Multi Medium

Great Moments In Journalistic Balance

From Michel Hiltzik’s column about how 501(c)4 “non-profit” organizations are used to bypass campaign finance disclosure requirements:

I don’t mean to pick on Rove or the Republicans here; Democratic Party operatives and the Obama campaign are certain to exploit the same dodge as fundraising for the November election kicks into gear.

“I can’t actually find any Democratic examples, but I’m sure there will be some eventually.”

March 5th, 2012 at 07:54am Posted by Eli

The New Elitism

Apparently wanting everyone to have the benefits of a college education is the height of snobbery now.  I’m sure Rick Santorum’s anti-sex, anti-education message would go over really well in a general election.

February 27th, 2012 at 07:30am Posted by Eli

The Outsider

First it was former House Speaker and K Street lobbyist historian Newt Gingrich calling himself a Washington outsider, now it’s Rick Santorum:

Rick Santorum told a crowd of Arizona Republicans today that he was “an outsider when he was inside” Washington, arguing he fought corruption and wasteful spending during his 16 years in Congress.

(…)

Santorum said that despite his time serving both in the House and Senate, he was never part of the Washington establishment.

“When we came to Congress, we came and we shook things up to its very core,” Santorum said about himself and former Rep. Frank Riggs, who now serves as the campaign’s Arizona state chairman.

From Santorum’s own campaign website, right before his list of legislative accomplishments:

Former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1990 at the age of 32, and from 1995 to 2007, served in the US Senate.  In 2000, he was elected by his peers to the position of Senate Republican Conference Chairman.

The number three leadership position in the Senate Republican caucus doesn’t sound very “outsider” to me, but what do I know.

February 22nd, 2012 at 07:25am Posted by Eli

Right-Wing Nuts Can’t Understand Why Mitt Romney Won’t Listen To Them

Perhaps Mitt is looking past the primaries and ahead to the general election, when being the NewsMax/Fox News/Weekly Standard candidate is just maybe not as great an asset as they think it is.

February 16th, 2012 at 07:31am Posted by Eli

The Only Solution?

It’s funny how whenever Republicans complain about the supposed epidemic of people casting votes in the name of the deceased, they always use it to argue that we need voter ID laws, and never that we need to improve the process for removing dead people from the voter rolls.

I’m sure it just never occurred to them.

January 26th, 2012 at 11:29am Posted by Eli

Empathy: You’re Doing It Wrong

Mitt Romney’s response to a guy who went bust on real estate investments and is considering leaving the country so he can afford his retirement:

Yeah. It’s just tragic, isn’t it? Just tragic, just tragic. We’re just so overleveraged, so much debt in our society, and some of the institutions that hold it aren’t willing to write it off and say they made a mistake, they loaned too much, we’re overextended, write those down and start over. They keep on trying to harangue and pretend what they have on their books is still what it’s worth.

(…)

The banks are scared to death, of course, because they think they’re going to go out of business. They’re afraid that if they write all these loans off, they’re going to go broke. And so they’re feeling the same thing you’re feeling. They just want to pretend all of this is going to get paid someday so they don’t have to write it off and potentially go out of business themselves.

It’s probably not a great idea to pivot your expression of sympathy to those poor terrified banks.  Not if you actually want to get elected.  I’m just sayin’.

January 24th, 2012 at 07:33am Posted by Eli

Appalled Newt Is Appalled

Shorter Newt (and daughters) in response to his ex-wife’s claim that he asked her for an open marriage: “I am much to classy to say anything negative about my ex-wife who I cheated on for years and then dumped, but everything she says is lying, slanderous trash and you in the media should be ashamed of yourselves for taking her seriously.”

January 20th, 2012 at 07:37am Posted by Eli

Monday Media Blogging

Finally, a candidate I can actually support.

Note: He did run as a Republican last time around, but I won’t hold that against him.

January 16th, 2012 at 05:01pm Posted by Eli

Vindication!

Yes, the fact that a bunch of James O’Keefe’s conservative dickheads attempted to commit voter fraud surely proves that we have an urgently pressing need to disenfranchise minorities and poor people.

Actually, perhaps we are misreading O’Keefe’s stunt as whistleblowing theater rather than a threat: i.e., If you don’t start requiring photo IDs at the polls, then my right-wing friends and I are going to take advantage and start stealing elections from right under your noses until you make us stop.

January 12th, 2012 at 11:53am Posted by Eli

Political Channel-Surfing

This ongoing cycle of a new Republican candidate catching fire every month and then abruptly fizzling again, reminds me of nothing so much as the last three elections, which have whiplashed from “throw all the Republican bums out” to “throw all the Democratic bums out”.

It’s like watching someone angrily mashing the remote over and over again in the desperate hope that if they keep clicking long enough they’ll miraculously find a channel that doesn’t suck.

January 4th, 2012 at 11:25am Posted by Eli

Why I Can’t Support Obama

Glenn Greenwald and Taylor Marsh helpfully explain why it is impossible to view Obama as a Democrat in any meaningful way other than “less insane and slightly less awful than the Republican candidates”.

No, I’m not going to support Ron Paul or any of the other Republican candidates, but as Taylor Marsh puts it, “Pres. Obama has helped Democrats deliver a climate that this party has threatened since the ’70s would happen if I didn’t vote for them.”

January 3rd, 2012 at 07:11am Posted by Eli

Newt Loves/Hates The Constitution

This is remarkable:

Newt Gingrich on Sunday hammered at the nation’s judiciary system, saying that if a court’s decision was out of step with American popular opinion, it should be ignored.

There’s “no reason the American people need to tolerate a judge that out of touch with American culture,” Gingrich said on CBS’ Face the Nation, referring to a case where a judge ruled that explicit references to religion were barred from a high school graduation ceremony….

Host Bob Schieffer asked Gingrich how he planned to enforce that. Would you call in the Capitol Police to apprehend a federal judge, he asked.

“If you had to,” Gingrich said. “Or you’d instruct the Justice Department to send the U.S. Marshall in.”

But this is what makes it really genius:

Gingrich claims his tough stance is part of a key question going into the 2012 elections: “Do you want to move towards American exceptionalism, reassert the Constitution, reassert the nature of America, or do you, in fact, want to become a secular, European, sort of bureaucratic socialist society?”

So… apparently “reasserting the Constitution” means completely ignoring it when it doesn’t agree with popular opinion?  Or maybe Newt believes that American popular opinion is just instinctively attuned to the Constitution at all times?

In any case, if popular opinion is supposed to be the ultimate arbiter of what should be considered constitutional, then why do we even need a judiciary at all?

December 19th, 2011 at 07:08am Posted by Eli

It All Depends On What The Meaning Of “Lower Middle-Income” Is…

I guess Mitt is running away with the tone-deaf primary now…

To hear Mitt Romney tell it, his two and a half years as a Mormon missionary in France in the late 1960s were tough times.  The places he was staying often had no working toilet, and certainly no baths or showers, he said just this past Sunday (in an effort to divert attention from the $10,000 bet he made Rick Perry).  He lived, he said, just like lower-middle income Frenchmen lived.

Turns out he was living in basically a palace, with servants, a chef, and multiple showers and bathrooms.  But I guess maybe it was poor compared to his accustomed standard of living.

December 16th, 2011 at 07:38am Posted by Eli

Not Too Slow On The Uptake

I thought this was kind of hilarious.  Gloria Borger worries that a tent full of clowns and elephants might turn into a circus.

December 8th, 2011 at 07:13am Posted by Eli

General Vs. Specific

Thomas Sowell attempts to make the case that Republican presidential candidates should let their conservative flag fly, rather than tacking to the center or “trying to be all things to all people”.

I think Obama is widely disliked enough at this point that a candidate like Reagan (Sowell’s sole example of a successful Republican candidate who ran as a conservative) could unseat him, but who would that be, exactly?  The column’s primary purpose appears to be to persuade Republican primary voters not to vote for Romney, but which of the conservative candidates are going to appeal to mainstream voters?

Cain is an unserious loose cannon who gets accused of sexual misconduct on a daily or weekly basis.  Bachmann is batshit crazy-eyes insane.  Rick Perry is dumb as rocks and will give people Dubya flashbacks.  And Gingrich is a pompous unlikable family values hypocrite.  Unpopular as Obama is, it would be a gamble at best to assume that a majority of voters would flock to any of those alternatives.

Reagan was a conservative, yes, but he was also a very charismatic and skilled politician, running against an unpopular failed incumbent.  The 2012 GOP field has the second element going for them, but not the first.

November 30th, 2011 at 07:19am Posted by Eli

20 Minutes In Heaven

Memo to Union Leader: 20 minutes is actually plenty of time if the candidate doesn’t have the depth of knowledge to answer policy questions with more than a sentence or two.

“Mr. Cain, can you explain the benefits of your 9-9-9 tax plan?”

“Certainly, I’m glad you asked.  It will raise revenue while stimulating the economy, creating jobs, and providing clean, inexpensive energy for everyone in the United States.”

“And how will it do that, exactly?”

“I’m afraid we don’t have enough time to get into all the boring details.  Next question, please.”

November 18th, 2011 at 11:27am Posted by Eli

People Unclear On The Concept

Russell Pearce brags that it took a recall to oust him from office.

Um, getting recalled is not exactly a ringing endorsement, dude.

November 16th, 2011 at 07:20am Posted by Eli

Post-Election Reflection

Yes, the story of the 2011 elections is definitely one of resounding defeat for Republicans, with the author of Arizona’s despicable anti-immigrant SB-1070 getting recalled, and state laws or referendums to restrict collective bargaining rights, eliminate same-day voter registration, and declare fertilized eggs to be people all going down in flames, but here’s a caveat for Obama and triumphant Democrats to consider:

Aside from the Iowa state senate special election, none of these victories were by Democratic candidates.  They were repudiations of anti-progressive, anti-democratic Republican policies.  It’s one thing for voters to say that they don’t want to unconditionally ban all abortions, but another thing entirely for them to vote for Democrats who have shown themselves to be ineffectual losers at best, and willing corporate tools at worst.

If Democrats want to take advantage of the opposition to unpopular conservative policies, then they need to show that they really do oppose them.  America is a 99% nation, not a Tea Party nation, and Obama and the Democrats would do well to start remembering that.

November 9th, 2011 at 07:18am Posted by Eli

Wanker Of The Day

Herman Cain:

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal posted Wednesday, the up-and-coming GOP 2012 contender and former CEO of Godfather’s Pizza summed up his bewilderment about recent demonstrations on Wall Street.

“Don’t blame Wall Street,” Cain said. “Don’t blame the big banks. If you don’t have a job and you’re not rich, blame yourself.”

The conservative radio talk show host described the protests as “planned and orchestrated to distract from the failed policies of the Obama administration, though he admitted he didn’t “have the facts to back this up.”

(…)

“It is not a person’s fault because they succeeded. It is a person’s fault if they failed. And so this is why I don’t understand these demonstrations and what is it that they’re looking for.”

Cain also has the Quote Of The Day:

“When I was growing up I was blessed to have had parents. That didn’t teach me to be jealous of anybody and didn’t teach me to be jealous of somebody,” Cain explained.

Wha?

Herman Cain is obviously an al Qaeda infiltrator sent to destroy the United States from within, but I don’t have the facts to back this up.

October 6th, 2011 at 07:00am Posted by Eli

Close But Not Quite, Part 1

Sean Paul Kelley:

So, elites our are on record calling for less democracy. Not days after they do the New York Times writes an article that in many ways delegitimizes public, peacefull assembly and protest:

Hundreds of thousands of disillusioned Indians cheer a rural activist on a hunger strike. Israel reels before the largest street demonstrations in its history. Enraged young people in Spain and Greece take over public squares across their countries. Their complaints range from corruption to lack of affordable housing and joblessness, common grievances the world over. But from South Asia to the heartland of Europe and now even to Wall Street, these protesters share something else: wariness, even contempt, toward traditional politicians and the democratic political process they preside over.

They are taking to the streets, in part, because they have little faith in the ballot box.

Excuse me, but I was brought up to believe, even here in America that the right to assemble was an essential adjunct of democracy. Read the rest of the article. It’s very interesting in its use of innuendo, in the sly way it identifies protest as anti-democratic and they way it asserts that “that liberal economics combined with democratic institutions represented the only path forward.”

It’s the essence of neo-liberalism at work and the Davos-type elites are getting concerned.

While it may be true that the NYT is subtly dissing the protestors, I don’t see how their loss of faith in corrupt government systems where virtually every single politician is in the pockets of big corporations is inherently “anti-democratic”.  To me it sounds more like the protestors are starved for democracy, not opposed to it.  Additional quotes from the story:

“Our parents are grateful because they’re voting,” said Marta Solanas, 27, referring to older Spaniards’ decades spent under the Franco dictatorship. “We’re the first generation to say that voting is worthless.”

(…)

“We elect the people’s representatives so they can solve our problems,” said Sarita Singh, 25, among the thousands who gathered each day at Ramlila Maidan, where monsoon rains turned the grounds to mud but protesters waved Indian flags and sang patriotic songs.

“But that is not actually happening. Corruption is ruling our country.”

They really don’t sound anti-democratic to me, just anti-corruption.

September 29th, 2011 at 08:09am Posted by Eli

Word Choice Of The Day

Chicago Business makes it sound like Obama’s supporters just got bored and wandered off:

President Barack Obama’s Chicago-based re-election campaign has a hometown problem: the donors and volunteers who have lost interest after launching his run for the White House four years ago.

Obama’s problem isn’t that his supporters have “lost interest,” it’s that they’ve been paying attention.

September 28th, 2011 at 07:36am Posted by Eli

Obatross

It’s looking more and more like Obama’s going to take congressional Democrats down with him again next year.  But some Democratic consultants still cling to hope (and change):

“I’m glad the election’s not today,” said Democratic pollster Keith Frederick, a veteran of House races. “Every poll shows independents losing their patience for the president. These House elections tend to get nationalized, and there’s no doubt right now that as a referendum on Barack Obama, House Democrats lose.”

I would love to know what makes Frederick think that Obama is going to be more popular in 2012.  If Democrats think the jobs bill is going to be enough to save them, they are sadly mistaken.  Especially after Obama strips it of everything but corporate tax breaks and forces Democrats to vote for it.

September 23rd, 2011 at 11:51am Posted by Eli

Why?

Has Russ Feingold been watching the same Obama I have?

Last week a group of liberal activists and academics, led by consumer advocate Ralph Nader and scholar Cornel West, announced that they were looking for six “recognizable, articulate” candidates to launch a primary bid — not to rip the nomination from Obama’s grasp but to keep him honest on issues like civil rights, consumer protections, labor and foreign policy.

(…)

“I strongly disagree with Ralph Nader. As I’ve said many times before, I believe that re-electing President Obama is an absolute imperative for our economy, our judicial system, for progressives and for our country,” said former Sen. Russ Feingold, who announced recently that he was not running for Wisconsin’s open Senate seat.

Really?  Because Obama has been incompetent on the economy (and frighteningly pro-austerity), downright destructive to progressives, and has all but ignored the judiciary.  More from Feingold:

Now, facing Republican candidates that are bought-and-sold by corporate money, and who want to give more tax breaks to the wealthiest and attack the rights of working Americans, the President is fighting to create jobs and provide economic security for middle class families.

Again, who is Russ talking about?  Obama is almost as much a corporate creature as the Republicans, strong-armed congressional Democrats into extending Bush’s tax cuts for the rich, and has twiddled his thumbs on jobs until just recently.

I’m still not quite at the point where I would say I would prefer a Republican president, but I can’t think of a single persuasive reason why Obama deserves to keep his job.  If we could get a Democratic nominee who might actually be a good president, I’d be all for it.

3 comments September 22nd, 2011 at 08:00am Posted by Eli

Eleventy-Dimensional Chess Strategy Revealed!

I think I have finally figured it out: By co-opting Republican positions on issues like extraction, tax cuts, regulations, and austerity, Obama is forcing the GOP to become more and more insane in order to stay to the right of him as an opposition party, thus making itself less and less appealing to non-crazy voters.

Obama isn’t following the Republicans to the right, he’s pushing them.

1 comment September 8th, 2011 at 11:23am Posted by Eli

Quote Of The Day

Michele Bachmann, from a story about how Republican Jews think she’s Jewish(!):

As a young girl from Anoka, I was shocked at the level of security in Israel. We worked on the kibbutz from 4 am to noon. We were always accompanied by soldiers with machine guns. While we were working, the soldiers were walking around looking for land mines. I really learned a lot in Israel.

Am I the only one who finds that kind of… unsettling?

August 31st, 2011 at 06:51am Posted by Eli

Optimistic Jon Huntsman Is Optimistic

Apparently he thinks that Republican primary voters are looking for a sane, rational candidate.  My favorite bit:

“The minute that the Republican Party becomes the party — the anti-science party, we have a huge problem,” Huntsman said.

Umm… Jon?  That ship sailed about ten years ago, if not more.

August 22nd, 2011 at 08:03am Posted by Eli

This Just In

Apparently the teabaggers are basically just rebranded Republican theocrats.  If they’re political independents, it’s only because the Republican Party isn’t sufficiently suffused with right-wing religious fanaticism.

But the joke’s on them, because now they’re even less popular than the religious right, and even atheists and Muslims.  Why, they’re even less popular than Obama’s record on the economy, and that’s saying something.

The Tea Party really is the best hope Obama and the Democrats have next year – that they nominate more unelectable crazies like Sharron Angle, Linda McMahon and Christine O’Donnell, and that voters turn against the teabaggers that they elected last year.  Lesser of two evils is pretty much all they have going for them next year, so they’re going to have to be pretty damn lesser to overcome the enthusiasm gap (who could have predicted that the party that strokes its base would get better turnout than the party that kicks theirs?).

1 comment August 18th, 2011 at 08:08am Posted by Eli

It All Depends On What The Meaning Of The Word “Good” Is…

The NYT recently revived Obama’s old quote from early in his presidency that he would rather be a good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president, in the context of talking about what he has to do to turn his presidency around before he’s up for re-election.  But really, that only makes sense if you buy the premise that he hasn’t been a good president, which can only be properly evaluated if you know what his goals are.

That is the question.  There has been a spate of Obama-evaluating articles and blog posts lately, with the likes of Robert Reich, Drew Westen, Der Spiegel, LAT, and the Wall Street Journal attributing his disappointing presidency to weakness and/or cluelessness, while Matt Stoller, David Sirota, Jamie Galbraith, and, well, me, argue that Obama has been enacting exactly the policies he wants to enact.

There is room for agreement between the two views, however: Regardless of whether Obama is a successful Republican or an unsuccessful Democrat, he has been an absolutely miserable politician who has demoralized his own base, alienated independents, and done nothing to win over Republicans. (Well, actually, he’s done quite a lot to win over Republicans, but none of it has worked.)  And the economy and employment situation is still terrible, although I suppose that could also be considered a matter of perspective – the wealthy are still doing fine, if not better, but the overwhelming majority of the electorate are not feeling very secure.

So is Obama a good president or a mediocre one?  I think the answer mainly depends on how much money you have.  Is he a one-term president or a two-term one?  I think the answer mainly depends on how crazy the Republican nominee is.

1 comment August 11th, 2011 at 07:42am Posted by Eli

Obama’s Secret Weapon Against Mitt Romney: Irony

Yes, Obama’s plan is actually to paint Romney as a phony insincere corporate shill who reverses his position on every issue.

His team really has been studying Karl Rove’s gameplan of attacking opponents with your candidate’s own weaknesses…

August 10th, 2011 at 07:25am Posted by Eli

There’s No One Left To Vote For

Shorter American electorate: WE HATE EVERYBODY.

And really, who can blame them?  Both parties got their shot at running the government, and both parties failed miserably because they cared more about their corporate and wealthy donors than the people they were elected to serve.

There is definitely room for a third party (although it would really be more like a second party at this point), but not if it’s just a corporate “centrist” party positioned between the other two corporate parties.  The only kind of third party that’s going to gain any traction would be a populist one that promises to represent ordinary people instead of corporations and the wealthy.

1 comment August 6th, 2011 at 01:47pm Posted by Eli