Andrew Sullivan doesn't like Obama anymore

By Frank Moraes

You may remember Andrew Sullivan. He is a conservative Obama supporter. And after the first presidential debate, Sullivan had a very public freak out. That was understandable, a lot of liberals were similarly concerned, although he was much more ridiculous than most.

Now that Sullivan has got the president he wanted, Sullivan apparently thinks that Obama shouldn't do anything as rash as govern on his campaign promises. In a blog post yesterday, he writes, "Meeting In The Middle." In it, he quotes Ezra Klein and Michael Tomasky, basically saying the same thing: it is good to see that Obama has learned how to negotiate. Tomasky writes, "If the White House had instead yesterday offered a modest set of specific entitlement cuts and domestic spending cuts, that would have started the negotiations on GOP turf, since those are the two things the GOP wants."

Exactly!

But Sullivan thinks this is all wrong:

But he just got re-elected. It's a classic time for magnanimity -- and yet he began the critical negotiations by poking the defeated GOP in the eye. This is not the new politics. It's the old partisanship. I hope it works. I fear it won't.

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It's a little game we play

By Mustang Bobby

Is there anyone out there who didn't see this one coming a mile away?

Republicans have rejected President Obama's opening budget bid.

In a Capitol meeting with House Speaker John Boehner Thursday, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner submitted the Obama administration's proposal for addressing medium term deficits, and avoiding across the board tax increases and spending cuts at the end of the year.

Republicans called the proposal outlandish and brushed it aside as unserious. But it's almost entirely comprised of policies Obama campaigned on and included in his budget for the current fiscal year. And by satisfying GOP demands that Obama offer up a plan that includes spending cuts, it paints Republicans, who have been reluctant to specify their own Medicare cut proposal, into a tight corner.

The White House formally proposes to increase tax revenues by $1.6 trillion over 10 years by increasing top marginal income tax rates and taxes on both capital gains and dividends, and by limiting tax deductions for top earners, according to Republicans.

I am pretty sure I predicted this in August 2011 when we did this the last time. It would start out with everyone saying that they were sure they could come to an agreement to avoid the imminent threat, then each would come up with something, and the jousting of the talking points would begin. The Republicans would accuse the White House of not being serious (irony and self-awareness not being their strong suit), then they would come back with something equally unserious. Meanwhile the Very Serious People on the cable shows would go back and forth with their chin-stroking about who's at fault and decide it's both sides, even if it isn't. And life goes on as the deadline approaches.

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Republican foolishness on "fiscal cliff" negotiations

By Frank Moraes

I tend to think that Republicans are more evil than stupid. But sometimes I wonder. For example: Republican operatives have leaked Obama's initial offer to deal with the "austerity bomb" (which is a much more accurate term than "fiscal cliff"). That's fine, but their reason for doing it is foolish. They think they can attack the president as not taking the negotiations seriously. No one other than Fox News is going to accept that narrative.

Instead, most people are reacting like Ezra Klein, who wrote, " Obama to GOP: I'm Done Negotiating With Myself." In fact, Klein even says that he agrees that the offer isn't serious. But I don't see this at all. Thus far, the only thing the GOP has said is that they wouldn't accept increases in tax rates at all. And this is coming from the party that has no real leverage. If no deal is reached, taxes go up by $500 billion dollars per year -- most of that on high income earners.

Not all liberals are happy. Robert Reich thinks that Obama has already given away too much. He thinks there should have been no signaling of a willingness to raise the top tax bracket to some level less than the Clinton rate and that cuts to Medicare should have been completely off the table. I agree with him on the first point. On the second, the administration claims that these savings will not come from reduced benefits, so I will go along with them.

Overall, I'm pleased that the offer looks as good as it does. (Even Digby seems moderately pleased, and these days that's saying something!) As may others, I am glad to see that that the president is not pre-negotiating.

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Calling out Republican bullshit on the "fiscal cliff"

By Michael J.W. Stickings

At Time, Michael Grunwald calls out the media for regurgitating Republican bullshit over and over again despite all the contradictions:

It's really amazing to see political reporters dutifully passing along Republican complaints that President Obama's opening offer in the fiscal cliff talks is just a recycled version of his old plan, when those same reporters spent the last year dutifully passing along Republican complaints that Obama had no plan. It's even more amazing to see them pass along Republican outrage that Obama isn't cutting Medicare enough, in the same matter-of-fact tone they used during the campaign to pass along Republican outrage that Obama was cutting Medicare.

This isn't just cognitive dissonance. It's irresponsible reporting. Mainstream media outlets don't want to look partisan, so they ignore the BS hidden in plain sight, the hypocrisy and dishonesty that defines the modern Republican Party.

It's a great piece. Make sure to read the whole thing.

My only quibble: It's not at all amazing to see this. Such irresponsibility is central to the way these reporters do their business. It's the rule, not the exception.

A.M. Headlines

(Huffington Post): "Fiscal cliff progress suffers as Republicans, Democrats remain divided"

(New York Times): "In latest campaign, Obama takes deficit battle to the public"

(The Hill): "Democrats: We're not overreaching in debt negotiations with Republicans"

(Reuters): "Attacker at Wyoming college kills two, commits suicide"

(Reuters): "Boy Scouts allowed to keep sexual abuse files private"

Obama to Romney: "So... you really thought you were going to win?"

By Michael J.W. Stickings

You may have seen this photo already, but here it is: Obama and Romney in the Oval Office after their turkey chili and chicken salad lunch on Thursday.

(And, yes, the Romney Campaign really thought their guy was going to win -- and maybe Mitt himself did, hence no prepared concession speech. See this must-read piece by Noam Scheiber at TNR on the campaign's way-off internal polls.)

I recall Central Park in fall...

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Our "Vimeo of the Day" is this lovely time-lapse video of Central Park (yes, in fall) by Jamie Scott:

One of the most striking things about New York City is the fall colors and there's no better place to view this then Central Park. I chose 15 locations in the park and revisited them 2 days a week for six months, recording all camera positions and lens information to create consistency in the images. All shots were taken just after sunrise. 

(Make sure to watch this on full-screen.)

Having lived in New Jersey for a number of years when I was a teenager, I can confirm that Central Park is beautiful in fall, and the period between Labor Day and Christmas was always my favorite to be in the city.

Speaking of Central Park in fall, though, I can't resist posting "Danke Schoen." You probably know it best, as I do, from Ferris Bueller (the parade scene), but let's go back a bit further into the mists of time.

No, not to Bert Kaempfert in 1962, nor to Wayne Newton in 1963, but rather to the lovely Brenda Lee in 1964, from her album By Request.

Richard, this one's for you. It's about your speed, right?

Charity case: Anti-gay bigotry at the Salvation Army

By Mustang Bobby

This is the time of year when you start seeing those folks standing outside stores and shopping malls with the Salvation Army kettles, ringing their little bells, asking you to put in some money. It's a tradition going back decades, and they do it to help those less fortunate. The Salvation Army also has collected and distributed a lot of funds and help during the recent natural disasters such as Hurricane Sandy, and they do provide help for the less fortunate. That's very noble of them, and I am sure that there are a lot of people who are grateful for their assistance.

But remember one thing: the Salvation Army is not a charity. It is an evangelical church, and despite protests to the contrary, they are anti-gay and promote discrimination in their hiring practices against LGBT people. No, they do not discriminate against people who avail themselves of their services or receive help from them, but if you want to work for them, you can't be gay.

Far be it from me to tell you who to give your money to in terms of charitable giving; that is strictly between you and your purse. If you want to support the Salvation Army in what they do, please do.  But remember that it comes with a little bit of a price.

As for me, when I see those people standing outside the mall or a store, I smile and walk right on by. I do not wish to embarrass them by giving them any money that might be tainted by being earned by someone who would chew away at their theological fabric. That would be very uncharitable.

(For more on the Salvation Army's history on LGBT people, check out Americablog.) 

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Global thinker Paul Ryan

By Frank Moraes

Alec MacGillis at The New Republic has now written about "Paul Ryan, Global Thinker?" In the article, he alerts us to a new list from Foreign Policy, "100 Top Global Thinkers." Such exercises are always stupid. Earlier this year, I wrote about Rolling Stone's 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time, "Pathetic Rock Journalism at Rolling Stone." In that article, I was particularly upset that George Harrison was listed at number 11. But I have to give The Rolling Stone credit: George Harrison was, in fact, a guitarist. I don't think that Paul Ryan qualifies as a global thinker.

The article starts by listing Ryan's bona fides as a budget guy: cut Medicaid by a third -- check; privatize Medicare -- check; savage all remaining programs other than the military -- check! According to Foreign Policy these are "bold" ideas that Ryan gradually got the Republican Party to embrace.

Wait, wait, wait! Just hold the fuck on there! Stop!

We haven't even gotten to the foreign policy part of the argument and the magazine has already piled the bullshit so high I can't see. What they fail to mention is that the first step in Ryan's budget balancing plan is to cut income tax rates. So let's look at this plan. It lowers taxes (especially on the rich) and cuts spending on programs for the poor and middle class. This is what Republicans always want. This is not a budget; this is a Republican wish list. So Foreign Policy magazine gets a very slow start by not understanding anything about Paul Ryan's domestic agenda.

Halfway through their argument, the editors finally get to Paul Ryan's global thinking. They do this by lying, "In the 2012 presidential election, contender Mitt Romney didn't just champion Ryan's ideas -- he tapped the 42-year-old libertarian-leaning lawmaker as his running mate, catapulting the debate over the size and scope of the U.S. government to the top of the political agenda." This one isn't even close. MacGillis responds, "Well, not exactly -- Romney tapped Ryan and didn't champion his ideas."

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How the Republican Party could save itself

By Richard K. Barry

I'm not suggesting it was brilliance on my part, but just after the election I said that the Republican Party would break into warring factions on either side of an analysis of why they lost. On one side would be those who would say that the message was fine and that if only some technical aspects of the campaign could be fixed, they would win next time. On the other side would be those calling for a reexamination of basic values and orientation of the GOP.

It was a no-brainer, I understand. But it has been interesting to see who has come out on which side of the debate.

Mike Murphy, one of the smarter Republicans around, sees the need to do more than tinker with campaign techniques.

Writing in Time magazine he says:

Identifying the problem is easy. The Republican challenge is not about better voter-turnout software; it is about policy. We repel Latinos, the fastest-growing voter group in the country, with our nativist opposition to immigration reform that offers a path to citizenship. We repel younger voters, who are much more secular than their parents, with our opposition to same-sex marriage and our scolding tone on social issues. And we have lost much of our once solid connection to the middle class on kitchen-table economic issues.

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The voters that mattered

By Mustang Bobby

Stuart Stevens, the chief strategist of the Romney campaign, tried to make chicken salad out of chicken shit in an op-ed in The Washington Post the other day:

On Nov. 6, Romney carried the majority of every economic group except those with less than $50,000 a year in household income. That means he carried the majority of middle-class voters. While John McCain lost white voters younger than 30 by 10 points, Romney won those voters by seven points, a 17-point shift. Obama received 4½ million fewer voters in 2012 than 2008, and Romney got more votes than McCain.

Oh, and Barack Obama wouldn't have won if he hadn't been... y'know... black:

There was a time not so long ago when the problems of the Democratic Party revolved around being too liberal and too dependent on minorities. Obama turned those problems into advantages and rode that strategy to victory. But he was a charismatic African American president with a billion dollars, no primary and media that often felt morally conflicted about being critical. How easy is that to replicate?

Well, they're not going to let that happen again. 

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Republicans reject Obama's initial "fiscal cliff" proposal, but he was right to make it

By Michael J.W. Stickings

The Times reports:

Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner presented the House speaker, John A. Boehner, a detailed proposal on Thursday to avert the year-end fiscal crisis with $1.6 trillion in tax increases over 10 years, $50 billion in immediate stimulus spending, home mortgage refinancing and a permanent end to Congressional control over statutory borrowing limits.

The proposal, loaded with Democratic priorities and short on detailed spending cuts, met strong Republican resistance. In exchange for locking in the $1.6 trillion in added revenues, President Obama embraced the goal of finding $400 billion in savings from Medicare and other social programs to be worked out next year, with no guarantees.

Tax increases (on the rich)? Stimulus spending? No more Republican-made debt ceiling crises? Now that's some change I can believe in. No wonder Republicans immediately rejected the proposal.

So does that mean it was pointless? Absolutely not.


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Newark Mayor Cory Booker's options

By Richard K. Barry 

Democratic Newark Mayor Cory Booker might have a difficult time unseating Governor Chris Christie in New Jersey, but that's not Booker's only option. Public Policy Polling finds that Democrats in the state prefer Booker over incumbent Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D) for the Senate seat.  

This doesn't mean they don't like Lautenberg, only that they prefer Booker:

If Lautenberg was to retire -- or even if he doesn't -- the choice of New Jersey Democrats to be their next Senator is clear: Cory Booker. By a 59/22 margin Democrats say they would prefer their candidate in 2014 be Booker than Lautenberg. And Booker emerges as the strong favorite in an open seat situation too. 48% would want Booker as their candidate compared to 17% for Rob Andrews and 13% for Frank Pallone, both Congressmen who have shown an interest in moving up.

Booker would be even stronger than Lautenberg in a head to head match up with Guadagno, leading her 52 to 29. 48% of New Jersey voters have a favorable opinion of Booker to only 20% with a negative one. He's very popular with Democrats (60/13) and independents (45/21) and even comes close to breaking even with Republicans at 29/34. In the match up with Guadagno he takes 21% of the GOP vote while losing only 7% of Democrats, and wins independents by an 18 point margin.

The U.S. Senate is not exactly a bad gig and it might just be a good idea to leave Chris Christie alone, much as I'd love someone to take him down.


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The next Republican ploy to take down Susan Rice

By Mustang Bobby

Now that the attempt to turn the attack on Benghazi into the next Watergate has gone up like a popcorn fart, the Republicans who aren't yelling at Susan Rice to get off their lawn are now demanding that the next secretary of state be "independent." Huh?

I heard Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) make such a demand the other day on NPR. He thinks Ms. Rice is too much of a "loyal soldier" to the Obama administration to be effective in the job as Secretary of State. The Los Angeles Times picks up the story:

Corker, who will be the ranking Republican member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in the new congressional term, implied that he considered Rice too much of a partisan and urged Obama to pick a more "independent" person as chief diplomat.

"All of us here hold the secretary of State to a different standard than most Cabinet members," he said. "We want somebody of independence."

He implied that Rice, who is close to the president, was, instead, a "loyal soldier." Corker also seemed to contrast Rice and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, with whom he said he has had a positive and "transparent" relationship "from day one."

Collins said that after a 75-minute session with Rice she still had many unanswered questions and remains "troubled" that on the Benghazi issue Rice played "a political role at the height of a contentious presidential election campaign."

This is really very pure bullshit, the kind you can only get from the finest kind of partisan wingnut.

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A.M. Headlines

(USA Today): Fiscal cliff talks likely to go down to the wire"

(CBS News): "Will the Supreme Court weigh in on same-sex marriage?"

(New York Times): "For Secretary of State, GOP pushes old hand"

(Associated Press): "Pressuring GOP, Obama takes his fiscal plan to PA"

(Reuters): "Inventories boost economic growth but trend weak"

Petraeus: "I screwed up royally."

By Michael J.W. Stickings

He added in a hand-written letter to his buddy General James Shelton (e-mail not always being the best way to communicate): "I paid the price (appropriately) and I sought to do the right thing at the end of the day."

"And thus, the public apology tour begins," writes Joe Coscarelli at Daily Intel. 

Yes, he'll be back. And probably sooner than you think. This is just an early stage of a massive self-serving PR campaign to rehabilitate his image. And it'll work, even if the whole Myth (and Cult) of Petraeus has been punctured and temporarily deflated, because nothing goes over better in evangelical America, as well as in the media, than the whole fall from grace and redemption bullshit.

In the meantime, raise your hand if you feel sorry for the guy...

Didn't think so.

**********

For more, see Frank's post, "Cliches for David Petraeus," which includes the following: "Even after the mighty hero's fall, the mainstream media just can't let go. We are still greeted with pieces saying nothing other than, "Petraeus is great and what he did was minor." I agree about his affair being minor. He has committed far worse sins in public view to applauding media. But since we will never get this kind of discussion, we can at least hope that reporters will shut the fuck up about the man."

Metaphorical fellatio

By Frank Moraes

Matt Taibbi took one for the team; he read All In, Paula Broadwell's biography of General Petraeus. He referred to the book as "slobberific" -- a new word worth repeating.

The point of his article -- "One Interesting Thing About Paula Broadwell's Petraeus Biography" -- is that it is perfectly in keeping with authorized biographies generally. And that is a big problem. He even quotes Glenn Greenwald's well-known observation about media bias in modern America: "The overwhelming, driving bias of the US media is subservience to power, whoever happens to be wielding it."

Of course, Taibbi has his own way of getting his point across:

If you read All In carefully, the book's tone will remind you of pretty much any other authorized bio of any major figure in business or politics (particularly in business), and it will most particularly remind you of almost any Time or Newsweek famous-statesperson profile.

Which means: it's impossible to tell the difference between the tone of a reporter who we now know was literally sucking the dick of her subject and the tone of just about any other modern American reporter who is given access to a powerful person for a biography or feature-length profile.

*****

The real scandal in the Petraeus episode isn't that a would-be journalist was sleeping with her subject, it's that lots and lots of other journalists are doing the same thing -- metaphorically, anyway.

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I'm shocked, shocked, to learn that "voter fraud" was a cover for voter suppression by the GOP

By Comrade Misfit

Big surprise, eh? 

"The Republican Party, the strategists, the consultants, they firmly believe that early voting is bad for Republican Party candidates," [Former FL GOP Chairman Jim] Greer told The Post. "It's done for one reason and one reason only... 'We've got to cut down on early voting because early voting is not good for us,'" Greer said he was told by those staffers and consultants. "They never came in to see me and tell me we had a (voter) fraud issue," Greer said. "It's all a marketing ploy."

It was all a cover for the largest voter suppression campaign since the poll tax. But they screamed "Acorn, Fraud" repeatedly on Fox News, Hate Radio, and all of the fellow-traveling blogs and what not.

The smart ones knew what they were doing, but all of the Teabaggers and other Wingnuts, the useful idiots of the corporatists and the plutocrats, swallowed their bullshit hook, line, sinker, and fishing pole. And for most of those clowns, they'll go to their graves believing that in-person voter fraud was a grave threat. 

(Cross-posted at Just an Earth-Bound Misfit, I.)

Old ideas from young Republicans

By Frank Moraes

The other night on Colbert Report, there was Reihan Salam explaining how the Republicans are going to win the hearts of the working class. And he had the book he wrote with Ross Douthat, Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream. Ah yes, the Grand New Party. The book is described as, "Two of the Right's rising young thinkers call upon the GOP to focus on the interests and needs of working-class voters." The basic idea is simple: the Republican Party should reinvent itself as the party of the working class and focus on making the base of the party the married heterosexual couple.

There is a fundamental problem here: this is already what the party claims to stand for. All Salam and Douthat are calling for is a continuation of the same except that Republicans should stop getting us into wars all the time. While I admit that this would be an improvement, I doubt that it would do much to make the Republican Party more appealing to working class Americans. This comes back to the issue I talk about over and over again: it's the poor, stupid. The problem with the Republicans is not cosmetic nor is it focus. The American people didn't vote for Obama while thinking, "You know, if it weren't for Romney's hateful rhetoric and terrible foreign policy, I'd vote for him!" The Republican economic policies are toxic.

But this doesn't stop the mainstream media from going all gaga over young Republicans offering up a vision of a Republican Party that doesn't seem quite so horrible.


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A fun fact about Ohio

By Richard K. Barry

Everyone talks about the importance of Ohio as a battleground state. It's hard to win the presidency without it, etc., etc. But the fact is that, historically speaking, it is one seriously divided state. 

As Smart Politics reports:

Ohio has been the most politically divided state in the country in presidential elections for the last 184 years -- boasting the lowest average victory margin and the largest number and percentage of races decided by less than five points.

Although most of the projected battleground states in the 2012 election fizzled out and were not nearly the highly competitive races that many media outlets had expected them to be, Ohio, once again, did not disappoint.

Won by Obama by just 2 points (provisional ballots pending), the state was the second most closely-decided in the nation, behind only Florida at 0.9 points.

I leave it to those well-versed in Ohio political history to explain it, but it is a fun little fact. 

Jeb '16?

By Mustang Bobby

Is former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush looking into running for president in 2016? Does a goose go barefoot?

Via Kyle Munzenrieder at the Miami New Times Riptide blog:

Jeb Bush spent most of the past four years denying that he would run for president... in 2012. He literally never missed an opportunity to tell anyone who would listen in no uncertain terms that he would not be running, but when asked about 2016 he seems to have a change of tone. He told National Review this morning that he was meeting with a bunch of former staffers and consultants just steps from the White House and didn't directly deny he's mulling the idea of a 2016 run.

According to NRO, Bush assembled a bunch trusted former staffer at the J.W. Marriot [sic] Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue, just a short walk from the former home of his dad and brother.

Not only do I think it's likely that he'll run, I agree with BooMan: he could be a real contender:

It's obviously not helpful to share a name with two former presidents, neither of whom who are remembered fondly. But the truth is that W. was an anomaly in the family. His father was an extraordinarily shady man with deep ties into the worst elements of our intelligence community. But he was also a competent president who ably managed the fall of the Berlin Wall and the crumbling of the Soviet Union. He was not a movement conservative or a neo-conservative or a paleoconservative. Of all the Republican presidents since Eisenhower, Poppy is the only one I would trust with our national security. That doesn't mean I would like his foreign policy, but I'd trust that he wouldn't get us all killed. The closest facsimile to Poppy is Jeb. He's literally the only person on the right who could plausibly be a commander in chief in four years.

I would expect the base of the party to be very resistant to nominating Jeb, but they were very reluctant to nominate McCain and Romney, too. You can't beat something with nothing. And if Jeb Bush has no stronger competition than Bobby Jindal and Rick Santorum, he's a shoo-in to win the nomination.

Even in the eyes of Democrats here in Florida, Jeb Bush was not a disaster as governor. He was able to work with Democrats in the legislature when they still had some clout in Tallahassee. That could be a problem for the Tea Party; they're on the record as not being wild about former governors that are willing to work across the aisle (see Romney, Mitt). And of course there's also the other rising star from Florida who would love nothing better than to make his move in 2016. As Kyle notes, "Somewhere Marco Rubio is fidgeting nervously."

Is it too early to cue up the Hillary machine?

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Rice and Benghazi: Why is this so fucking hard for Republicans to understand?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

And so the Republican obsession with the tragic Benghazi attack and its aftermath -- and specfically with comments Ambassador Susan Rice made on the Sunday talk shows about how the attack wasn't pre-meditated (and so not a planned act of terrorism) -- continues. Rice met with key Republicans on Capitol Hill the past couple of days, but apparently the meetings didn't go well. Or, at least, these key Republicans didn't emerge from the meetings content with what they heard:

The Wednesday meeting in a secure briefing room in the Capitol basement came a day after a similar sit-down Rice had with three key voices on foreign policy and defense issues went terribly wrong. GOP Sens. John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Kelly Ayotte, all members of the Armed Services Committee, said they were more "troubled" about the Benghazi affair than they had been before their meeting with Rice.

And Graham and Ayotte went so far as to say they would place a hold on her possible nomination.

And this gang of three was joined by one of the Beltway's overhyped "moderates":

Even Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, just the type of moderate Republican who might help break a filibuster on a nomination, said there were still too many questions about why Rice incorrectly characterized the Sept. 11 assault in five Sunday talk show interviews as the result of spontaneous protests at the same time the Libyan president was calling it a terrorist attack.

"I don't understand why she would not at least qualify her response to that question," Collins told reporters after emerging from a 75-minute, closed-door meeting with Rice.

Troubled... don't understand...

Seriously, are they fucking stupid?

I've said this before, but I'll say it again: "On Benghazi, it's desperately partisan Republicans vs. Obama, the CIA, and the facts."


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This is just mean -- and funny

By Richard K. Barry

Ha, ha, ha... I'm a walking punchline.

And while it's just mean, I didn't say I didn't like it. GQ magazine has Mitt Romney No. 1 on its list of "The Least Influential People of 2012":

Was anyone inspired by Mitt Romney? Did anyone vote enthusiastically for Mitt Romney? Of course not. Voting for Romney is like hooking up with the last single person at the bar at 4 a.m. The only successful thing he did this year was embody every black stand-up comedian's impression of a white person. Thank God the election's over. No more endless photos of Mitt staring winsomely off-camera with that attempted smile on his face. No more glaring campaign mishaps week after week after week. No more labored media efforts to make him look like anything other than Sheldon Adelson's pampered money Dumpster. Good-bye, Mitt. I hope you enjoy the rest of your life quietly ensconced at Lake Winnipesaukee, blissfully ignorant of the plight of anyone who doesn't have $300 million squirreled away in the Bahamas.

Good joke, but to be fair, I'm sure some people voted for Mitt Romney enthusiastically. The truth in the joke, however, is that it would be difficult to think of a presidential election in which most of the enthusiasm for one candidate was based significantly on hatred for the other candidate. That may be a kind of enthusiasm, but it is a miserable kind. 

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Rice burners

By Carl 

It strikes me that the Republicans are being a little disingenuous in their efforts to derail the not-even-announced nomination of UN Ambassador Susan Rice to Secretary of State, replacing the resigning Hillary Clinton.

Her CV, for one, suggests an intelligent and gifted person who would be adept at managing foreign affairs for the Obama administration, perfect for the job. In this, she would outshine the presumptive second choice, Senator John Kerry, which is no easy feat.

The controversy, as you know doubt know ad nauseam, is Rice's comments in the wake of the September 11 attacks on the Benghazi compound of the American ambassador there.

The facts are pretty clear: an organized attack occured on the compound on September 11. Either coincidentally or in a coordinated misdirection, there was also a protest in Egypt over some bloody idiot's idea of a prank on the same day. It doesn't really matter how Egypt played into this, except it also made a convenient excuse to buy a little time if needed.

Rice went on the Sunday talk shows, and implied that the Egypt attack may have been a part of the Libyan massacre, even if tangentially. This was the talking point the CIA had handed up to the administration, which greenlighted it as an interim explanation, even though it was clear from the get-go this was a terrorist attack.

Why the deception? The CIA had assets on the ground in Libya that would have been exposed if their information had been made public.

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A.M. Headlines

(USA Today): "Obama, Romney maintain awkward tradition"

(Politico): "Inside the talks: fiscal cliff deal emerging"

(Wall Street Journal): "Fed stimulus likely in 2013"

(Reuters): "New York lobbies for $42 billion in Sandy disaster aid"

(Washington Post): "British press braces for censure, fears  clampdown, as media ethics inquiry reports"

(Buffalo News): "Tickets sold in Arizona, Missouri win Powerball jackpot"

Rice burners: McCain, Graham, and Ayotte continue to bully Susan Rice over Benghazi

By Mustang Bobby

This was doomed from the outset:

What was supposed to be a make-nice meeting on Tuesday seemed only to make things more contentious between the White House and Senate Republicans over U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice's comments following the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya.

Rice came face to face with some of her harshest Republican critics, hoping to allay their concerns about whether she misled Americans regarding what precipitated the assault. President Obama has staunchly defended Rice and is said to be considering her for his next secretary of state, but the meeting apparently only served to deepen GOP skepticism.

"Bottom line, I'm more disturbed now than I was before," said Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.).

Rice and Acting CIA Director Michael Morell met privately with Graham and Sens. John McCain (Ariz.) and Kelly Ayotte (N.H.), three members of the Senate Armed Services Committee who have been leading the GOP charge against the administration since the attack that led to the deaths of four Americans, including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens.

Ayotte said she left the meeting with Rice "more troubled, not less."

McCain told reporters that he and his colleagues remain "significantly troubled by many of the answers that we got and some that we didn't get concerning evidence that was overwhelming leading up to the attack on our consulate that we tried to get."

Unless Ms. Rice had gone into the meeting and slit open her wrists, there wasn't going to be any other outcome than what we got, so the only thing you can say is that at least she tried. She would have been excoriated if she hadn't made the effort.

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God ain't on Kentucky's side

By Frank Moraes

Long-time reader and author James McCollough sent me to an amazing article at AlterNet by Laura Gottesdiener, "A Year in Jail for Not Believing in God? How Kentucky Is Persecuting Atheists." I don't think of myself as an atheist especially; although I do self-identify as one, I think it gives an entirely incorrect idea of where I stand on matters spiritual. But this article is an outrage and shows one reason why I have no respect for the conservative Christian movement in this country.

The Kentucky law states that their Homeland Security building must have plaques in front of it claiming how we are only really secure thanks to God. The plaques read in part, "The safety and security of the Commonwealth cannot be achieved apart from reliance upon Almighty God." And if some bureaucrat doesn't install these plaques, he faces up to a year in jail. This law was taken to the Kentucky state Supreme Court, which upheld it.

This law seems clearly unconstitutional. But frankly, I'm not at all sure that the current U.S. Supreme Court would agree. At this point, we seem to have 4 political hacks on the court who might as well have been elected by the Tea Party. One thing is for sure: if this case does go to the US Supreme Court, some of the justices will vote to uphold. And that is a sad testament to the state of our "justice" system.

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David Axelrod talks about the campaign

By Richard K. Barry

David Axelrod, senior strategist for the Obama campaign, was at the University of Chicago talking to an audience about the election, particularly those things that surprised him about the Romney campaign.

Among those surprises was that Republican super PACs didn't attack Obama far earlier; Mitt Romney didn't  invest more in his ground game; and, Romney picked Paul Ryan as his running mate. 

Axelrod said that he was a bit surprised conservative Super PACs, which spent massive amounts of money, "didn't hit television and radio with anti-Obama ads until May." He added that "our air defenses weren't ready," meaning they didn't yet have the money to respond. As it put it, "they gave us a pass for some reason."

Another point he made was that the Romney campaign took too long to fashion a positive message about their candidate as a successful businessman, waiting until late fall to get there. The Obama campaign assumed that once Romney secured the nomination he would craft a more positive message about where he would take the country, generally considered an important aspect of any winning campaign.

As for Ryan, Axelrod personally figured former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty would be the choice, possibly Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio. His doubts about Ryan were a function of tough-minded views on privatizing Social Security and making significant changes in Medicare.

And as for the Republicans' field operation, their comparatively small investment played into the Democrats' hands and was not forecast by Axelrod, either.

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I got mine...

By Mustang Bobby

James Kwak in The Atlantic on the future of entitlement programs:

When people say that we can't afford our entitlement programs, they're really saying that rich people won't pay the taxes necessary to sustain our entitlement programs. To be fair, many rich people probably would be willing to pay higher taxes if they knew the facts. But a small number of extremely rich people have successfully spread the myth that we can't afford our entitlement programs.

By the way, the term "entitlement" has been used to make it sound as if people are getting something for nothing. Of course that's bullshit. Everyone who collects a paycheck pays into Social Security and Medicare. But it's not like it's going into a savings account with their name on it; they're paying for the people on it now, and when they retire, the people working will be paying for them. So if everybody — and that includes those of you in the royal boxes — pays their fair share, the system works and it will keep on working.

Ironic that the ones who are the real freeloaders are the rich folk who don't give a rat's ass about anyone else.

Along those lines, I really like what Josh Marshall has to say about how to solve the fiscal crisis:

When you want to efficiently raise revenues, you raise rates. A major simplification of the structure, rooting out all the miscellaneous loopholes and special interest deductions, is probably also a good idea. But that's for fairness and efficiency. Not what you do if the federal coffers simply need more money.

Usually when people say they're willing to raise revenues but want to do it by closing loopholes, they're BSing you. And that's most of what we're hearing today. But I think we're at the point where some of the Republicans making these arguments have gotten themselves so wrapped up in a ball of anti-tax verbiage that they may actually be ready to accept some bizarre Rube Goldberg approach to deduction caps which would raise something like the same amount of revenue as tax rate hikes. And that may be possible.

But at the end of the day, just clean your clothes. If you've got some weird hangup about doing the laundry you could keep buying new clothes after each wearing. Or you could use more perfume. Or you could socialize only with people with no noses. But at end of the day, just f'ing clean your clothes. And the same way, just raise the rates.

Anything else is just people in denial or bargaining from people who need to quickly move through all five stages and get to acceptance. Or a fight they need to have with Grover Norquist. Whatever the problem is, get into therapy, get over it and don't inflict it on the rest of the country or the nation's finances.

Just do it.

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Undecided voters: The most important people in America

By Michael J.W. Stickings

In case you missed it, this is from the September 22 Saturday Night Live, hosted by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, which was on again this past Saturday.

Sure, the election's over, but this is still hilarious. Just as it will be in 2016 and as long as democracy maintains its tenuous grip on the American body politic.



And of course it reminded me of this classic scene from Family Guy: 
 

File this under "Why is this news?"

By Carl

There was a featured story on The Today Show this morning. I'm going to embed the video and then we'll talk on the flip:

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

Let the implications of this story sink in for a moment, then ask yourself the following question: "What was the point?" 

Yahoo Chief Executive Office, Marissa Mayer, is a new hire who just had a baby and then went back to work less than two weeks after giving birth. 

OK, that's a bit of a story. No, not really.

What it is is a myth. It is an attempt to sell you and me on the idea that women can have it all. They can have work, they can have family, they can have God and football, too. 

Bullshit.
  
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A.M. Headlines

(Politico): "The fiscal cliff roadshow"

(Washington Post): "Obama public relations effort aims to avoid 'fiscal cliff'"

(Associated Press): "Senate Dems divided over cuts to benefits programs"

(USA Today): "Obama sells budget plans to middle class, biz leaders"

(Voice of America): "Clashes in Cairo continue"

(Reuters): "Iran 'will press on with enrichment:' nuclear chief"

The "L" Word

By Mustang Bobby

(Ed. note: Make sure to watch the great clip from The West Wing below. There are many, many good reasons we're proud to be liberals. -- MJWS)

Digby points to an article in The Week that alerts us to the growing popularity of liberalism:

A full 25 percent of voters in this month's election identified themselves as liberals, according to exit polls, a marked increase from 22 percent in 2008. (Conservative is still a more popular identifier, with 35 percent of voters claiming that label.) Still, the "L" word is more popular than it has been since 1976. Conservatives managed to turn "liberal" into an insult in the 1980s, and when Republican icon Ronald Reagan won re-election in 1984, only 17 percent of voters confessed to being liberal. Today that number has ballooned to 25 percent.

The article attributes the trend to a couple of reasons, one being that Barack Obama made being liberal "cool" again, and the other the fact that there's the perception out there that conservatives are uncaring and disconnected:

It's not that Americans are suddenly gung-ho about liberal politics, says Gary Bauer at Human Events. Voters are still filled with "strong skepticism about whether Obama will be able to accomplish Americans' goals." The Obama campaign simply managed to drive people away from Mitt Romney with a relentless barrage of negative ads smearing him — and, by extension, conservative politics — as "uncaring and disconnected." Republicans can regain this lost ground next time around if they just learn from this loss.

Yeah, if they just knocked off the gay-bashing, the misogyny, the racism, and the need to inject fear and loathing into everything from children's TV to health care for the elderly, they wouldn't be such bad folks after all. Of course, if they did that, they'd be on their way to being liberals.

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