Hillary's the one

By Infidel753 

Hillary Clinton is now officially in the 2016 Presidential race, and will almost certainly be the Democratic nominee. And we're lucky to have her. She can do the job, she can do the job right -- and, critically, she can get the job. She can beat the Republicans.

[I mean no disrespect by adopting the common habit of referring to Hillary Clinton by her first name. Given that Bill Clinton remains a prominent figure, just calling her "Clinton" would be ambiguous, and her own campaign is called "Hillary for America".]

Here's Charles Pierce (found via Progressive Eruptions) explaining what's at stake: 

If she is elected, she unequivocally will accept the science of anthropogenic climate change and treat it as a crisis. This cannot be said of any of the Republican candidates, real or potential. 

If she is elected, she unequivocally will support marriage equality, and oppose discrimination against our fellow citizens based on sexual orientation or gender identity. This cannot be said of any of the Republican candidates, real or potential. 

If she is elected, she will not destroy the Affordable Care Act, an article of faith among all the Republican candidates, real or potential. 

If she is elected, and despite her closeness to certain Wall Street interests, she will not destroy the Dodd-Frank reforms, another article of faith among all the Republican candidates, real or potential.

[...] 

To get elected, she does not have to wink at state's rights, up to and including incidents of armed resistance. 

To get elected, she does not have to equivocate on the science behind the theory of evolution as does any Republican candidate who seeks the votes of Republicans in Iowa. 

To get elected, she does not have to peddle the snake oil of supply-side economics, nor does she have to peddle scare stories about the oncoming caliphate, nor does she have to create bogeymen about jackboots coming to steal your guns.

That is to say, Hillary thinks and functions in the real world as opposed to being committed to dangerously-delusional policies. I'd add that she won't put any more theocratic nutcases like Scalia on the Supreme Court. And she will build on the progress Obama and Rouhani have made on bringing Iran out of isolation to the point where it has a stake in the international system, and will continue working with amenable Middle Eastern groups and governments to fight violent extremism, as opposed to the Republican strategy of "when in doubt, bomb and invade and hope for the best."

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Bruce Jenner is a courageous idiot

By Michael J.W. Stickings

There isn't much about the Kardashians and their bubble of cultural degradation and egomaniacal excess that I respect, but I do respect Bruce Jenner's decision, if one can even call it that, to come out as a woman (he is still a "he" for now, but he says that he is a woman, and the "he" may soon become "she"), that is, his courageous coming to terms with, and acceptance of, his sexual identity. Even now, in 2015, it is not an easy thing to do, in private let alone in public, where you subject yourself to speculation and ridicule, if not worse, as much as to admiration and respect.

Now, I don't know Bruce Jenner. I watched part of his interview with Diane Sawyer on ABC as it's been a story on CNN this afternoon and I caught it flipping through the channels, and I can only take him at his word, and I can only give him the benefit of the doubt. That is, I can only assume that he is being sincere, that he has spent the better part of his life struggling with his sexual identity, and that his coming out as a woman -- cosmetic surgery and hormone treatment but not yet, and perhaps not, full conversion -- isn't yet another publicity stunt on the part of the Kardashian Klan, of which is, of course, a central member. Needless to say, the Kardashians, Jenner included, are long-time publicity whores, and it wouldn't be a stretch for Jenner to use his transgendered status to get some attention, not least with another reality show coming up.

But again, let's give him the benefit of the doubt. I do not know what it's like to be transgendered, nor to struggle with one's sexual identity, and he does seem genuine.

But if I credit him with courage, I must also debit him for his idiocy. Because there is so much of it:

After months of speculation that he was transitioning into a woman, Bruce Jenner confirmed the news in an interview with Diane Sawyer that aired on ABC Friday night, clarifying that he is also a Republican and a Christian.

When asked about Barack Obama addressing LGBT rights in his State of the Union, the 65-year-old former Olympic athlete said that didn't affect him much.

"I've always been more on the conservative side," Jenner said.

*****

Jenner said he is a Christian as well.

"I would sit in church and always wonder, 'In God's eyes, how does he see me?'"

But now, he said, he's realized that maybe this is part of his purpose.

"Maybe this is my cause in life."

"This is why God put me on this earth... to deal with this issue."

That's from The Daily Caller, Tucker Carlson's right-wing toilet paper, and the tone of the piece suggests that it is rather gleeful that this famous transgendered person is Republican and Christian, as if that somehow sticks it to the left. In any event, let's address the idiocy here:

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Obama's bad bet on Republicans

By Frank Moraes

Last weekend, Jane Mayer wrote about "Torture and the Truth." I know that many people are thinking, "Torture! Again?! That's so last week!" Actually, this article is not about torture. But the truth of the matter is that, for me, torture will never be so last whatever. It's not that I ever thought that the United States was lily white, but I was appalled when Cheney started talking about the "dark side" and people began to discuss when torture might be okay. From grammar school on, I always thought that the willingness to torture was the prime thing that separated the "good guys" from the "bad guys." So I'm never getting over this. But that's not what I'm going to discuss here.

In Mayer's article, she discussed how Obama blew the response to this issue. By leaving it for so long to be dealt with by the Senate, he allowed it to become just another partisan issue. She quoted political science professor Darius Rejali: "It's becoming a lot like the death penalty." (I find this terrifying; I really do think that the Republicans have devolved into nothing short of fascism.) But it isn't like the issue was off the table. Mayer explained that in early 2009, pretty much all of Obama's advisers were in favor of "the formation of an independent commission." It wasn't done. "Obama, however, said that he didn't want to seem to be taking punitive measures against his predecessor, apparently because he still hoped to reach bipartisan agreement on issues such as closing Guantánamo."

I recently quoted Garry Wills's "The Problem With Obama." In it, Wills said that Obama is so keen to maintain continuity that he often (usually?) does the wrong thing. I think that is at work here. But there is a political aspect here as well — one that gets to the heart of why Obama was exactly the wrong president for this period. He was so eager to placate to stop people from attacking him as a foreign radical. And what he got for that was absolutely nothing. And that will continue going forward.

Can anyone doubt that if Ted Cruz is elected president in 2016 he will prosecute the previous administration for any actual scandal that turns up? The Republicans — almost twenty years ago when they were a hell of lot more reasonable than they are now — impeached a president because he lied about an affair with an intern. I'm not even convinced that if the Republicans control all of Washington in 2017 they won't continue on with their Benghazi and IRS fake scandal-mongering.

As I mention a whole lot around here, I'm not that ideological. I'm a pragmatist. That's why I gave the Democrats a pass on the CRomnibus. But there is a huge difference between knowing what is possible and pretending that you live in a world of fairies and elves where you can have all the candy you want. And that was certainly the world that Obama used to live in. And to a significant, but reduced, degree, I think he still does.

Politics is about power. Smart power. It isn't about rubbing your opponent's nose in his defeat. In fact, providing face-saving concessions to your enemies is a big part of correcting wielding power. (This is something that the United States is famously bad at internationally.) But it is not about cajoling. All Obama's efforts to entice and prove that he is a moderate (by our far-right-skewing system) have only hurt his efforts to get things done. If he had called for a single-payer health-care system, he would have been called a socialist. So he didn't call for a single-payer health-care system, and he was called a socialist.

Well played, Mr. President!

Afterword

For the record, I know that the reason we couldn't have a single-payer health-care system is because of all those Blue Dog Democrats — like Obama himself! I should point out, however, that the vast majority of those conservative Democrats were swept out of office in 2010, so I don't really know what they thought they were buying. And that was as predictable as anything in politics. Conservative Democrats get elected in nominally red districts. Outside of a wave, Democrats won't get elected there, so they are sure to lose the next time. So they might as well stand up for liberal policy.

(This is assuming that they believe in liberal policy. And I have to admit that I just don't know anymore.)

(Cross-posted at Frankly Curious.)

Why go on?

By Capt. Fogg

There's really no point, is there? I mean, I've been protesting and griping and occasionally exulting about things for over 50 years and although it sometimes seems I've been on the right side, sometimes on the winning side, the wins have been so slow to grow into anything and the losers so able to readjust their stories to define the losses as wins that perhaps it doesn't matter. Even angels have to fear the sticky epithets falling on the guilty and the innocent, fear to tread on the right and the wrong because right and wrong can't be discerned through the fog of politics of any denomination. Descriptions mean nothing when our language, our history, our morals are written in water and change with the tide. We are not saved by works, but damned at random.

I don't believe in protests any more. I don't believe in elections. I don't believe in the public's ability to pay attention, to be objective, rational or enlightened enough to do anything but make noise and make it all worse. If we actually feel we've been allowed anything like good government, it's often really that we've been thrown a bone to distract us from seeing that the chuck wagon has rolled off  with dinner. Take the amazing fact that Congress passed a budget rather than shutting down the country they pretend to love. Reading it you may feel like the patient who learns his illness is gone, but there's a disturbing spot on his lungs. The spot, the shadow, the tumor, the poison pills, are riders you won't hear about, unless the Fox decides they can blame them on Obama.

And of course the president will have to support it else we hear more of the chorus of "he's a tyrant, an emperor ignoring the will of the people" even though there can't be a whole lot of "the people" who approve of allowing a huge increase in the amount of money one can contribute to the Republican Party (up to three million for a married couple) and of allowing a return to the reckless bank chicanery with exotic derivatives that caused the recent recession. After all that protest and demonstration and passion! Should we just admit there's no way to control the course of events that involves democracy? 

And of course I've always been told that I hated America, because I opposed a whole shooting gallery of things, like the war in Vietnam or segregation or torture or the end of probable cause or forfeitures without due process. I hated America, it's said, for warning that paying  for our most expensive and lengthy war with tax cuts for the wealthy wouldn't work. I hated America for making a fuss about My Lai 4, for the abomination of HUAC. I hated it for not hating enough.

Perhaps now, with the voice of evil, Fox News host Andrea Tantaros claiming that the only reason we finally admit to illegal and immoral practices like torture, is that Obama wants you to think America isn't awesome, with the ability of  war criminals to define their crimes away, perhaps now I can decide that, yes, I really do hate this evil empire. This abomination of a country that dares screech about FREEDOM but won't let you leave, won't let you live abroad and wants to make you pay U.S. taxes even if you're a foreign national and don't live in the U.S. -- unless you're a corporation of course. I have to oppose it. I can't do otherwise.

No, the center isn't holding. 

Yes, I'm a fool for protesting, for blogging, for hoping. I can't change minds or anything else and even if I did, our country is a runaway train anyway because people do not vote, corporations do. It's a runaway train because no one can do anything without the permission of  the ruling party. Even old John McCain who lost an election because he had to pretend his masters weren't evil, because he had to run with that Alaskan millstone around his neck must hate America for trying so eloquently to hold it to a moral standard higher than the Spanish Inquisition. It brought tears to my eyes. Misery makes strange bedfellows indeed.

Are there enough of us to rebel, to force the money grabbers, the tyrants out of the government? Of course not, and not only because only the worst of us vote. We can't unite because we truly are a small-minded, self-absorbed, uncompromising, and gullible group of fractious fools, and because it's too late anyway and it's all our own fault. The enemy is us. It always has been.

(Cross-posted to Human Voices.)

Is rational political dialogue in America still possible?

By Richard K. Barry

I haven't written much about politics lately. I've mostly concentrated on music at another blog. It seems that nothing changes in the so-called national dialogue and saying the same thing over and over gets tiring. But just when I thought I might want to jump back in, I come across a comment by Fox News resident psychiatrist Keith Albow.

Tom Kludt at TPM describes Albow's recent's comments about our president:

"I think that we became psychologically mired in a form of national Stockholm Syndrome," he said of Obama's election victories during his radio interview last week. "We said to ourselves, and the world, 'Look at this guy. We're going to elect this guy president. Why would you attack us? We're not even voting for somebody who likes us. This guy, who has names very similar to two of our archenemies, Osama, well, Obama. And Hussein. Hussein. Surely you won't attack us now because we've got a shield here of a guy who, as the leader of our country, says we're bad.'"

I know it's only one asshole at Fox, and, given the source, it doesn't surprise. I suppose that's the problem. Tired, tired, tired.

Obama's cautious pragmatism is the best approach for dealing with Syria and ISIS

By Michael J.W. Stickings

There's a lot of talk today, the Friday before a long weekend, about President Obama's remark that "we don't have a strategy yet" regarding ISIS and the deteriorating situation in Syria and Iraq. The remark has identified as a "gaffe" by the press, Republicans jumped all over it (because they'll do or say anything to score political points at the president's expense), and the White House has gone into damage-control mode (because of course).

Now, to be sure, it was an inartful way of explaining the situation. The president was clearly talking about what to do about ISIS, not broadly about the region, but that hardly came across clearly. But it makes sense not to know quite what to do at this point. It's easy to be an armchair militarist like John McCain or Bill Kristol, much harder to the one who has to make the tough decisions, decisions that will result in significant loss of life, particularly when there are no clear answers to a problem that in and of itself is difficult to understand. How far do you go in dealing militarily with ISIS? Do you put troops on the ground? Do you rely solely on airstrikes, or on airstrikes with support for allies on the ground? But, then, who are those allies? ISIS is at war with Bashar al-Assad's Syrian regime, but that regime is hardly an American ally. Does the U.S. really want to get into yet another protracted war in Iraq, one with no clear outcomes? And what would airstrikes against ISIS accomplish anyway, particularly without clear allies on the ground?

And so on, and so on.

At a time like this, as most times, caution is a virtue, and President Obama's cautiousness, which very much defines who he is and how he governs, stands in stark, pragmatic contrast to the "bomb bomb bomb" recklessness of Republicans. Besides, it's not like the president has been soft on America's enemies -- just consider the extra-judicial drone war that he has been waging against various threats throughout the Middle East. Indeed, as Peter Beinart writes at The Atlantic, and I think he's right on this, President Obama is both a hawk and a dove, or neither, or somewhere in between: 

So was Obama more dovish than Clinton or more hawkish? The answer is both. On the one hand, Obama has shown a deep reluctance to use military force to try to solve Middle Eastern problems that don't directly threaten American lives. He's proved more open to a diplomatic compromise over Iran's nuclear program than many on Capitol Hill because he’s more reticent about going to war with Tehran. He's been reluctant to arm Syria's rebels or bomb Basher al-Assad because he doesn't want to get sucked into that country's civil war. After initially giving David Petraeus and company the yellow light to pursue an expanded counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan, he's wound down America's ground war against the Taliban. Even on Libya, he proved more reluctant to intervene than the leaders of Britain and France.

On the other hand, he's proven ferocious about using military force to kill suspected terrorists. In Afghanistan and Pakistan, he's basically adopted the policy Joe Biden proposed at the start of his administration: Don't focus on fighting the Taliban on the ground, since they don't really threaten the United States. Just bomb the hell out al-Qaeda from the air. Compared with George W. Bush, he's dramatically expanded drone strikes, even though they're unilateral, legally dubious, and morally disturbing. And, as promised, he sent special forces to kill Osama bin Laden without Pakistan's permission, even though his vice president and secretary of defense feared the risks were too high. When it comes to the Middle East, in other words, Obama is neither a dove nor a hawk. He's a fierce minimalist.

A minimalist. A cautious pragmatist, I'd say. And therein lies his strategy for dealing with the region, with ISIS, and with other such problems facing the United States, and indeed his strategy for dealing with pretty much everything. It's not good enough for Republicans, but, then, nothing he does is ever good enough for Republicans. And it's not really good enough for the media either, because it's not a clear, simplistic strategy, or, rather, not a clear, simplistic worldview. In contrast to the "bomb first, think later, if ever" approach preferred by McCain, Kristol, and their ilk, as well as to the "America as global hegemon" worldview espoused by Kristol and his neocon ilk and embraced by the likes of Dick Cheney, President Obama's approach is really the only approach that makes sense, and that could actually produce positive, lasting results, given the crazy state of the world today, given the challenges the country faces, given the complexities of the problems in places like Iraq and Syria.

No, you don't get that rush of bloodlust that comes with, and underpins, right-wing militarism, and you don't get that sense of purity that comes with pacifism and/or isolationism, nor the perceived, and self-deceiving, moral clarity that comes with any sort of absolutism, but what you do get is a chance of achieving some sort of success in a world where, given the choices available and outcomes likely, success is awfully hard to come by.

Maybe President Obama's "minimalism" won't work in this case, but it's far more preferable than the alternatives, because at least it recognizes that there are no easy solutions and that missteps could lead to catastrophe. As occasionally frustrating as his cautious pragmatism may be, he knows what he's doing, even when the words don't come out as artfully as desired.

The conundrum of memory

By Capt. Fogg

Sometimes I get to wondering, sometimes I get confused about what our conservative brethren are trying to tell us. I was reminded recently that my former Republican congressman Tom Rooney (R-FL), amongst others, vociferously  threatened to impeach the president for having provided air traffic control for the UN incursions into Libya; for having exceeded his constitutional authority by arming Syrian rebels. Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC) back in June of 2013, threatened to impeach President Obama if any U.S. troops are killed in Syria. Is there a relationship between rhetorical amplitude and political passion and the shortness of its half-life?

I ask because currently the same party is chastising him for not having gone into Syria thus allowing ISIS a breeding ground. We need those airstrikes -- why didn't he make those airstrikes? We need airstrikes, says John McCain, in his time-worn tradition of  damning Obama if he does or if he doesn't. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) wants to commit ground troops. This is all "due to our total inaction. And it's going to be one of the more shameful chapters in American history," says John McCain.

Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) said on Face the Nation that the president's limited foreign policy is no longer acceptable on. I have no idea whether that refers to the nearly a hundred airstrikes the Obama administration has unilaterally launched into Northern Iraq to help the hopelessly rickety and incompetent government Republicans bragged about setting up not long ago, but we can be assured of at least one thing: Republicans will damn him for doing it and damn him for not stepping in earlier back when they were trying to impeach him for it.

(Cross-posted at Human Voices.)

Frankly speaking

Last week Thomas Frank wrote a piece in Salon in which he went all in on calling Barack Obama a weak and gutless leader and labeling his presidency an abject failure. The Hope and Change president promised so much and delivered so little, he didn't stand up to the crazy Republicans when he could have and should have, and worst of all, there's no pony with rainbow ribbons and no sprinkles on the ice cream.

Why, the visitors to his library will wonder, did the president do so little about rising inequality, the subject on which he gave so many rousing speeches? Why did he do nothing, or next to nothing, about the crazy high price of a college education, the Great Good Thing that he has said, time and again, determines our personal as well as national success? Why didn’t he propose a proper healthcare program instead of the confusing jumble we got? Why not a proper stimulus package? Why didn’t he break up the banks? Or the agribusiness giants, for that matter?

Because, to quote Elliot in E.T., this is reality. Governing in a democracy means working with other people, people who for some reason or another -- I'll let you fill in the blanks -- have no interest in a president succeeding; people who in fact were plotting against his every move before the president had spent his first night in the White House. Add to that a well-oiled and well-funded noise machine of unprecedented lung power and a TV network that can take the smallest thing and turn it into a 24-hour breaking news blitz, and getting things done becomes a bit of a challenge.

But to Mr. Frank's charges of failure after failure, let's think about the ones he's listed: How does a president persuade a college or university to lower their tuition and make it affordable? Someone's gotta pay for it; it's not like the alumni are going to pick up everything else after football. What about healthcare? Well, the "proper" way would have been a single payer plan with the government picking up the tab and raising taxes, much in the way a number of industrialized nations and Canadian provinces do it: Medicare for all. Yeah, try and pass that; I dare you.

The same could be said about the rest of Mr. Frank's laments: the stimulus package that was passed was done in the first moments of the Obama presidency and while we were still under the weight of the crapfest left by the previous administration. What we got would not have passed three months later, and certainly not through a Senate that was barely under the control of the Democrats. Break up the big banks and agribusiness? Sure, if you don't think anyone with any influence or money will object, go ahead.

We expect to hear this kind of whining and pearl-clutching from the Republicans; they've mastered the art of crocodile tears and fear-mongering even when they're in control. In the last thirty years they have done a fine job of making the case that no one else but a true American conservative should be running the country and then providing us with laboratory-grade examples of exactly why they shouldn't.

The biggest failure of the Obama presidency isn't in what it didn't accomplish or the "tepid" answers it gave to the problems at hand. It's that Barack Obama believed -- and probably still does -- that he was facing opposition from a political party that shared his basic goal of running the country and making it better for all the citizens, not just the ones who voted for him or contributed to his campaign. He didn't realize that their sole purpose in life was his personal destruction. But if a genius like Thomas Frank can't figure that out, how could anyone else?

Cross posted from Bark Bark Woof Woof.

Exporting our national experience

By Carl

This is going to be an interesting and intriguing visit to Cooperstown by President Obama today:

WASHINGTON (AP) - Promoting travel to the U.S. as a job creator, President Barack Obama is planning new steps to make it easier for people from other countries to visit the 50 states and spend money at their hotels, restaurants, tourist attractions and other businesses.

Obama planned to discuss the economic benefits of tourism to the U.S. and the latest steps he is taking to boost it at the Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York, on Thursday.

Obama acted two years ago to speed the processing of tourist visas for visitors from China and Brazil, steps that have dramatically reduced the length of time people from those populous countries have to wait for approval to travel to the U.S., said administration officials who previewed the president's trip for reporters.

On Thursday he will tackle the flip side of the problem: long waits for processing at U.S. airports and other ports of entry once tourists arrive.

It's an interesting location, not that the topic itself is that interesting. Not only is the president pushing for more tourists to visit the U.S., but it seems he wants them to include places not normally high on tourists' lists of places to visit.

Think about it: apart from the United States, and perhaps the Caribbean and Australia, where else would the baseball Hall of Fame attract tourists from? (ed. note: um, Canada? -- MJWS)

The actual attraction aside, it's important for the economies of places like Cooperstown, or Canton, OH, or Springfield, MA, or our national parks, and other out of the way places around the country to get some of that foreign gelt. Small town America is hurting, to be sure, unless there's a fortunate happenstance of a natural gas field waiting to be fracked or other resource to be exploited.

And really, is that what we want our ultimate legacy as a nation to be? We raped and pillaged our beautiful countryside to provide wealth to our citizens? It's one thing to profit from our bounty, it's another thing to make that the only way we can profit.

I think it's important to the nation and to the world that places like Cooperstown engage with foreign visitors. It’s far too easy for citizens in remote areas to fear the strange, the difficult to grasp. The opportunities for our country to come together domestically can be greatly enhanced if we all have the common experience of meeting other people, people who don't necessary share our views on things, and who can educate us (and we educate them in turn).

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

Democrats are always black presidents

By Frank Moraes 

For a long time, I've puzzled over something. Why has the conservative treatment of Obama been almost exactly the same as the treatment of Bill Clinton. Yes, there have been little differences. For example, no one ever claimed that Clinton wasn't qualified to be president because he wasn't born in America. And that is a bit of overt racism that should have embarrassed the conservative movement far more than it did. I think the reason that it didn't cause more of a stir was that the media are loath to admit anything quite so disturbing as the fact that one of the major political parties in the United States owes most of its appeal to racism. And the white majority mostly wants to compartmentalize racism as nothing more than people who use the n-word. But other than this bit of clearly racist behavior, Obama and Clinton were treated the same.

What I mean by this is that both men were treated as though they were treated as though they were invalid. And conservatives seem to believe that either men are capable of anything. There are stories about how Obama is secretly gay married and of course who can forget that Bill Clinton murdered Vince Foster. What's more, during both presidencies, the conservatives have kept going with supposed scandals that not only don't come to anything, but don't even seem to be about anything. What was Whitewater about? What is Benghazi! about? It isn't just that I don't know. The people pushing these scandals don't seem to know either.

But leave it to Ta-Nehisi Coates to straighten out my thinking on this issue, "Bill Clinton Was Racialized, Too." He pointed out that the issue isn't so much who is leading the Democratic Party. The issue is that to the racists, the Democratic Party itself is the black party. It's the part that looks after the interests of "those people." He explained it:

Even Bill Clinton did not exist in a bubble of neutralized racism. He was a product of American politics in the post-civil-rights era, and thus had to cope with all the requisite forces. Racism does not merely concern itself with individual enmity, but with group interests. The men who killed [white civil rights activist] Andrew Goodman did not merely hate him individually, they hated what he represented. By the time Bill Clinton came to prominence, his party was closely associated with black interests.

Then he linked this to the very long history of white Americans seeing black Americans as invalid -- not "real" Americans. I was especially amazed to read that people argued that Frederick Douglass didn't actually write Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass because he was just an ignorant black man. This goes right along with claims that Obama didn't write Dreams from My Father. How far we've come! But the point is that anyone but white Europeans are not just The Other, but are beings who just can't be anything but unworthy outsiders.

So any Democratic president is going to be treated as an interloper. It doesn't matter if they get 90% of the vote. And as we saw after the 2008 election, a certain segment of the conservative movement doesn't accept voting. This is why ACORN was such a prime target for them. These people will never believe that the nation is changing. Instead, we get "black presidents" because ACORN and other nefarious groups are stealing elections. This is also why conservatives have embraced voter-identification laws. It isn't about winning future elections (for the base). It is about making sure that elections are honest because they just know that real America (white America) could never have a president who cared about those non-white aliens.

(Cross-posted at Frankly Curious.)

Jay Rockefeller speaks the truth about Obama and Republican racism

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Politico:

Sen. Jay Rockefeller unloaded on lawmakers Tuesday, accusing some of blocking efforts to solve urgent problems during Barack Obama's presidency "because he's the wrong color."

Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), who will retire at the end of the year, made his comments during a Senate Finance Committee hearing on transportation funding, saying he's confounded by the "lack of will to keep ourselves from dropping into rivers and rolling over bridges that are no longer there."

"It's an American characteristic that you don't do anything which displeases the voters, because you always have to get reelected here," he added. "I understand part of it. It has to do with — for some, it's just we don't want anything good to happen under this president, because he's the wrong color."

Yup.

Don't get me wrong, Republicans would still oppose him ferociously were he white. But basically, if Obama were white, he'd be seen as a mostly centrist, establishmentarian Democrat (champion of market-based health-care reform, generally supportive of Wall Street and Big Business, aggressive on national security, etc.) with occasional (and always measured) forays into progressivism (belated support for marriage equality, concerned about race/racism, cautious environmentalism, etc.) As a black man, though, he's basically seen as the Other, the Enemy, a Communist, a Terrorist, anything and everything that is anti-American from a right-wing perspective.

Rockefeller's statement is something of an exaggeration, I admit. Mitch McConnell's obstructionism in the Senate and House Republicans' general opposition to anything and everything associated with Obama would have the Republican approach if Hillary had won in 2008, and one can expect them to deal with any Democratic president in a similar manner. But certainly Obama's race has aroused an ugly strain of conservatism that had previously been somewhat dormant, or at least quieter: racism and nativism. And it certainly seems to be the case that the virulence of Republican opposition to Obama is very much rooted in that strain.

On deaf ears

By Carl 

The Obama administration has decided to move the national dialogue forward, to try to take a pro-active position on climate change:

Washington (CNN) -- Flooded rail lines. Bigger, more frequent droughts. A rash of wildfires.

Those are some of the alarming predictions in a White House climate change report released Tuesday, part of President Barack Obama's broader second-term effort to help the nation prepare for the effects of higher temperatures, rising sea levels and more erratic weather.

"Climate change, once considered an issue for a distant future, has moved firmly into the present," the National Climate Assessment says, adding that the evidence of man-made climate change "continues to strengthen" and that "impacts are increasing across the country."

We, of course, can anticipate absolutely no action will take place on this. When a significant number in even a dying political party do not believe in climate change – or worse, somehow conflate climate change with God's will – nothing will happen.

Still, Obama is correct to make a go of it. After all, it's a desperate enough situation that some kind of effort has to be made, even if it means hearing endless plaintive wails about the amount of money it's going to cost us and the effect on a seedling economic recovery.

To do nothing is to drown that seedling.

Ten years ago, we might have hoped that our children's children's children would curse us and our inertia on what will be the most critical issue of the 21st century. That timetable has been moved up, alarmingly so. It will not be our great-grandchildren. It may not be our grandchildren. It may not even wait for our children, altho they will certainly suffer for our stupidity.

Our generation, us: we may be the victims of our own stupidity, greed, and fear.

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The view from 90

Guest post by Robert Stein

Ed. note: A couple of months ago, my friend and fellow blogger Bob Stein turned 90. I meant to publish this wonderful post at the time, but, well, time got away from me and it's been a sporadic couple of months of blogging for me anyway.

It is, in any event, a timeless post, and I'm very happy to publish it today, belatedly. Bob has led an incredibly interesting life and he's seen some incredibly interesting things. What is truly encouraging (and amazing) is that as he looks not just back at America's and the world's messy history but out at the crazy world around him now, he retains a sense of hope and optimism that overrides doubt and despair. He sees the good, that is, even when it is hard to find.

I wish him all the best, and a (belated) happy birthday, from all of us here.

This is Bob's third guest post here at The Reaction, and the first since his reflections on the anniversary of JFK's assassination last November. (His first post for us was "A life in black and white: Personal reflections on race in America.") -- MJWS

Robert Stein has had a long career as an editor, publisher, media critic, and journalism teacher. A former chair of the American Society of Magazine Editors, he currently blogs at Connecting the Dots. 

**********

On March 4, 1933, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was inaugurated. It was my ninth birthday.

In April 1945, I was a 21-year-old foot soldier on the floor of a German farmhouse when someone shook me awake to whisper that FDR had died. 

Now, at 90, I am inevitably shaped by those years after a working lifetime as writer, editor and publisher trying to explain the world to others -- and myself.

The scenes around me today are filled with human folly, selfishness and shameless behavior, but that’s far from the whole story. My so-called Greatest Generation, which survived a Depression and World War, does not in retrospect seem so morally superior to those that succeeded it but only more limited in education, experience of the world and outlook.

Many of our virtues were rooted in ignorance: no TV, cable, computers, Internet, no electronics of any kind, only radios with music, soap operas and swatches of evening news lifted from newspapers (as a teenage copy boy, I wrote some of them.)

As a nation we were united, but in an innocence that also had its dark side -- racial ghettos, religious prejudice, rural isolation -- where only unseen white men, all Protestant, held power over our lives in government and business.

Women then lived no fuller a life than those in Nazi Germany: Kinder, Küche, Kirche (children, kitchen, church). Our mothers patrolled homes in house dresses, with only one exception.

Although we knew her as Mrs. Goldstein, nothing went with that matronly name, not the shimmer of clothes clinging to her trim body, or the beauty-parlor hair, the high-heeled shoes and face painted with makeup even in daytime, or the sweet perfume cloud that came into the living room in late afternoons when she kissed her son goodnight and dazzled the rest of us playing there with a cupid's bow smile on her way out.

She always seemed on the move to someplace exciting or, if my mother's mutterings could be believed, sinful. I had no idea what nafka meant, but Mrs. Goldstein gave our pre-teen senses a whiff of hope that the night life on movie screens existed somewhere in the real world.

Jump cut through decades: a World War; prosperous but Man-in-the-Grey-Flannel-Suit Fifties; JFK, the Youthquake, Civil Rights awakening and Women's Lib of the televised Sixties; a backlash of the Silent Majority and Watergate in the Nixon years; Reagan's "Morning in America" to paper over growing economic and political gulfs followed by Clinton's centrism and self-centeredness barely surviving Gingrich's loopy Contract with America; and then almost a decade of W's preemptive war and mindless tax cuts to bring us into the Obama years of almost total Tea Party collapse of the civility that held us together all that time, with racism showing its naked face.

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Beverly Hills Cop: Obama's Asian Tour

By Michael J.W. Stickings

This is weird but also sort of awesome:

MANILA – Move over "Hail to the Chief," the official musical flourish for President Obama here just might be the theme song to "Beverly Hills Cop."

A local ceremonial band hammered out the tune on xylophones and tooted from long cylindrical instruments as Obama and Philippines President Benigno Aquino walked the red carpet to the Malacanang Palace.

By the way, did you know they're making a fourth one? (The first was great, the second was good, the third sucked. Let's hope they get it right. Seriously, Ratner and Murphy, don't fuck this up.)

Okay... here you go:

Behind the Ad: Former Mass. Sen. Scott Brown comes to New Hampshire (and not for a vacay)

By Richard K. Barry

Who: End Spending Action Fund

Where: New Hampshire (on WMUR TV and cable sports networks).

What's going on: The End Spending Action Fund is a group backed by billionaire Joe Ricketts, which, as the name suggests, is a Republican advocacy group. This ad is in support of former Massachusetts GOP Sen. Scott Brown, who has been toying with the idea of running for the U.S. Senate in New Hampshire. Now comes word via the Boston Globe that he will in fact take the plunge, and make his intentions clear this Thursday.

The incumbent is Democrat Jeanne Shaheen, who was first elected in 2008 with 52 percent of the vote, defeating then-GOP Sen. John Sununu. As you will recall, 2008 was a particularly good year for Democrats, which is likely why Brown is thinking he can poach the seat in this year's midterm, when Republicans have done well more recently.

Scott Brown won, I'm sure you'll remember, an upset special election in 2010 in Massachusetts to fill the remainder of Ted Kennedy's term, but was than unseated in 2012 by Democrat Elizabeth Warren.

As for polling in New Hampshire, HuffPollster's trend line has Shaheen ahead of Brown by a margin of 49.8 percent to 40.3 percent, though this was done before it was clear he was running. The most recent poll (March 13-16) has Shaheen up 50 percent to 38 percent. Still, if Democrats
want reason to worry, they can direct themselves to President Obama's job approval rating in the state. Just 31 percent say they like the job he is doing, while 56 percent disapprove.

As we've seen in the past, all bets seem to be off in the midterms.

The ad in question features a clip of Brown criticizing Obamacare in his victory speech after the 2010 special election in Massachusetts. “It will raise taxes; it will hurt Medicare; it will destroy jobs and run our nation deeper into debt,” he states. And then the announcer intones: “Scott Brown was right on ObamaCare then. He’s right for New Hampshire now.”

Grade: While Republicans running hard against ObamaCare makes sense now, it is hard to tell how the issue will play in November. Maybe it will still work. Maybe not. In a state where Obama's favourability is seriously underwater, health care reform has to be a part of that. The funny thing about Brown is that he campaigned in Massachusetts as a moderate, as you would expect, but became a Tea Party favourite as they dreamed of swiping Ted Kennedy's seat. It will be interesting to see how he plays his candidacy in New Hampshire, especially as outside money designs a message that may not be very moderate at all. The ad is effective for now, to the extent that ObamaCare is a negative proxy for President Obama, but that may change. In fact, the more popular ObamaCare becomes, the more likely Republicans are to start calling it the Affordable Care Act. B

Condi Rice criticizes Obama's leadership, proves she lacks anything resembling self-awareness or perspective

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Condi and Dubya. Sort of.

So Condi Rice is on the anti-Obama bandwagon, just like her pals Cheney and Rummy and rest of the detritus of the Bush II presidency:

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice accused Barack Obama of dramatically weakening the United States' position in the world, drawing a straight line between Obama's ever-yielding foreign policy and the increasing troubles around the world.

"Right now, there's a vacuum," she told a crowd of more than two thousand attending the National Republican Congressional Committee's annual dinner last night in Washington, D.C. "There's a vacuum because we've decided to lower our voice. We've decided to step back. We've decided that if we step back and lower our voice, others will lead, other things will fill that vacuum." Citing Bashar al Assad's slaughter in Syria, Vladimir Putin's aggression in Ukraine, al Qaeda's triumphant return to Fallujah, Iraq, and China's nationalist fervor, she concluded: "When America steps back and there is a vacuum, trouble will fill that vacuum."

Oh, the sheer stupidity of the everything-is-Obama's-fault crowd, which is pretty much the same as the America-as-imperial-global-hegemon crowd, as if the president of the United States, any which one, can just snap his, or her, fingers and make the world bow before America's overwhelming might. That sort of worldview, connected to neoconservative ideological fervor, is as ignorant and childish as it is astoundingly dangerous and self-destructive.

And if you're looking to find fault for weakening America's standing in the world, how about, oh, throwing some blame at those who ignored a pre-9/11 CIA memo called "Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US," launched a second war on false pretenses (i.e., lies) while a first was still going on, and grossly mismanaged that second war while ignoring the first, turning Iraq into a chaotic vacuum and failing to do the job in Afghanistan, allowing al Qaeda and others to continue to thrive while also creating the conditions for terrorism as a movement and threat to grow in strength, all the while weakening America's core alliances, thoroughly obliterating its credibility and moral standing in the world as well as its capacity to engage militarily beyond Iraq and Afghanistan, and making the American people even more isolationist than ever.

And by the way, included among those who deserve that blame is not the president who rebuilt America's alliances, credibilty, and moral standing in the world, put an end to the bloody quagmire of a war in Iraq and the going-nowhere war in Afghanistan, shifted America's military resources to target al Qaeda, against enormous risk gave the green light to the operation to take out bin Laden, directly as a result of the new focus on al Qaeda, opened up diplomatic relations with Iran so as to work towards long-term peace and stability in the Middle East and to turn that country away from its nuclear ambitions, helped put an end to the brutal Qaddafi regime in Libya, and has otherwise carefully guided the U.S. through delicate international crises, from the Arab Spring to Syria to the current situation in the Ukraine, at a time when the American people want nothing of intervention and when there's really only so much even the president of the United States can do to achieve America's foreign policy goals.

So you said what, Condi? And you're blaming whom? Huh.

Senate Democrats shamefully abandon President Obama over outstanding surgeon general nominee

By Michael J.W. Stickings

It's one thing for right-wing ideologues and NRA stooges like Rand Paul to oppose President Obama's nominee for surgeon general, Dr. Vivek Murthy. Dr. Murthy, after all, has said that gun violence represents a serious public health threat, which of course it does, and reality-denying pro-gun absolutists live in a fetishistic fantasy world where guns save lives.

It's another thing, though, for Democrats, even Republican-leaning conservative Democrats, to oppose a Democratic president's nominee and for their opposition be enough, with Republican opposition, to derail that nominee's confirmation to a post for what he is supremely qualified: 

Facing a possible defeat in the Senate, the White House is considering delaying a vote on President Obama's choice for surgeon general or withdrawing the nomination altogether, an acknowledgment of its fraying relationship with Senate Democrats.

The nominee, Dr. Vivek H. Murthy, an internist and political ally of the president's, has come under criticism from the National Rifle Association, and opposition from the gun-rights group has grown so intense that it has placed Democrats from conservative states, several of whom are up for re-election this year, in a difficult spot.

Senate aides said Friday that as many as 10 Democrats are believed to be considering a vote against Dr. Murthy, who has voiced support for various gun control measures like an assault weapons ban, mandatory safety training and ammunition sales limits.

I get that some of these Democrats are generally pro-gun and that some of them are facing tough re-election challenges this year. But it takes extreme ignorance and/or willful stupidity not to see America's plague of gun violence as a public health threat, and, what's more, it's not like Murthy's confirmation would suddenly mean the end of gun "rights."

But beyond that, these are Democrats undermining a fellow Democrat who could certainly use the support right now. I get that politicians are about self-preservation and that supporting the president isn't exactly a major vote-winner at the moment (though of course Congress's approval rating is way lower than Obama's). But these Democrats should a) do what's right for the country, b) support the president's, any president's, nominees unless something truly egregious is uncovered, and c) back up their president even if doing so might subject them to some (but probably not much) criticism back home.

But these Democrats aren't just looking at re-election, they're basically just siding with the NRA and the rest of the gun nuts against sensible gun policy, as well as sensible public health policy. They're NRA stooges just like Rand Paul is, and in opposing President Obama's extremely qualified nominee they're displaying not so much sensible political sensitivity but abject moral cowardice. And for that, they should be ashamed of themselves, just as all Democrats should be ashamed that their party can't even remain united in support of their president for what is, for all intents and purposes, an easy call.

Bill O'Reilly understands neither Lincoln nor the presidency nor comedy

By Carl 

It's odd that a man who claims among his favorite guests both Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart would have a problem with President Obama's appearance in a comic interview on the website Funny or Die. But he does:

All I can tell is you Abe Lincoln would not have done it. There comes a point when serious times call for serious action. We're a divided nation which Talking Points believes is in decline. Mr. Obama is quick, has a good sense of humor. Those are assets.

Oh, um, Bill? About Lincoln? Yeah. He likely would have.

In response to a discussion about the pressure from abolitionists for the president to take action against slavery, Lincoln said:

Wa-al that reminds me of a party of Methodist parsons that was travelling in Illinois when I was a boy, and had a branch to cross that was pretty bad — ugly to cross, ye know, because the waters was up. And they got considerin' and discussin' how they should git across it, and they talked about it for two hours, and one on 'em thought they had ought to cross one way when they got there, and another another way, and they got quarrellin' about it, till at last an old brother put in, and he says, says he, 'Brethren, this here talk ain't no use. I never cross a river until I come to it.'

It was a characteristic Lincoln moment. He deflected the question of what he would do about slavery; he used the story as a device to explain his policy; in a display of folksy wisdom, he got his listeners to laugh.

Lincoln understood what Obama understands and what even idiots like Frank Luntz get: if you want to get your point across, you have to hit your audience in their gut with something.

It can be humor. Often, it can be tragedy, or anger. Bush utilized our anger to talk us into two massively destructive wars that made little sense in toto. Yet to this day – and it even echoes in your network's offensive, treasonous coverage of our president – people talk about how "strong" Bush was, and how "weak" Obama looks.

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Obama and Galifianakis ramp up the funny on "Between the Ferns"

By Michael J.W. Stickings

President Obama faces an obstructionist, disloyal, and perhaps even treasonous Republican Party; an often cowardly Democratic Party with many in the ranks who don't have his back; a media establishment cowed into submission by the right-wing propaganda machine; a divided and apathetic electorate that allows itself to be manipulated by that machine; and a world in which the U.S., through no fault of his, just doesn't have the overriding influence it once had.

So, honestly, can you blame him for turning to comedy on Funny or Die's "Between the Ferns"? Besides, he was really funny, as was his hirsute, spider-bitten interviewer (a certain Zach Galifianakis, from The Hangover Part III), and it was all for a good cause that Republicans hate. 

And all the "worried harrumphing" is just nonsense. As Chait writes: 

One can certainly understand why the White House would be concerned about upholding the dignity of the office. Presidential dignity is one of the most powerful tools the president has. He commands a vast state apparatus designed to create a sense of grandeur around him, and this aura bestows upon him a power unavailable to his rivals.

Is this apparatus really too weak? Why is it the role of the press to worry that the president is coming across too much like an equal citizen and not enough like a monarch? Washington’s dignity fetish is one of those manifestations of the cult of the presidency that expresses some really weird ideas about how democracy is supposed to work.

Besides, if members of the media are so worried about "dignity," maybe they should look at their own chosen profession, and at themselves, before turning their noses up at the president. And as for the Obama-can-do-no-right conservatives, which is pretty much all of them, well, whatever. They have no dignity anyway, and their shameless hypocrisy is nothing new.

Anyway, back to the show. Here you go... Enjoy!

Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis: President Barack Obama from President Barack Obama

The Democrats' problem with their base

By Richard K. Barry

It should come as no surprise that President Obama is a bit worried that Democrats not neglect the 2014 midterms because the 2016 presidential election is a shinier bauble.

With the House increasingly out of reach, losing the Senate would pretty much be game over for what is left of the Obama agenda.

Speaking to some higher-end donors in Boston on Wednesday night, the president said that he "hoped because I'm not on the ballot that people aren't going to take it easy this time, because the ideas I care about and am fighting for are on the ballot."

Interesting too is the thought that making use of Obama and his team in the midterms is a tricky business. 

Our message to candidates is: How can we help?" White House political director David Simas said in an interview. If showing up for a rally isn't the answer in moderate districts, Simas said the president can give candidates a boost by raising money and setting a national debate on economic opportunity.

And the same point from the other side can be gleaned from this comment by Republican strategic Brad Dayspring:

"Obviously their plan is to hide Obama in deep blue states and use him to raise money in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles," Dayspring said. "The problem is that Democratic senators and candidates in the top 14 battleground states — from Mary Landrieu in Louisiana to Mark Warner in Virginia — have voted with President Obama an average of 94 percent of the time, a remarkable disconnect considering his approval rating in those states averages just 36 percent."

No great surprise, but midterms tend to be about turning out the base and the Republicans are typically more energized when Obama is not on the ballot to excite Democrats. This is why the Obama team will want to talk up those things that appeal to single women, young people and minorities, things like the presidents economic agenda and minimum wage.

Sadly, hatred is a more compelling turn-out driver than a vague hope that your guy's team has a plan.

So, no, I'm not feeling good about the midterms.