Democrats with Balls

Thank God for Molly Ivins. One of the few remaining Democrats with balls. The agenda for progressives everywhere must be to unmask the radical religious right Orwellian attack on the language that allows them to con the very people they are screwing over into saying "Once more please."

By the way, I'm glad to see that it is not only us Louisiana populists who know what Lagniappe is.

While the Republicans terrorize Americans with yellow and orange and red alerts and Nazi like language about how the ACLU is going to force to attend every gay marriage on our weekends, and about abortion as slaughter (but not about the abortion of the slaughter Bush has unleashed in Iraq), they do nothing to solve the real problems of real Americans. The reason is simple. They want to be in power to transfer wealth from the have nots to the haves because they mistakenly believe that wealth creates jobs and economic growth. ( Wealth doesn't create anything; labor does.) The only way they can stay in power is by keeping the gullible in fear.

Dumb Dems Let GOP Run Wild

By Molly Ivins, AlterNet. Posted April 28, 2005.

Being of the populist persuasion, I am a terminal fan of Thomas Frank, who has gone from "What's the Matter With Kansas?" to "What's the Matter With Liberals?" in the current issue of the New York Review of Books, which is a good spot for it.

Those of us in the beer-drinking, pick-up-truck-driving, country-music-listening school of liberals in the hinterlands particularly appreciate his keen dissection of how the Republicans use class resentment against "elitist liberals," while waging class warfare on people who work for a living.

The unholy combination of theocracy and plutocracy that now rules this country is, in fact, enabled by dumb liberals. Many a weary liberal on the Internet and elsewhere has been involved in the tedious study of the entrails from the last election, trying to figure out where Democrats went wrong. I don't have a dog in that fight, but I can guarantee you where they're going wrong for the next election: 73 Democratic House members and 18 Democratic senators voted for that hideous bankruptcy "reform" bill that absolutely screws regular people.

And it's not just consumers who were screwed by the lobbyist-written bill. The Wall Street Journal shows small businesses are also getting the shaft, as the finance industry charges them higher and higher transaction fees. If Democrats aren't going to stand up for regular people, to hell with them.

Now here's some populist lagniappe (that's a word us populists often use) for you to chew on.

The Economic Policy Institute reports the economic well-being of middle-class families has declined between 2000 and 2003 for three reasons: the generally lousy economy, the Bush tax policies and the cost of health care.

Pre-tax incomes for middle-class families of every type (children, young singles, seniors, single mothers) are down, leaving the typical household with $1,535 less income in 2003 than in 2000, a drop of 3.4 percent.

After taking into account changes in both pre-tax incomes and taxes, the finding remains that most middle-class families lost ground between 2000 and 2003. This is true for married couples with children, elderly couples and young singles, although single mothers did gain 1.9 percent because of the greater refundability of child tax credits.

Family spending on higher insurance co-pays, deductibles and premiums escalated, rising three times faster than income for those married with children, absorbing half the growth of their income.

The Tax Justice Network recently reported the world's richest individuals have placed $11.5 trillion in assets in offshore tax havens to avoid paying taxes, a sum 10 times the GDP of Great Britain. The most authoritative study yet done shows that rich people clip $860 billion in coupons a year off this money.

"Governments appear unable, or unwilling, to prevent the rich employing aggressive strategies to minimize their tax liabilities," said the Observer of Britain. We can emphasize the "unwilling" with this administration.

The ratio of CEO pay to average worker pay reached 301-to-one in 2003. The average worker takes home $517 a week, while the average CEO earns $155,796, according to BusinessWeek. In 1982, the ratio was 42-to-one.

Dialogue between President Bush and a citizen during a February meeting in Nebraska, where Bush was trying to sell his scheme to privatize Social Security:

Woman: "That's good, because I work three jobs and I feel like I contribute."

Bush: "You work three jobs?"

Woman: "Three jobs, yes."

Bush: "Uniquely American, isn't it? I mean, that is fantastic that you're doing that. (Applause.) Get any sleep? (Laughter.)"

One out of every two jobs created in the United States over the past 12 months was taken by a worker over 55. Economist Dean Baker says the flood of older workers is caused by the falling value of retirees' 401(k)s and the cost of health care.

The number of long-term unemployed who are college graduates has nearly tripled since 2000. Nearly one in five of the long-term jobless are college graduates, according to the Los Angeles Times.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has a brand-new study out showing the uneven division of the fruits of the supposed economic recovery:

"The data show that the share of real income growth that has gone to wages and salaries has been smaller than during any other comparable post-World War II recovery period, while the share of real income growth that has gone to corporate profits has been larger than during all other comparable post-World War II recoveries."

In previous recoveries, workers got an average of 49 percent of the national income gains, while corporate profits got 18 percent. This time, the workers are getting 23 percent and the corporations are getting 44 percent -- about one half as much as the share that has gone to corporate profits.

None of that apply to you? Good. Go listen to Tom DeLay give another lecture on moral values.

Molly Ivins is a best-selling author and columnist who writes about politics, Texas and other bizarre happenings.

Mainstream Media: Dupes or Whores

From Media Matters: a great archeology of the term "nuclear option." Trent Lott is the daddy. We know it didn't come from Dubya, 'cuz then it would the the "nookular option." But the MSM just can't seem to get it right. CNN's Schneider is simply clueless; look for his picture in the dictionary under "doofus."

Media adopts false claim that "nuclear option" is a Democratic term

Major media outlets have recently miscast the term "nuclear option" as a creation of Senate Democrats. These include even National Public Radio (NPR), the Los Angeles Times, and the New York Times, all of which had previously reported accurately that it was Senate Republicans who originated the term.

As several weblogs have noted, the term "nuclear option" -- referring to the Republican-proposed Senate rule change that would prohibit filibusters of judicial nominations -- was coined by one of its leading advocates, Sen. Trent Lott (R-MS). But since Republican strategists judged the term "nuclear option" to be a liability, they have urged Senate Republicans to adopt the term "constitutional option." Many in the media have complied with the Senate Republicans' shift in terminology and repeated their attribution of the term "nuclear option" to the Democrats.

Lott himself provided an example of the Republicans' deliberate rhetorical shift on the April 17 edition of ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos, which featured Lott and Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) discussing the proposed rule change:

SCHUMER: It goes against the checks and balances.

LOTT: That's why I call it the constitutional option. I went back this very morning and re-read the constitution.

SCHUMER: You once called it the nuclear option.

LOTT: Well, I am given credit for that.

SCHUMER: You are.

LOTT: I'm not sure I want it. I prefer to call it the constitutional option.

Some in the media have noted Lott's creation of the term. NPR legal correspondent Nina Totenberg reported on April 21: "The judicial filibusters have infuriated the White House, leading to the birth of an idea dubbed the nuclear option by former Senate GOP leader Trent Lott, nuclear because it would blow up the Senate." An article in the March 7 New Yorker reported: "It was understood at once that such a change would be explosive; Senator Trent Lott, the former Majority Leader, came up with 'nuclear option,' and the term stuck." The Hill quoted Lott using the term in a May 21, 2003, article: "'I'm for the nuclear option,' said Lott. 'The filibuster of federal judges cannot stand.'" And a June 25, 2003, Roll Call article quoted Lott saying of the nuclear option: "I am an advocate of that ... The Democrats are going to stop this or we are going to have to go nuclear."

CNN host and nationally syndicated columnist Robert D. Novak acknowledged in his April 21 column that the proposed rule change was "unfortunately first self-described by Republicans as the 'nuclear option.'" Some conservatives have in the past readily acknowledged the term's Republican pedigree.

On the December 29, 2004, edition of MSNBC's Scarborough Country, host Joe Scarborough said: "With us now to talk about the president's brinkmanship strategy on judges and whether it's going to lead to what the Republicans are calling the nuclear option are Democratic congressman Anthony Weiner, who serves on the Judiciary Committee and House -- and Republican strategist Jack Burkman." Fox News host Chris Wallace, speaking to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) on the November 14, 2004, edition of Fox News Sunday, said: "Well, let me ask you about one of them [options available to Republicans concerning judicial filibusters], because some Republicans are talking about what they call the nuclear option, and that would be a ruling that the filibuster of executive nominees is unconstitutional, which would require not 60 or 67 votes but only a simple majority of 51." Norman J. Ornstein, resident scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, wrote in a November 28, 2004, Washington Post op-ed: "Senate Republicans have one weapon -- what Majority Leader Bill Frist and his colleagues have called the 'nuclear option,' because it would blow up the current rules requiring a 60-vote 'supermajority' to end a filibuster."

Until recently, news outlets reporting on the judicial filibuster controversy would correctly note that "nuclear option" was a Republican term:

• To break the Democrats' filibustering maneuver, Republicans have been threatening what they've called the ''nuclear option'' -- invoking a rare parliamentary maneuver that would declare filibustering judicial nominations to be unconstitutional. [San Jose Mercury News, 2/15/05]
• Some Republicans have been reluctant to try that maneuver. They call it the nuclear option, because it could come back to haunt them if they are in the minority. [The New York Times, 11/12/04]
• Now, about that filibuster rule; Republicans are calling it the nuclear option. [Host Jennifer Ludden, NPR's All Things Considered, 11/11/04]
• If Frist's plan fails, Republicans have been discussing what they have referred to as the "nuclear option." [Los Angeles Times, 5/10/03]
• The tactic would be so drastic in the usually congenial Senate that Republicans refer to it as their "nuclear option." [The Washington Times, 5/7/03]

In spite of these facts, however, various media outlets have recently miscast "nuclear option" as solely a Democratic term, including some cited above who originally attributed it correctly:

• DAVID WELNA (NPR congressional correspondent): Democrats call a simple majority rules change banning judicial filibuster the "nuclear option," due to the toxic effect they say it would have on Senate relations. [NPR's Morning Edition, 4/25/05]
• But Frist made clear that he is still considering an effort to ban filibusters on judicial nominees and smooth the way for a Senate vote on Bush's controversial appointments. Democrats say such an action would be a "nuclear option" that would force them to bring the Senate to a virtual standstill, except for action on national security legislation. [Chicago Tribune, 4/25/05]
• Now Republicans are considering what Democrats call "the nuclear option" -- a parliamentary move that would end the filibusters and force a vote on the Senate floor. In return, Democrats have vowed to grind Senate business to a halt. [Newsweek, 4/25/05]
• Democratic groups are asking supporters to counsel their senators against what they call the "nuclear option." It has become their latest cause for fundraising. [St. Petersburg Times, 4/25/05]
• In order to get more of President Bush's judicial appointments approved by the Senate, Republicans are threatening what Democrats call "the nuclear option" -- a procedural vote that would deny minority Democrats the right to filibuster. [Charlotte Observer, 4/24/05 (registration required)]
• Democrats have called this threatened GOP maneuver the "nuclear option" because they say it would destroy a Senate tradition of filibusters. [Chicago Tribune, 4/23/05]
• ANDREA KOPPEL (CNN State Department correspondent): Now, a potentially historic fight may be on the horizon. Republican leaders are threatening to exercise what Democrats call the nuclear option -- changing the rules so Democrats can't use filibusters to block the nominations. [CNN's Saturday Morning News, 4/23/05]
• Republicans, who have a 55-member majority, are threatening to lower the threshold for closing debate on all nominations to a simple majority. They say they need only 50 votes plus Vice President Cheney to make the change. Democrats call this the nuclear option, and say they will use other parliamentary rules to bring the Senate to a virtual standstill if Republicans use it. [The New York Times, 4/23/05]
• Frist is expected to try as early as next week to push the Senate to ban filibusters on judicial nominations -- a move so explosive that Democrats are calling it the "nuclear option." [Los Angeles Times, 4/22/05]
• BILL SCHNEIDER (CNN senior political analyst): The Republicans are saying that they want to end the right to filibuster. That is, allow unlimited debate on judicial nominations, which would be a real change in Senate procedure. Democrats are outraged. They call that the nuclear option. And on their part, they're saying, if the Republicans pass that change, which should only take a simple majority vote -- and the Republicans do have a 55 [vote] majority in the Senate -- if the Republicans do that, the Democrats are threatening to shut down the Senate and allow no further business, because they regard it as such a break with the tradition and also a violation of their rights as a minority. [CNN's Live Today, 4/21/05]
• DAVID WELNA: That's because Democrats intend to filibuster both nominees, a move Republicans warn could prompt them to rule out all judicial filibusters by a simple majority vote. Democrats call that the nuclear option because of the enormous damage they say it would do to relations between the two parties in the Senate. [NPR's All Things Considered, 4/21/05]
• At a press conference with Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., [Sen. Ken] Salazar [D-CO] said it was wrong for Republicans to end rules that have worked in the U.S. Senate for two centuries. Democrats called that the "nuclear option" because they consider it so drastic. [Scripps Howard News Service, 4/20/05]
• Amending Rule XXII would effectively abolish the filibuster for judicial nominations. ... Democrats refer to it as the nuclear option because, they argue, it would utterly devastate the Senate. Republicans refer to it by the equally loaded phrase the constitutional option, noting that the Constitution allows the Senate to make its own rules. [Slate.com, 4/20/05]

As journalist Joshua Micah Marshall noted on his Talking Points Memo weblog, NBC News correspondent Chip Reid went a step further on an April 25 appearance on MSNBC's Imus in the Morning, both misattributing the term "nuclear option" to the Democrats, and then redefining it to mean the Democrats' response to the Republicans' threatened abolishment of the rule change, rather than the rule change itself:

REID: Democrats are saying, "If you're going to do that, then we're going to pull the trigger on what we call the 'nuclear option,' meaning we're going to shut this place [the Senate] down."

Frist and Republicans Lie about the Nuclear Option Too

Maybe because their fearless leader can't say it, now the Republicans are claiming the term "nuclear option" is a Democratic one. What BS. Check out DailyKos and Armando for the truth on this issue. Of course, maybe they're right: they invented the nookular option.

Senate Leader a Liar

Besides being a member of the American Taliban, the lunatic religious right, our Senate Majority Leader is also a pillar of lying hypocrisy. In remarks for "Justice Sunday" Frist regurgitated the Republican mantra about judicial nominees, in particular P. Owens: "even though,'" he said, " a majority of Senators support her, she has been denied an up or down vote on the floor of the Senate."

Then Frist tells a Goebbels-sized lie: that the filibuster against Bush's nominees was the first time ever that "a judicial nominee with majority support has been denied an up or down vote."

Of course this is complete hogwash and Frist knows it. If he doesn't, he may not be a liar, but then he's a fucking idiot.

At least the AP, but most likely not CNN and certainly not Fox News, pointed out that the Republicans frequently prevented votes on Clinton's court appointments through various methods, including the filibuster, and then when in the majority bottling nominations up in committee knowing the nominee would be confirmed if allowed to go to a floor vote in the Senate.

Richard Paez, a district court judge when he was nominated, waited more than four years before being confirmed to the appeals court. But of course the Republicans are honorable men defending a principle. Just like they defended the principle of solving the problems of Social Security by squanering the Clinton surplus (which if applied to the Social Security Trust Fund, would have solved all solvency problems for as long as accountants would care to calculate) b;y profligately wasting the suplus in the most gigantic transfer of money from people who need it to people who don't in the country's history. Yeah, trust these guys.

AP failed to mention that Frist voted in favor of filibustering Judge Paez. AP failed in that, but it is still crystal clear that the Majority Leader is the most obnoxious hypocrite.

The Best Analysis for Democratic Party Action Yet

From Hunter on DailyKos:
A minor point for discussion: I've been hearing talk in a number of places opining that the Democrats are "too reactive". That is, that instead of announcing policy proposals of our own, taking the initiative on issues, we are merely reacting to whatever gets tossed our way from the other side. Shouldn't we be ignoring sideshows like Justice Sunday and Ann Coulter, not letting ourselves get distracted by going 24/7 on parlor games involving Bolton, DeLay, etc? Shouldn't we use the extra time to promote our own agenda?

Hell, no.

Let's be blunt, here. The Democrats are coming off a ten-year period of being spectacularlyreact to thrown attacks. It's not that Gore lost, or Kerry lost, or the House and Senate have Republican leads -- all of those things happened by hair's-breadth margins, and in and of themselves are not very indicative of anything resembling a long-term catastrophe. What is of more import is the way those elections or particular legislative agendas have been lost, often times in circumstances where public opinion was clearly -- unambiguously -- on the Democrats' side. The problem is -- and this is important -- current national politics has almost nothing to do with policy. inept in national politics, and I would chalk a fair amount of that up to being categorically unable or unwilling to

We're all clear on that, right?

It's not about the facts of the argument, when there is no place where the facts can be debated. It's not about reasoned discourse -- there aren't any channels interested in showing that right now. It's not about deciding who has the better proposals, on a given issue: there's simply no forum to present them to. Every time I hear a liberal talking about how we need to be more "policy driven", therefore, I get a bit confused. Isn't that missing every lesson of contemporary politics? I'd love for our national discourse to be policy driven. But that hasn't happened, and the Republicans have made it a major strategy to make sure it doesn't happen anytime soon.


Democrats :: :: Trackback ::

That's where the archetype of Tom Tomorrow's bearded and sweatered liberal comes from, in fact -- this notion of the liberal intellectual who is well prepared for debate on any topic you can throw at him armed with facts, logic, statistics -- but is instead is reduced to comical ineffectiveness because that's not how the game is currently played.

The way the game is currently played is that you, the Democrat, suggest some new policy; I, the Republican, then hit you with a cinder block, take your wallet, and declare victory. See in the absurd pronouncements of lobbyist-funded "think tanks", or watch it live and up-close on Hannity & Colmes, or explore it at length in the new Calvinballesque rules of Congress -- it's all the same strategy, if "strategy" can really be applied to such a thing.

So, fine. As a point of carefully considered Democratic strategy, I say it's time to stock up on cinder blocks.

That means, for example, making the exposure of the multi-headed DeLay chain of corruption a primary goal of Democratic strategists -- and more importantly, it means following the money trail back to every single one of the House members that have been sucking at that trough. It means embracing the politics of personal destruction, until such point as it loses its Rovian charms for the other side. It means following the continuing fiasco of far-right religious conservatives demonizing everyone around them in a Taliban-like insistence that the religions you, and I, and most of America share are Wrong, and theirs -- only theirs -- is Right. And yes, it means filibustering, or preparing the bunkers for the Republicans to invoke the "nuclear option". Stopping the Senate, and stopping it cold until Republicans agree that maybe the rules that apply to us should apply to them as well, and wouldn't it maybe be better to send the longtime political adults back in and start thinking about a truce?

None of this is to say that there isn't a place for actual policy-crafting. The various crises of the world -- ballooning deficits, a health care system being held together with paperclips, a looming oil crunch -- aren't going to wait. But right now -- this moment -- the stage needs to be set for those discussions to even take place. And setting that stage means tearing down the false constructs that the Republicans have piled on top of it, and preparing to start over. George W. Bush isn't an English king, and shouldn't be treated as such. Tom DeLay's personal fiefdoms are not more important than the enshrined laws and ethical standards of the nation. The judicial system that has evolved over the last two centuries of American history isn't to be flushed down the toilet because some fringe political or religious Ozymandias demands unending reign.

So be reactive, and be personal, and be tuned to respond to each outrage en masse. Maybe, after a year or two or three in which the Democrats prove themselves to be capable of the same kinds of warfare as the Republicans, the moderates in this world can spank the children, send them home, and start governing like adults again.

Thoughts?

Here are my thoughts:
Hunter is spot on relative to the issue of the irrelevance of policy pronouncements. When the lunatic radical religious right has highjacked the language of politics, to make proposals a la John Kerry about every specific issue that may or may not confront the nation is meaningless. Because the Republicans are ruling from a point of view of defining the Other, not defining any solutions, to talk about solutions is peripheral and counter productive. We on the left have to show that the people running our country are the wrong people because of what they think and what they do and the consequences of that for the rest of us. Right on Hunter.

Time Magazine has got to be kidding

Talk about an unexamined life. What Cloud did in his fluff piece on Ann Coulter is a black mark on Time and journalism. What happened to objectivity, to research, to telling the truth. Of course, it would have been the pinnacle of irony to actually tell the truth in an article about Coulter who has actually never even brushed up against the truth.

That Cloud would not address the issue of the hatred that spews out of this chick is an incredible lack of curiosity even if he is not interested journalistically.

Another nail in the coffin of objective journalism. We will soon mirror Europe of the 1920's and 30's when political parties had newspapers and individuals who sought the truth were considered irrelevant. Where is our century's Albert Camus? or Orwell? or Socrates?

Maybe we'll find that person here, in the comments.

Progressive Praxis

This blog represents a progressive viewpoint on current affairs embedded within a Socratic philosophy.

In English, this means two things: 1) as Plato has Socrates state, "An unexamined life is not worth living," and 2) basically all human beings suffer from an existential ignorance about the meaning and purpose of life, what a philospher named Voegelin called the Beginning and Beyond.

We live in a time of unbelievable upheaval. The twentieth century was one of the bloodiest in human history, and the twenty first is starting out as one of continuing backlash by fundamentalists of all religions against what they perceive as the modern world. Out of these times and individuals reflecting on them arise upwellings of the spirit to point out the falsity of the "old" symbols we use to make sense of life and in rare cases lead to a "discovery" of new symbols to define and make sense of and give purpose to our shared existence on this planet. If we are to make it out of the first decade of the twenty first century, human beings have to go beyond the crusty, reified meaningless fundamentalisms of the past that angry people of many faiths are hanging on to. Sometimes that may mean rediscovering the orginal intents of, for example, the founders of Christianity, and comparing it to the distortions of the present. Other times it may mean throwing out everything.

This will be a place to examine lives and seek answers that speak to our most common humanity.