Charlie Cook has come out saying that the Republicans will hold the House in 2012 and take back the Senate. But he said that his discussions with top Republican strategists indicate that President Obama will win re-election. With a wing-nut Congress that would be interesting if not absurd. James Carville's Democracy Corps has polled and found that voters have buyers' remorse and that GOP freshmen in the House are so vulnerable that the Democrats have a chance to win back the House. Others dispute this saying that redistricting totally favors the Republicans and that buyers' remorse may not turn into votes.
A Pew Poll shows that President Obama beats the generic Republican rather handily and that specific Republican names don't help much either. Public Policy Polling of swing states show Obama winning his states but not with some of the large margins he experienced in 2008. That's one of the reasons that Republican strategists believe they will have a lock on Congress because the Presidential coat-tails will not be so long. The actions of the Midwest Republican Governors have swung the region's direction back to the Democrats and may help save a few Senate seats.
One of the fascinating things to observe is that the approval ratings of the most visible Republican potential candidates have seriously dropped since 2009. The suggestion is that the more people know them the less they like them. I'm not one of those who believes this race is totally wide open as some have suggested. Basically, I believe it is a Huckabee versus Romney contest at this point.
For the first time, Gallup has Mike Huckabee taking the lead over Mitt Romney. The results of the full poll are fascinating.
19% Mike Huckabee
15% Mitt Romney
12% Sarah Palin
10% Newt Gingrich
6% Ron Paul
5% Michelle Bachmann
4% Mitch Daniels
2% Haley Barbour
2% Rick Santorum
2% Jon Huntsman
2% Gary Johnson
1% Donald Trump
Notice the absence of Tim Pawlenty, who announced his exploratory committee this week. Evangelical Christian Tim Pawlenty just finished his stint as Governor of Minnesota, creating the largest deficit in their history. Pawlenty is known among hunters for gut-shooting a deer and letting his aide clean up after him because he had to go to a fund-raiser.
People claims that Haley Barbour has a good shot because he is well-known for his fund-raising and his ability to exploit every loophole in campaign finance laws. Barbour has been out in Iowa this week pledging to reinstate DADT to avoid the battlefield dangers of an "amourous mindset." The return of DADT has been pledged by Gingrich,Mike Huckabee and Tim Pawlenty.
Mitt Romney facing criticism for his Romneycare program in Massachusetts is going to stay away from Iowa because his handlers fear he will be ambushed by the social conservatives, who dominate the Caucus. He claims he will be creating a strategy that focuses on New Hampshire, Nevada and Florida. However, he will be risking his front-runner status if he stays away from too many primaries.
If there is an emerging pattern to the Republican race, it is that it will be fought over "values" issues and not the economy. With House Republicans and Governors sabotaging the recovery, they are betting that a sour economy will doom President Obama. However, they risk the voters actually waking up and discovering the implications of their actions by then.
The key component of the Republican strategy is the ability to raise astronomical sums of money from people like the Koch Brothers and Rove's billionaire donors to overwhelm the Democrats. The second part is being implemented by the Republican Governors, who are implementing Voter ID laws that will dramatically affect the ability of the young,minorities and the poor to vote. Republicans are hoping they can suppress these key constituencies, who vote overwhelming for Democrats but more importantly for President Obama. A big liability for Republicans is the new census figure showing that Hispanics have grown to 50 million people and are now the largest minority in the country. With the immigration laws proposed by the Republicans in over two dozen states,their one-time dream of capturing the Hispanic vote has faded.
The most interesting new possible candidate is Donald Trump. Trump epitomizes Republican economics at this point in time. Trump inherited a fortune from his father, leveraged enormous debt from it, declared bankruptcy several times but paid 10cents on the dollar, each time increasing his wealth, and actually managed to let a casino go bankrupt. In many ways, he is the most suitable candidate of them all.
Showing posts with label Haley Barbour. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Haley Barbour. Show all posts
Saturday, March 26, 2011
Thursday, September 9, 2010
You Don't Know What's Happening Here,Do You, Pastor Jones?
First up, the great International Quran Burning Day in Gainesville, Florida. I have yet read a piece that this whole stunt by one Pastor Jones is about erasing the tax liens on his properties. The Church also houses his for-profit enterprise and his congregation--all 40 of them--serve as "volunteer" labor for his business. Pastor Jones and his wife own real estate in the surrounding areas estimated to be worth $5 million and some of it is in arrears for taxes. It seems the whole Quran Burning event is a scam to raise money to pay off his taxes.
This is not so dissimilar to the Westboro Baptist Church scam, which generates protests at military funerals and sometimes anti-semitic and homophobic demonstrations. This so-called church basically consists of one extended family and a few followers. The whole purpose of their obnoxious stunts is to provoke physical attacks on their members so that the Church can file suit and collect damages. This is the whole raison d'etre of their existence and so far they have been very successful at it.
Our third scam artists are The Quitter from Wasilla and Glenn Beck, who are exploiting 9/11 in Anchorage, Alaska at an event where they are charging $250.00 for an entrance fee. Talk about Chutzpah since Glenn Beck frequently proclaimed how sick he was of hearing from 9/11 families. I guess he was repulsed because they didn't charge money.
During Labor Day weekend, I got to drive a brand-new Chrysler Minivan over highways refurbished under the Recovery Act. So, I was thrilled to hear President Obama come firing out at the Milwaukee Labor Day celebration and announce plans for a $50 billion infrastructure program. This was followed by a strong economic speech in Cleveland, where he drew the lines between his recovery policy and the Republican non-plan.
So where are we with the Midterms? I listened to Larry Plotkin on NPR on Labor Day claim the Republicans will take back the House by 22-25 votes and have a chance at taking the Senate. Charlie Cook doubled down on his prediction of Republicans taking back the House and suggested Democrats could lose the Senate. Charlie Cook today then criticized Organzing for America, suggesting they would not have any influence on this year's election. Another polling firm reneged on its prediction that the Republicans would retake the House yesterday. Then, the Gallup poll came out and the great 10 pt. generic lead by Republicans vanished and it was again tied.
President Obama's approval rating continued to tank. Oh wait, it remains the same as it has been for the past 15 months--pretty consistent given the situation of the economy. But most surprising is his approval rating among those who told pollsters they were not going to vote--75% approval. And there lies the Democratic strategy.
David Plouffe addressed the OFA members via video-conferencing about his plans for the mid-terms. His view is that the mid-terms will be decided by a series of races where the vote margins will be below 1,000 and percentages like 51-49%. OFA has been ramping up their efforts with the view of opening several offices in key states and nation-wide contacting 15 million Democrats or leaning Democrats, who are ambivalent about voting this year. Democrats hold a 4-3 advantage over Republicans and just moving a percentage of these ambivalent voters would affect the results of elections determined by low turnouts.
In addition to this, the AFL-CIO and other unions are gearing up for a massive voter turnout effort. To galvanize their memberships, the unions, civil rights groups and environmental groups are marching on Washington October 2 for a public display of strength.
Chris Van Hollen, who is handling the Democratic House races, "leaked" several internal polls that directly contradicted the media's narrative about a change in the House. He choose races where the incumbent Democrat was said to be threatened. In each it showed the Democrat in the lead.
That's not to say that Republicans right now don't have the intensity factor on their side, but their candidates are frightening and Democrats are exploiting that with independents. Gov. Fast Eddie Rendell of Pennsylvania has come right out and told independents that the Republicans this year are "wack-o's." David Axelrod echoed this sentiment saying the Republicans this year are farther right than George W. Bush. But ,Democrats face one astonishing fact--58% of the electorate believe the Republicans will have ideas different from George W. Pete Sessions and John Boehner have made it clear they are doubling down on the Bush economic policies despite the havoc they sowed. This is where President Obama in his campaign mode is useful to the Democrats by drawing a sharp contrast between his vision of the future and the Republican plans.
The line on the tax issue has been drawn in the sand--Obama backing middle-class tax cuts and Republicans insisting on maintaining tax cuts for the upper income brackets. There is alot of nonsense within the Beltway about the legislative fights ahead. Since Obama made his position clear yesterday, Huffington Post and other blogs are asking when Obama will cave on this issue, citing his avoidance of saying he would veto such tax breaks. It's amazing how the well-paid, high-income tax bracket media wishes to maintain this tax break, despite buckets of evidence that it would only increase our deficit by billions--actually hundreds of billions--and that it would do absolutely nothing to stimulate the economy. The same occurred during the Healthcare debate when the media cried over provisions affecting people earning over $250,000 a year.
President Obama is also offering about $300 billion in tax breaks to corporations, particularly small businesses, once the base of the Republican Party. His offer to write-off R&D costs over the next two years is being met with phony counter offers by the GOP. There is a reason for this cat-and-mouse. If you examine President Obama's recent tax offers, you'll realize he just co-opted the best items in his 2012 rival's plans--Mitt Romney. Just as he did with parts of the healthcare reform. He's practicing his rope-a-dope two years early. (A P.S. it's doubtful that the corporate tax breaks will actually stimulate the economy.)
How this plays out in the next few weeks is anyone's guess but at least Obama will place the Democrats on the side of working and middle-class families and Republicans with the wealthy. This is almost a caricature of past political rhetoric but for the first time in a long while it is actually true. Even Democrats charging that Republicans want to eliminate Social Security is actually true for the first time in my memory.
Meanwhile Haley Barbour, the GOP King of GOTV, is heading that operation out of the Governors' Association since the RNC is dead. Barbour is also organizing the GOP to campaign solely on the economy and not get distracted by social issues. The Republicans for the first time in a while are waging a 50 state campaign, mirroring the past efforts by former DNC chairperson Howard Dean. However, even Haley knows he has some ringers. He's already pulled the plug on the GOP candidate for Governor in Colorado because he's lied about being an undercover FBI agent and other exaggerations on his resume.
The marriage of the teabaggers with the GOP is getting rocky. The teabagger win in Alaska by Rick Miller has propelled Democrat Scott MacAdams into contention and with a real shot at winning the election. I listened to Scott MacAdams on a podcast last night and realized if the teabaggers were actually populist and not an ideological campaign he would have been their nominee. Rick Miller has claimed various social programs are unconstitutional and he has vowed to ween Alaska off the federal tit. But his background is very suspicious. He is a graduate of Yale Law School and has never held a job over 6 months, progressing from position to the next. It's clear that he doesn't believe a word he says but is a pure opportunist. It was Todd Palin who got him the nomination, not Sarah, to get even with the Murkowski family.
Meanwhile, the Mayor of Sitka simply lucked into the Democratic nomination because he was asked to fill in at a candidate training seminar and asked to make a fake stump speech for the Senate. The attendees of the Alaska Democratic convention liked it so much they made him the candidate. Now ActBlue has taken up his cause and he is raising competitive money from the grassroots even though the national Democratic Party has neglected him. Even Rasmussen has him polling less than 5 points behind Miller.
Next up is Delaware where the teabaggers hope to bump off veteran Mike Castle, who has never lost an election. Christine O' Donnell has the Tea Party support and buckets of money. But she is plagued by her history of personal insolvency and campaign funding hijinx. She probably is the first Senate candidate in American history whose major issue is masturbation. She hopes to ban it. As the ads hit the airwaves, the nasty exchanges between the two Repubican camps have given Jeffrey Coons, the Democratic nominee, the opening he can exploit. He's hit the airwaves with a positive ad, highlighting his role in cutting budgets and acting in a bipartisan manner. Right now Castle has a huge lead over Coons. But if the teabagger wins , it's Coons in a walkaway.
One of the most important developments is a wholesale defection of Republican businessmen, including Reagan's RNC chairman Frank Fahrenkopf, to Harry Reid. Sharron Angle has scared the daylights out of these men and they have gone very public in their support of Reid.
Various analysts still see Democrats holding between 51-53 seats in the Senate. Nate the Great has bumped his odds of a GOP takeover to 25% but he admits this is caused by fooling around with his methodology and not because of anything real. The Democrats are at a disadvantage because they are allowing North Dakota, Indiana, Arkansas go by the boards. This means they have less margin of error. Somehow, I do think they will turn a few Republican seats. I'm still at 54-55.
Republicans still look like they will pick up some state houses. Nate the Great says 30 but others peg it at 27. The Texas gubernatorial contest is very close, with White actually leading in some polls. Alex Sink looks in a strong position to take Florida. And we are all praying Governor Jerry Brown will rise from the dead and start battling Meg Whitman in earnest. After spending over $100 million, she's just a couple points ahead in some polls and behind in others. The Republican Midwest sweep looks less certain than when I wrote about it. Minnesota and Wisconsin, which looked automatic, have gotten shaky with the GOP candidates acting in bizarre ways.
MEANWHILE--The 9th Circuit Court is not demanding the State of California actually defend Prop 8. Arnold and Jerry Brown both refused to support it in court. This leaves an interesting question whether the religious proponents can have the right to defend it. It's highly questionable. I think we may expect a ruling sooner than previously advertised.
Elizabeth Warren again visited the White House this morning. She's already cancelled her teaching position at Harvard this fall. Obama would only say she was advising him and Geitner on how to establish the Consumer Agency. An announcement soon would be a big boost for progressives prior to the elections.
There is also some discussion that the DADT repeal will be appended to the Defense Appropriations Bill. Again another point on the progressive agenda.
I am expecting a hurricane of books shortly. We have a new Mary Oliver, Tom McQuane, Gary Snyder, V.S. Naipul, John Le Carre and more all-stars to pick me up.
This is not so dissimilar to the Westboro Baptist Church scam, which generates protests at military funerals and sometimes anti-semitic and homophobic demonstrations. This so-called church basically consists of one extended family and a few followers. The whole purpose of their obnoxious stunts is to provoke physical attacks on their members so that the Church can file suit and collect damages. This is the whole raison d'etre of their existence and so far they have been very successful at it.
Our third scam artists are The Quitter from Wasilla and Glenn Beck, who are exploiting 9/11 in Anchorage, Alaska at an event where they are charging $250.00 for an entrance fee. Talk about Chutzpah since Glenn Beck frequently proclaimed how sick he was of hearing from 9/11 families. I guess he was repulsed because they didn't charge money.
During Labor Day weekend, I got to drive a brand-new Chrysler Minivan over highways refurbished under the Recovery Act. So, I was thrilled to hear President Obama come firing out at the Milwaukee Labor Day celebration and announce plans for a $50 billion infrastructure program. This was followed by a strong economic speech in Cleveland, where he drew the lines between his recovery policy and the Republican non-plan.
So where are we with the Midterms? I listened to Larry Plotkin on NPR on Labor Day claim the Republicans will take back the House by 22-25 votes and have a chance at taking the Senate. Charlie Cook doubled down on his prediction of Republicans taking back the House and suggested Democrats could lose the Senate. Charlie Cook today then criticized Organzing for America, suggesting they would not have any influence on this year's election. Another polling firm reneged on its prediction that the Republicans would retake the House yesterday. Then, the Gallup poll came out and the great 10 pt. generic lead by Republicans vanished and it was again tied.
President Obama's approval rating continued to tank. Oh wait, it remains the same as it has been for the past 15 months--pretty consistent given the situation of the economy. But most surprising is his approval rating among those who told pollsters they were not going to vote--75% approval. And there lies the Democratic strategy.
David Plouffe addressed the OFA members via video-conferencing about his plans for the mid-terms. His view is that the mid-terms will be decided by a series of races where the vote margins will be below 1,000 and percentages like 51-49%. OFA has been ramping up their efforts with the view of opening several offices in key states and nation-wide contacting 15 million Democrats or leaning Democrats, who are ambivalent about voting this year. Democrats hold a 4-3 advantage over Republicans and just moving a percentage of these ambivalent voters would affect the results of elections determined by low turnouts.
In addition to this, the AFL-CIO and other unions are gearing up for a massive voter turnout effort. To galvanize their memberships, the unions, civil rights groups and environmental groups are marching on Washington October 2 for a public display of strength.
Chris Van Hollen, who is handling the Democratic House races, "leaked" several internal polls that directly contradicted the media's narrative about a change in the House. He choose races where the incumbent Democrat was said to be threatened. In each it showed the Democrat in the lead.
That's not to say that Republicans right now don't have the intensity factor on their side, but their candidates are frightening and Democrats are exploiting that with independents. Gov. Fast Eddie Rendell of Pennsylvania has come right out and told independents that the Republicans this year are "wack-o's." David Axelrod echoed this sentiment saying the Republicans this year are farther right than George W. Bush. But ,Democrats face one astonishing fact--58% of the electorate believe the Republicans will have ideas different from George W. Pete Sessions and John Boehner have made it clear they are doubling down on the Bush economic policies despite the havoc they sowed. This is where President Obama in his campaign mode is useful to the Democrats by drawing a sharp contrast between his vision of the future and the Republican plans.
The line on the tax issue has been drawn in the sand--Obama backing middle-class tax cuts and Republicans insisting on maintaining tax cuts for the upper income brackets. There is alot of nonsense within the Beltway about the legislative fights ahead. Since Obama made his position clear yesterday, Huffington Post and other blogs are asking when Obama will cave on this issue, citing his avoidance of saying he would veto such tax breaks. It's amazing how the well-paid, high-income tax bracket media wishes to maintain this tax break, despite buckets of evidence that it would only increase our deficit by billions--actually hundreds of billions--and that it would do absolutely nothing to stimulate the economy. The same occurred during the Healthcare debate when the media cried over provisions affecting people earning over $250,000 a year.
President Obama is also offering about $300 billion in tax breaks to corporations, particularly small businesses, once the base of the Republican Party. His offer to write-off R&D costs over the next two years is being met with phony counter offers by the GOP. There is a reason for this cat-and-mouse. If you examine President Obama's recent tax offers, you'll realize he just co-opted the best items in his 2012 rival's plans--Mitt Romney. Just as he did with parts of the healthcare reform. He's practicing his rope-a-dope two years early. (A P.S. it's doubtful that the corporate tax breaks will actually stimulate the economy.)
How this plays out in the next few weeks is anyone's guess but at least Obama will place the Democrats on the side of working and middle-class families and Republicans with the wealthy. This is almost a caricature of past political rhetoric but for the first time in a long while it is actually true. Even Democrats charging that Republicans want to eliminate Social Security is actually true for the first time in my memory.
Meanwhile Haley Barbour, the GOP King of GOTV, is heading that operation out of the Governors' Association since the RNC is dead. Barbour is also organizing the GOP to campaign solely on the economy and not get distracted by social issues. The Republicans for the first time in a while are waging a 50 state campaign, mirroring the past efforts by former DNC chairperson Howard Dean. However, even Haley knows he has some ringers. He's already pulled the plug on the GOP candidate for Governor in Colorado because he's lied about being an undercover FBI agent and other exaggerations on his resume.
The marriage of the teabaggers with the GOP is getting rocky. The teabagger win in Alaska by Rick Miller has propelled Democrat Scott MacAdams into contention and with a real shot at winning the election. I listened to Scott MacAdams on a podcast last night and realized if the teabaggers were actually populist and not an ideological campaign he would have been their nominee. Rick Miller has claimed various social programs are unconstitutional and he has vowed to ween Alaska off the federal tit. But his background is very suspicious. He is a graduate of Yale Law School and has never held a job over 6 months, progressing from position to the next. It's clear that he doesn't believe a word he says but is a pure opportunist. It was Todd Palin who got him the nomination, not Sarah, to get even with the Murkowski family.
Meanwhile, the Mayor of Sitka simply lucked into the Democratic nomination because he was asked to fill in at a candidate training seminar and asked to make a fake stump speech for the Senate. The attendees of the Alaska Democratic convention liked it so much they made him the candidate. Now ActBlue has taken up his cause and he is raising competitive money from the grassroots even though the national Democratic Party has neglected him. Even Rasmussen has him polling less than 5 points behind Miller.
Next up is Delaware where the teabaggers hope to bump off veteran Mike Castle, who has never lost an election. Christine O' Donnell has the Tea Party support and buckets of money. But she is plagued by her history of personal insolvency and campaign funding hijinx. She probably is the first Senate candidate in American history whose major issue is masturbation. She hopes to ban it. As the ads hit the airwaves, the nasty exchanges between the two Repubican camps have given Jeffrey Coons, the Democratic nominee, the opening he can exploit. He's hit the airwaves with a positive ad, highlighting his role in cutting budgets and acting in a bipartisan manner. Right now Castle has a huge lead over Coons. But if the teabagger wins , it's Coons in a walkaway.
One of the most important developments is a wholesale defection of Republican businessmen, including Reagan's RNC chairman Frank Fahrenkopf, to Harry Reid. Sharron Angle has scared the daylights out of these men and they have gone very public in their support of Reid.
Various analysts still see Democrats holding between 51-53 seats in the Senate. Nate the Great has bumped his odds of a GOP takeover to 25% but he admits this is caused by fooling around with his methodology and not because of anything real. The Democrats are at a disadvantage because they are allowing North Dakota, Indiana, Arkansas go by the boards. This means they have less margin of error. Somehow, I do think they will turn a few Republican seats. I'm still at 54-55.
Republicans still look like they will pick up some state houses. Nate the Great says 30 but others peg it at 27. The Texas gubernatorial contest is very close, with White actually leading in some polls. Alex Sink looks in a strong position to take Florida. And we are all praying Governor Jerry Brown will rise from the dead and start battling Meg Whitman in earnest. After spending over $100 million, she's just a couple points ahead in some polls and behind in others. The Republican Midwest sweep looks less certain than when I wrote about it. Minnesota and Wisconsin, which looked automatic, have gotten shaky with the GOP candidates acting in bizarre ways.
MEANWHILE--The 9th Circuit Court is not demanding the State of California actually defend Prop 8. Arnold and Jerry Brown both refused to support it in court. This leaves an interesting question whether the religious proponents can have the right to defend it. It's highly questionable. I think we may expect a ruling sooner than previously advertised.
Elizabeth Warren again visited the White House this morning. She's already cancelled her teaching position at Harvard this fall. Obama would only say she was advising him and Geitner on how to establish the Consumer Agency. An announcement soon would be a big boost for progressives prior to the elections.
There is also some discussion that the DADT repeal will be appended to the Defense Appropriations Bill. Again another point on the progressive agenda.
I am expecting a hurricane of books shortly. We have a new Mary Oliver, Tom McQuane, Gary Snyder, V.S. Naipul, John Le Carre and more all-stars to pick me up.
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Afternoon Coffee at the Last Manatee
Drudge reports that Obama only met with BP executives for 20 minutes today. Pretty productive meeting since he got them to fork over $20 billion for an escrow fund for the region's victims. With additonal fines of $4,300 per barrel, this is looking better than the original Louisiana Purchase.
Newt told his Fox audience that in this case it was alright for Obama to use religious language during his address to the nation.
Haley Barbour, Governor of Mississippi, one of the states affected by the spill worried that the escrow account would affect BP's profits.
Sarah Palin said the Dutch could clean up the spill. She was referring to their skimmer technology. A little late in the day, Dutch's skimmer machines have been in the Gulf for the last few days.
The House Republicans entered an amendment yesterday to strip the health reform bill of the individuals mandates. It was defeated. Look for this throughout the next few years.
The Senate Republicans managed to block the extension of unemployment and Cobra as well as the emergency $50 billion funds for the bailout of states.
Meg Whitman put another $20 million of her personal wealth into her campaign coffers. This means she has put in $90 million of her own dough. Apparently, Meg also has anger issues, having fought an employee in 2007. The poor woman was trying to prepare her for an interview. Should be interesting if she wins the California state house.
The Christian Right is back in all its lunacy, saying that the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell would mean that God would make us lose wars. In case anyone has been watching, the United States hasn't won a clearcut battlefield victory in a long time. There has been so many statements and pronouncements by the Christian Right, you're better off checking www.rightwingwatch.com on a daily basis.
I think I've finally figured out this fascination of the Hard Right for the American revolution. It's the last "good war" in their minds that America fought. You can't embrace Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War because he was for big government, the wrong side won and the slaves were freed. You can't embrace WWII because FDR was the President and, in some minds on the right, the wrong side won again. And Vietnam doesn't do it because we lost and that was the period of the civil rights movement. And we know George W and Dick Cheney have been airbrushed out of the small government conservatives' history. The Spanish-American war is a no-no because it involves Hispanics and we want them deported.
Bill McCollum, who is running for the Republican nomination in Florida, is being successfully challenged by a hospital mongol, who has been convicted of felonies and forced to pay millions of dollars in fines. I guess the appeal is that this person was a CEO.
The final arguments for the Prop 8 trial are wrapping up today. The anti-gay lawyers are moving on another front to get the 18,000 legal gay marriages reversed. In my mind, the legal arguments have been all on the pro-gay side with the anti-gays having to invoke sociological studies done in the 1950s. But I am skeptical that the final arguments can move the current Supreme Court. Conservative lawyer Ted Olson disagrees but I believe he's naive about where the current court stands.
Jim Inhofe is doubling down on his anti-DADT repeal position. He went on the floor of the Senate yesterday saying that our armed forces simply won't fight with open gays in the military. Sort of like how it happened in Sparta and Rome.
All the polls this week except the AP poll show Republicans set to make big gains in the Congressional races. The volatility of these polls showing rapid changes in the generic congressional races and the vast ups and downs of Democrartic enthusiasm make me highly skeptical that we know anything about the state of the electorate. With jobs, the deficit and terrorism ranking as the top issues. I personally can't see how Republicans can capitalize on the jobs and deficit issue, although they talk a good game on terrorism.
Republicans have not created a job since 1990 and they have never acted as deficit hawks since Eisenhower. I can't see where they gain any credibility here, especially among independents. Unless something dramatic happens, terrorism doesn't trump the economy. As we've seen, Republicans are now embracing CEOs as their star candidates. But look at Whitman and Fiorina in California. Both of them gained their reputation by either outsourcing jobs or eliminating massive numbers of jobs nationwide but also in the very state they seek to represent.
On Taxes, Republicans claim they own the franchise in tax reduction but they opposed during the stimulus debate the largest tax cut for the middle class in history. Now they are framing the tax debate as if the financial concerns of the very wealthy are those of the rest of us. They may well pull that off with their spin machine. Most Americans don't believe Obama cut their taxes.
The fate of the free world hinges on Jack Nicholson just as it did in Mars Attacks. If Jack cheers on the Lakers well in Game 7, we will be saved. While not my favorite Laker team--Kareem and Magic--the Lakers must crush the Celtics if there is any justice in the world. As President Obama said, "the arc of history bends toward justice."
We salute Ken Griffey, who retired this past month. Finishing his career with 630 hrs, Griffey could have surpassed all homer records--natural or steroid infuenced--if his career in Cincinnati hadn't been plagued with injuries.
Yankee statisticians claim that Derek Jeter surpassed the 3,000 hit mark this week--if you include his playoff and world series hits. Hey, that's cheating. Let him do it straight. It should take two more months.
Meanwhile Nick Johnson made it another year in which he made the Disabled List. That makes every year that I have been following his career.
Shame on Brazil for only beating North Korea 2-1 in the World Cup. The North Korean team was made up of all males in the country who are given daily meals. Double shame on Spain for losing to Switzerland.
Washington is abuzz with the Rookie pitcher Stephen Strassburg, who struck out 14 in his first start and 7 of his last 10 and at one point 7 in a row. So far, he's won his first two games in the big leagues and won every start at all levels of the minor leagues. Unfortunately, the Nationals still blow.
The German austerity package if passed will trigger another Great Depression. So far the euro is barely hanging on with defaults in Greece and upcoming defaults in Spain and Portugal. As European commentators have mentioned, austerity does not necessarily lead to prosperity. So far we have been insulated from this stage of the European crisis but we can't be for long. With deficit hawks in the ascendency in the United States and Britain, these austerity programs may be this century's equivalent of protectionism in the 1930s.
Newt told his Fox audience that in this case it was alright for Obama to use religious language during his address to the nation.
Haley Barbour, Governor of Mississippi, one of the states affected by the spill worried that the escrow account would affect BP's profits.
Sarah Palin said the Dutch could clean up the spill. She was referring to their skimmer technology. A little late in the day, Dutch's skimmer machines have been in the Gulf for the last few days.
The House Republicans entered an amendment yesterday to strip the health reform bill of the individuals mandates. It was defeated. Look for this throughout the next few years.
The Senate Republicans managed to block the extension of unemployment and Cobra as well as the emergency $50 billion funds for the bailout of states.
Meg Whitman put another $20 million of her personal wealth into her campaign coffers. This means she has put in $90 million of her own dough. Apparently, Meg also has anger issues, having fought an employee in 2007. The poor woman was trying to prepare her for an interview. Should be interesting if she wins the California state house.
The Christian Right is back in all its lunacy, saying that the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell would mean that God would make us lose wars. In case anyone has been watching, the United States hasn't won a clearcut battlefield victory in a long time. There has been so many statements and pronouncements by the Christian Right, you're better off checking www.rightwingwatch.com on a daily basis.
I think I've finally figured out this fascination of the Hard Right for the American revolution. It's the last "good war" in their minds that America fought. You can't embrace Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War because he was for big government, the wrong side won and the slaves were freed. You can't embrace WWII because FDR was the President and, in some minds on the right, the wrong side won again. And Vietnam doesn't do it because we lost and that was the period of the civil rights movement. And we know George W and Dick Cheney have been airbrushed out of the small government conservatives' history. The Spanish-American war is a no-no because it involves Hispanics and we want them deported.
Bill McCollum, who is running for the Republican nomination in Florida, is being successfully challenged by a hospital mongol, who has been convicted of felonies and forced to pay millions of dollars in fines. I guess the appeal is that this person was a CEO.
The final arguments for the Prop 8 trial are wrapping up today. The anti-gay lawyers are moving on another front to get the 18,000 legal gay marriages reversed. In my mind, the legal arguments have been all on the pro-gay side with the anti-gays having to invoke sociological studies done in the 1950s. But I am skeptical that the final arguments can move the current Supreme Court. Conservative lawyer Ted Olson disagrees but I believe he's naive about where the current court stands.
Jim Inhofe is doubling down on his anti-DADT repeal position. He went on the floor of the Senate yesterday saying that our armed forces simply won't fight with open gays in the military. Sort of like how it happened in Sparta and Rome.
All the polls this week except the AP poll show Republicans set to make big gains in the Congressional races. The volatility of these polls showing rapid changes in the generic congressional races and the vast ups and downs of Democrartic enthusiasm make me highly skeptical that we know anything about the state of the electorate. With jobs, the deficit and terrorism ranking as the top issues. I personally can't see how Republicans can capitalize on the jobs and deficit issue, although they talk a good game on terrorism.
Republicans have not created a job since 1990 and they have never acted as deficit hawks since Eisenhower. I can't see where they gain any credibility here, especially among independents. Unless something dramatic happens, terrorism doesn't trump the economy. As we've seen, Republicans are now embracing CEOs as their star candidates. But look at Whitman and Fiorina in California. Both of them gained their reputation by either outsourcing jobs or eliminating massive numbers of jobs nationwide but also in the very state they seek to represent.
On Taxes, Republicans claim they own the franchise in tax reduction but they opposed during the stimulus debate the largest tax cut for the middle class in history. Now they are framing the tax debate as if the financial concerns of the very wealthy are those of the rest of us. They may well pull that off with their spin machine. Most Americans don't believe Obama cut their taxes.
The fate of the free world hinges on Jack Nicholson just as it did in Mars Attacks. If Jack cheers on the Lakers well in Game 7, we will be saved. While not my favorite Laker team--Kareem and Magic--the Lakers must crush the Celtics if there is any justice in the world. As President Obama said, "the arc of history bends toward justice."
We salute Ken Griffey, who retired this past month. Finishing his career with 630 hrs, Griffey could have surpassed all homer records--natural or steroid infuenced--if his career in Cincinnati hadn't been plagued with injuries.
Yankee statisticians claim that Derek Jeter surpassed the 3,000 hit mark this week--if you include his playoff and world series hits. Hey, that's cheating. Let him do it straight. It should take two more months.
Meanwhile Nick Johnson made it another year in which he made the Disabled List. That makes every year that I have been following his career.
Shame on Brazil for only beating North Korea 2-1 in the World Cup. The North Korean team was made up of all males in the country who are given daily meals. Double shame on Spain for losing to Switzerland.
Washington is abuzz with the Rookie pitcher Stephen Strassburg, who struck out 14 in his first start and 7 of his last 10 and at one point 7 in a row. So far, he's won his first two games in the big leagues and won every start at all levels of the minor leagues. Unfortunately, the Nationals still blow.
The German austerity package if passed will trigger another Great Depression. So far the euro is barely hanging on with defaults in Greece and upcoming defaults in Spain and Portugal. As European commentators have mentioned, austerity does not necessarily lead to prosperity. So far we have been insulated from this stage of the European crisis but we can't be for long. With deficit hawks in the ascendency in the United States and Britain, these austerity programs may be this century's equivalent of protectionism in the 1930s.
Saturday, September 5, 2009
Republican Gomorrah
Max Blumenthal's expose of how much the fundamentalists control today's Republican Party is one of the best reads on domestic politics in a long time. There are so many great moments. One summarizes ,in my opinion, why educated professionals are fleeing the Republican Party in droves. Sarah Palin is a member of a Third Wave Pentecoastal Church, which preaches that Satan had sex with Eve and gave birth to Cain--the so-called "Serpent's Seed". And through Cain, in the words of the Church's founder, came "all the smart, educated people to the antediluvian flood--the intellectuals. They know all the creeds but they do not know God." So, it doesn't matter to Palin's supporters she is clueless in terms of policy, she has right religion.
Blumenthal also does an excellent job of explaining the on-going appeal of George W. Bush to the religious right. Despite all the failings, he is seen as carrying out the personal commands of God, as he emphasized many times in conversations with foreign leaders. Horribly,if these people control the party, then it can not get beyond George W. and reinvent itself. Logically, it must plunge deeper into the religious right.
After finishing the book, it's apparent that there are only two possible nominees for 2012--Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee. Blumenthal does a splendid job of laying out Huckabee's long-time relationship with people like Dr. Dobson of Focus on the Family and by inference it's clear that Huckabee can talk the talk in a way that I think will be more compelling than Palin. One priceless scene is how Palin calls Dobson and tries to persuade him McCain is on board against Stem-Cell Research (he wasn't) and how he was firmly for banning gay marriages (he wasn't.) Since Dobson muscled McCain to choose Palin, it didn't really matter he had his girl.
Blumenthal does a real service by exploring the hinky side of the Christian Right's heroes. We discover that Diaper Dave Vitters, not only visited the D.C. Madam but also regularly engaged in S&M with a prostitute in New Orleans. Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council came to Vitters defense because funds for the faith-based initiatives were coming to the Lousiana based branch of his outfit courtesy of Vitters. In addition, Vitters might be replaced by a Democrat. But in the case of Idaho's Larry Craig, who could only be replaced by a Republican, he could be thrown under the bus to assert the righteous indignation over gay sex.
Some of the best writing is on the Republican gay underground and how it sees itself as "Jews in Hitler's Army" by backing the extreme right's social agenda. Blumenthal reminds us of the long-history of gay-baiting by the right started under Joe McCarthy and enabled by Roy Cohn, who died of AIDS but never admitted he was gay. In the 1980s, when I first came to Washington during the Reagan years, it was startling to see how many gays were Republican activists, while the Democrats were basically homophobes then.
One interesting portrait is that of Howard Ahmanson, Jr, a terribly shy man who suffers from Tourette's Syndrome and who was once hosptalized for mental illness, who put his fortune at work funding anti-gay, anti-abortion, pro-big business candidates for the California Assembly and by 1994 secured a Republican takeover of that body. He provided a good bulk of the funding behind the anti-gay Propositions in the State. He invested early on in the career of Marvin Olasky, who was a member of the Communist Party in the early 1970s when that group barely existed and who later converted from Judaism to an ultraconservative version of the Presbyterian Church. Olasky later became the godfather of compassionate conservatism, arguing that the church had been the traditional and most effective approach to philanthropy before the New Deal. During the bruising primaries between George W. Bush and John McCain, Olasky accused McCain's Jewish neoconservative supporters as worshipping the "religion of Zeus". His brainchild was Bush's creation of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives in 2001.
Ahmanson's other success was the creation of the Seattle-based Discovery Institute, which touts the intelligent design movement and seeks to debunk evolution. Americans United for Separation of Church and State calls Discovery "the most effective and politically savvy group pushing a religious agenda in America's public school science classes." The institute was founded by former Reagan official Bruce Chapman, a conservative Catholic. He has recruited dozens of research fellows, directors and advisors who all boast advance degrees from respectable universities.
There are some surprises in the book. One is the war the religious right waged against Newt Gingrich, culminating in a power play by Tom DeLay to force Gingrich to resign both as speaker of the House and finally his seat in Congress. While I knew Newt's womanizing galled some Republicans, I never realized it was the religious right who actually waged the campaign against him.
Another fun section of the book concerns Ralph Reed and Jack Abramoff, who hustled the religious right into blocking attempts to loosen restrictions on gambling if these state efforts conflicted with their Indian clients ,who ran casinos and gambling operations on their own territory. This sparked a brawl between them and Haley Barbour, who represented the Jena Choctaws, who were about to be granted a gambling license, and were rivals of Reed and Abramoff's clients. Reed managed to persuade Focus on the Family and Dr. Dobson to flood the White House and the Department of Interior with protests. In the end, Haley triumphed but not before the evangelicals unleashed a torrent of warning about the sins created and fostered by gambling.
The book is extremely troubling for its insights into how far the Republican Party has gone down the path of religious extremism. Much of the fiery rhetoric we hear today against Obama is present through much of the religious right's war against.. fill in the blank. And what is especially disturbing is the evangelicals stated position that it is alright to lie in order to advance their agenda. This is the doctrine of Islamists, who believe it is righteous to lie and deceive the infidels.
Throughout much of the book, there is a stream of thought that America must adopt biblical laws and that somehow America has become degenerate and corrupt. It depends on the age when they discuss this--first it's during the civil rights period, then it's against the Age of Aquarius and the new religions, now it's against gays and anti-abortion. From the early 1980s, there is also a doctrine that legitimizes armed struggle, particularly the violence against any place or person perceived as performing abortions. This language was the creation of Francis Schaeffer, whose son within the last year has denounced the very religious right he helped create.
Imagine for a minute any of these people charged with running the largest economy in the world, a government which controls 30% of that economy, and the largest military on earth. That is a truly frightening prospect. But then again, we did--the Bush Administration was not only the most conservative in terms of policies in the modern age but the one most dominated by the religious right. And where did it get us--a Global Depression, two wars, a suspension of our constitutional rights and the legal rationalization of torture.
There is one thing in this book, an incidental detail but significant for understanding today's political rhetoric. Republicans actually polled on language suggesting fear and death and found that these ideas brought forth the most coherence among their followers. Death Panels, Death Book,and Obama letting terrorists free on the streets,another terrorist attack. Among Republican voters this is red meat. Personally, I doubt whether this resonates anymore in the public at large.
Blumenthal also does an excellent job of explaining the on-going appeal of George W. Bush to the religious right. Despite all the failings, he is seen as carrying out the personal commands of God, as he emphasized many times in conversations with foreign leaders. Horribly,if these people control the party, then it can not get beyond George W. and reinvent itself. Logically, it must plunge deeper into the religious right.
After finishing the book, it's apparent that there are only two possible nominees for 2012--Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee. Blumenthal does a splendid job of laying out Huckabee's long-time relationship with people like Dr. Dobson of Focus on the Family and by inference it's clear that Huckabee can talk the talk in a way that I think will be more compelling than Palin. One priceless scene is how Palin calls Dobson and tries to persuade him McCain is on board against Stem-Cell Research (he wasn't) and how he was firmly for banning gay marriages (he wasn't.) Since Dobson muscled McCain to choose Palin, it didn't really matter he had his girl.
Blumenthal does a real service by exploring the hinky side of the Christian Right's heroes. We discover that Diaper Dave Vitters, not only visited the D.C. Madam but also regularly engaged in S&M with a prostitute in New Orleans. Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council came to Vitters defense because funds for the faith-based initiatives were coming to the Lousiana based branch of his outfit courtesy of Vitters. In addition, Vitters might be replaced by a Democrat. But in the case of Idaho's Larry Craig, who could only be replaced by a Republican, he could be thrown under the bus to assert the righteous indignation over gay sex.
Some of the best writing is on the Republican gay underground and how it sees itself as "Jews in Hitler's Army" by backing the extreme right's social agenda. Blumenthal reminds us of the long-history of gay-baiting by the right started under Joe McCarthy and enabled by Roy Cohn, who died of AIDS but never admitted he was gay. In the 1980s, when I first came to Washington during the Reagan years, it was startling to see how many gays were Republican activists, while the Democrats were basically homophobes then.
One interesting portrait is that of Howard Ahmanson, Jr, a terribly shy man who suffers from Tourette's Syndrome and who was once hosptalized for mental illness, who put his fortune at work funding anti-gay, anti-abortion, pro-big business candidates for the California Assembly and by 1994 secured a Republican takeover of that body. He provided a good bulk of the funding behind the anti-gay Propositions in the State. He invested early on in the career of Marvin Olasky, who was a member of the Communist Party in the early 1970s when that group barely existed and who later converted from Judaism to an ultraconservative version of the Presbyterian Church. Olasky later became the godfather of compassionate conservatism, arguing that the church had been the traditional and most effective approach to philanthropy before the New Deal. During the bruising primaries between George W. Bush and John McCain, Olasky accused McCain's Jewish neoconservative supporters as worshipping the "religion of Zeus". His brainchild was Bush's creation of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives in 2001.
Ahmanson's other success was the creation of the Seattle-based Discovery Institute, which touts the intelligent design movement and seeks to debunk evolution. Americans United for Separation of Church and State calls Discovery "the most effective and politically savvy group pushing a religious agenda in America's public school science classes." The institute was founded by former Reagan official Bruce Chapman, a conservative Catholic. He has recruited dozens of research fellows, directors and advisors who all boast advance degrees from respectable universities.
There are some surprises in the book. One is the war the religious right waged against Newt Gingrich, culminating in a power play by Tom DeLay to force Gingrich to resign both as speaker of the House and finally his seat in Congress. While I knew Newt's womanizing galled some Republicans, I never realized it was the religious right who actually waged the campaign against him.
Another fun section of the book concerns Ralph Reed and Jack Abramoff, who hustled the religious right into blocking attempts to loosen restrictions on gambling if these state efforts conflicted with their Indian clients ,who ran casinos and gambling operations on their own territory. This sparked a brawl between them and Haley Barbour, who represented the Jena Choctaws, who were about to be granted a gambling license, and were rivals of Reed and Abramoff's clients. Reed managed to persuade Focus on the Family and Dr. Dobson to flood the White House and the Department of Interior with protests. In the end, Haley triumphed but not before the evangelicals unleashed a torrent of warning about the sins created and fostered by gambling.
The book is extremely troubling for its insights into how far the Republican Party has gone down the path of religious extremism. Much of the fiery rhetoric we hear today against Obama is present through much of the religious right's war against.. fill in the blank. And what is especially disturbing is the evangelicals stated position that it is alright to lie in order to advance their agenda. This is the doctrine of Islamists, who believe it is righteous to lie and deceive the infidels.
Throughout much of the book, there is a stream of thought that America must adopt biblical laws and that somehow America has become degenerate and corrupt. It depends on the age when they discuss this--first it's during the civil rights period, then it's against the Age of Aquarius and the new religions, now it's against gays and anti-abortion. From the early 1980s, there is also a doctrine that legitimizes armed struggle, particularly the violence against any place or person perceived as performing abortions. This language was the creation of Francis Schaeffer, whose son within the last year has denounced the very religious right he helped create.
Imagine for a minute any of these people charged with running the largest economy in the world, a government which controls 30% of that economy, and the largest military on earth. That is a truly frightening prospect. But then again, we did--the Bush Administration was not only the most conservative in terms of policies in the modern age but the one most dominated by the religious right. And where did it get us--a Global Depression, two wars, a suspension of our constitutional rights and the legal rationalization of torture.
There is one thing in this book, an incidental detail but significant for understanding today's political rhetoric. Republicans actually polled on language suggesting fear and death and found that these ideas brought forth the most coherence among their followers. Death Panels, Death Book,and Obama letting terrorists free on the streets,another terrorist attack. Among Republican voters this is red meat. Personally, I doubt whether this resonates anymore in the public at large.
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