PTSD

Here's some interesting writing on the mid-term election. First off, Jonathan Chait, on policy vs. politics (in response to Ross Douthat):

Which is to say, if Douthat is correct about his political premises, both parties had to choose between politics and policy. Democrats could have minimized their losses at the cost of sacrificing the health reform they wanted. Or Republicans could have minimized the scope of health care reform, at the cost of minimizing their potential wave. Democrats chose the best policy, and Republicans chose the best politics. I'm happy with the choice. Mitch McConnell won his election, and Democrats won health care reform. The latter is going to around a lot longer than the former.

And I would agree. However, I also agree with The New York Times that Obama needs to do more than legislate, he has to lead, and this is where he failed in the two years leading to yesterday's debacle:

Mr. Obama, and his party, have to do a far better job of explaining their vision and their policies. Mr. Obama needs to break his habits of neglecting his base voters and of sitting on the sidelines and allowing others to shape the debate. He needs to do a much better job of stiffening the spines of his own party’s leaders.

He has made it far too easy for his opponents to spin and distort what Americans should see as genuine progress in very tough times: a historic health care reform, a stimulus that headed off an even deeper recession, financial reform to avoid another meltdown.

Mr. Obama has a lot of difficult work ahead of him. The politics in Washington will likely get even nastier. Before he can hope to build the minimal bipartisan consensus needed to move ahead, Mr. Obama will have to rally more Americans to the logic of his policies.

Finally, the most brutal piece of all, from John Judis, on how Obama deserved the beating (for the reasons above) but the damage of the GOP tide to our economy could last decades:

The Republicans may not have a mandate to repeal health care, but they do have one to cut spending. Many voters have concluded that Obama’s stimulus program actually contributed to the rise in unemployment and that cutting public spending will speed a recovery. It’s complete nonsense, as the experience of the United States in 1937 or of Japan in the 1990s demonstrated, but it will guide Republican thinking in Congress, and prevent Obama and the Democrats from passing a new stimulus program. Republicans will accede to tax cuts, especially if they are skewed toward the wealthy, but tax cuts can be saved rather than spent. They won’t halt the slowdown. Which leads me to expect that the slowdown will continue—with disastrous results for the country.

And that’s only what one can expect over the next few years. Like the depressions of the 1890s and 1930s, this slowdown was also precipitated by the exhaustion of opportunities for economic growth. America’s challenge over the next decade will be to develop new industries that can produce goods and services that can be sold on the world market. The United States has a head start in biotechnology and computer technology, but as the Obama administration recognized, much of the new demand will focus on the development of renewable energy and green technology. As the Chinese, Japanese, and Europeans understand, these kinds of industries require government coordination and subsidies. But the new generation of Republicans rejects this kind of industrial policy. They even oppose Obama’s obviously successful auto bailout.

Instead, when America finally recovers, it is likely to re-create the older economic structure that got the country in trouble in the first place: dependence on foreign oil to run cars; a bloated and unstable financial sector that primarily feeds upon itself and upon a credit-hungry public; boarded-up factories; and huge and growing trade deficits with Asia. These continuing trade deficits, combined with budget deficits, will finally reduce confidence in the dollar to the point where it ceases to be a viable international currency.

Buckle up, America. Because unless there's a potent political force either invigorated or reinvigorated to beat this back, the very citizens who voted this GOP wave to power will be recipients of an even greater wealth disparity that we've already achieved, as America drives towards Third World status. Because Senator-elect Rand Paul (R-KY), bless his Galtian heart, has made the Republican economic policy perfectly clear:

"We all either work for rich people, or sell things to rich people."

And the 21st Century New Feudalistic Era is hereby official.

The Narcissism of the Baggers

Matt Taibbi has another blistering story in the latest issue of Rolling Stone, this one about his adventures at Tea Party rallies and explaining how they were fueled to prominence and whatever cohesion they have by corporate interests and Republican insiders. By far the most compelling stuff is his take on the partiers themselves:

"Let me get this straight," I say to David. "You've been picking up a check from the government for decades, as a tax assessor, and your wife is on Medicare. How can you complain about the welfare state?"

"Well," he says, "there's a lot of people on welfare who don't deserve it. Too many people are living off the government."

"But," I protest, "you live off the government. And have been your whole life!"

"Yeah," he says, "but I don't make very much." Vast forests have already been sacrificed to the public debate about the Tea Party: what it is, what it means, where it's going. But after lengthy study of the phenomenon, I've concluded that the whole miserable narrative boils down to one stark fact: They're full of shit. All of them. At the voter level, the Tea Party is a movement that purports to be furious about government spending — only the reality is that the vast majority of its members are former Bush supporters who yawned through two terms of record deficits and spent the past two electoral cycles frothing not about spending but about John Kerry's medals and Barack Obama's Sixties associations. The average Tea Partier is sincerely against government spending — with the exception of the money spent on them. In fact, their lack of embarrassment when it comes to collecting government largesse is key to understanding what this movement is all about..

He goes into the funding behind the Tea Party, etc., some of which you may have read before, and then digs into the race angle:

It would be inaccurate to say the Tea Partiers are racists. What they are, in truth, are narcissists. They're completely blind to how offensive the very nature of their rhetoric is to the rest of the country. I'm an ordinary middle-aged guy who pays taxes and lives in the suburbs with his wife and dog — and I'm a radical communist? I don't love my country? I'm a redcoat? Fuck you! These are the kinds of thoughts that go through your head as you listen to Tea Partiers expound at awesome length upon their cultural victimhood, surrounded as they are by America-haters like you and me or, in the case of foreign-born president Barack Obama, people who are literally not Americans in the way they are.

It's not like the Tea Partiers hate black people. It's just that they're shockingly willing to believe the appalling horseshit fantasy about how white people in the age of Obama are some kind of oppressed minority. That may not be racism, but it is incredibly, earth-shatteringly stupid.

Taibbi describes the scene in Kentucky, where Rand Paul is the #1 Tea Party idol, even though he's lived off government largesse via Medicare payments that he hypocritically does not want to see cut to doctors, all the time getting more and more cozy with and castrated by the Republican Party establishment that he ran against in the primary:

With all the "just for the primary" stuff out of the way, Paul's platform began to rapidly "evolve." Previously opposed to erecting a fence on the Mexican border, Paul suddenly came out in favor of one. He had been flatly opposed to all farm subsidies; faced with having to win a general election in a state that receives more than $265 million a year in subsidies, Paul reversed himself and explained that he was only against subsidies to "dead farmers" and those earning more than $2 million. Paul also went on the air with Fox News reptile Sean Hannity and insisted that he differed significantly from the Libertarian Party, now speaking more favorably about, among other things, judicious troop deployments overseas.

Beyond that, Paul just flat-out stopped talking about his views — particularly the ones that don't jibe with right-wing and Christian crowds, like curtailing the federal prohibition on drugs. Who knows if that had anything to do with hawkish Christian icon Sarah Palin agreeing to headline fundraisers for Paul, but a huge chunk of the candidate's libertarian ideals have taken a long vacation.

I've long thought Rand Paul a lightweight/milquetoast, especially compared to his very honest and mostly consistent father, Ron. Rand looks so weak next to his Democratic opponent for Senate, Jack Conway, Kentucky Attorney General and a guy who has the bearing of a sheriff:

If Rand were a Dem he's be laughed out of Kentucky -- too weak-looking for that state or many others -- but it's a crazy year and the South is crazy Republican right now.

Y'know, the worst thing that could happen to the Tea Party isn't necessarily that all their candidates lose. It's that enough of them win to take the bloom off the rose by the next General Election.

Too bad it'll be hell on America.

Atlas Toked

So it turns out that Kentucky GOP Senate candidate Rand Paul was a stoned-out kidnapper in college:

The strangest episode of Paul's time at Baylor occurred one afternoon in 1983 (although memories about all of these events are understandably a bit hazy, so the date might be slightly off), when he and a NoZe brother paid a visit to a female student who was one of Paul's teammates on the Baylor swim team. According to this woman, who requested anonymity because of her current job as a clinical psychologist, "He and Randy came to my house, they knocked on my door, and then they blindfolded me, tied me up, and put me in their car. They took me to their apartment and tried to force me to take bong hits. They'd been smoking pot." After the woman refused to smoke with them, Paul and his friend put her back in their car and drove to the countryside outside of Waco, where they stopped near a creek. "They told me their god was 'Aqua Buddha' and that I needed to bow down and worship him," the woman recalls. "They blindfolded me and made me bow down to 'Aqua Buddha' in the creek. I had to say, 'I worship you Aqua Buddha, I worship you.' At Baylor, there were people actively going around trying to save you and we had to go to chapel, so worshiping idols was a big no-no."

Not surprisingly, Rand's memory is foggy on this event. However, he's still able to whine about being treated unfairly by the media, as all modern rightwing nutjobs do when being challenged by anyone other than their Fox News support system:



If Atlas is looking at Rand Paul right now, he's certainly shrugging.

Don't bogart, Rand!

But of course

Of course they did:

The House Energy and Commerce Committee released dozens of internal documents that outline several problems on the deepsea rig in the days and weeks before the April 20 explosion that set in motion the largest environmental disaster in U.S. history. Investigators found that BP was badly behind schedule on the project and losing hundreds of thousands of dollars with each passing day, and responded by cutting corners in the well design, cementing and drilling mud efforts and the installation of key safety devices.

"Time after time, it appears that BP made decisions that increased the risk of a blowout to save the company time or expense. If this is what happened, BP's carelessness and complacency have inflicted a heavy toll on the Gulf, its inhabitants, and the workers on the rig," said Democratic Reps. Henry A. Waxman and Bart Stupak.

Of course, he isn't -- why would he:

Rand Paul, who touts his career as a Kentucky eye doctor as part of his outsider credentials in his campaign for U.S. Senate, isn't certified by his profession's leading group.

He tried Monday to bat away questions about it by calling it an attack on his livelihood, saying the scrutiny stems from his challenge of a powerful medical group over a certification policy he thought was unfair.

The libertarian-leaning Republican helped create a rival certification group more than a decade ago. He said the group has since recertified several hundred ophthalmologists, despite not being recognized the American Board of Medical Specialties – the governing group for two dozen medical specialty boards.

Of course they did. Do:

So, Halliburton creates offshore entities to circumvent the U.S. ban on doing business in Iran, and part of what passes through this truly ridiculous loophole is nuclear enabling technology. All of the profit ends up in a Cayman Islands shell company so there's no U.S. tax burden, and when we have to go interdict a nuclear armed Iran Halliburton gets paid again supporting our military in the conflict.

But of course!

Meltdown. Meow!

I thought the Rand Paul story would have subsided but he appeared on ABC's Good Morning America with George Stephanopoulos and had even more of a meltdown than with Rachel Maddow last night. As one of our readers has commented, when pure Libertarian ideas are brought to light and the proponents forced to explain them outside of their own self-supporting echo chamber, the carefully constructed ideological house of cards collapses -- and in this case with it, the candidate and the man:



Starting with the victimized whining about not getting a honeymoon -- because he actually had to explain his views the day after calling out President Obama like a hot young punk -- through his complaint that it is somehow un-American to blame BP (i.e. British Petroleum) for the largest environmental disaster in U.S.A. history, he comes off like a not ready for primetime l-o-s-e-r. Sure, Rand, "accidents happen." Especially when you skip all the safety procedures and testing put in place to keep them from happening.

The upshot is that someone has pulling Rand Paul back inside for re-grooving -- he's now become only the third guest in Meet the Press history to cancel on an appearance (sharing the honor with -- ah the irony -- Louis Farrakhan and Prince Bandar bin Khaled al-Faisal of Saudi Arabia. I expect that the GOP establishment is sending in some of their top consultants to teach Rand how to be exactly the kind of politician he and his partiers abhor.

Media attention is already starting to turn to Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway who's appeared of sound mind and body on Wolf Blitzer tonight, a clear responsible alternative to the loony loose cannon who can no longer be relied upon to know where he stands on any real world issue. He even accepted Wolf's on-the-spot debate request -- Conway said he'd be happy to come back on the show to debate Paul. Not shying away.

No meowwww-owie.

Welcome to the Big Time, Rand

So GOP Kentucky Senate nominee Rand Paul -- the Tea Party choice -- was allowed to hang himself by Rachel Maddow on the subject of the five decade old Civil Rights Act, which outlawed discrimination based on race in our USA:



Yes, true libertarians (Libertarians?) don't believe the federal government has the right to regulate anything private. Really. So while this extremist point of view seems reasonable and divorced from racism, it's actually pointing out the relationship between the Tea Party and racism, per Bob Cesca:

However, he obviously supports allowing businesses to engage in racial discrimination with impunity. Evidently, if the government says it's against the law to run a whites-only business, this is a bridge too far for Rand Paul.
...

Rand Paul's extremist position on the Civil Right Act underscores a major flaw in libertarian ideology, and it further cements the connection between the tea party movement and race.

Libertarianism, which both Ron and Rand Paul famously embrace, suggests the free market is a significant and vital component of liberty. Private businesses are capable of accomplishing everything, and government can't interfere or regulate those businesses in any way. The free market will police itself. Just leave it be.

Private industry can pave roads, educate children, put out fires and protect our streets from drunk drivers. It can shuttle our kids to corporate schools and back, it can provide clean water to our homes and they can guarantee our meat and vegetables aren't contaminated with diseases. And by the way, in a nation that's 70 percent white, private businesses can choose to do all of these things for white people only. Private businesses can provide everything we need, but only offer those services to white people.

And these businesses, according to libertarian ideology, can form monopolies if they want to. As we're all painfully aware from the health care debate, monopolies occur even in our current government-regulated system. Imagine what would happen in a totally unregulated free market.

So, in Rand Paul's utopia, not only can Woolworth's prevent black people from sitting at its soda stand if it wants to, but a private, free market police corporation can set up shop in a community, buy up any competing police corporations and announce that it no longer serves black people or Jewish people or Hispanic people or gay people -- any minority segment of the population.

The Libertarians agree with Rand Paul, and accept that racism and segregation is an "unfortunate" evil in their fantasy for our society. While that does not inherently appear to make them racists, it points to their inability to accept a non-free market remedy. And again, Rand Paul may not be a racist himself, but his campaign manager, who was forced to quit for racist images on his MySpace page, and one assumes someone close to Paul, certainly appears to have been one. By his own evidence.

It turns out that Rand has a history of being against, for example, the federal Americans with Disabilities Act as well. And Ezra Klein has a whole list of questions on what Rand and his fellow Libertarians/Tea Partiers would accept:

For instance: Can the federal government set the private sector's minimum wage? Can it tell private businesses not to hire illegal immigrants? Can it tell oil companies what safety systems to build into an offshore drilling platform? Can it tell toy companies to test for lead? Can it tell liquor stores not to sell to minors? These are the sort of questions that Paul needs to be asked now, because the issue is not "area politician believes kooky but harmless thing." It's "area politician espouses extremist philosophy on issue he will be voting on constantly."

Over the course of the day, Rand Paul began walking back his statements on the Civil Rights Act, then running it back, basically skirting the main question he brought up while finally crying uncle -- "I would have voted yes" for the law. "There was a need for federal intervention."

I expect his dogwhistle followers will discount this reversal and in their hearts know Rand is still one of them, but it sure sounds like a same 'ol same 'ol politician to me.

Massive GOP FAIL to climax in November?

Primary Results

There is no GOP wave. It's a myth. There's a huge civil war going on in the Republican Party, whether the establishment coheres to fight their insurgency or not. There is no false equivalency on the Democratic side as progressives are far from a radical insurgency, in large part they're members of the angry middle as much or more than teabaggers.

I'm interested to see if the establishment GOP can recapture the Wall Street campaign money thanks to their opposition or weakening of the bank reform legislation. I've only seen the Left picket and protest on Wall Street -- where are the t.partiers? Can they remain bought off by an unregulated Libertarian approach to capitalism? Even if it cost them their pension fund?

I'll also be looking how insurgent KY GOP Senate nominee Rand Paul's public image develops. His father seems like a gentleman. Rand just called out Obama like a punk. Offering to pay for his ticket.

Vestiges of condescension.