Mitt Romney on The Huffington Post

Alex Brant-Zawadzki: Anatomy of the Tea Party Movement: RecessRally.com

2009-12-11T12:00:00Z

Produced by HuffPost's Eyes & Ears Citizen Journalism Unit

Tea Partiers are famous for their raucous protests during the August Congressional recess. They screamed, yelled, stomped and railed against health care reform via town hall meetings and protests across the country.

Most of the August Tea Party activity was coordinated on RecessRally.com, a website started by Eric Odom in July. Odom previously administered OfficialChicagoTeaParty.com (February 27 protests) and TaxDayTeaParty.com (April 15 protests). In 2008, long before Odom's tea parties, while he was still a Sam Adams Alliance employee, he founded the #DontGo movement, in support of offshore drilling. In March Odom rebranded #DontGo into the American Liberty Alliance.

One of the hallmarks of astroturfing is the coordinated creation of many small, interdependent groups who publicly support each other. RecessRally.com, which was the driving force behind the organization of the August anti-health care reform rallies, used to tout the grassroots nature of the protests, listing its 15 sponsors: American Liberty Alliance; American Liberty Tour; American Majority; Americans for Limited Government; Americans for Prosperity; Let Freedom Ring; Michelle Malkin; Nationwide Tea Party Coalition; NetRightNation; Patients First; RedState blog, Sam Adams Alliance, Smart Girl Politics, and Tea Party Patriots. In reality, the groups were tightly coordinated and fewer than half of those 15 'sponsors' are independent from one another.

Each individual group appears to be an offshoot, partner or affiliate of at least one other project under the RecessRally.com umbrella. American Majority and American Liberty Alliance (Odom's organization) are both derivatives of Sam Adams Alliance. The American Liberty Tour advertised itself as "a collaborative project of the American Liberty Alliance, Americans for Limited Government, and the Sam Adams Alliance." NetRightNation is also a project of Americans for Limited Government. The national Tea Party Coalition site is registered to Michael Patrick Leahy of #TCOT, part of the "original organizing crew" of TaxDayTeaParty.com along with Tea Party Patriots co-founder Amy Kremer. Patients First is a project of Americans for Prosperity.

Patients First, which shares the same street address as Americans for Prosperity, was responsible for the summer's "Hands Off My Health Care" bus tours featuring buses with a giant bloody hand on the side. Its tour events have played host to some of the infamous rallies where official speakers compared Obama to Hitler. At an August tour rally in Pueblo, Colorado, speaker Mark Harrison addressed the crowd:

"Part of end-of-life counseling can be an end-of-life order... What does that mean? End of life. Another word for that is 'death'. Order. What's another word for that? A sentence. Now, you folks review with me a little bit; as I recall, Stalin in the 1920s issued about 20 million end-of-life orders for his fellow Russians. Pol Pot did it during the Vietnam War - he issued about two million end-of-life orders. It's being done in Africa today; Mugabe is doing it every day. Adolf Hitler issued six million end-of-life orders. He called his program the Final Solution. I kind of wonder what we're going to call ours."

Various members of the RecessRally.com coalition also belong to the upper echelons of politics and industry.

FreedomWorks is helmed by Dick Armey, former Republican House Majority Leader, and traces its routes back to Citizens for a Sound Economy, a group founded by David Koch of Koch Industries. Koch is the 9th-richest man in America and Koch Industries is the largest privately-held oil company in America. Americans for Prosperity, once part of Citizens for a Sound Economy, was also founded by David Koch who also serves as chairman of the Americans for Prosperity Foundation. Together the two groups (FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity have been the most active supporters of the Tea Party movement.

Howard Rich, a New York real estate mogul who has funneled millions of dollars into anti-big-government efforts (and now also anti-ACORN), is chairman of Americans for Limited Government. He also sits on the boards of the Cato Institute (along with Koch) and the Club for Growth.

Rich has been one of the primary financial backers of libertarian efforts such as Proposition 90 in California, which would have severely limited the ability of the state government to collect new taxes. One of Rich's associates, former executive director of the National Libertarian Party Eric O'Keefe, has served on the boards of Americans for Limited Government, the Club for Growth, and the Institute for Humane Studies. He also worked for Citizens for Congressional Reform, (pdf) a project of Koch's Citizens for a Sound Economy. He also happens to be chairman and CEO of the Sam Adams Alliance.

John Tillman serves on Sam Adams Alliance's board of directors along with O'Keefe. Tillman also served as president and COO of Sam Adams Alliance during its "start-up phase". Before working at Sam Adams Alliance, Tillman served as president and director of Americans for Limited Government, also during its start-up phase.

Some of the organizations affiliated with RecessRally.com also have a history of media-driven campaigns for conservative causes.

Let Freedom Ring, for instance, is helmed by Colin Hanna, a Philadelphia-based former commissioner. According to its website:

Let Freedom Ring was formed to counter the attacks of anti-conservative groups on patriotic candidates as well as attacks on the important issues of our day - those that affect the core of our society: the family, marriage, the economy, energy, abortion, health care and foreign policy, to name just a few. We also work to keep our constituents and the media informed about what our founding fathers' intentions were and how history shapes laws and our culture today.

Hanna is the man behind a grisly ad featuring planes hitting the World Trade Center in order to drum up support for the Iraq War. The group also worked on a documentary about the faith of George W. Bush, Sen. Rick Santorum and Sen. Zell Miller. Let Freedom Ring is supported by, among others, John Templeton Jr., the wealthy son of a famous investor. Templeton co-chaired the Faith and Values Steering Committee for Republican candidate Mitt Romney's failed presidential campaign and supported Proposition 8 in California, banning gay marriage.

The backers of these groups have known and worked with each other for years. Including many political elites from right-wing American politics, the connections behind RecessRally.com seem to demonstrate less a spontaneous groundswell of government opposition than a synchronization of populist outrage with old-school conservative campaign strategy.

Read full coverage detailing the various parts of the Anatomy of the Tea Party Movement:

Tea Party Patriots

FreedomWorks

Tea Party Express

Americans for Prosperity

American Liberty Alliance

Sam Adams Alliance

American Future Fund

RecessRally.com

The Media

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The Next Credit Crisis Will Involve Private Equity, Says Author Josh Kosman

2009-11-30T15:19:03Z

As the nation struggles to endure the financial crisis -- with rising foreclosures and increased unemployment threatening to prolong the devastation -- another meltdown looms around the corner.

The next credit crisis may be caused by private equity companies, which bought over 3,000 companies this decade by forcing them to take on enormous amounts of debt, argues financial reporter Josh Kosman, the author of "The Buyout of America: How Private Equity Will Cause the Next Great Credit Crisis."

Almost one in 10 nongovernment employees works for a company owned by a private equity firm, and many of them could find their jobs in jeopardy if their employers can't pay back the loans.

"Private equity firms bought thousands of companies this decade using the same cheap credit that fueled the subprime mortgage crisis and that debt is coming due in the next few years," Kosman tells HuffPost in an extended interview, citing Chrysler and Simmons Mattress as two recent examples.

Though private equity leaders like Stephen Schwarzman of Blackstone insist that "the worst is behind the industry," six of the ten companies acquired by PE firms in the biggest buyouts of the last decade are already considered distressed by Moody's. Looking ahead, between 2011 and 2014, almost half a trillion dollars in leverage buyout debt will mature.

Those numbers are fiercely disputed by the industry trade group, the Private Equity Council, which says that half of the defaults described by Moody's are not traditional defaults, but rather opportunistic transactions to deleverage companies.

The potential dangers of private equity acquisitions are due to the risky methods they use, says Kosman:

"They're playing with other people's money -- putting 20% down, and company they buy is borrowing 80% -- in that sense, there's already little risk [for the private equity firm]. Apollo doubled its money in two years while driving Linens N' Things into bankruptcy. Most of the risk comes from other investors like state pension funds, some of which are really exposed to private equity investments - Oregon has 22% exposed, California is 14%."

The biggest leveraged buyout in history -- when PE firms Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and TPG took control of power generator TXU (now called Energy Future Holdings Corp) in 2007 -- is close to the brink due partly to a collapse in natural gas prices. "Their cash flow is negative, they owe $30+ billion," says Kosman. "They won't go bankrupt in next year or two but there is no prayer of that company being able to pay that debt."

Kosman explains that PE firm execs often do well when their companies collapse because most of them earn enough from management fees they charge their investors and the companies to more than cover their losses. Typically, private equity managers rake in 'two and twenty' fees -- two percent of the total amount assets under their management, regardless of performance, and twenty percent of any profits their fund earns.

He also warns that PE firms are trying to profit from the current crisis by buying up distressed assets like banks, mortgage and corporate loans at deep discounts and the US government is seeking them out to help rescue failing banks.

And Kosman takes a tough looks at Bain Capital, the PE firm owned for 11 years by potential 2012 presidential candidate Mitt Romney. He claims that three companies -- Ampad, Dade Behring and GS Industries -- failed after being bought by Bain Capital. In the case of Dade, a lab testing equipment maker, Romney pushed for big cutbacks in the employee pension plan, which saved the company $40 million. The next month, he used that as a basis to borrow $420 million.

A company executive told Krosman that he confronted the CEO about the move, telling him "Well, that'd be like me going out and borrowing the amount of money I make in a year and then trying to pay it off and pay for my house and feed myself and everything else. That doesn't make sense." The CEO responded: "Companies do that all the time." Within two years, the company collapsed.

Kosman is skeptical about Romney's claims that he wasn't aware of some of these events: "That either indicates he doesn't know what's going on at a company which he [owned] 100% of, which is incompetent, or he's lying, which is worse."

In a call to arms at the end of his introduction, Kosman urges lawmakers to close tax loopholes exploited by PE firms: "I believe the record shows that PE firms hurt their businesses competitively, limit their growth, cut jobs without reinvesting the savings, do not even generate good returns for their investors, and are about to cause the Next Great Credit Crisis."

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Mike Huckabee Leaning Against Presidential Run In 2012

2009-11-29T17:38:20Z

WASHINGTON — Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee says he's leaning slightly against running for president in 2012 but says it's far too early to say what he will do.

Huckabee says how the 2010 congressional elections turn out will affect his decision. He also will be looking at whether the Republican Party is willing to unite behind him as a candidate.

Josh Nelson: Will the GOP Nominate a Climate Change Denier in 2012?

2009-11-18T14:55:33Z

In the early stages of the race for the Republican Presidential nomination in 2012, eight names are mentioned most frequently: Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, Newt Gingrich, Haley Barbour, Bobby Jindal and Dick Cheney.

Of these eight early contenders, five outright deny or question climate science, while the remaining three are opposed to all meaningful action.

If Gingrich, Jindal or Barbour wish to claim they are not opposed to all meaningful action, they'll have to present plans that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions to the extent scientists say is necessary, which is on the order of an 80+ percent reduction from 1990 levels by 2050. An 'All of the Above' strategy of increased domestic oil and gas development and incentives for nuclear plants that will never be built does not even come close.

Candidate	Position
Mitt Romney	Climate Science Denier
Mike Huckabee	Climate Science Denier
Dick Cheney	Climate Science Denier
Sarah Palin	Climate Science Denier
Tim Pawlenty	Climate Science Denier
Newt Gingrich	Opposed to Meaningful Action
Bobby Jindal	Opposed to Meaningful Action
Haley Barbour	Opposed to Meaningful Action

Mitt Romney, as part of the unveiling of the Massachusetts Climate Action Plan, wrote:

"If climate change is happening, the actions we take will help," Romney wrote. "If climate change is largely caused by human action, this will really help. If we learn decades from now that climate change isn't happening, these actions will still help our economy, our quality of life, and the quality of our environment."

Mike Huckabee, speaking with Katie Couric of CBS News:

Katie Couric: "Do you think the risks of climate change are at all overblown?"

Mike Huckabee: I don't know. I mean, the honest answer for me, scientifically, is I don't know.

Dick Cheney, speaking to ABC news in 2007, said:

"We're going to see a big debate on it going forward," Cheney told ABC News, about "the extent to which it is part of a normal cycle versus the extent to which it's caused by man." What we know today, he added, is "not enough to just sort of run out and try to slap together some policy that's going to 'solve' the problem."

Sarah Palin, talking to GOP boss Rush Limbaugh yesterday:

RUSH: What's our biggest energy challenge as a country? Do you believe at all or some or a lot in the modern-day go-green movement of solar and wind and all of these nefarious things that really don't produce anything yet?

GOV. PALIN: I think there's a lot of snake oil science involved in that and somebody's making a whole lot of money off people's fears that the world is... It's kind of tough to figure out with the shady science right now, what are we supposed to be doing right now with our climate. Are we warming or are we cooling? I don't think Americans are even told anymore if it's global warming or just climate change. And I don't attribute all the changes to man's activities. I think that this is, in a lot of respects, cyclical and the earth does cool and it warms.

Brad Johnson has more on this, including audio, here.

Tim Pawlenty, who was once an advocate of clean energy solutions to the climate crisis, has steadily moved in the wrong direction as his national ambitions have grown. Think Progress recently documented his regression as follows:

Dec. 2006: Pawlenty lays out an ambitious clean energy program for Minnesotans to reduce their use of fossil fuels 15 percent by 2015. Cutting greenhouse gases, Pawlenty said, would "be good for the environment, good for rural economies, good for national security and good for consumers." He also calls for a regional cap and trade program.May 2007: Pawlenty signs the Next Generation Energy Act of 2007, requiring the state to reduce its emissions 15 percent by 2015 and 80 percent in 2050. At the signing ceremony, Pawlenty said Minnesota was "kicking-starting the future" by "tackling greenhouse gas emissions."

Oct. 2007: Pawlenty declares that the climate change issue is "one of the most important of our time." He also brushes off "some flak" from right-wingers who doubt climate change science.

Sept. 2008: During the election, Pawlenty backs away from his own cap and trade program, says such a system would "wreck the economy." He then tells hate radio personality Glenn Beck (a climate change denier) that human activity only contributes "half a percent" to climate change.

Nov. 2009: Pawlenty backs away from acknowledging that any human activity is the cause of climate change.

While Newt Gingrich does not openly deny climate science, he is vehemently opposed to any meaningful legislation or regulation to address it. In testimony before the House Energy and Commerce Committee in April (PDF), he said:

This is the wrong bill for our national security.

This is the wrong bill for our economy.

This is the wrong bill for government of, by, and for the people.

He went on to cite widely discredited cost estimates and tout the wonders of coal and oil shale, two of the most polluting energy sources on the planet. This is not an all of the above strategy as Gingrich would like to claim. The emphasis is drill here, drill now, more of the same.

Bobby Jindal's press secretary released the following statement in September 2009:

"Governor Jindal has made it clear he believes that the House passed cap and trade bill punishes the American energy industry and that's the last thing we need to do when we are trying to become more energy independent. The legislation will make it harder to create new manufacturing jobs in the US, and the Governor opposes it."

In a March 2001 memo to Vice President Dick Cheney (PDF, page 17), then energy industry lobbyist Haley Barbour urged the Bush administration not to let environmental initiatives trump sound energy policy. Specifically, he wrote:

A moment of truth is arriving in the form of a decision whether this Administration's policy will be to regulate and/or tax CO2 as a pollutant. The question is whether environmental policy still prevails over energy policy with Bush-Cheney, as it did with Clinton-Gore. Demurring on the issue of whether the CO2 idea is eco-extremism, we must ask, do environmental initiatives, which would greatly exacerbate the energy problems, trump good energy policy, which the country has lacked for eight years?Most Americans thought Bush-Cheney would mean more energy and more affordable energy.

William Bradley: The Inevitable Fluke That Is Sarah Palin

2009-11-17T12:06:07Z

Five minutes into yesterday's Oprah extravaganza with Sarah Palin, I messaged Steve Schmidt, John McCain's presidential campaign manager: "So how did you know Bristol was pregnant before it was announced?"

His immediate reply: "I didn't, untrue."

Palin had just said that Schmidt, the evident villain of her new book, Going Rogue, and other top McCain advisors had already known that her teenage daughter was pregnant with an illegitimate child and had marching orders for her even before she was picked as McCain's shock vice presidential nominee.

Ex-Alaska Governor Sarah Palin provides insight into Russian politics.

Palin continued in a similar vein throughout her ballyhooed Oprah interview, constantly hitting the girrrl power/female victimization tropes of daytime TV, casting herself as an individual struggling against male control. Except, of course, for "God and Todd."

It's all a tissue of nonsense when you think about it, including her silly notion that an interview with the anchor of CBS News was supposed to be "light and fun." Whether Oprah really bought the act or not, she appeared to appreciate it. That is, after all, how it's done.

Which took me back to when I learned that the preposterous Palin had become the possible next vice president of the United States ...

Sarah Palin was a fluke. Had to be. A non-serious and irresponsible fluke. That was what I thought when I saw she was about to be named McCain's running mate on August 29, 2008.

I called Schmidt, McCain's campaign manager who I got to know well when he ran Arnold Schwarzenegger's landslide re-election as governor of California, to vent. Schmidt, a hardball if rather gentlemanly operator, had helped McCain spring back into real contention with Barack Obama, jamming the favorite with a series of effective if irritating tactics. (Remember Obama's brilliant international tour, blunted by the mocking TV ad: "He's the biggest celebrity in the world." That was Schmidt.) Such is politics, especially for the campaign with the weaker hand, so no personal venting was called for.

But Palin? I'd scouted her, which amounted to watching a few hours of video footage of her and reading some articles, and she was clearly a totally unqualified, and very vain, intellectual lightweight. And that was being kind. Compared to Palin, George W. Bush belonged on Mount Rushmore.

Palin pretended yesterday on Oprah to have been surprised that CBS News anchor Katie Couric asked her serious questions.

Palin was also, in retrospect, inevitable. Even though she was not the real first choice of McCain, Schmidt, and the rest of the campaign high command. Perhaps because she was not the real first choice.

Here's why.

Two years ago, McCain was struggling along, his once frontrunning candidacy having imploded due to his moderation on immigration and a few other issues and his discomfort from playing the establishment frontrunner. After McCain's campaign collapsed, I'd had lunch with Schmidt, joking that McCain must do as Chairman Mao advised when he said: "The guerrilla must move amongst the people as a fish swims in the sea."

Schmidt had decided to carry on with what his business partners referred to as his unpaid "hobby," and McCain had decided to do something "Mao-like" or at least a Republican variant. He traveled like a normal person, was very accessible, held free-wheeling town halls in his home away from home New Hampshire and a few other states. Freed from the pressure of being the national frontrunner, he recovered his mojo in a race that was still very winnable for him.

After he won New Hampshire, the far right went crazy, moving heavily into Stop McCain mode. Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity inveighed against him at all hours of the day and night. The far right blogosphere was in high dudgeon over this "dangerous liberal" McCain.

The reality is that McCain is a conservative. He's much like Ronald Reagan, who would also face tremendously vicious yip-yap today in the party which purports to venerate him unless he moved further to the right.

The far right settled on the awkward figure of Mitt Romney to stop McCain. For some, like radio host Hugh Hewitt, who wrote a truly amazing biography of Romney (in which the corporate takeover artist flew over tall buildings), it was a matter of heavily willed suspension of disbelief that this Eastern economic royalist/social liberal was really a movement conservative. For others, it was simply a matter of stopping McCain, who once pissed all over their pretensions. Romney had adopted their rhetoric, fraudulent though his positioning was, and for them, that was enough.

With the Republicans' winner-take-all primary ways, and Romney not able to shut down Mike Huckabee, McCain rocked Romney to a dead stop in California and knocked him out the following week in Florida. He did this with the help of moderate Governors Arnold Schwarzenegger and Charlie Crist, both of whom are reviled by the far right.

But the far right, which amounts to a neo-Confederate political tendency, retained a simmeringly mutinous attitude, playing up sizable non-McCain votes as the primaries went on. Though they couldn't ever get behind Huckabee.

An interesting question is why they didn't get behind Huckabee instead of Romney. Huckabee is a real social conservative and a far better natural politician than the generally stiff Romney. But he's more of a populist than a royalist, and expressed concern about climate change. The dominant far right political tendency deeply identifies with entrenched wealth and authority, and disdains squishy notions like peace and the environment. Which is why Dick Cheney, of all people, is a patron saint of the far right.

So McCain and his advisors had a big problem going forward. The far right, with big megaphones in the form of Limbaugh, Hannity, et al was busily proclaiming that they were the real Republicans. And without the so-called "base," McCain had a built-in potshot press every day.

Palin was baffled by questions about the Supreme Court.

Meanwhile, Schmidt, who'd tooled around with McCain in rental cars and commercial flights during the rebuilding days of the campaign, had taken over its operations. Working with Schwarzenegger, he'd been at the controls of a smoothly running megabucks machine. But this, even after clinching the nomination, was definitely more ramshackle.

Especially compared with the humming Obama machine, raising money at a record clip, with volunteers all over America. Once the tussle with the Clintons was ended -- despite all the silly "Puma" hype, which never really amounted to much, though Schmidt and others had some hopes -- Obama had a happy and united party base on the left and and in the center.

When it came time to pick a potential vice president, the McCain high command had a series of not especially good choices.

My impression was that they liked Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, both personally and substantively. But he was not an inspiring figure and Obama was likely to win his state, as he did, easily.

Huckabee was a good campaigner and had good rapport with McCain. But you certainly couldn't have a creationist on the ticket. Right? And the Talk Radio Wing of the party hated him.

Palin now bashes the Wall Street bailout as an Obama scheme. Last year, when it was pushed through by George W. Bush, she backed it, but thought that it was about health care.

Romney was, let's say, not personally popular in McCain Land. The two seemed to viscerally dislike each other on stage, making the Obama-Hillary dynamic look like occasionally bickering lab partners. But he could bring some very big money to the table, if no real advantage in terms of states.

McCain wanted to tear it up and be the maverick by picking Joe Lieberman. Al Gore's running mate of 2000 would be his running mate of 2008.

But that wouldn't fly, as Team McCain learned when they took some soundings in the party. As much as much of the left hates Lieberman -- without whom, as Obama shrewdly realized, there would be no 60-vote Democratic majority in the Senate -- he is a dangerous liberal to the far right. Sure, he's a neo-Likudnik hawk. But beyond that he is essentially a moderate corporate liberal Democrat. And that is totally unacceptable to the Taliban of America's far right.

Other folks mentioned, the Rob Portman types, were largely unknown and were in no way game-changers.

For that was how the pick came to be framed.

Palin complains now that her brilliance was bottled up by Team McCain.

Most of what the McCain campaign did in the general election can be understood by understanding this: The presidency of the United States in 2008 was Barack Obama's to lose. That's the way the dynamics of history played out in 2008. If Obama became seen as a plausible president -- and McCain and his top people never bought the "birther" nonsense or the rest of the "Manchurian Candidate" fantasy so prevalent on the far right even today, though they played around with that fire -- and didn't make a big mistake, he would be the next president.

Unless they could alter the equation, distract from Obama's luster, trip him up. And they would need a big turnout of core conservative voters to be in the ballpark.

In that context, essentially a context of desperation -- and let's remember all the handwringing about Obama's chances amongst liberal Democrats going on throughout all this -- Sarah Palin made sense.

Except that she really didn't. Because she had no idea what she was talking about. Which is why I knew she was dead amongst independent voters, who don't necessarily like fancy credentials but demand basic knowledge.

And yet she really did make sense, very much so, politically, within the context of the Republican Party. Both through process of elimination -- see above -- and in terms of activating conservative activists and turning on grassroots conservative contributors.

I thought from the beginning she would backfire, and wrote it again after she gave her big speech at the Republican national convention, which had most pundits swooning. And that proved to be the case.

Palin brought a lot of energy -- mostly of the angry, backlash variety -- to the McCain ticket. But in the end, because of her fundamental ignorance and negativity, she made it impossible for McCain to win.

Now, let me say that I have always liked McCain. I don't agree with him on everything, to say the least, but I think he is a good man in a very flawed system.

I had hoped for a different sort of campaign between my favorite Democrat and my favorite Republican. That was too idealistic of me. For that sort of campaign would have guaranteed an Obama victory. Naturally, McCain decided not to play along, as, like most politicians, he would rather take a shot at winning than settle for an honorable defeat.

That also brought us Sarah Palin.

But what really made Palin the inevitable fluke that she is is the nature of the current Republican Party.

A once great party has turned into a neo-Confederate political party, looking for a very shallow, mean, dishonest, know-nothing version of Ronald Reagan. And in Sarah Palin, it has found it.

America doesn't buy her as a potential president. Especially after she bizarrely quit as governor of small state Alaska halfway through her only term.

But in a multi-candidate winner take all GOP primary scenario, she could definitely walk away with the party's presidential nomination. And in the meantime, her poisonous brand of charisma will continue to infect Republicans, meaning that all of national politics will continue to be infected with a vicious virus of dishonest, know-nothing hyper-partisanship.

You can check things during the day on my site, New West Notes ... www.newwestnotes.com.

Axelrod Knocks Romney: 'Never Had Responsibility For Any Decision Akin To This' (VIDEO)

2009-11-15T10:30:16Z

On CNN's "State of the Union" Sunday, White House senior adviser David Axelrod responded to former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney's criticism of the president. Romney expressed incredulity that President Obama had not made up his mind on Afghanistan.

"Why is it taking so long?" host John King asked.

"Governor Romney has to choose one argument of another," Axelrod responded. "Either he has to say he is not paying attention or he has to say he is taking too long because he has been involved in a rigorous review ... You know, I know that Governor Romney has never had responsibility for any decision akin to this, so he just may not be familiar with all that it entails."

WATCH:

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GOP Presidential Candidates Already Jockeying For 2012 Election

2009-11-14T20:17:32Z

WASHINGTON — Sarah Palin is embarking on a book tour. Tim Pawlenty is building a national political operation. Mitt Romney is weighing in on the recession.

They're all jockeying for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination – even if they won't say so.

Richard (RJ) Eskow: No, Rachel, No! This "Health Reform" Could Lose the Middle Class for Dems

2009-11-13T13:07:03Z

I read with interest Mike Elk's assertion that "liberal elitism will make Sarah Palin President," as well as Oliver Willis' response that "some people are, sadly, stupid." But if Democrats and progressives are really concerned about middle-class votes - and they should be - it's statements like this one by Rachel Maddow that should concern them:

And this weekend, the House grabbed the brass ring that president after president and Congress after Congress have wanted to grab and failed: health reform at last -- the kind of once in more than a lifetime historic achievement that could brand the Democratic Party and inspire voter loyalty for a generation.

Now, as a conflict-of-interest disclosure, I love Rachel Maddow's show. And she gets better every week. But when I heard her say these words on Monday's show, I felt like an actor in one of those slow-motion disaster scenes, watching a friend make a tragic mistake and wanting to shout "No-o-o-o-o- ...." (Remember, it's in slow motion.)

I think that's what Rachel was doing, too, when she went on to rightly slam the Stupak Amendment. (For an idea of how that amendment might look to a visitor from another planet, go here.) But, Stupak Amendment aside, it's this sort of rhetoric that troubles me the most right now. This is not the time for people, especially progressives, to congratulate themselves over this deeply flawed bill. There's still time to fix its most egregious flaws, which are by no means limited to the highly objectionable (and politically foolish) Stupak Amendment. I hope Rachel will reconsider.

Any possible amalgam of the House and Senate bills, as they now stand, will look very much like the plan once called Romneycare in Massachusetts. It will be highly (if not entirely) dependent on private health insurance, will lack meaningful price controls, and will be forced of necessity to leave a great many people uninsured even after passage. It will do great things for the lower-income uninsured - which is to be celebrated - but it will do so by placing disproportionate financial burdens on the middle class.

When politicians and health policy experts were celebrating the Massachusetts bill, only a few of us sent out warnings. But the scenario has played out pretty much the way our minority reports predicted. Politically, the Massachusetts bill - which addresses a much smaller problem than the one we face nationally - is mildly popular overall (51% favorability), but markedly unpopular with those it has affected personally.

And who would that be? The middle class, mainly.(1) That scenario's likely to play out again on a national scale. Those who currently have health insurance will face a future of rising premiums, starting next year, which these reforms would do little or nothing to address. Most of them will not have a public option choice, and even those that do will find it lacks cost-containment "teeth." And, while there's some merit to Goldman Sachs' doomsaying, the insurance companies will have a guaranteed revenue stream that can be enhanced with further premium increases. (The Goldman forecasts address the trend-based scenarios which drive stock prices - e.g.,will margins tend to improve or narrow - rather than absolute revenue numbers, which will remain healthy.)

This hardly sounds like "a lifetime historic achievement that could brand the Democratic Party and inspire voter loyalty for a generation." It sounds more like a bill that will help some people, leave others where they are, and place new burdens on still others. It also sounds like a bill that can be used to make political capital for the GOP, which can paint Dems as "the party that doesn't understand the middle class." A little of that, plus some populist right-wing rhetoric about Wall Street's coziness with Washington, and you could have a winning formula for Republicans.

Why say this now? Because there is still a chance to make this bill significantly better. Democrats can strengthen the public option, reconsider price controls, and make sure not to pass that "Cadillac" tax. (David Leonhardt's defense of it in the New York Times is based in part on a decades-old RAND study that has now been seriously challenged methodologically - I hope to discuss that at more length soon).

Nobody's going to bother addressing some of this bill's more troublesome provisions if smart, engaged progressives like my hero Rachel engage in premature congratulation, rather than providing Democrats the tough criticism needed if we are to get a better result than the one we're likely to face today.

____________

UPDATE: I haven't been able to read all of the comments, and you're entitled to your opinions (if expressed according to site rules, of course.) But, please, guys - the hatin' on Rachel is upsetting to me. I think she's terrific.

Can't we disagree on one point without whipping out the switchblades on one another?

____________

(1)This point applies specifically to families who will be mandated to purchase coverage, but will be eligible for little or no assistance paying their insurance premiums (which, as a reminder, neither the House or Senate bills would do much to contain). This will most strongly affect those who make roughly $66,000/year income and upward for a family of four, and who do not receive insurance through their employer.

RJ Eskow blogs when he can at:

A Night Light
The Sentinel Effect: Healthcare Blog

Website: Eskow and Associates

Huckabee Slams Romney, Palin, Conservative Movement

2009-11-09T09:14:00Z

The day the Gallup Organization confirmed Mike Huckabee's status as the pollsters' front-runner for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, the former Arkansas governor was slouched in the back of his tour bus, somewhere between Harrisburg and Allentown, Pa., talking about the frustrations of not being taken seriously.

"I'm a very serious person," he said. "I may not be dour, but I'm serious.

Sarah Palin Not Qualified To Be President, 7 In 10 Say In New Poll

2009-10-28T18:52:55Z

Fifty-six percent of Americans thinks Sarah Palin cares about people like them, something which many Republican presidential candidates have not shared, but 71 percent don't think she's qualified to sit in the Oval Office, according to a CNN/Opinion Research poll conducted Oct. 16-18.

Republicans: We're Boxed In By Conservative Commentators

2009-10-22T09:27:53Z

Many top Republicans are growing worried that the party's chances for reversing its electoral routs of 2006 and 2008 are being wounded by the flamboyant rhetoric and angry tone of conservative activists and media personalities, according to interviews with GOP officials and operatives.

Congressional leaders talk in private of being boxed in by commentators such as Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh -- figures who are wildly popular with the conservative base but wildly controversial among other parts of the electorate, and who have proven records of making life miserable for senators and House members critical of their views or influence.

Josh Nelson: 20 GOP Politicians Repeat $1,761 Clean Energy Bill Lie

2009-10-08T11:02:07Z

I've written several times in the past few weeks about the $1,761 energy tax lie Republicans have latched onto to oppose clean energy legislation. For those who haven't been following, here is how this went down:

STEP ONE: "News" generated by right-wing think tank.

STEP TWO: Right-wing print journalists write "breaking news" story.

STEP THREE: Promoted by Drudge, story repeated endlessly on right-wing blogs, Twitter, and talk radio.

STEP FOUR: Republican politicians, right-wing think tanks, and polluter front groups release statements of shock and outrage.

STEP FIVE: On Fox News, Glenn Beck calls President Obama a liar/socialist/Marxist/communist/fascist/racist.

Here is how I characterized the willingness of Republican politicians to latch onto this lie at the time:

Despite immediate and forceful pushback from the Treasury Department, the Congressional Budget Office and environmental groups, solid reporting by the Wonk Room and the Washington Post, and thorough debunkings by Media Matters and Politifact, several leading GOP elected officials have begun citing the highly misleading figure.

Since I wrote that a few weeks ago, several Republican politicians have continued repeating the lie.

Today, Representative Ed Markey pushed this story back to the forefront with a Huffington Post piece. After setting the record straight on Romney's falsehood and explaining the urgency of clean energy legislation, Markey finishes strong:

So the next time you hear Mitt Romney or other opponents of clean energy and climate legislation railing about the costs of action, you should multiply your suspicion by whatever number they are attempting to sell. Odds are, it is far from even-handed.

While this is a solid piece, and Representative Markey makes his case well, he barely mentions the other Republican politicians who have repeated this lie. I understand the value of pegging this on a potential 2012 Presidential candidate, but there are over a dozen current elected officials in the Republican party who have repeated this lie as well.

Since I last updated the count a few weeks ago, eight additional Republican politicians and party organizations have repeated the lie, bringing the total to 20.

Senator Roger Wicker (R-MS) released a statement claiming that "The Obama administration's own estimate found a cap-and-trade scheme could cost American families an extra $1,761 per year."

Rep. Cynthia Lummis' Chief of Staff told a local Chamber of Commerce that Democrats' cap-and-trade bill "could cost individual households an extra $1,761 a year."

The Oregon GOP sent a fundraising email claiming that Democrats in Congress "Passed a huge energy tax that adds an estimated $1,761 to every family's yearly budget."

Joel Pollack, Republican candidate for Congrss in IL-9 told the Cook Country Republican party that "The House passed a cap-and-trade bill that will cost each family in America $1,761 per year."

Rep. Blaine Leutkemeyer issued a press release lamenting the "Majority's obvious disregard for the plight of American families who would have to shell out at least $1,700 a year in additional taxes..." (h/t Fired Up Missouri)

Rep. John Culberson blogged that "Treasury also estimates the cost per household would be $1,761 a year, while American families are struggling to make ends meet."

MN State Rep. Mike Beard blogged that "We are gaining some more perspective as to how much cap-and-trade proposals at the federal and state levels would cost the average Minnesota family: $1,761 and $575 per year, respectively."

Finally, here is one I missed as this lie was just beginning to take hold:

On September 16th, the National Republican Congressional Committee issued dozens of press releases with the headline "National Energy Tax Could Cost Families $1,761 A Year."

Here is the full list of 20 Republican politicians and local party organizations who have parroted some version of this widely debunked $1,761 lie:

Senator Lamar Alexander issued a press release saying "American families can't afford a new $1,761 yearly energy tax."

Senator James Inhofe issued a press release claiming that "the President's own economic team said his cap-and-trade proposal would cost each family $1,761 per year."

Senator Lisa Murkowski issued a press release stating that "At the upper end of the administration's estimate, the cost per American household would be $1,761 a year, on top of what they already pay in taxes to the government."

2008 also-ran Mitt Romney told the crowd at the conservative Value Voters Summit on Saturday that the clean energy legislation "would cost the average American family $1,761 a year, the equivalent to a 15% income tax hike."

Representative Roy Blunt tweeted: "CBS reports the Obama Admin privately concluded cap & trade could cost families $1,761 a year. Same as a 15% personal income tax increase."

Representative Fred Upton fired off a letter, which cites the $1700 figure, accusing the Treasury Department of censoring information in the FOIA release.

House Minority Leader John Boehner said on PBS' NewsHour: "It's a cap-and-trade proposal that came through the House that we now find out from the Treasury Department would cost each American family over $1,700 per year."

House Republican Conference Chairman Mike Pence copied-and-pasted the wholly discredited CBS blog post where the $1,761 figure originated into an email to supporters.

Update 9/21: Representative Pete Sessions writes "American households could pay an additional $1,761 a year in expenses."

Update 9/22: Senator John Cornyn issued a press release saying "According to a the Department of Treasury's analysis, new taxes would be between $100 and $200 billion each year, costing families up to 1,761 each year." Unlike some of the others, Cornyn didn't even try to hide his source. He linked directly to the conservative blogger who came up with the $1,761 figure. He attributes the figure to the Treasury Department -- which is false.

Update 9/22: According to user casinclair on Twitter, Sarah Palin repeated the lie at her speech in Hong Kong yesterday. I'm assuming this is paraphrased, and am trying to find a full transcript: "Cap and tax (trade) will cause unemployment. Say it will cost $1800 per Americans and cause no change."

Update 9/22: Republican Senate Candidate Scott Brown said yesterday: "They want a "yes" vote on cap and trade, even if it will raise energy costs on the average family in this country by $1,761 a year."

Update 10/7: Senator Roger Wicker released a statement claiming that "The Obama administration's own estimate found a cap-and-trade scheme could cost American families an extra $1,761 per year."

Update 10/7: Rep. Cynthia Lummis' Chief of Staff told a local Chamber of Commerce that Democrats' cap-and-trade bill "could cost individual households an extra $1,761 a year."

Update 10/7: The Oregon GOP sent a fundraising email claiming that Democrats in Congress "Passed a huge energy tax that adds an estimated $1,761 to every family's yearly budget."

Update 10/7: Joel Pollack, Republican candidate for Congrss in IL-9 told the Cook Country Republican party that "The House passed a cap-and-trade bill that will cost each family in America $1,761 per year."

Update 10/7: Rep. Blaine Leutkemeyer issues a press release lamenting the "Majority's obvious disregard for the plight of American families who would have to shell out at least $1,700 a year in additional taxes..." (h/t Fired Up Missouri)

Update 10/7: Rep. John Culberson blogged that "Treasury also estimates the cost per household would be $1,761 a year, while American families are struggling to make ends meet."

Update 10/7: MN State Rep. Mike Beard blogged that "We are gaining some more perspective as to how much cap-and-trade proposals at the federal and state levels would cost the average Minnesota family: $1,761 and $575 per year, respectively."

Update 10/7: On September 16th, the National Republican Congressional Committee issued dozens of press releases with the headline "National Energy Tax Could Cost Families $1,761 A Year."

Originally posted at EnviroKnow.

Rep. Ed Markey: Mitt Romney's Fuzzy Math on Clean Energy Legislation

2009-10-07T18:19:47Z

Today former Governor Mitt Romney released a video--and a contribution plea--targeting the clean energy and climate legislation currently moving through Congress. Problem is, Romney does not seem to quite know what proposal he opposes, or the real figures on Congress' actual proposal.

In his campaign missive, Romney hones in on the supposed cost of a pollution reduction system--a number that has been repeated by renowned climate-denier Sen. Jim Inhofe, House Minority Leader John Boehner, and conservative commentators like Glenn Beck. The problem is, their numbers are completely fabricated.

Romney, and the other opponents of clean energy legislation, are now claiming it will cost $1,761 per household. This after claiming it will cost $3,100 in months past. An MIT professor who had his own work twisted into the $3,100 figure called the same fuzzy math that created this new number "wrong in so many ways, it's hard to begin." The Pulitzer-prize winning fact-checker site Politifact has called both of these manufactured numbers "False."

The reality is that Romney and other naysayers aren't even looking at the actual Congressional bills currently being considered. Or perhaps they just haven't read them.

If Romney had looked at the House-passed Waxman-Markey bill, or the analyses of the bill done by the Congressional Budget Office, the Environmental Protection Agency, or the Energy Information Administration, he'd see that we dedicate the majority of the bill towards consumer protection measures. That's why all three analyses found that the household costs would be about a postage stamp a day--and that's before you add in the thousands of dollars in savings per year from energy efficiency provisions in the bill, or the national and economic security benefits from reducing our dependence on oil. In fact, the CBO found that the poorest fifth of Americans would actually come out $40 ahead from the robust consumer protections and rebates in the bill.

Here's the scariest math of all: since President George W. Bush's era of climate inaction began in 2001, every single year has been one of the top ten hottest on record, according to NASA. And under the Republican-led Congress and the Bush administration, consumers' energy costs rose $1,100 more for energy from 2001-2007, according to a study by the Center for American Progress--and that's not including the exorbitant gas prices of 2008.

So the next time you hear Mitt Romney or other opponents of clean energy and climate legislation railing about the costs of action, you should multiply your suspicion by whatever number they are attempting to sell. Odds are, it is far from even-handed.

Going Rogue And Other Cheesy Political Book Covers (PHOTOS)

2009-10-02T17:14:56Z

The cover of Sarah Palin's forthcoming book Going Rogue was made public today. In honor of the inspirational photograph of the ex-governor, here are some other milestones in contrived political book jackets.

Frankie Sturm: Mitt Romney's Foreign Policy Vision, in Need of Corrective Lenses

2009-09-27T10:05:25Z

I recently attended a luncheon in Washington hosted by the Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI). Founded and run by prominent neoconservatives, FPI invited former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney to hold a discussion on America's place in the world. I predicted that the former presidential candidate's hair would be more exquisite than his foreign policy ideas. I was not disappointed.

From the beginning it was clear that politics would trump policy, as Governor Romney received softball after softball designed to tear down President Obama and buck up the Republican faithful. He expressed relief that President Obama had not rapidly yanked US troops out of Iraq or taken Air Force One to North Korea. Since these outlandish propositions were never part of Obama's presidential campaign, one wonders why he feared such possibilities in the first place.

The most likely answer, of course, is that he never actually harbored such fears. Instead, it seemed that he was merely pumping up the crowd in order to set the stage for this go-for-the-jugular accusation: that President Obama is a "timid defender of freedom."

It's a predictable claim, which jives nicely with the long Republican tradition of choosing tough talk over tough choices. Also predictable was the decision to go after the "chattering class," a new epithet for the liberal media. For Governor Romney, the chattering class is responsible for spreading the poisonous idea that America is "in decline." As America's power diminishes, so the straw man goes, the United States stands on the sidelines and asks for help. It no longer leads, no longer stands up for its friends, and no longer stands up for itself. The incarnation of this worldview? Barack Obama.

Such is Governor Romney's working theory. But the theory isn't working. Once again, he's pushing politics over policy. "Decline" is not a neutral term. It's a political accusation that willfully ignores the realities of today's world.

America's share of world GDP stood at 50% after World War II. As economies recovered, primarily in Europe in Japan, that share moved to 20% in 1980, and has stayed constant ever since. What has not stayed constant is Europe and Japan. Since 1980, Europe's share of world GDP has gone from 27% to 20%, while Japan's has gone from 8% to 6%.

Who's picking up the slack? Asia, with China leading the way. In the same time period, China's share of world GDP has gone from 4% to 16%, while the rest of Asia has gone from 12% to 19%. Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs has predicted that the combined economies of Brazil, Russia, India, and China will be larger than the combined economies of the United States and the European Union by 2050.

Does this mean America is in decline? Hardly. On the contrary, it's a measure of our success that so many nations have, to varying degrees, adopted economic systems similar to ours. As a consequence, the wealth of others has grown, and the opportunities for the US to cooperate with like-minded nations has grown. The fact that economies in Europe, Asia, and elsewhere have grown since 1945 is not a sign of American decline. It's a testament to US leadership.

Yet like all worthwhile accomplishments, this comes with a cost. The US simply controls less wealth than it used to. Our resources aren't infinite and we have to make tough choices to keep America safe and strong. Governor Romney isn't up for tough choices. Tough talk is much easier. His choice is to ignore this reality, and slander anyone who points out this incontrovertible economic fact as a decline monger.

But it's not 1945 anymore. Other nations have the resources to go their own way if they want to. Yet they probably don't want to, because without American leadership in the world, nothing gets done. The National Intelligence Council puts it nicely:

On newer security issues like climate change, US leadership will be widely perceived as critical to leveraging competing and divisive views to find solutions. At the same time, the multiplicity of influential actors and distrust of vast power means less room for the US to call the shots without the support of strong partnerships.

The Catholic Church often refers to the bishop of Rome -- the pope -- as "the first among equals." That might be a stretch when comparing America's position in the world to that of other powers -- we're still top dog economically and militarily -- but it's probably the kind of attitude we need to succeed in the 21st century. To pretend otherwise, as Governor Romney prefers to do, is to abandon the reality we have for the unicorn he wants.

Read more: American-Decline, Economics, Foreign Affairs, President Obama, Mitt Romney, Neoconservatism, Obama Foreign Policy, Foreign Policy, Gdp, National Security, Neocons, National Intelligence Council, President Obama Administration, Neoconservatives, Neo-Conservatives, American Decline, Politics News

Adam Blickstein: Romney Never True to Thine Own Self

2009-09-24T15:24:12Z
Well once again Mitt Romney has waded into, what for him, are the foreign shores of foreign policy. While addressing a neoconservative conference this week in Washington, Romney, according to reports, discussed a whole host of national security issues he has little to no experience with. Remember, this is the same guy that barely two years ago (while then Sen. Obama sat on the Foreign Relations Committee) spent his time:

"...ticking through a presidential checklist, sometimes with perilous results. Where he lacked foreign policy experience, his staff arranged one-day visits to Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Check, check, check."

Romney's business experience probably makes him an expert at making lists and checking off accomplishments, but sadly, this is not suitable for successful leadership in the foreign policy world where nuance and policy experience actually matter. For instance, at the conference, Romney called Obama's foreign policy:

"a dramatic and revolutionary" redesign in American foreign policy unlike what we have seen over the past 50 years...[and] distance ourselves from our friends and move "closer to our foes."

First, over the past fifty years, there has been a strong tradition in American foreign policy of American Presidents embracing our allies while also engaging with our enemies. Nixon went to China. Reagan helped end the Cold War by engaging with the Soviets and actually held a summit in Soviet Moscow with Gorbachev. All Romney and other conservatives seem to want is a new Cold War with Russia and China. Speaking of which, our foreign policy in 2009 should be far different than it was in 1959 since the Cold War is in fact over and our strategic imperatives and threats are far different today than they were then. If anything, we do need a new foreign policy direction that is "dramatic and revolutionary" when compared to the failures of the past 8 years, one that stands in stark contrast to the erratic and reactionary approach of the Bush administration.

Romney also went after the Administration's decision to revamp our missile defense system, saying he was "dumbfounded" by the president's decision" and "derided the new and improved intelligence." Well, I'm sure the one-term Massachusetts governor has access to the latest information from our intelligence community, and knows better on this issue than the Secretary of Defense, the intelligence community, and of course the President, people who actually spend their lives reading high level intelligence and not just giving political speeches. He also seems pretty comfortable disparaging the work of all 16 agencies in the intelligence community who put together the May 2009 intelligence assessment on Iran from which the decision to bolster the missile defense system in the face of new threats was derived. But at the same time he attacked the Justice Department for investigating possible interrogation abuses at the CIA, asserting it may expose our "friends" there. So which is it, are folks in the CIA Mitt Romney's friends he wants to defend or inept government officials he wants to attack for their apparent inability to gather reliable intelligence on Iran's missile program? Here, he seems frantically confused.

Just like Hamlet I guess, whom Romney compares Obama to:

President Obama's skepticism about a troop build-up in Afghanistan came under fire on Monday from former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, a Republican who ran for president in 2008 and is actively laying the groundwork for a second run in 2012.

"This is not the time for Hamlet in the White House," said Romney. "How in the world can he be saying at this stage the things that he is saying?"

Not like Romney has never been compared to the erratic Shakespearean character before. But Romney here confuses indecisiveness with careful deliberation over an intractible issue. Romney, like most Republicans, views Afghanistan as a problem to be solved only through a purely military approach, and he doesn't understand that the role of the President is to distill different views into a coherent and comprehensive strategy, of which the military is a crucial, but not singular, part. This is something even CENTCOM Commander General David Petraeus acknowledged:

Military action is absolutely necessary but it is not sufficient...Political, economic and diplomatic activity is critical to capitalize on gains in the security arena."

At a time when the political, economic, and diplomatic situation in Afghanistan remains uncertain, Obama is taking the smart approach and weighing all his options, not embarking on some strategy that fits into a quaint and elitist but factually baseless Republican Shakespearean allusion.

And Romney might want to be careful while quoting Hamlet. For a man John McCain said has "consistently taken both sides of any major issue [and] consistently flip-flopped on every issue," Romney should probably actually read the play and take guidance from perhaps its most famous phrase:

This above all -- to thine own self be true;
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.

It's pretty clear, though, that the only thing Romney is to true to is his own selfish political ambitions.

Read more: Mitt Romney, 2012 Election, Barack Obama, Foreign Policy, Romney Foreign Policy, Romney Obama, Obama Foreign Policy, Politics News

Authors Of Iraq War Push Obama On Afghanistan

2009-09-21T15:35:27Z
The neoconservatives who provided the intellectual foundation for the war in Iraq convened on Monday to make a renewed push for the current administration to pursue greater military engagement in Afghanistan.

Hours after it was reported that military officials are advising President Obama to send up to 40,000 more American troops to the eight-year-long war, former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney joined the intellectuals at the Foreign Policy Initiative forum to declare any future policy debate moot.

"This is not the time for Hamlet in the White House," said Romney, mocking President Barack Obama's appeal for more time to decide the best course forward for U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

"Hopefully he has had the time to deal with the issue of Afghanistan," Romney added. "He will make the decision, which is called for by as great a team of military minds that has ever been assembled for a conflict like this... This team is unanimous. They have developed a strategy that is consistent with his principles. How in the world can he at this stage be saying what he is saying?"

Speaking before the FPI -- a group headed by many of the chief intellectual authors of the war in Iraq, including The Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol, renowned neocon Robert Kagan, and former adviser to the Coalition in Iraq Dan Senor -- Romney's remarks were filled with other carefully-worded criticisms of Obama's foreign policy. The president had shown himself to be "a reluctant and timid defender of freedom," was pursuing a "dramatic" and "revolutionary" departure from previous approaches to global affairs and was alienating our allies in an effort to placate emerging international forces, argued the former Massachusetts governor argued.

"All politicians are in love with love," Romney said of the alleged "neutrality" that Obama had brought to U.S. diplomatic relations. "I think it flows in part from the sense that is growing in a lot of foreign policy circles that America is in decline. And that is inevitable that other great nations will surpass America and therefore the job of the president of the US should be to manage America through decline and make sure that we are in good stead with the Chinese and the Russians and these other contenders."

And yet, for all the foreign policy machismo and rhetorical platitudes offered by Romney, a countervailing truth seemed to temper his and others remarks. On the topic of Afghanistan, Obama and the neocons are far closer to one another than they are apart. The president, to date, has pursued policies that even former rivals like Sen. John McCain, (R-A.Z.) and Lindsey Graham, (R-S.C.) have cheered.

At an earlier panel at the FPI forum, the president was urged once more to follow the recommendations that his top military commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, laid out in a 66-page assessment of the situation in that country.

"The primary objective [in Afghanistan] is to protect the United States" from another 9/11," said Rep. Mark Kirk, a Republican Senatorial candidate in Illinois. My job, Kirk added, is to "make sure that everyone in [Chicago's] Sears Tower can come home tonight."

But others were more accommodating of the president's desire for deliberation, noting the need to build up public support for the endeavor and the long-term implications of any additional troop commitment.

"The support of the American people is the center of gravity for the next ten years," said Brig. Gen. Mark T. Kimmitt, USA (Ret.). Given the extent of the commitment hoped for, this "is going need some deliberation," Kimmitt said, "we don't want to see a rush to failure."

Read more: Foreign Policy Initiative, Obama Troops, Obama Afghanistan, Obama Hamlet, Mitt Romney, Obama Neoconservatives, Iraq War Obama, Obama Troops Report, Romney Obama, Obama Foreign Policy, Politics News

Josh Nelson: Eight GOP Politicians Parrot False $1,761 Talking Point on Costs of Climate Bill

2009-09-21T07:44:27Z
I mentioned last week that both CBS and Politico were forced to issue corrections on pieces they published citing inflated cost-estimates of a version of climate legislation that was never considered by Congress.

Despite immediate and forceful pushback from the Treasury Department, the Congressional Budget Office and environmental groups, solid reporting by the Wonk Room and the Washington Post, and thorough debunkings by Media Matters and Politifact, several leading GOP elected officials have begun citing the highly misleading figure.

Brad Johnson has an important piece at Think Progress documenting the process conservatives used to disseminate this misleading talking point:

STEP ONE: "News" generated by right-wing think tank.

STEP TWO: Right-wing print journalists write "breaking news" story.

STEP THREE: Promoted by Drudge, story repeated endlessly on right-wing blogs, Twitter, and talk radio.

STEP FOUR: Republican politicians, right-wing think tanks, and polluter front groups release statements of shock and outrage.

STEP FIVE: On Fox News, Glenn Beck calls President Obama a liar/socialist/Marxist/communist/fascist/racist.

Reading Brad's meticulous documentation of how this meme was disseminated, I realized that they are setting this up to be one of the major talking points in the fight against clean energy legislation in the months to come. From the looks of things, marching orders have already gone out. Eight Republican elected officials, several of whom are in leadership positions, have already begun parroting this talking point:

Senator Lamar Alexander issued a press release saying "American families can't afford a new $1,761 yearly energy tax."

Senator James Inhofe issued a press release claiming that "the President's own economic team said his cap-and-trade proposal would cost each family $1,761 per year."

Senator Lisa Murkowski issued a press release stating that "At the upper end of the administration's estimate, the cost per American household would be $1,761 a year, on top of what they already pay in taxes to the government."

2008 also-ran Mitt Romney told the crowd at the conservative Value Voters Summit on Saturday that the clean energy legislation "would cost the average American family $1,761 a year, the equivalent to a 15% income tax hike."

Representative Roy Blunt tweeted: "CBS reports the Obama Admin privately concluded cap & trade could cost families $1,761 a year. Same as a 15% personal income tax increase."

Representative Fred Upton fired off a letter, which cites the $1700 figure, accusing the Treasury Department of censoring information in the FOIA release.

House Minority Leader John Boehner said on PBS' NewsHour: "It's a cap-and-trade proposal that came through the House that we now find out from the Treasury Department would cost each American family over $1,700 per year."

House Republican Conference Chairman Mike Pence copied-and-pasted the wholly discredited CBS blog post where the $1,761 figure originated into an email to supporters.

These eight Republican politicians either think you are too stupid or too lazy to do even the most cursory fact-checking research on their increasingly hysterical claims. Tellingly, four of the eight -- Alexander, Inhofe, Boehner and Pence -- were also heavily involved in promoting another intentionally misinterpreted study claiming the legislation would cost each household $3,100 per year.

These staunch advocates of the status quo are grasping at increasingly ludicrous straws in their attempts to make Americans afraid of meaningful reform. When your position is based on ignoring science to prop up polluting industries, you have little choice but to cite misleading statistics to make your point. The problem for opponents of clean energy reform is that when Americans know the truth about the full range of costs and benefits associated with the legislation, they overwhelmingly approve -- even in districts that are generally considered conservative. As long as we don't let manufactured lies dominate the debate, support will remain strong and we'll pass legislation in the next few months.
Read more: Treasury Department, Waxman-Markey, Senator Murkowski, Senator Inhofe, Fred Upton, John Boehner, Politics, Roy Blunt, Media, Mitt Romney, League of Conservation Voters, Green, Mike Pence, Cbs, Global Warming, Cap and Trade, Politifact, American Clean Energy and Security Act, Climate Change, Political News, Green Living, Wonk Room, Green News, Congressional Budget Office, Politico, Washington Post, Media Criticism, Environmental Defense, Value Voters Summit, Senator Alexander, Deniers, Green News

Huckabee Beats Palin For President In 2012 Straw Poll

2009-09-19T16:35:46Z
WASHINGTON — A straw vote suggests former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee is a favorite among religious conservatives to be president in 2012.

That's according to a vote held Saturday at the annual Values Voter Summit in Washington.
Read more: Republican Primary Election, 2012 Presidential Election, Mike Huckabee, 2012 Election, Sarah Palin, Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, Huckabee Beats Palin, Voter Values Summit, Sarah Palin President, 2012, Huckabee for President, Republicans, Politics News

Bob Cesca: The Most Nightmarish Health Care Reform Bill Ever

2009-09-09T17:14:55Z
Yesterday, Senator Max Baucus (D-MT) finally released a proposal for his committee's health care reform bill -- the framework for the eventual Senate Finance Committee legislation.

Predictably, the Baucus Plan is totally nightmarish. Naked on the subway while being accosted by prostitutes that resemble Chuck Grassley nightmarish. I've been writing about the terrible possibility of such a bill for several weeks, but now it's actually beginning to take shape.

But first, because he's not the most famous or likely political villain, here's some background.

Baucus controls the Finance Committee, which has jurisdiction over any legislation that revolves around Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and health care in general. So the senator, as chairman, enjoys a remarkable degree of power considering that he only represents 960,000 people in Montana, one of the most sparsely populated states in the Union. And I'm fairly certain that if polled most Americans would say that Max Baucus is the guy who played Thurston Howell on Gilligan's Island.

While the Baucus Plan would impose the usual syllabus of regulations on the health insurance industry, it also includes an individual mandate, making it compulsory for everyone to buy a health insurance plan. I get the idea: mandates are an important step to controlling costs and achieving a universal health care, but mandates should be accompanied by a public health insurance option in order to serve as an "option of good conscience" -- an escape hatch for those of us who have moral objections to being forced under penalty of law to finance the corrupt insurance cartels.

And the Baucus Plan doesn't offer a public insurance option.

So you're basically screwed if you have moral objections to being forced by the government to hand over a chunk of your monthly income to the same corporate criminals who heretofore have engaged in practices that can accurately be defined as death panel-ish: canceling the policies as soon as you get sick, denying claims, refusing to pay for life-saving procedures, or, as we read about this week, randomly hiking the premiums for 114,000 Michigan residents by around 30 percent effective immediately. If you happen to object to financing such corporate practices (past or present), there's no public option waiting for you in the Baucus Plan.

Instead, you would have to buy a private insurance policy or be penalized by the federal government like so:

Penalties for failing to get insurance would start at $750 a year for individuals and $1,500 for families. Households making more than three times the federal poverty level -- about $66,000 for a family of four -- would face the maximum fines. For families, it would be $3,800, and for individuals, $950.

Let me repeat this another way. Max Baucus wants to force us to hand over billions of dollars in free cash to the private health insurance cartels and if we refuse, we'll be fined thousands of dollars if we object to paying these mafia-style tributes to Baucus' dons.

The public option, however, would create an escape hatch for those of us who find such a law to be unconscionable. (The public option would also significantly reduce the overall cost of health care reform and it would foster a more competitive atmosphere in which people with private insurance policies would benefit. See also my list of 10 things about the public option.)

Instead of being coerced under penalty of law to pay our monthly premiums to Aetna, CIGNA, Wellpoint or UnitedHealth, those of us without an employer-based policy could buy affordable, portable and reliable insurance offered by We The People. An inexpensive policy based on a Medicare framework that doesn't finance CEO bonuses and multi-million dollar golden parachutes. A policy whereby 96 cents of every dollar pays for actual medical care rather than junkets, lobbying and other varieties of corporate masturbation we've been unwittingly financing for too long.

You might be asking yourself, though, Why does Thurston Howell want to create such an enormous and compulsory handout to the private insurance cartels?

The short answer is that Baucus receives around $1500 a day from the health care lobby and PACs and he needs to keep his financiers wallowing in their own filth. But a more specific answer can be defined by who wrote the Baucus Plan.

Funny story. Baucus and his staff forgot to delete the name of the author of the plan from the Acrobat version of the document. Whoops!

In the Properties dialogue box of the PDF, in the "author" slot, the name Liz Fowler appears. Fowler is a Baucus staffer who was with the senator in the early part of this decade but left to take a breather in the private sector and only returned to Capitol Hill last year. During her time in the private sector, can you guess where Fowler worked?

She was the VP for Public Policy and External Affairs at WellPoint, the health insurance parent company of Blue Cross. And while Fowler was an executive at Wellpoint, there was this unfortunate but all too typical incident:

Blue Cross of California [parent company: Wellpoint] "routinely" violated state law when it canceled individual health insurance coverage after policyholders got pregnant or sick, making no attempt to determine whether they did anything to merit such "harsh" treatment, according to a state investigation of practices that appear to be industrywide. [...]

As a result of its unprecedented investigation, the Department of Managed Health Care on Thursday said that it had fined Blue Cross $1 million -- an amount immediately criticized by canceled policyholders and consumer advocates as too small to matter to an insurer whose parent company, WellPoint Inc., earned $3.1 billion in profit last year on revenue of $57 billion.

Incidentally, Wellpoint is still doing this to its customers.

And so a former executive of a company that was penalized for rescinding the policies of sick people was tasked by Max Baucus with writing potentially the most powerful health care reform proposal to be crapped out of the Senate. No wonder it contains individual mandates but no public option. It's a proposal that snares us all and makes us, in effect, government mandated prisoners of the health insurance industry.

People of all political stripes are fond of repeating lately that the public option isn't the entirety of health care reform. It might not be the only item on the list, but it's surely the most important. It's the glue that holds the entire thing together. Mandates are important in terms of covering everyone and consequently controlling health care costs, but without a public option, a bill with mandates is unacceptable to anyone with a brain and some basic morality.

There's really no way around this. But if Congress drops the mandates, then the bill would fail to effectively control costs and it certainly wouldn't achieve universal (or near-universal) coverage. As such the bill would be mostly a failure.

What's worse is that if anything similar to the Baucus Plan passes -- that is, anything with mandates but no public option -- we will have worked for months, years and decades for health care reform legislation only to achieve a bill that literally forces us to pay the enemy.

Have you thrown up into your own mouth yet?

The Baucus Plan or similar legislation runs so contrary to the core values of most of the netroots and progressive base of the Democratic Party that it would touch off an internal revolt unlike anything we've seen to date. I suspect many independents and some Republicans (the ones who aren't fixing to swipe Charlie Cheswick's cigarettes) would also have a thing or two to say about it as well. The whole thing would be a disaster of epic proportions for the White House and the Democratic Party. And then say howdy to President Mitt Romney and Vice President Liz Cheney.

And yes, it's arguably worse than passing nothing. We might still be uninsured or underinsured, but at least right now we don't have to pay the crooks who will always find cruel and unusual ways to screw us.

The Baucus Plan cannot be passed into law. But regardless of whether it has any legs, healthcare reform must include a robust public option without strings. Without it, the insurance-industrial-congressional complex only strengthens its chokehold on an already asphyxiated system, and extricating ourselves will be nearly impossible.

This is it, folks. The public option must become law.

Bob Cesca's Awesome Blog! Go!

Read more: Senate Finance Committee, Obamacare, Public Option, Liz Cheney, Mitt Romney, Health Care Reform, Max Baucus, Barack Obama Health Care, Health Insurance, Health Care, Obama Health Care, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Wellpoint, Politics News

David Sirota: Wall Street Journal : "Glenn Beck Counts For More At the Obama White House" Than the Progressive Movement

2009-09-08T10:25:04Z
Needless to say that when you wake up one morning and find yourself the subject of the lead editorial in the largest conservative publication on the planet, it is a bit jarring. However, I flag today's Wall Street Journal topline editorial today not because it is about Van Jones and me, but because it makes a genuinely important point for the progressive movement.

After citing my earlier post about how the firing of Jones "will inevitably create a chilling effect on the aspirations of other movement progressives," the Journal says this:

Mr. Sirota is speaking for many on the movement left who believe they helped to elect Mr. Obama and therefore deserve seats at the inner table of power. They are increasingly frustrated because they are discovering that Mr. Obama will happily employ "movement progressives," but only so long as their real views and motivations aren't widely known or understood. How bitter it must be to discover that the Fox News Channel's Glenn Beck, who drove the debate about Mr. Jones, counts for more at this White House than Mr. Sirota.

Bitter? Not quite. Unsurprised is a better word, really. As I had been incessantly writing before and after the presidential election (and indeed, for years before Obama ever announced as a candidate for president), Barack Obama has ties to the progressive movement, but he is an inherently cautious -- and, at times, frightened -- politician. He is first and foremost desperate to appease his opposition, even if his opposition is political terrorists who can never be appeased. And that's especially true as the progressive movement refuses to "make him do it" -- that is, refuses to put real, organized and even unfriendly pressure on him to deliver.

The Journal is absolutely, and unfortunately, correct -- right now, today's White House officials answer more to Glenn Beck, Blue Dogs and Republicans than it does to progressive members of Congress and the progressive base of the Democratic Party that got them into the White House in the first place. You can see that in the negotiations over health care and climate change. You can see that in the plans to escalate the war in Afghanistan at the urging of people like Karl Rove, and the refusal to stop Wall Street bailouts and push real Wall Street reform. You can see that even in who the president opts to give exclusive interviews to. You can, in short, see it everywhere.

Progressives don't just "believe" they deserve a seat at the table -- we actually do deserve that seat, not just because we worked to elect this president, but because our stance on major issues like the public option, climate change, Wall Street reform and the war are the majoritarian positions in America. That's not speculation -- polls show that's an empirical fact.

But we won't get that seat at the table unless we demand it. That means the Washington-based progressive groups have to stop kissing the White House's ass and selling out their grassroots membership. It means rank-and-file Obama supporters have to stop framing legitimate progressive pressure on Obama as some sort of disloyal desire to see Mitt Romney elected President in 2012.

It means, as I said in my last newspaper column, that we have to start thinking and acting like a real movement, and not just like sycophantic political partisans. If we do that, we'll get that seat at the table -- and more importantly, we'll get the legislative results Obama originally promised, but now hesitates to champion.

This is going to take real work -- and it's not going to be psychologically easy. As a personal example, my email box has been flooded with the worst kind of threatening hate mail today and over the last few days, as the conservative hate machine is keyed up by the Wall Street Journal's editorial and the CNN appearances I made this week. And I'm sure that's emblematic of the larger blowback all progressives are feeling right now as we work in communities across the country.

But that's to be expected. We are fighting for real change, and if there is one lesson from history, it is that exactly the people we are confronting today -- the right-wingers, corporatists, Establishmentarians, and status quo devotees -- will do everything they can to intimidate us. We can stand down or stand up -- and it's long past time for the latter.
Read more: Glenn Beck, Wall Street Journal, 2012 Elections, Van Jones, Afghanistan, Green Jobs, David Sirota, Blue Dog Democrats, Barack Obama, Karl Rove, Editorials, Mitt Romney, Cnn, Fox News, Fox, Health Care, Politics News

Bruce Wilson: Divorce Rate in Gay Marriage-Legal MA Drops To Pre-WWII Level

2009-09-03T13:17:19Z
James Dobson Claimed Gay Marriage Would "Destroy the Earth."

[below: A classic 2006 Daily Show episode examines claim that gay marriage has destroyed Massachsusetts.]

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In an August 20th column for the Chicago Tribune, Steve Chapman writes,

Opponents of same-sex marriage reject it on religious and moral grounds but also on practical ones. If we let homosexuals marry, they believe, a parade of horribles will follow -- the weakening of marriage as an institution, children at increased risk of broken homes, the eventual legalization of polygamy and who knows what all.

Well, guess what? We're about to find out if they're right. Unlike most public policy debates, this one is the subject of a gigantic experiment, which should definitively answer whether same-sex marriage will have a broad, destructive social impact.

Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa, Vermont, Maine and New Hampshire have all decided to let gays wed.

Actually, the "experiment" has been running in Massachusetts for fully 1/2 decade now. Over three years ago I wrote a story, "Christian Right Wrong on Gay Marriage", summing up the apparent non-impact of the then-2 year "experiment". Now, we have 4 consecutive years of data. According to the most recent data from the National Center For Vital Statistics, Massachusetts retains the national title as the lowest divorce rate state, and the MA divorce rate is about where the US divorce rate was in 1940, prior to the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor that triggered the US entrance into World War Two.

Provisional data from 2008 indicates that the Massachusetts divorce rate has dropped from 2.3 per thousand in 2007 down to about 2.0 per thousand for 2008. What does that mean ? To get a sense of perspective consider that the last time the US national divorce rate was 2.0 per thousand (people) was 1940. You read that correctly. The Massachusetts divorce rate is now at about where the US divorce rate was the year before the United States entered World War Two.

Back in summer 2006, after more than a year of poring over accumulating data I reported what was, to my mind, a foregone conclusion; after two years of legal gay marriage, the Bay State still boasted the lowest divorce rate of any state in the nation. That was notable in light of the absurdly histrionic claims made by leaders on the Christian right that legal gay marriage in Massachusetts would be an "apocalypse" that would destroy the institution of marriage and lead to the destruction of Western Civilization or even the Earth itself.

Now Steve Chapman has taken the next step. As he writes in his Chicago Tribune column,

I contacted three serious conservative thinkers who have written extensively about the dangers of allowing gay marriage and asked them to make simple, concrete predictions about measurable social indicators -- marriage rates, divorce, out-of-wedlock births, child poverty, you name it.

You would think they would react like Albert Pujols when presented with a hanging curveball. Yet none was prepared to forecast what would happen in same-sex marriage states versus other states.

One of the "conservative thinkers" who Chapman tried to solicit a prediction from, Maggie Gallagher, was active in the push to pass California's anti-gay marriage Proposition 8. Ms. Gallagher later responded, as I describe later in this story, to Mr. Chapman but she has narrowed her predictions dramatically since claiming, in 2003 it would adversely impact marriage and cause a rise in divorce rates. Gallagher new position is, in essence, that gay marriage will cause problems for gay marriage critics.

In short, it appears the word is getting out that gay marriage has little impact other then 1) allowing gay couples to marry and 2) providing marriage fees for clerics who conduct such marriage ceremonies. The real question is this -- how long will it take for the truth to diffuse, out into wider society ?

[below: predictions about gay marriage prior to its legalization in Massachusetts]

"marriage bears a real relation to the well-being, health and enduring strength of society" - Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, in a February 5, 2004 Wall Street Journal opinion article"

"This is an important victory for those of us who wanted to preserve traditional marriage and to make sure that the mistake of Massachusetts doesn't become the mistake of the entire country" - Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, commenting on a March 30, 2006 Massachusetts Supreme Court Ruling barring out of state same sex couples from marrying in Massachusetts.

"This is only the beginning, if we allow this [ same sex marriage ] to happen we will, in effect, have destabilized the basic institution of our society, which is marriage between a man and a woman" - Brian Camenker, President of the Parents' Rights Coalition, as quoted by MassNews, March 2000

"Taxpayers and businesses should not be compelled to subsidize either homosexual unions or non-marital heterosexual partnerships, both of which undermine the institutions of marriage and family." - Acting President of the Massachusetts Family Institute, Dan Englund, as quoted by MassNews, March 2000

"There is a master plan out there from those who want to destroy the institution of marriage." - Senator Wayne Allard (R-CO) during the July 2004 U.S. Senate debate on the "Federal Marriage Amendment".

"the sexual revolution led to the decoupling of marriage and procreation; same-sex "marriage" would pull them completely apart, leading to an explosive increase in family collapse...." - Charles Colson, Christianity Today, June 2004

"We must aggressively combat the homosexual effort to destroy the tradition of marriage. This nation is on the precipice of moral devastation." - Jerry Falwell, July 14, 2003

"Pro-homosexuality activists try to portray the success of their cause as inevitable. But it is not. The churches can stand against the tide of relativism and libertinism in our culture. And they can help to reverse the tide, restoring marriage to its proper place of honor" - Former President of The Institute on Religion and Democracy, Dianne Knippers, as quoted on the website of Concerned Women For America

"....a person can use his or her right to object out of conscience and refuse to comply with this crime [ gay marriage ] which represents the destruction of the world." - Cardinal Alfonso López Trujillo, in a May 3, 2005 interview with Fides new service.

"Homosexual conduct is, and has been, considered abhorrent, immoral, detestable, a crime against nature, and a violation of the laws of nature and of nature's God upon which this Nation and our laws are predicated. Such conduct violates both the criminal and civil laws of this State and is destructive to a basic building block of society -- the family." - Judge Roy Moore, Feb. 15, 2002

"Marriage is the union between a man and a woman is a truth known to each one of us already, and any attempt to allow same-sex marriages is a detriment to the family unit and hurts our state and nation." - Texas Governor Rick Perry, in an August 2005 mass email to supporters

"Homosexuals are not monogamous. They want to destroy the institution of marriage. It [ same-sex marriage ] will destroy marriage. It will destroy the Earth." - James Dobson, Focus on the Family, October 2004 speaking at a rally for OK GOP Senate candidate Tom Coburn

"It seems the more people consider the long-term impact of homosexual marriage on the family and society, the more they oppose homosexual marriage," - Dr. Ron Crews, President of The Massachusetts Family Institute, quoted in a January 7, 2004 "Coalition For Marriage" press release

"Any redefinition of marriage must be seen as an attack on the common good....I would hope that those who promote same-sex unions will not be so naive as to fail to recognize the impact that redefining marriage will have on American culture....Strengthening marriage in the face of widespread cohabitation and the galloping divorce rate needs to be the concern of every citizen. Radically redefining marriage will simply serve to intensify the assault on marriage and the American family." - Boston Cardinal Sean O'Malley, October 2, 2003

"just a fraction of a master plan to destroy everything that is good and moral here in America." - description of the gay rights movement, from an early 1980's fundraising letter sent by Robert C. Grant of the group "Christian Voice"

Those predictions above, made prior to the May 17, 2004 court decision that made gay marriage legal in Massachusetts, represent the spectrum of dire claims made about the allegedly disastrous impact gay marriage would have on the Bay State, American society, the family, Western Civilization, and the World. "Global thermonuclear war" could have been inserted in place of "gay marriage" in some of the quotes and they would have made more sense.

After the June 26, 2003 Supreme Court decision of Lawrence v. Texas, which struck down Texas' anti-sodomy law, Gallagher wrote, at the National Review Online, that "We are poised to lose the gay-marriage battle badly. It means losing the marriage debate. It means losing limited government. It means losing American civilization." Six years later, American civilization appears to be more or less intact. Gallagher also made more specific claims:

"The good news is that a marriage recovery appears to be on its way: Rates of divorce have dropped, illegitimacy is leveling off, marital fertility is on the rise, adult commitment to marital permanence is increasing, and the next generation's dislike of divorce is rising; the consensus that children do better when parents get and stay married is now broad, if shallow.

The bad news is that gay marriage will gut this marriage movement, and reverse these gains."

But legalized gay marriage in Massachusetts appears to have no effect on the Massachusetts divorce rate. That poses a big problem for highbrow critics of gay marriage such as Gallagher -- who has come up with a new list of the alleged horribles that legal gay marriage will spawn. In a Thursday, August 20th column at the National Review Online, Maggie Gallagher responded to Steve Chapman's request for predictions about the tangible effect gay marriage might have in the future but her new predictions aren't about the wider societal impact and amount to this: the success of gay legal marriage, as an institution, will cause problems for critics of gay marriage. Here are Gallagher's predictions:

1. In gay-marriage states, a large minority people committed to traditional notions of marriage will feel afraid to speak up for their views, lest they be punished in some way.

2. Public schools will teach about gay marriage.

3. Parents in public schools who object to gay marriage being taught to their children will be told with increasing public firmness that they don't belong in public schools and their views will not be accomodated [sic] in any way.

4. Religous institutions will face new legal threats (especially soft litigation threats) that will cause some to close, or modify their missions, to avoid clashing with the government's official views of marriage (which will include the view that opponents are akin to racists for failing to see same-sex couples as married).

5. Support for the idea "the ideal for a child is a married mother and father" will decline.

In a similar way, Galileo's insistence that the Earth revolved around the Sun and not vice-versa caused problems for opponents of the Heliocentric theory such as the Catholic Church. But, in time the Church learned accept the new outlook because scientific data supported it. So, perhaps there's hope that Maggie Gallagher and other critics of gay marriage may yet come to accept that after a half decade of legal gay marriage in Massachusetts, life continues as before.

Read more: Mitt Romney, James Dobson, Massachusetts, Maggie Gallagher, Gay Marriage, Politics News

Ted Johnson, Maegan Carberry, Teresa Valdez Klein: Twitter Wars 2: Return of the Progressives!

2009-09-02T16:27:34Z
In today's show, we continue on our Twitter kick. Last week, we had David All, a conservative new media strategist, on to discuss how conservatives are winning the Twitter war and why it's essential that they do. Today, we've got Jim Gilliam, co-founder of Brave New Films and Chief Technology Officer of Business.com, who recently created Tweetprogress.us, a directory of progressive tweeters and a place where people can be mentored in Twitter politics. Can progressives come back in the Twitter war? Is it important to people like Jim to push the #p2 hashtag? Is competition as much a part of the progressives on Twitter as it is for the conservatives? Jim makes some good points about the driving forces in elections; how the 2004 election was driven by blogs, how 2008 was driven by video, and how he believes 2012 will be driven by Twitter. A curious thought, sir, but can you imagine Mitt Romney twittering about his magic underpants in 2012? Hmm.

With the end of the August recess, the word is that President Obama is considering giving a major speech to Congress, outlining his healthcare demands. Oh yeah, and the public option might not be on the table. How disappointed are you if you're a progressive right now? Does it feel odd to be agreeing with Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid? I feel dirty, personally. But why is this happening? Is it Rahm Emanuel? His appointment was a big change in tone from the campaign, and putting such a hard-ball abrasive guy at the forefront of healthcare reform might have been a huge mistake.

While the administration is trying to get back to its roots, with the president holding a charming "huddle" with Organizing for America last week, Maegan believes Obama needs to get back online and start speaking to his people directly. Youtube it, baby! Also, it might help not to lump all young people together (college students and young professionals do not have the same priorities, yet they are both "young") and to ask people to do more than just provide community service. Ted believes a big problem here is that Obama underestimated the trust factor - people don't trust the government after eight years of blunders - and the voters aren't too comfy with all these giant new government programs he's pushing.

Finally, we touch on Glenn Beck, who thoughtfully decided to call Obama a racist, and how this fine, upstanding boy scout could be the future face of the Republican Party; but that's probably a bad idea. Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty, however, both seem to be poised to reposition themselves as potential leaders for 2012 over such populist politicians as Mike Huckabee. Time to start watching the Iowa papers, everyone!

Listen to the show here, subscribe to the iTunes podcast, or use the Blog Talk Radio player:

Wilshire & Washington, the weekly Blog Talk Radio program that explores the intersection of politics, entertainment, and new media, features co-hosts Ted Johnson, Managing Editor of Variety; conservative blogger Teresa Valdez Klein (www.teresacentric.com), and liberal blogger Maegan Carberry (www.maegancarberry.com). The show airs every Wednesday at 7:30am PST on BlogTalkRadio.com.
Read more: #P2, Twitter, Public Option, #Tcot, Nancy Pelosi, tweetprogress.us, President Obama, Mitt Romney, Hashtag, Jim Gilliam, Young Voters, Republican Party, Harry Reid, Mike Huckabee, Brave New Films, Rahm Emanuel, New Media, Tim Pawlenty, Glenn Beck, Healthcare Reform, David All, Politics News

Andy Ostroy: The Real Appeal of Ted Kennedy and the Camelot Clan

2009-08-27T11:32:21Z
In the wake of Sen. Ted Kennedy's death, I think the one thing that unified Americans in their appreciation and affection for the Kennedys and Teddy in particular perhaps was that, after putting aside the family's vast wealth, they lived and died just like the rest of us. And in that lesson is the painful reality that money can't buy love, health or happiness, or prevent unfathomable horror.

To be sure, the Kennedy clan is America's version of royalty, complete with the queen-like figure in the late matriarchal Rose. But just like Great Britain's royal family, this Camelot had more than its fair share of dysfunction and tragedy. The Kennedy Curse, as it's known.

The Kennedys are no stranger to alcoholism, drug addiction, DWI's, adultery, cancer, amputations (Ted Jr), stillborn and premature infant death (Arabella, Patrick), plane crashes (Joseph Jr., Kathleen, Ted, John)) accidental death (John Jr), murder (John and Bobby) and scandal (Ted's Mary Jo Kopechne Chappaquiddick drowning; William Smith's Palm Beach rape charge; Michael Skakel's murder conviction). They're a living, breathing soap opera. But America loves a good soap opera.

And all of this melodrama was part of the same initial appeal George W. Bush had with voters. The "he's just like us" factor. It's why people like John McCain, John Kerry and Mitt Romney fail to catch on nationally with voters in the same way. Looking past their vast wealth, there is nothing seemingly humble about their beginnings or the lives that followed. They are largely viewed as privileged, lacking that same connection that the Kennedys made with the common man. Will we ever forget the heartbreaking images of Americans of all ages, religions and races sobbing in grief at the tragic losses of John, Bobby and John Jr. as if these iconic figures were part of their own families?

As the proverb goes, some people are born on 3rd base and think they've hit a triple. The Kennedys always knew they were born there, but never forgot that most everyone else hadn't been. They dedicated their lives to public service, trying to help the little guy reach 3rd even knowing that, no matter how fast he ran, he'd still never hit that triple.

Ted Kennedy's contribution to American culture and society can be seen in virtually every historic issue fought in modern American politics, including health care, social security and medicare, minimum wages, education, immigration, aid for senior citizens, civil rights, voter's rights, women's rights, gay rights and human rights. And he accomplished all this as a gentleman and a respected bi-partisan leader, with civility, grace and humor. A larger-than-life Washington character. Sadly, there's no one to step in and fill his shoes....on either side of the aisle.

Ted Kennedy's legacy, and that of his family, is abundantly clear. But more importantly, so are the many reasons he was loved and cherished by so many as a true national treasure.

RIP, Liberal Lion.
Read more: Joh F. Kennedy, Michael Skakel, John McCain, Mary Jo Kopechne, Bobby Kennedy, John Kerry, George W. Bush, Chappaquiddick, John F. Kennedy Jr. Rose Kennedy, Mitt Romney, Liberal Lion, The Kennedy Curse, Ted Kennedy, Kathleen Kennedy, William Kennedy Smith, Politics News

Bill Maher: New Rule : No Shame in Being the Sorry Party

2009-08-21T10:42:43Z
New Rule: If Mitt Romney, Karl Rove and Sarah Palin all think America has never done anything wrong, we must be doing something wrong. Look at them: an empty suit, an empty heart and an empty head. It looks like the news team on Good Morning Hell. And what they've been competing about lately is who would not apologize the most. America is infallible, and apologies are horrible things that must never, ever be given. Except by me when I make a joke about the Pope. "We're perfect -- deal with it," is their new handshake. But I say, what's wrong with America occasionally saying, "I'm sorry"? Because these are the three sorriest white people I've ever seen.

If in your eyes America can do no wrong, you should really look into Lasik surgery. There's the rational, mature assessment of our country: that it's a great nation -- especially if you like fried foods -- but it also has its faults. And then there's the Republican view: that it's perfect and pure in every way and it's always right all the time, just like Leviticus and Ronald Reagan.

If the founders were alive today, Republicans would be giving them shit because the Preamble to the Constitution says, "In order to form a more perfect union? Hello, it's already perfect! Why are you suggesting American apologetics, Ben Franklin?"

One of the things that makes Republicans furious about our current president is their idea that Obama is always apologizing for America's biggest mistakes. Unlike President Bush. Who was one of America's biggest mistakes.

In his first week as president, Obama did an interview with Arab TV in which he said, "We sometimes make mistakes. We have not been perfect." Thought crime! And then he went to Cairo and violated one of those absolute eternal rules the Right Wing is always making up out of thin air: "The president must never apologize on foreign soil. Lest our allies begin to doubt that we're assholes. "

But what did Obama actually say to make Karl Rove's head explode and the popcorn fly out? Cover your children's ears: When he was asked if he believed in American exceptionalism, he said he did, the same way "the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks in Greek exceptionalism." Yes, our so-called president actually said people in other countries might like their countries better. I was so shocked I nearly dropped the Bible I was using to help me masturbate into my gun.

In her farewell speech -- if only -- Sarah Palin kept telling us "how she's wired." Now I'm not a doctor, or an electrician -- but this is faulty wiring, this worldview that, in her words, "we should never apologize for our country." Really? Never? Not for slavery? Or Japanese internment camps, or if we tortured the wrong guy at Guantanamo? The Indians? Nothing, Sarah? "The Real Housewives of Atlanta"? Shouldn't John McCain apologize for... you?

When did intractability become a virtue? Mitt Romney's new book is called No Apology: The Case For American Greatness. You can find it at Borders, in the "Suck-Up" section. It's such a perfect title, combining paranoia with arrogance: "No one has yet asked me to apologize but, if someone ever does, fuck them."

Conservatives think apologizing is a sign of weakness. It's what liberal pussies do, when they're not busy driving electric cars and feeling empathy. When in fact it's the weak and the scared who are too insecure to apologize. Apologies are actually a sign of strength. That's why six-year-olds hate them.

In Rwanda, after a genocide that killed a million people, they set up special courts where people stood up and said, "Hey, sorry I macheted your entire family. My bad." And believe it or not, in most cases, that was enough. That's the power of an apology. A recent study reveals that doctors who are willing to apologize to patients for their mistakes are sued for malpractice about half as much as doctors who aren't willing to apologize.

Apologies can do great things, and they can enable great things. And if you still don't believe me, I have three words for you: make-up sex.

Bill Maher is the host of HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher, Fridays at 10:00 p.m. Eastern Time on HBO. Guests on this week's program include Jay Leno, Chuck Todd, Rep. Jan Schakowsky, Sam Harris and Jeremy Scahill.

Read more: Barack Obama, Karl Rove, No Apology: The Case for American Greatness, Barak Obama Apology, Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin, Bill Maher, Comedy News