, isolation. Of this, Obama has said: Pentagon says it's ok, so i guess it's ok. The whole 'safety' thing is bullshit. They've put him on a fake suicide watch, which means they can wake him up every time he falls asleep to 'make sure' he's still alive, etc. Everyone knows this. It's the same things they've done to all of the Guantanamo prisoners. Well, on Friday, State Department spokeperson P.J. Crowley said this in response to a question: Crowley: I spent 26 years in the air force. What is happening to Manning is ridiculous, counterproductive and stupid, and I don't know why the DoD is doing it. I was impressed with that. I thought maybe there was disagreement between State and Defense and there was going to be some internal pressure to treat Manning like a human being, despite Obama's statement. Turns out i was being too hopeful again, however: P.J. Crowley abruptly resigned Sunday as State Department spokesman over controversial comments he made about the Bradley Manning case. Glenn Greenwald reminds us of this quote from Obama: I don't want to have people who just agree with me. I want people who are continually pushing me out of my comfort zone. Not this time, apparently. By fnord12 | March 14, 2011, 9:04 AM | Liberal Outrage | Link Ofc, last night the Republican State Senators pushed through the union-busting measure that everyone's been protesting about. Originally it was part of the budget bill, and you need a quorum to vote on a financial bill in Wisconsin, so the Democrats hiding out-of-state was working. By stripping it out and putting in a stand-alone bill, the Republicans felt that they could vote on it without a quorum. Remember that previously Republicans were saying they needed to strip unions of their rights in order to balance the budget, which would in theory mean that this separate bill should also require a quorum. But whatever. About all this Steve Bennen at Washington Monthly writes: But while those plans are considered, it's worth appreciating the larger context. The political environment in and around Madison was already noxious as the debate over the governor's plan intensified. Last night's gambit only served to make the air significantly more toxic, enraging working families and their Democratic allies. Indeed, if the GOP were sweating over Democratic recall efforts before, Republicans have to realize they just put their majority in serious jeopardy. If pushing the union-busting bill was the equivalent of poking the hornets' nest, ramming it through this way was the equivalent of beating the hornets' nest with a tire-iron and then daring the hornets to do something about it. That may all be so, but please take note that Republicans did it anyway. No compromises. No hemming and hawing. No talk of bipartisanship. They had the votes, they figured out how to jump any procedural hurdles, and they did what their base wanted them to do. And now they'll suffer the consequences, betting that they'll be far less than pundits warn and that at least some portion of their ploy will remain in place when all the dust settles. Imagine the national Democrats doing that when they had a majority in both houses of Congress plus the White House. Imagine all the progress they could have made. By fnord12 | March 10, 2011, 2:44 PM | Liberal Outrage | Link It's always said that racism is a way to keep the masses at each other's throats instead of wondering why the top 1% of the population has 90% of the wealth. So here we are with 9% unemployment and Congress is... holding "Muslim: Threat or Menace?" hearings. By fnord12 | March 10, 2011, 2:32 PM | Liberal Outrage | Link Ezra Klein interviews Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, and i'm just stunned at how tone-deaf his comments are and how fact free his reasoning seems to be. TV: It is an argument. There is a value system that's important to support. If there's not economic opportunity, we can't utilize the resources of rural America. I think it's a complicated discussion and it does start with the fact that these are good, hardworking people who feel underappreciated. When you spend 6 or 7 percent of your paycheck for groceries and people in other countries spend 20 percent, that's partly because of these farmers. EK: My understanding of why I pay 6 or 7 percent of my paycheck for food and people in other countries pay more is that I'm richer than people in other countries, my paycheck is bigger. Further, my understanding is that a lot of these subsidies don't make my food cheaper so much as they increase the amount of it that comes from America. If we didn't have a tariff on Brazilian sugar cane, for instance, my food would be less expensive. If we didn't subsidize our corn, we'd import it from somewhere else. TV: Corn and ethanol subsidies are one small piece of this. I admit and acknowledge that over a period of time, those subsidies need to be phased out. But it doesn't make sense for us to have a continued reliance on a supply of oil where whenever there is unrest in another part of the world, gasoline prices jump up. We need a renewable fuel industry that's more than corn-based, of course, and there are a whole series of great opportunities here. But as soon as we reduced subsidizes for biodiesel, we lost 12,000 jobs there. So if you create a cliff, you're going to create significant disruption and end, for a while, our ability to move beyond oil. And keep in mind that the Department of Agriculture has moved, for years, to reduce our spending. We cut $4 billion in crop insurance and put that to deficit reduction. So we are making proposals to get these things in line. But a lot of our money goes to conservation, and goes to some of those 600,000 farmers who are barely making it. EK: Let me go back to this question of character. You said again that this is a value system that's important to support, that this conversation begins with the fact that these people are good and hardworking. But I come from a suburb. The people I knew had good values. My mother and father are good and hardworking people. But they don't get subsidized because they're good and hardworking people. TV: I think the military service piece of this is important. It's a value system that instilled in them. But look: I grew up in a city. My parents would think there was something wrong with America if they knew I was secretary of agriculture. So I've seen both sides of this. And small-town folks in rural America don't feel appreciated. They feel they do a great service for America. They send their children to the military not just because it's an opportunity, but because they have a value system from the farm: They have to give something back to the land that sustains them. EK: But the way we show various professions respect in this country is to increase pay. It sounds to me like the policy you're suggesting here is to subsidize the military by subsidizing rural America. Why not just increase military pay? Do you believe that if there was a substantial shift in geography over the next 15 years, that we wouldn't be able to furnish a military? TV: I think we would have fewer people. There's a value system there. Service is important for rural folks. Country is important, patriotism is important. And people grow up with that. I wish I could give you all the examples over the last two years as secretary of agriculture, where I hear people in rural America constantly being criticized, without any expression of appreciation for what they do do. When's the last time we thanked a farmer for the fact that only 6 or 7 percent of our paycheck goes to food? We talk about innovation and these guys have been extraordinarily innovative. We talk about trade deficits and agriculture has a surplus. Ethanol as a fuel source is a pipe dream. Costs more energy to grow and process the stuff than you get from it. I don't know why Vilsack doesn't know that. The rest of it just sounds like we have to subsidize people so they feel appreciated. The thing about military service is just bizarre. By fnord12 | March 10, 2011, 11:08 AM | Liberal Outrage | Link Media Matters digs up an old Washington Post article: This is what her supporters call the Whitman miracle, the fiscal accomplishment that has sent her stock soaring among New Jersey's voters and transformed her on the national scene from a political unknown into one of the Republican Party's newest stars. ... But the key to the Whitman miracle lies neither in her political philosophy nor in her spending cuts, but rather in the fine print of her budget. Contained there is a series of arcane fiscal changes that some experts say amount to this: Christine Todd Whitman has balanced New Jersey's books and paid for her tax cut by quietly diverting more than $1 billion from the state's pension fund. Whitman calls what she did a "reform" of the pension system that puts it on a more "sound actuarial footing." Others are less charitable. The one thing that even the actuarial consultants hired by the Whitman administration agree on, however, is that the chief effect of the changes will be to shift billions of dollars in pension obligations onto New Jersey taxpayers 15 to 20 years from now. At best, this represents a gamble that the state's economy in the early part of the next century will be stronger than it is today and better able to shoulder pension responsibilities. At worst, according to fiscal experts, Whitman's move represents politics at its most cynical. By fnord12 | March 7, 2011, 6:34 PM | Liberal Outrage | Link The Obama administration notoriously predicted an 8% unemployment rate if we did nothing (despite cries from lefty economists that it would be higher). And of course, we now have 9% unemployment with the stimulus. Ezra Klein interviews one of the economists that the Obama administration based their predictions on, and asked why he got it wrong: "Nowadays," he continued, "nine or 10 percent unemployment sounds normal. But we'd had so many years of around five percent unemployment that we just couldn't believe it would go that high." In other words, the unemployment we're experiencing now was so hard to imagine in 2008 that most forecasters didn't even consider it as a serious possibility until they actually saw it happening to the economy. But three years later, we don't like nine percent unemployment, but fairly few people have their hair on fire about it. The Obama administration is talking about winning the future; John Boehner is saying that if his policies cause further job loss, then "so be it." We've acclimated. We're moving onto other issues. And that's a bad thing. By fnord12 | March 2, 2011, 2:59 PM | Liberal Outrage | Comments (2)| Link Rush Holt beats Watson at Jeopardy. By fnord12 | March 1, 2011, 6:22 PM | Liberal Outrage
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