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Taylor Marsh has been writing on line since 1996, with the archives provided here a representation of that work.

Tag Archives | Bill Clinton

9/11 Commemoration: Three Presidents, Different Perspectives

By on 10 September 2011

“There has always been a special place in the common memory for people who deliberately, knowingly, certainly lay down their lives for other people to live. …” – Pres. Bill Clinton

Every time I hear the word “anniversary” invoked for 9/11 I cringe. There is nothing celebratory about the date, with it a commemoration of a horrific tragedy that now with the 9/11 memorials in place should take a new spot in our national dialogue. Revisiting the history of it that has an end, which came with Pres. Obama’s call to send Seal Team Six into Pakistan to risk it all to kill Osama bin Laden.

The politics of 9/11, however, will go on, as we saw last Sunday on Fox News with Chris Wallace, when the anchor decided not ask former V.P. Dick Cheney about the killing of Osama bin Laden, because the thought of crediting Pres. Obama with an extraordinary point of leadership, which didn’t require torturing anyone, would be just too much for FNC viewers to take.

From Politico, the politics of 9/11.

A decade later, 9/11 has finally brought the political parties together in this respect: They’ve both mastered the art of politicizing the terrorist attacks.

[...] But the presence of 9/11 in politics is as profuse as ever. Most recently – days ahead of the tenth anniversary of the attacks – candidates in a New York congressional election have traded sharp accusations over who’s more committed to protecting the country from terrorism and supporting first responders.

Continue Reading →

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Chris Wallace Proves (again) Why He’s the Worst Anchor on TV

By on 04 September 2011

… But both parties are not rotten in quite the same way. The Democrats have their share of machine politicians, careerists, corporate bagmen, egomaniacs and kooks. Nothing, however, quite matches the modern GOP. [...] – Goodbye to All That: Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult

Fox News Channel and Chris Wallace won’t be leaving the “cult” anytime soon. In fact, today is representative of how they keep the cult alive, along with the mythology that helps promote, but also hide, the rancid reality of Republicanism today, not only where the economy is concerned, but also on matters of national security.

If you want to get an idea of how awful Chris Wallace is as a news man, today was another example. While discussing Cheney’s book, Mr. Wallace danced around 9/11 without ever once mentioning the killing of Osama bin Laden and the mission Pres. Obama approved to get that job done. It’s the exact opposite approach he took with former Pres. Clinton one day in 2006, with the entire spectacle today on Fox representative of the worst of today’s national security media mendacity.

What’s even worse is that Chris Wallace allowed former V.P. Dick Cheney to once again embellish, some would say continue to perpetuate a historical lie when compared to the facts, his role on 9/11. I’ve written about it before, in 2007 and in 2006, with the second link to 2006 giving you an example of the types of questions Wallace asked former Pres. Bill Clinton compared to how Wallace tip toes around Dick Cheney.

So, take yourself back…

It’s 9/11.

All hell has broken loose, with hijacked planes bearing down on the nation’s capitol, Washington, D.C. and outlying areas and and the financial center of the United States, New York City.

V.P. Dick Cheney has been whisked to the bunker for safety, but according to Mr. Cheney, he’s also in charge of events.

What kind of man lies about his role on 9/11?

Unfortunately, it’s now becoming legend, as Mr. Cheney once again regurgitated his story to Chris Wallace, who did nothing to challenge his version of events.

From a very important Vanity Fair article back in 2006, “9/11 Live: The NORAD Tapes” (the salient section about Cheney being proved a liar on page 18).

Nasypany starts walking up and down the floor, asking all his section heads and weapons techs if they are prepared to shoot down a civilian airliner if need be, but he’s jumping the gun: he doesn’t have the authority to order a shootdown, nor does Marr or Arnold, or Vice President Cheney, for that matter. The order will need to come from President Bush, who has only just learned of the attack at a photo op in Florida.

[...] A former senior executive at the F.A.A., speaking to me on the condition that I not identify him by name, tried to explain. “Our whole procedures prior to 9/11 were that you turned everything [regarding a hijacking] over to the F.B.I.,” he said, reiterating that hijackers had never actually flown airplanes; it was expected that they’d land and make demands. “There were absolutely no shootdown protocols at all. The F.A.A. had nothing to do with whether they were going to shoot anybody down. We had no protocols or rules of engagement.”

In his bunker under the White House, Vice President Cheney was not notified about United 93 until 10:02—only one minute before the airliner impacted the ground. Yet it was with dark bravado that the vice president and others in the Bush administration would later recount sober deliberations about the prospect of shooting down United 93. “Very, very tough decision, and the president understood the magnitude of that decision,” Bush’s then chief of staff, Andrew Card, told ABC News.

Cheney echoed, “The significance of saying to a pilot that you are authorized to shoot down a plane full of Americans is, a, you know, it’s an order that had never been given before.” And it wasn’t on 9/11, either.

President Bush would finally grant commanders the authority to give that order at 10:18, which—though no one knew it at the time—was 15 minutes after the attack was over.

Rewriting Bush-Cheney history has been happening a lot in the Obama era.

Now segue to Wallace interviewing former Pres. Bill Clinton in 2006. While Wallace today didn’t bother to ask Cheney why former Pres. George W. Bush said he was “truly not that concerned” about bin Laden. As you can witness by former Pres. Bill Clinton’s response to Wallace’s blatant bias, love him or hate him, the Big Dawg didn’t take Chris’ crap when Wallace tried to sandbag him on 9/11. Here’s the excerpt, since minds have gone soft as we approach the commemoration of the horrific tragedy next week.

WALLACE: When we announced that you were going to be on Fox News Sunday, I got a lot of email from viewers, and I got to say I was surprised most of them wanted me to ask you this question. Why didn’t you do more to put Bin Laden and al Qaeda out of business when you were President? There’s a new book out which I suspect you’ve read called the Looming Tower. And it talks about how the fact that when you pulled troops out of Somalia in 1993, Bin Laden said “I have seen the frailty and the weakness and the cowardice of US troops.” Then there was the bombing of the embassies in Africa and the attack on the USS Cole.

CLINTON: OK..

WALLACE: Let me — let me — may I just finish the question, sir?

And after the attack, the book says that bin Laden separated his leaders, spread them around, because he expected an attack, and there was no response.

I understand that hindsight is always 20/20…

CLINTON: No let’s talk about–

WALLACE: …but the question is why didn’t you do more, connect the dots and put them out of business?

CLINTON: OK, let’s talk about it. I will answer all of those things on the merits but I want to talk about the context of which this arises. I’m being asked this on the FOX network. ABC just had a right wing conservative on the Path to 9/11 falsely claim that it was based on the 9/11 Commission report with three things asserted against me that are directly contradicted by the 9/11 Commission report. I think it’s very interesting that all the conservative Republicans who now say that I didn’t do enough, claimed that I was obsessed with Bin Laden. All of President Bush’s neocons claimed that I was too obsessed with finding Bin Laden when they didn’t have a single meeting about Bin Laden for the nine months after I left office. All the right wingers who now say that I didn’t do enough said that I did too much. Same people.

Clinton takes on Fox News bias:

WALLACE: Do you think you did enough sir?

CLINTON: No, because I didn’t get him.

WALLACE: Right

CLINTON: But at least I tried. That’s the difference in me and some, including all the right wingers who are attacking me now. They ridiculed me for trying. They had eight months to try and they didn’t. I tried. So I tried and failed. When I failed I left a comprehensive anti-terror strategy and the best guy in the country, Dick Clarke. So you did FOX’s bidding on this show. You did you nice little conservative hit job on me. But what I want to know..

WALLACE: Well, wait a minute, sir.

CLINTON: No, wait. No, no…

WALLACE: I want to ask a question. You don’t think that’s a legitimate question?

CLINTON: It was a perfectly legitimate question, but I want to know how many people in the Bush administration you asked this question of.

I want to know how many people in the Bush administration you asked, Why didn’t you do anything about the Cole?

I want to know how many you asked, Why did you fire Dick Clarke?

I want to know how many people you asked…

WALLACE: We asked — we asked…

CLINTON: I don’t…

WALLACE: Do you ever watch Fox News Sunday, sir?

CLINTON: I don’t believe you asked them that.

WALLACE: We ask plenty of questions of…

CLINTON: You didn’t ask that, did you? Tell the truth, Chris.

WALLACE: About the USS Cole?

CLINTON: Tell the truth, Chris.

WALLACE: With Iraq and Afghanistan, there’s plenty of stuff to ask.

CLINTON: Did you ever ask that?

You set this meeting up because you were going to get a lot of criticism from your viewers because Rupert Murdoch’s supporting my work on climate change.

And you came here under false pretenses and said that you’d spend half the time talking about — you said you’d spend half the time talking about what we did out there to raise $7-billion-plus in three days from 215 different commitments. And you don’t care.

WALLACE: But, President Clinton, if you look at the questions here, you’ll see half the questions are about that. I didn’t think this was going to set you off on such a tear.

CLINTON: You launched it — it set me off on a tear because you didn’t formulate it in an honest way and because you people ask me questions you don’t ask the other side.

WALLACE: That’s not true. Sir, that is not true.

CLINTON: And Richard Clarke made it clear in his testimony…

WALLACE: Would you like to talk about the Clinton Global Initiative?

CLINTON: No, I want to finish this now.

WALLACE: All right. Well, after you.

CLINTON: All I’m saying is, you falsely accused me of giving aid and comfort to bin Laden because of what happened in Somalia. No one knew Al Qaida existed then. And…

WALLACE: But did they know in 1996 when he declared war on the U.S.? Did they know in 1998…

CLINTON: Absolutely, they did.

WALLACE: … when he bombed the two embassies?

CLINTON: And who talked about…

WALLACE: Did they know in 2000 when he hit the Cole?

CLINTON: What did I do? What did I do? I worked hard to try to kill him. I authorized a finding for the CIA to kill him. We contracted with people to kill him. I got closer to killing him than anybody has gotten since. And if I were still president, we’d have more than 20,000 troops there trying to kill him.

Now, I’ve never criticized President Bush, and I don’t think this is useful. But you know we do have a government that thinks Afghanistan is only one-seventh as important as Iraq.

And you ask me about terror and Al Qaida with that sort of dismissive thing? When all you have to do is read Richard Clarke’s book to look at what we did in a comprehensive, systematic way to try to protect the country against terror.

And you’ve got that little smirk on your face and you think you’re so clever. But I had responsibility for trying to protect this country. I tried and I failed to get bin Laden. I regret it. But I did try. And I did everything I thought I responsibly could.

The entire military was against sending Special Forces in to Afghanistan and refueling by helicopter. And no one thought we could do it otherwise, because we could not get the CIA and the FBI to certify that Al Qaida was responsible while I was president.

And so, I left office. And yet, I get asked about this all the time. They had three times as much time to deal with it, and nobody ever asks them about it. I think that’s strange.

The entire interview from 2006 is instructive. Because whatever you think of Clinton, and his third way-ism, NAFTA and other policies that were destructive to progressive economics, while paving the way for Obama’s Republicanism, at least the man didn’t use kumbaya bipartisan excuses to keep from fighting battles that need to be fought. Bipartisanship for Clinton didn’t require caving to wingnuts out of fear of partisanship or because he might scare off Independents.

As for Dick Cheney’s other claim today on Fox News Sunday that Obama’s made the economy worse, said with a straight face and without a hint of irony, Chris Wallace didn’t challenge him on that either. The fact that Bush-Cheney kept the wars off the budget, gave massive tax cuts that produced no jobs, while blowing the surplus Clinton left them, with the list a lot longer than this, none of this was on Chris Wallace’s mind either.

That’s because Mr. Wallace feels more comfortable catering to the Fox News audience, so presenting facts over ideological fluffery isn’t his top priority. He does prove why they’re the least informed, because he and others on the network make sure of it.

Simply, do you think there was a liberal bias in the mainstream media? – Chris Wallace to former V.P. Dick Cheney

Maybe Mr. Wallace should try his luck at comedy, because as a journalist, “fair and balanced” or otherwise, he continues to fail.

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Republicans Plummet in Popularity After Debt Ceiling Debacle

By on 10 August 2011

This isn’t easy to do: have a lower approval than Republicans during Pres. Bill Clinton’s impeachment.

So, the Tea Party, who gained in 2010, through Obama and Democrats caving on the Bush tax cut extensions last December, but also through the White House’s cut-cut-cut 2011 austerity budget, then the debt ceiling negotiations, have finally brought the Republican Party down where they deserve.

Both parties have earned the dubious distinction of turning off voters, but for Democrats only 58% think they should be thrown out of Congress, while it’s 64% for Republicans.

A new CNN poll sends a strong message to the Tea Party and Republicans, saying their priorities are not America’s:

According to the poll, 63 percent say the super committee should call for increased taxes on higher-income Americans and businesses, with 36 percent disagreeing. And by a 57 to 40 percent margin they say the committee’s deficit reduction proposal should include major cuts in domestic spending.

But cuts in defense spending get a mixed review: Forty-seven percent would like the committee to include major cuts in military spending, with 53 percent saying no to such cuts.

Nearly two-thirds say no to major changes to Social Security and Medicare. And nearly nine in ten don’t want any increase in taxes on middle class and lower income Americans.

We’ve known the people don’t support cuts in the social safety net for a while, but Pres. Obama won’t stand on that line.

So, this would be great news for Obama and the Democrats, showing them the way, but unfortunately the President bought into austerity a long time ago and won’t make the Democratic economic case. That means for 2012 we’ll have two candidates making the case for cuts, while Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid has no champion in either big two party, though we’ll hear plenty of hot air on “reforming” the social safety net, which won’t result in any good news for the working class.

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A Friendly Rebuttal to David Sirota (from the ultimate outsider – a former Clintonite)

By on 05 August 2011

David Sirota has taken up the multi-dimensional chess argument for Obama, though in a different way than his loyalists and fan boys. David begins by excusing the results we’ve had so far as simply being that he isn’t a liberal. Well, that’s an understatement, but then he says Obama is a “bizarro FDR.” Sirota is as smart as they come, but he’s not the only one screwing up the Obama story. Here’s one snippet of his piece:

They usually stipulate that the president genuinely wants to enact the progressive agenda he campaigned on, but they gently reprimand him for failing to muster the necessary personal mettle to achieve that goal. In this mythology, he is “President Pushover,” as the New York Times columnist Paul Krugman recently labeled him.

This story line is a logical fallacy. Most agree that today’s imperial presidency almost singularly determines the course of national politics. Additionally, most agree that Obama is a brilliant, Harvard-trained lawyer who understands how to wield political power.

Considering this, and further considering Obama’s early congressional majorities, it is silly to insist that the national political events during Obama’s term represent a lack of presidential strength or will. And it’s more than just silly — it’s a narcissistic form of wishful thinking coming primarily from liberals who desperately want to believe “their” president is with them.

Hip boots, please.

Mr. Obama has no driving dream as a foundation, but is simply a formidable political performer that has the gift of oratory, which has become the facade behind which he stands. He can deliver the words, but has never cared about the deeds required to make those words manifest. He is a political actor, nothing more, which is why compromise is his tool, because he has no ideas of his own for which he’s willing to risk failure to pursue. It’s always about him, never you.

None of this, however, detracts from the fact “that Obama is a brilliant, Harvard-trained lawyer who understands how to wield political power.” But power for the sake of it, without purpose, is ultimately corrupting, corrosive and eventually calamitous.

What Sirota and the progressive cool kids are trying so hard to elucidate is that Obama is doing what he is because he wants to, getting the results he wants. So far, so good, but today Sirota takes it to a place that doesn’t sustain itself.

What he and others miss by a marathon is why this is occurring, though Sirota does get this right too: The president has the political muscle to enact a progressive agenda, but he doesn’t want to. Absolutely correct, as I’ve written for a long time, but not for the reasons he writes.

It’s in the polling, which is what guides the Obama White House and reelection team and is the only thing driving this president and it begins with Pres. Obama and his team knowing that Democrats will be on board no matter how mad you get about how horrific his capitulations and compromises are to the Right.

The reason he’s going to the Right is because they’ve got the momentum and he actually is too weak to make the counter argument, because he doesn’t want the fight as much as he wants the compromise, but also because he simply doesn’t care that much to wage the battle. Progressives like David Sirota have forgotten Obama’s revulsion to the battles of the 60s and the 90s; he wasn’t kidding.

Barack Obama will do anything to avert an ideological confrontation, but with the Tea Party caucus he’s been thrown the mother of all curves. Even during the Gingrich era Republicans weren’t willing to burn Washington down over the debt, deficit or budget. The reason he served up Medicare and entitlement “reform” is because Obama thought Republicans would jump at it. As conservatives said repeatedly, pre Tea Party they would. Pres. Obama and the White House never in a million years believed they’d stiff him on it, which is why he didn’t want the details leaked, because the White House isn’t stupid and knew the Left would go berserk. But when the Tea Party did what happened? He compromised again and again to get an outcome that would stop the madness, instead of something that would rectify the problem.

Barack Obama has never waged a fight for anything other than himself, which is what his presidential campaign was about. Now he’s trying to bring every voter he can to his side for his reelection, with Democrats and progressives assured, so he’ll do anything to make that happen, relying on polling to tell him what the public thinks, what they want to hear and what he should say to reach them.

The outcome truly doesn’t matter to him as long as most of the American people side with him in the end to give him a second term. Polls are his compass, not some passion for his Republicanism, which he chose because the mood of the country long ago started swinging Tea Party and Obama has no intention of taking them on, because he might alienate voters whom he’ll need, and Democrats no longer stand for anything, so they’ll just follow the leader.

It’s this Democratic weakness that set up Barack Obama in the first place, the genesis in the Clinton era, though Clinton’s compromises were mixed with a man who relished the battle and had lines he would not cross. When you take out that fighting for people character component the result is the Obama presidency, which has no Democratic compass at all.

The problem with compromising with political extortionists is that once they find out you detest an ideological battle and are willing to give them anything they want as long as they go away and things quiet down is that it’s a never ending saga.

Once again to Obama being candid back in 2007, something most people ignored, but I still believe was a seminal moment for understanding him:

“I think that I have the capacity to get people to recognize themselves in each other. I think that I have the ability to make people get beyond some of the divisions that plague our society and to focus on common sense and reason and that’s been in short supply over the last several years. I’m not an ideologue, never have been. Even during my younger days when I was tempted by, you know, sort of more radical or left wing politics, there was a part of me that always was a little bit conservative in that sense; that believes that you make progress by sitting down listening to people, recognizing everybody’s concerns, seeing other people’s points of views and then making decisions.” – Barack Obama (on ABC’s “This Week”) – May 2007

Pres. Obama is using F.D.R. as his Democratic template and his negotiating base. Everything progressives and the Professional Left bellyaches about is simply noise, because he has no intention of taking on Republicans to make the fight. Obama cedes control to Congress time and again, because he doesn’t want to be cloaked in their ideological mist. The White House always blame liberals for not making the case for Obama, because as they see it, you’re not going anywhere and he’s not changing, so shut up and get with the program. Obama’s got to make peace with a Tea Party nation, so he doesn’t need your crap.

That he has no ideological compass or foundation from which to make an argument for anything F.D.R.-ish should go without saying by now, so any notion he’s a “bizarro FDR” is absurd. He assumes people know that F.D.R. is the base from which he navigates, because he’s goddam Democrat.

The rest is about forging any compromise he can get and he isn’t about to take on the Tea Party and the Right, because he doesn’t believe in ideological fights, which he truly thinks is fruitless, as it upsets people and alienates them from him.

If it won’t help Barack Obama, he’s just not going to do it. Democrats should be grateful, because after all, he’s their leader and he’s, duh, #winning.

The problem that Pres. Obama and his advisers have created now, however, is that when you compromise with extortionists who are also wrong on the facts of the current economic disaster unfolding in America, as Europe’s financial volcano comes close to erupting further, and you have no ideological compass of your own on these matters, the purposeless floundering and dangerous compromises can boomerang.

Sure, you may be left standing, but the carnage piled around you will be catastrophically historic.

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Bill Clinton Played Hardball and Won, Obama Paid Ransom and America Lost

By on 03 August 2011

“(Pres. Bill Clinton) beat the hell out of us first, for a year. He pummeled us for a year. … He didn’t roll over the second we walked in. … Then he out-negotiated us for a year. He brought us to our knees.” – Joe Scarborough

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Those were the days. A time when a Democratic president in the White House knew how to wage a political fight. Today, not only has Pres. Obama ceded our national economic policies to Republicans and Tea Party extortionists, but he’s managed to alter the entire debate forever.

What we have done, Larry, also is set a new template. In the future, any president, this one or another one, when they request us to raise the debt ceiling, it will not be clean anymore. This is just the first step. This, we anticipate, will take us into 2013. Whoever the new president is, is probably going to be asking us to raise the debt ceiling again. Then we will go through the process again and see what we can continue to achieve in connection with these debt ceiling requests of presidents to get our financial house in order. – Sen. Mitch McConnell

Joe Scarborough was there and explained it best back when the Gingrich revolution rolled into Washington, something I remember well. Joe also makes the Democratic argument starting at around 6:45, with the money quote at 11:45 on the video above.

Back in the ’90s, William Jefferson Clinton had many things going for him Obama didn’t have during the debt ceiling debacle. First, as Kara Brandeisky writes in TNR, there was a roaring economy, but there were also no Republicans willing to take the country over a financial cliff.

Pres. Clinton had something else too. Yes, he became a Third Way centrist hated by progressives, but Clinton drew a line in concrete on what he would accept and not accept. But more importantly, he didn’t let the Republican extortionists set the terms of goddam debate.

November 9, 1995, a senior administration official told the Washington Post, “Our position is it does not matter what they put on this legislation, we are not going to accept anything but clean bills because we will not be blackmailed over default. Get it? No extortion. No blackmail. What you hear are their screams of complaint as they realize we are not, not, not budging on this.” – How Clinton Handled His Debt Ceiling Crisis Better Than Obama

As Jonathan Chait notes as well, it’s not about looking at Bill Clinton’s centrist presidency, which was filled with compromises, with rose-colored glasses, which isn’t going to happen anyway.

Obama and his loyalists have gone overboard the same way George W. Bush did when he came in. Bush’s Anything But Bill strategy led to the demoting of the first terrorism export, then 9/11. Obama’s aversion to Bill Clinton’s politics, but also Obama’s arrogance in not learning the lessons of his presidency, especially his hardball tactics that go back to Lyndon Johnson, has now given Republican economics to America.

Worse yet, Obama has also told his adversaries that there isn’t anything he won’t do to avoid a confrontation, while simultaneously yielding the economic debate to Republicans.

Clinton may be a lot of things, but he wasn’t a political coward.

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Boehner Drags Tea Party Into Reality

By on 27 July 2011

These aren’t the sounds of a Republican revolt. By the end of Wednesday, Republicans were totally on message about how they chose the best of three plans (the others being Harry Reid’s plan or default) and would push it through. Democrats obsessed over which conservative groups were most annoyed, and they were whipping their own votes to make the GOP’s job harder. But it looks increasingly like the only win Democrats got was the Republican back-down from a “grand bargain” that would have raised the eligibility age for Medicare. – The Day the Tea Party Grew Up

Speaker Boehner started this day by telling his caucus to “get their ass in line.” …and it looks like they have, according to David Weigel’s piece above. But Boehner held the line on taxes and revenues, plus got spending cuts.

Pres. Obama served up raising the Medicare eligibility age as part of his “grand bargain,” so the Obama fans will just have to accept it, though there are plenty in his blue doggie pack who will applaud that, too.

So when Paul Krugman pointed to a Bruce Bartlett piece from last week on Twitter today, which I hadn’t seen when it initially was published, I thought I’d share it, because it perfectly casts Obama’s conservatism, something I’ve been writing about for years now. Here’s one graph:

Conservatives will, of course, scoff at the idea of Obama being any sort of conservative, just as liberals scoffed at Nixon being any kind of liberal. But with the benefit of historical hindsight, it’s now obvious that Nixon was indeed a moderate liberal in practice. And with the passage of time, it’s increasingly obvious that Clinton was essentially an Eisenhower Republican. It may take 20 years before Obama’s basic conservatism is widely accepted as well, but it’s a fact. – Barack Obama: The Democrats’ Richard Nixon?

Another important section deals with Bill Clinton, though I must note here I never thought Clinton or Gore were liberals. I felt Clinton was important, because since Jimmy Carter, Democrats were considered losers. Clinton coming in after 12 years of Reaganism was a lot different than the wave Obama came in on after the years of Bush-Cheney. Segue to Bartlett:

Liberals initially viewed Bill Clinton the same way conservatives viewed Eisenhower – as a liberator who would reverse the awful policies of his two predecessors. But almost immediately, Clinton decided that deficit reduction would be the first order of business in his administration. His promised middle class tax cut and economic stimulus were abandoned.

By 1995, Clinton was working with Republicans to dismantle welfare. In 1997, he supported a cut in the capital gains tax. As the benefits of his 1993 deficit reduction package took effect, budget deficits disappeared and we had the first significant surpluses in memory. Yet Clinton steadfastly refused to spend any of the flood of revenues coming into the Treasury, hording them like a latter day Midas. In the end, his administration was even more conservative than Eisenhower’s on fiscal policy.

And just as pent-up liberal aspirations exploded in the 1960s with spending for every pet project green lighted, so too the fiscal conservatism of the Clinton years led to an explosion of tax cuts under George W. Bush, who supported every one that came down the pike. The result was the same as it was with Johnson: massive federal deficits and a tanking economy.

Thus Obama took office under roughly the same political and economic circumstances that Nixon did in 1968 except in a mirror opposite way.

That’s why when I wrote in 2007 that Obama was going to serve up entitlements, then followed my analysis up consistently saying our President is a conservative, I knew others would take a while accepting it, but I think now everyone’s finally on the same page.

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Obama’s Lost Moon Shot on Energy

By on 20 July 2011

“… We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.” – President John F. Kennedy (September 12, 1962, at Rice University, Houston, Texas)

On this date in 1969, we landed the first man on the moon, and part of this adventure concludes for the United States tomorrow, with the final space shuttle mission set to land at 5:56:58 a.m. EDT at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

I cannot begin to express the joy I’ve had in watching this American passage, remembering the wonder of this visionary journey and accomplishment. Betsy Mason over at Wired has an amazing piece and photo gallery on what NASA did to train the APOLLO astronauts. Thanks to everyone at NASA and all the supporters of this amazing feat, as we all await the next journey, provided Congress understands that investment, research and development is critical for America’s future. There’s absolutely no evidence at this point our politicians get this fact.

Thinking about the anniversary of the moon landing today, I’m reminded of what is required to make the seemingly impossible manifest.

When Pres. Bill Clinton ruminates about the wondrous explosion of economic growth in the ’90s he experienced as president, he never forgets to cite the amazing technological expansion of the internet that helped make it happen. He often says how he just put the pedal to the metal and exploited every aspect to help it work for America as he led the country to peacetime prosperity and a booming economy that left George W. Bush a record surplus.

Thinking of both Pres. Kennedy’s vision and Clinton’s initiative to harness what was happening in technology, is something that leads me to be unforgiving of the wasted opportunity for what Pres. Obama’s presidency might have meant to this country.

When Pres. Obama won the presidency things had turned sour economically, so what he inherited was a horrendous mess, including wars waged off the budget and a country whose leaders were disrespected around the world. His presidency held the hope that all that was about to change.

With the American people behind him wholeheartedly when he was inaugurated, the press cowed and the world waiting for greatness, Barack Obama had a once in a generation opportunity to do big things, really big things. Like tackle our energy challenges, which would impact us domestically, as well as our foreign policy and military priorities, a situation that has bled this country dry of resources we’ll never recover. He could have harnessed business leaders of industries, mayors and governors to commit to having their cities be bullet train depots, so we could finally get high-speech rail from New York to the Midwest to the Pacific Coast, from north to south and across this country, creating jobs by the thousands along the way, including side industries of workers and support, with the results manifesting a new way to travel, at least for America.

People in Europe have been traveling this way for years.

All of a sudden a tax on gas wouldn’t be so onerous. “Drill, baby, drill” a bad memory of bankrupt celebrity politicians and their fans.

But to imagine, implement and sell a nationwide building extravaganza focused on changing our energy focus Mr. Obama would have had to have had a vision. He did not. Instead he doubled down on military actions, reneged on campaign pledges to remove the stench of the Bush-Cheney legacy by doubling down on drone attacks, starting another war in Libya and continuing rendition and allowing “secret” prisons to continue. If you want to see the final gasp of “hope and change” read Jeremy Scahill’s article about Somalia. Our Nobel Peace Prize President now turned to ash.

So, as we all trudge into another presidential election cycle we’re stuck dealing with meager men and women running for the highest office in the land and the world, people who talk to interest groups, factions and fans, without having the core character to speak about a larger human purpose.

John F. Kennedy spoke of choosing to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, but then he did something about it at a time when American limitations didn’t exist. When leaders dreamed of big things and stuck their own neck out to sell them for the good of the country, not because it would help them win the Independent vote.

We are still a great nation, but we are now led by smaller men. …and women, because you can’t have a country in the mess it is today without a collapse of leadership from all quarters, including We The People. At some point the American public has simply got to walk away from the current political class to say enough is enough.

Last View This image of the International Space Station was taken by Atlantis' STS-135 crew during a fly around as the shuttle departed the station on Tuesday, July 19, 2011. STS-135 is the final shuttle mission to the orbital laboratory. Image Credit: NASA


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Bill Clinton Would Use 14th Amendment Option ‘Without Hesitation’ then “Force The Courts To Stop Me’

By on 19 July 2011

Joe Conason, who has had more access to former Pres. Bill Clinton over the years than most, begins his new website launch The National Memo with a blockbuster on the debt ceiling debate.

Former President Bill Clinton says that he would invoke the so-called constitutional option to raise the nation’s debt ceiling “without hesitation, and force the courts to stop me” in order to prevent a default, should Congress and the President fail to achieve agreement before the August 2 deadline.

Sharply criticizing Congressional Republicans in an exclusive Monday evening interview with The National Memo, Clinton said, “I think the Constitution is clear and I think this idea that the Congress gets to vote twice on whether to pay for [expenditures] it has appropriated is crazy.”

Lifting the debt ceiling “is necessary to pay for appropriations already made,” he added, “so you can’t say, ‘Well, we won the last election and we didn’t vote for some of that stuff, so we’re going to throw the whole country’s credit into arrears.”

You may be tired of me writing this, but I’ve never understood all the drama and whining out of the White House over the Aug. 2 date or the involvement of Pres. Obama to such a degree in a situation that has revealed his paltry negotiating skills once again.

It’s the job of Congress to raise the debt ceiling, which certainly does not have to be done on the wings of a deficit deal.

So, sit back, wait, then invoke the 14th Amendment if you need, while making it clear that raising the debt limit is up to Speaker Boehner and his Tea Party rabble. If they dare not to do it show them out.

Love him or hate him, Pres. Bill Clinton knows a lot about playing chicken with lesser politicians who don’t have the country on their side.

As the CBS poll showed yesterday, as much as people detest the Republican insanity, with so much on his side, Pres. Obama’s disapproval is higher than his approval ratings on his handling of the debt ceiling “crisis.” That’s because his message has been absolute mush, revealing he’s scared of his opponents. That’s right, scared. Choosing to negotiate from a place of weakness was Obama’s biggest mistake, because he always had a stronger option. But that would take courage to stand alone and pull the trigger himself, something he’s never been willing to do on anything.

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Obama’s Failure to Make Case on Taxes Created Eric Cantor

By on 14 July 2011

Bartlett said the political demise of George H.W. Bush convinced GOP leaders that tax hikes are political suicide. “And I don’t know that they’re necessarily wrong,” Bartlett said. “At some point the American public is going to have to shift their attitudes (about tax hikes), but the (Obama) administration has done nothing to bring them along.” – Debt limit stalemate forces new look at tax hike debate

This is a very sad story about a president who cherry picked his political history and like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and the Republican Right, has used his infatuation with the image of Ronald Reagan, without knowing the practical applications of the man’s politics, which never met a line he wouldn’t cross.

The short-sided stupidity of Pres. Obama’s austerity craze, which started with Simpson-Bowles, has now become a never ending, long-term, self-destructive nightmare for us all.

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Bill, Barack, & the Mother of All Quotes

By on 08 July 2011

“I think we should always listen to Bill Clinton about everything. And so, if that’s his view then that should be the rule of law.” – John Heilemann on “Morning Joe”

This belongs as a bookend to Chris Matthews’ thrill up his leg moment and is equally obsequiesce. With “journalism” like this is it any wonder that presidents come to believe they can walk on water? I say this as someone who respects, even reveres, parts of what Clinton accomplished in the ’90s (I have long believed we should go back to Clinton era tax rates), but especially his unparalleled gift to communicate his message.

But seriously? Why is John Heilemann getting away with this crap?

Take this from the National Journal, which is worth the read:

“Our risk is that we’ll be so averse to any changes in the entitlement programs that we’ll continue to spend … too much money on today, so we don’t have enough money [to invest] for tomorrow,” he said. – Clinton: What Went Wrong With the Economy After I Left?

William Jefferson Clinton is the best in the political business, but let’s not forget he’s a corporate DLC Dem, from which Barack Obama’s cut. It’s just one reason Obama disavowed him in the ’08 primaries. Looking in the mirror at what you are when you’re hawking the opposite even made him nauseous.

As for Obama exalting Ronald Reagan instead of Clinton, Reagan raised taxes 11 times against his party’s philosophy, which is so jarring to today’s Republicans they simply write it out of history.

Obama isn’t close to the political skills, dexterity and talent of either Reagan or Clinton, he’s a mirage.

Bill Clinton’s former former Third Way loves Obama’s “deal of the century.”

“Third Way has long argued that entitlement reform should be part of the solution to America’s deficit challenge. Not only will it put us back on a sustainable fiscal path, reform will save and strengthen our social safety net. We applaud the President’s willingness to do the right thing and lay hands on the “third rail” of American politics.

Some on the left will attack the President for putting Social Security and Medicare fixes on the table, but without action these programs will eventually crowd out our ability to invest in America’s future and force us to default on our promise to provide for tomorrow’s seniors. Postponing reform indefinitely is not an option, and to delay is not progressive.

The President is taking a step vital to any negotiation – offering a reasonable path to compromise on priorities dear to him. It’s time for Republicans to follow suit by abandoning their unreasonable opposition to closing tax loopholes.”

Obama’s Republicanism is right of Clinton’s Third Way crap and even less effective, but neither did or is now doing anything for the Democratic Party. Bill Clinton made deals as he was being hounded toward impeachment (though his Wall Street coziness was voluntary), while Obama made deals he didn’t have to after coming into office with the entire world slobbering over his wondrousness.

Obama is a wannabe Clinton, just with less talent, no economic game and absolutely zero gifts to reach into people’s hearts with or without the teleprompter rolling. Instead of feeling people’s pain, Obama has become their pain.

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David Plouffe’s Shell Game, 2012 Edition

By on 08 July 2011

President Obama’s senior political adviser David Plouffe said Wednesday that people won’t vote in 2012 based on the unemployment rate. – Top Obama adviser says unemployment won’t be key in 2012



King David has spoken. Oh, am I relieved. It’s good to know people won’t vote on the unemployment rate, even though a hell of a lot of voters are worried about their own economic future, as Pres. Obama screws around with his new best friend, Austerity.

David Plouffe is under the delusion that Barack Obama is still perceived as the same politician who ran in 2008. The man is not stupid, so he’s either in deep denial, having a political breakdown looking at the lack of enthusiasm for Mr. Obama, or he’s speaking gibberish while dreaming about what was versus what is today.

Jared Bernstein on Jobs numbers:

The June jobs report reveals a much more serious job creation problem in this country than most policy makers realized. Over the past two months, job creation has essentially ground to a halt, with 25,000 jobs added in May and 18,000 in June. The unemployment rate, now 9.2%, is climbing.

Dean Baker:

On the whole, this is one of the most negative employment reports since the recovery began. It indicates that the economy has made no progress whatsoever in re-employing the people who lost their jobs in the downturn. Even more discouraging is the fact that there is no reason to expect anything to change for the better any time soon. The pace of job loss in the public sector is likely to accelerate, with no evidence of an offsetting pickup in the private sector.

Former Pres. Bill Clinton on this insanity and the threats Britain could face because of their austerity craze:

Spending cuts and tax rises to rein in a nation’s finances should be postponed until its economy is “clearly recovering” because these measures dampen growth, he argued.

“The UK’s finding this out now,” he said. “They adopted this big austerity budget and there’s a good chance that economic activity will go down so much that tax revenues will be reduced even more than spending is cut and their deficit will increase.”

With Pres. Obama embracing Republican austerity at the expense of everything else, there’s no reason to believe, to trust or to hope anything is going to get better before it gets worse.

David Plouffe’s pronouncements about how people will vote is predicated on something that no longer exists. The belief in Barack Obama’s talents to lead our nation, which has been proven wrong, deadly, deadly wrong.

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Following Obama’s Buzz Words

By on 07 July 2011

From Sam Stein:

“The story overshoots the runway,” said a senior administration official. “The President said in the State of the Union that he wanted a bipartisan process to strengthen Social Security in a balanced way that preserves the promise of the program and doesn’t slash benefits.”

“While it is definitely not a driver of the deficit,” the official added, “it does need to be strengthened.”

Ah, strengthened, ri-ight.

Then a statement from Jay Carney:

“There is no news here,” Carney said. “The President has always said that while social security is not a major driver of the deficit, we do need to strengthen the program and the President said in the State of the Union Address that he wanted to work with both parties to do so in a balanced way that preserves the promise of the program and doesn’t slash benefits.”

Maybe the Tea Party will save Democrats from their feckless “leader.” Just maybe they’ll be stupid enough to stiff Pres. Obama on the “deal of the century” he’s offering.

Go Eric Cantor, come on, baby, be your bad self and stiff the President. You know you want to.

…or just maybe, maybe, Nancy Pelosi will finally make up for her horrendous cave-in to the Catholic Church during health care, to draw a line where any principled Democrat would.

[... It’s safe to say at this point that the White House is starting to get the credit it wants for working hard to find a compromise even as Republicans work hard to resist one. But that’s not a triumph of messaging. It is, if anything, an understatement based on the White House’s willingness to give congressional Republicans a much more lopsided deal than Reagan, Bush or Clinton presided over. Republicans might be fools for passing on it, but if and when they finally say “yes,” a lot of Democrats are going to be wondering whether the Democrats were suckers for offering it. - Ezra Klein

It’s not over until the Tea Party squeals.

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Bill Clinton: ‘Jon Huntsman Quite an Impressive Man’

By on 30 June 2011

Clinton’s assessment of Jon Huntsman is why Republicans won’t choose him. But if Huntsman and Bachmann could head the Republican ticket that would really be something for Obama reelect to go up against. Republicans simply aren’t that smart.

Former Pres. Bill Clinton weighed in on a number of issues during a break of CGI, which is in Chicago focusing on jobs:

For one thing, Clinton believes the economy will be better by Election Day than it is now, though unemployment still will be relatively high and the improvement in the economy won’t be as dramatic as the emergence from a shallower recession during his first four years as president.

“The circumstances are different,” Clinton said. “When President Obama took office, we were in the midst of avoiding having a financial collapse turn into a depression. So, the unemployment rate was higher and people were scared to death about what was going to happen. The so-called stimulus bill actually outperformed expectations, not underperformed, but it wasn’t big enough to lift this whole economy out of the hole it was in. The auto restructuring is working. And I think he’ll be able to point to that.”

He also believes whichever Republican gets nominated to face Obama will get boxed in by ideology.

“Since they, apparently, ideologically, will not permit their candidates to do some of the things that would be most effective in creating jobs and in balancing budget, I just don’t think they’ll be able to get away with what they got away with in the election in 2010,” Clinton said. “You won’t just be able to say, ‘Vote for me, I’m the non-Obama.’ I think he’s going to be able to point to a lot of very specific things that are better. I think that he’s going to be able to convince people that it takes a little longer after that kind of collapse to recover. It took Japan a decade to recover. … We’re coming back quicker than that.”

But Clinton’s idea of agreeing on a framework now, but then pushing the practical application of a debt solution down the road, sounds positively crazy to me. He’s been out of the game of partisan politics a long time and a lot has changed since he left, even if when he was in office things were bad. It was still pre-Tea Party. Offering a fantasy economic utopian path to cut all sides some slack has no chance in hell in today’s Washington, D.C.

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Mitch McConnell Won’t Budge, So We Await Obama’s Blink

By on 28 June 2011

Please do not yield to outrageous Republican demands that would greatly increase suffering for the weakest and most vulnerable members of our society. Now is the time to stand with the tens of millions of Americans who are struggling to survive economically, not with the millionaires and billionaires who have never had it so good. – Sen. Bernie Sanders (Shared Sacrifice letter to Pres. Obama)

If only Pres. Obama could channel one-quarter of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ passion (see video above).

But he is having a news conference at 11:30 a.m. tomorrow from the East Room of the White House. Here’s why, in case you’ve been on the beach:

“So far, they’re saying that it’s essential,” McConnell told reporters Tuesday. “We think it’s a job-killing step that shouldn’t be taken, and Republicans are not interested in going in that direction.” – Mitch McConnell holds ground on taxes

Enough is enough, Sanders is correct. Unfortunately, Pres. Obama simply doesn’t have what it takes to make this case. He simply does not know how to rally the middle class by touching the hearts of the people to raise them up on their on behalf.

The last president who could do that was William Jefferson Clinton.

So, Pres. Obama is still likely to “yield once again.”

Dear Mr. President,

This is a pivotal moment in the history of our country. Decisions are being made about the national budget that will impact the lives of virtually every American for decades to come. As we address the issue of deficit reduction we must not ignore the painful economic reality of today – which is that the wealthiest people in our country and the largest corporations are doing phenomenally well while the middle class is collapsing and poverty is increasing. In fact, the United States today has, by far, the most unequal distribution of wealth and income of any major country on earth.

Everyone understands that over the long-term we have got to reduce the deficit – a deficit that was caused mainly by Wall Street greed, tax breaks for the rich, two wars, and a prescription drug program written by the drug and insurance companies. It is absolutely imperative, however, that as we go forward with deficit reduction we completely reject the Republican approach that demands savage cuts in desperately-needed programs for working families, the elderly, the sick, our children and the poor, while not asking the wealthiest among us to contribute one penny.

Mr. President, please listen to the overwhelming majority of the American people who believe that deficit reduction must be about shared sacrifice. The wealthiest Americans and the most profitable corporations in this country must pay their fair share. At least 50 percent of any deficit reduction package must come from revenue raised by ending tax breaks for the wealthy and eliminating tax loopholes that benefit large, profitable corporations and Wall Street financial institutions. A sensible deficit reduction package must also include significant cuts to unnecessary and wasteful Pentagon spending.

Please do not yield to outrageous Republican demands that would greatly increase suffering for the weakest and most vulnerable members of our society. Now is the time to stand with the tens of millions of Americans who are struggling to survive economically, not with the millionaires and billionaires who have never had it so good.

Respectfully,

Sen. Bernie Sanders;
and Co-signers

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The Great Equivocator

By on 26 June 2011

With each equivocation, the man in the Oval Office shields his identity and cloaks who the real Barack Obama is. – Maureen Dowd


In a dead on devastating piece, I still have to say… Come come, Ms. Dowd, surely you jest.

Barack Obama is The Great Equivocator. It’s who he is.

Nate Silver provides important perspective:

But the type of leadership that Mr. Cuomo exercised — setting a lofty goal, refusing to take no for an answer and using every tool at his disposal to achieve it — is reminiscent of the stories sometimes told about with President Lyndon B. Johnson, who had perhaps the most impressive record of legislative accomplishment of any recent president.

It’s also a brand of leadership that many Democrats I speak with feel is lacking in President Obama.

This screen capture of the White House homepage, which has been live until recently, is representative of Barack Obama. When I visited the White House site and this image came up I found it jarring. Just why did Obama reelect pick this photo of Obama looking upward (an image they’ve used before), making it appear he’s got his head in the clouds and his nose in the air? It’s the oddest, most out of touch photo possible, aloof, but it does have a regal air to it reflecting the hubris of the man and his presidency. Someone who doesn’t so much care about people’s concerns as he does about projecting an image he finds presidential, even if it makes him look unreachable, out of touch, which it remains, with his “leadership” more in the minds of his speechwriters than in evidence through his actions.

As for Dowd invoking Catholic clergy, because of his two-faced political marketing he’s actually worse than New York’s Archbishop Timothy Dolan she mentions in her column, who as a representative of the Catholic Church is predictably reprehensible on marriage equality. Remember that the Catholic Church won’t give women power either and they actually might have been able to save these corrupt men from raping and pillaging the youth of the young boys under their charge.

More from Dowd:

The man who was able to beat the Clintons in 2008 because the country wanted a break from Clintonian euphemism and casuistry is now breaking creative new ground in euphemism and casuistry.

Obama is “evolving” on the issue of gay marriage, which, as any girl will tell you, is the first sign of a commitment-phobe.

Maybe, given all his economic and war woes as he heads into 2012, Obama fears the disapproval of the homophobic elements within his own party. But he has tried to explain his reluctance on gay marriage as an expression of his Christianity, even though he rarely goes to church and is the picture of a secular humanist.

While picking up more than three-quarters of a million dollars from 600 guests at a gay and lesbian fund-raising gala in Manhattan on Thursday night, the president declared, “I believe that gay couples deserve the same legal rights as every other couple in this country,” even as he held to his position that the issue should be left to the states to decide.

I don’t know what people like Ms. Dowd have to see in order to understand that Pres. Obama is taking the stance on gay marriage equality, because he’s trying to protect the part of his base, including people beyond the Democratic Party, that he cannot survive 2012 without, including African American and Hispanic churchgoers, a serious segment of the Dem base, but whom he feels cannot be lobbied or convinced to change their minds.

Andrew Cuomo is a corporate Democrat in the great tradition of our two-party duopoly, but he made Pres. Obama look like a mouse.

It’s not about Obama’s own religious beliefs. This is about Obama’s craven political opportunism, which mimics most every other ordinary politicians seeking reelection. His problem is he now is to the Right of New York Republicans.

It’s completely understandable that people don’t want to believe Barack Obama is who he is. I gladly voted for the man in ’08 and don’t regret it at all given the alternative. John Aravosis wants to believe the best, which I appreciate.

However, I’m not in the business of partisan fan politics anymore. I simply say it as I see it.

Pres. Obama is voting “present” on marriage equality.

While taking the LGBT’s money, he proves this community is too trusting and refuses to understand he’s only your friend when he’s got cover (see DADT). Like any president who wants a second term he’s thinking of himself and Obama reelect simply believes marriage equality will cost him the 2012 election, so they won’t fight for it, because he rarely fights for anything but Bushesque wars, proving Barack Obama is an old style mediocre politician from our 20th century past, contrary to his herculean marketing hype.

Perhaps it’s time for the LGBT community to take a lesson from Richard Trumka. Sure, he will likely land in Obama’s court come 2012, but he’s not going to play the sucker for nothing.

The Great Equivocator has spoken. “Evolving” is simply a word to keep people hanging on and it’s working, as Obama reelect knew it would.

But now that Republican New Yorkers have broken the LGBT community’s way, isn’t it time this community decoupled itself from Pres. Obama to see what can be accomplished beyond him, especially since Pres. Obama’s clearly not an ally on marriage equality?

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Wanted: Pictures of David Vitter in Diapers in the House Gym

By on 16 June 2011

Senior Democrats have privately worried that the three-week-long scandal has taken the focus off the party’s message, which had been trained on criticism of House Republicans’ plans to overhaul Medicare. – House Democrats could strip Anthony Weiner of key committee seat

Somewhere in his Fox bunker Roger Ailes is laughing.

As for the Clintons being “livid,” oh, spare me. On this one they should both just shut up.

David Vitter - D.C. Madam

But at least Mr. Weiner’s stupidity didn’t end like David Vitter’s prostitution and rumored diaper fetish did, with the suicide of the woman who helped Vitter get his kicks. Flashback:

Local police responding to a call late Thursday morning discovered the woman’s body in a storage shed to the side of the home, according to a statement released by the Tarpon Springs, Fla. Police. Hand-written notes were found nearby which “describes the victim’s intention to take her life,” according to the statement.

I don’t have any sympathy at all for Anthony Weiner, never have, even though I thought this whole exercise was ridiculous, because the only ones who have been hurt is Weiner and his wife.

NBC’s cub reporter Luke Russert opined on MSNBC that lying to your leadership is what did him in. If that doesn’t encapsulate this stupidity nothing does.

Anthony Weiner deserved to lose his committee seat and be shamed to congressional hell for his legendary stupidity. Where he finds himself is all his fault. But let’s not pretend he wouldn’t have survived this whole thing if he hadn’t sullied the sanctified setting of the House gym. That was just too much for the D.C. establishment to take.

But if Democrats can’t get out a platform to beat Ryan’s Medicare scheme, blaming Weiner for their message incompetence, they don’t deserve to win a single seat or the presidency in 2012.

It’s hard to root for the Democratic Party these days, who once again reveal their deep-seated self-loathing.

A classic from Artur Davis Former congressman (D-Ala.):

Weiner learned a brutal set of lessons about the chemistry of Washington politics. First, rank-and-file House members are expendable: the House is not the club that is the Senate, where personal relationships are more durable and there is an institutional aversion to pushing a member out. Second, unlike Charlie Rangel, Weiner had no race card to play. Finally, the Bill Clinton rule of survival applies best to second-term presidents with 65 percent approval ratings and a track record of 7.5 percent GDP growth.

And of course, Weiner got caught not only lying but doing it with gusto and indignation. False allegations do happen in politics, and it does not take much for baseless rumors to spread. Weiner has just complicated the task of any public figure who denies an allegation and for that reason alone, this saga has contributed to the cynicism around political life.

Finally, there is no long-term consequence. The informal caucus of congressmen and senators who cheat, flirt or make inappropriate comments to women of any age has not been dented by Weiner’s fall. The exposure rate will continue to turn on arbitrary and unwritten rules, and the sin rate will remain thoroughly bipartisan.

Only the Democrats could jettison one of their strongest voices where no actual sex occurred. But at least the leadership won’t have the thorn of Anthony Weiner in their side anymore and neither will Pres. Obama.

The next conservative who talks about the liberal media deserves a pie in the face.

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A Second Term for the Sake of It

By on 15 June 2011

Norquist might have to take a hard line and pretend he’s appalled to see it crossed, but in focusing everyone on that line, he’s effectively distracting them from how far the goalposts have been moved. Instead of revenues being an assumed part of a deficit deal, with the only question being how much of the deal they make up, the question has become whether Republicans will accept any revenues at all in the deficit deal. Including any new revenues at all has been framed as a major concession for the Republicans, which means it’s easier for Republicans to include far less revenue in total. And no matter how you look at it, that’s a win for Grover Norquist. – Wonkbook: Grover Norquist’s small loss and big win

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Well, that was a weird exchange with Ann Curry that explains a lot.

The most amazing thing about the Republican debate this week was that there were no ideas on the economy or jobs. It’s the most infuriating thing about the era of austerity in which we live. Pres. Obama, having bought into the same thing a long time ago, except when it comes to dispensing our military in other countries, has now relegated the Democratic Party to the same status as the GOP, a tax-cutting priority party.

Meanwhile, The American people and the Progressive Caucus are exercised about jobs for good reasons. From Huffington Post:

Progressive Democrats are launching a tour to call for good jobs for the working and middle classes, putting pressure on House Republicans and President Barack Obama to push for more job measures.

“Let’s get mad,” Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) said at a press conference. “Let’s tell the man that we love in the White House to get off of his butt and start supporting some legislature for jobs. … He’s the best speaker in the world, and now we want some action.”

But the Democrats saved their harshest words for House Republicans, whom Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisc.) called “spineless” in their support for tax cuts and subsidies.

It would be nice if progressive legislators also remembered that it was Pres. Obama who touted tax cut last year, while ignoring tax hikes for mil-billionaires, but that would require mutiny.

I just don’t get any sense that Pres. Obama is all that excited about taking on the challenge, except as a campaign theme or as some panel exercise. If he was he would.

Pres. Obama says he’s got enough energy to keep doing the work he’s doing, but without a vision for what his presidency means I’m not sure that’s good enough. It’s striking that he talks about finishing the work he started in 2009, mentioning energy and education, when the word j-o-b-s should be the first word out of his mouth.

Asked about his family’s reaction to his wanting another term, Obama said: “Michelle and the kids are wonderful in that if I said, `You know, guys, I want to do something different,’ They’d be fine. They’re not invested in daddy being president or my husband being president.” – Obama: My family would be fine with just 1 term

The idea here is that Barack Obama would be fine with one term, something that he’s implied before. Perhaps that’s because he’s floating along letting events pull him, rather than having a driving ideological passion and purpose that inspires him to begin an infrastructure project that would revitalize our country, whether it’s roads and bridges, airports, with the manifested results also putting people back to work.

Negotiator is one role he plays, but Pres. Obama’s presidency long ago turned into administrating through the events unfolding. There isn’t a passionate purpose to his presidency that I can sense, feel or hear. Americans like Pres. Obama, with his family a remarkable model. But the celebrity persona that helped land him in the White House hasn’t inspired him to change into a man on any mission.

There is no great vision to Barack Obama’s presidency and everybody knows it. The recent jaw-boning flurry is campaign talk without a plan. There’s no driving dream, no sense of where he wants to take the country. Any direction was better than where George W. Bush was taking the country, but now there is a listlessness to the American journey Pres. Obama’s supposed to be leading.

The thrill is also gone in watching Pres. Obama and I’m not sure revving up his trademark rhetoric will alter this dynamic. He’s certainly still a formidable candidate, but if a Republican challenger with a vision for America finally gets around to offering one people will listen.

Americans are desperate.

Obama also says he wants to finish what he started, but somehow it simply sounds like something a one-term president says, because he wants another. George H.W. Bush showed the same kind of nonchalance to the office of the presidency before Bill Clinton came out of nowhere to knock the dreams of a fourth Reagan legacy tour off the calendar.

The economy’s the biggest reason Pres. Obama could lose his job. He could keep it if the current Republican crew continues what they revved up last night: attacks with no ideas, coupled with tax cuts. Another reason Obama could lose is that he isn’t making a case in policy, passion or in vision for why he deserves to keep it.

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Karl Rove & Republicans Take Hit Out on Debbie Wasserman Schultz

By on 10 June 2011

… Wasserman Schultz is kind of an easy target. Any “aggressive messenger” is. Extreme and shrill is always far easier to spoof than subtle and nuanced. – Hot Air

…and the D.C. political class is sucking it up.

Democrats are freaked that Karl Rove is leading the Right, The Hill and other Republican-leaning outfits in a targeting campaign to discredit Debbie Wasserman Schultz, all in attempt to Pelosi her.

And, yep, right on schedule, the Democratic boys club is getting nervous.
Continue Reading →

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Anthony Weiner on Resigning: ‘I’m not’

By on 09 June 2011

**UPDATED**

According to the one-day poll, conducted Wednesday, just 33 percent of voters in New York’s Ninth Congressional District think Weiner should resign from the House, while 56 percent do not think he should resign. – Poll: Weiner’s Constituents Don’t Think He Should Resign

I didn’t believe he would and he shouldn’t.

Rep. Anthony Weiner looked almost relaxed as he was interviewed by the New York Post, or maybe the best word is relieved. He was carrying a lot of guilt and shame, with the worst finally happening to him. His secret is out and everyone knows. There’s nowhere to go but up from here.

His wife Huma Abedin is reportedly standing behind him and urging him to fight for his job and to renew his life, which was the whole ballgame. She didn’t have to come out on camera to prove it, though fogies and establishment types demanded it.

The New York Post got the scoop:

“I’m going to get back to work as best I can,” he said.

“I betrayed a lot of people and I know it and I’m trying to get back to work now and try to make amends to my constituents, and of course to my family of course,” he added. “I’m going to go back to my community office and try to get some work done.”

Weiner reiterated what he told the media earlier this week.

“As I said when I spoke at the press conference on Monday that I exchanged inappropriate things with people and, I think that I’ve now got to deal with those consequences,” he added.

“I was completely honest on Monday after I hadn’t been for a while,” Weiner said outside his lawyer’s office in Midtown.

Who knows, maybe talking with the Big Dawg helped and he might have gotten some sage advice about fighting through this hell.

The worst is over (no matter what happens in the ethics investigation).

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Old Fogie Justice and Breitbart Lies

By on 09 June 2011

“She loves her husband very much. She is committed to her husband and her marriage,” the close friend said. She’s adamant that her husband does not resign, and is optimistic that he can continue his career as an elected official. “I think people have weathered worse,” said the source. “They are still talking all the time about what to do [to survive the scandal],” the source said, adding that they plotted his political comeback while at the hotel. – Weiner on wife support, Huma has his back

Ed Rendell proclaimed today on “Morning Joe” that Rep. Weiner is a dead politician walking, my words not his. If he is, Democrats better understand who wins here and it isn’t them or progressives. So far DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz has kept quiet, even amidst RNC chair’s Reince Priebus’ hypocritical judgment, which only applies to Weiner, not Vitter or other Republicans who have been caught up in scandals, with Vitter’s solicitation of prostitutes actually a crime.

As both Rendell and Mike Barnicle know but are conveniently fogetting, if John F. Kennedy had been held to today’s standards he would never have been president, with his White House behavior something the press would have ravaged him over today, perhaps rightly so:

Since they had not lived together before marrying, Jackie was unprepared for what she called Jack’s “violent” independence — by which she meant not just his habit of going off with his male friends but, more important, his thinly disguised promiscuity. … “I don’t think there are any men who are faithful to their wives. Men are such a combination of good and evil.” … Jackie’s unhappiness was no inducement to Jack to restrain himself. In the summer of 1956, while she was int he late stages of a pregnancy that ended in a miscarriage, Jack went on a yachting trip with George Smathers in the Mediterranean, where he enjoyed “a bacchanal, with several young women getting on and off the boat at its ports of call.” … In 1958, when younger brother Ted got married, Jack was caught on tape whispering to him “that being married didn’t really mean that you had to be faithful to your wife.” – An Unfinished Life, by Robert Dallek (pgs. 194-195)

Classic statement on Weiner from Democratic grand dame Diane Feinstein, “I just view it with great surprise and dismay. That’s all I can say.”

Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Sen. Patty Murray, said “of course” Weiner’s actions make it tough for Dems in ’12. That’s malarkey, especially in the Senate, where Dems were in trouble long before Weiner’s weiner went wide.

Thanks to Rep. Paul Ryan’s Medicare-ending budget scheme, the House could be in play for Democrats.

Pres. Obama’s problems are economic not moral.

Now, giving Andrew Breitbart control over your life because you were stupid is Rep. Weiner’s own fault. But any notion that Breitbart was going to uphold his words on the “Today” show, where he said he’d hold the photo as insurance in case Weiner went after him, should be at the very least questioned, while I admit to believing he leaked it on purpose, no matter what he says.

In fact, two nights ago, Andrew Breitbart went out drinking with Anthony and several others — and according to Anthony, showed the picture to numerous people, even leaving his laptop computer unattended with the picture on the screen for long periods of time. One of those people was right wing flamethrower Ann Coulter. Here’s Anthony’s photo of Coulter reacting to the picture; notice that his computer is apparently there, but Breitbart is nowhere to be seen. – Charles Johnson

Johnson goes on to allege Breitbart handed his phone around the studio. As I tweeted yesterday, did Breitbart actually believe that talk radio shock jocks wouldn’t leak the photo?

Breitbart and shock jock statement from yesterday, which is laugh out loud hilarious at this point:

Earlier today, a photograph resembling one that I had withheld from publication in the Weinergate saga was released without my knowledge or permission.

Prior to the publication of our story on BigGovernment.com and BigJournalism.com this past Monday morning, it was necessary to show the pictures I had received from our source to several news producers, including several at major news networks, to prove that the additional material I described really did exist, which some have continued to doubt.

This morning, I showed a photograph, which our source claims Weiner sent her, to radio hosts “Opie and Anthony” of the Sirius XM radio network on my mobile device. Somehow, without my knowledge or permission, apparently a picture was taken of my mobile device, and subsequently published by Opie (Gregg Hughes) on Twitter.

His co-host, Anthony (Anthony Cumia), stated today:

“In regards to the photo of Anthony Weiner that was leaked by members of The Opie And Anthony show on 6/8, I want to make it clear that Andrew Breitbart had no knowledge that this photo was being made public. A phone with the photo was being displayed and a camera in the studio caught it. It was then uploaded to twitter [sic], again, without Andrew Breitbarts [sic] knowledge.”

I regret that this occurred.

Needless to say, neither Breitbart or Anthony “regret” the release of the photo.

The Washington political establishments of both big parties are not hip. But they deliver verdicts differently. Republicans allow disgraced politicians like Vitter to keep on keeping on. Democratic self-loathing doesn’t allow for that and with so many Blue Dog Democrats now holding sway it will take the strength of Huma Abedin and the dogged tenacity Weiner’s exhibited on the House floor before to weather the party’s wrath that continues to build.

The calls for resignation remain a mistake, especially looking at new generations of potential politicians waiting in the wings. Social media mistakes will be common to many good people coming up the ranks in politics, which Krystal Ball represented in the last cycle. But it shouldn’t be a deal breaker, nor should we continue to expect what never can be delivered: perfection in our politicians.

Weiner’s no Jack Kennedy and he’s no Bill Clinton. But at least his wife Huma is carrying his child and his cheating is virtual (at this point, though it really doesn’t matter if it crossed over after his X-rated exposure). You can’t say that about Arnold Schwarzenegger, John Edwards, David Vitter or the scores of other politicians who’ve been unmasked.

If Weiner had only paid a prostitute he wouldn’t be in this trouble, as David Vitter proves. The Washington political establishment can handle the oldest profession pitfall; they just can’t wrap their heads around virtual sex.

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