A Little Patience, Please

You can't say Markos Moulitsas Zuniga isn't open-minded.

The founder and publisher of Daily Kos, with hundreds of thousands of registered users and millions of unique viewers each month, ran on Monday a post entitled "2016 dan be Hillary's." Citing polls indicating Mrs. Clinton is favorably viewed, and would defeat potential GOP nominees in a presidential race in Texas and Kentucky, Moulitsas argues

if she's making states like those two competitive, what prayer would Republicans have in the traditional battlegrounds?

As I noted last week, Republicans are already in a world of hurt—if 2012 looked demographically the way 2016 will look, President Barack Obama's 3.9-point victory would've been a 5.2-point victory. But Clinton would make the GOP's daunting task downright impossible, particularly in the wake of their hamfisted efforts to attack Obama by trying to gin up a rivalry between the president and his former primary opponent.

So when Dick Cheney said, "I have the sense that she’s one of the more competent members of the current administration, and it would be interesting to speculate about how she might perform were she to be president," he wasn't trying to be nice to Clinton, he was trying to attack Obama. But oops. Four years of blowing kisses at Hillary can't be erased by a single manufactured freakout over Benghazi. The reality is that Hillary remains the nation's most popular politician and the most admired woman in the last 64 years, per Gallup.

Barely six hours later, a post authored by "Troubadour" on the same site asks rhetorically

And yet here we are again, with no less than Markos putting up a Front Page piece on what a stirling (sic) candidate Hillary would be in 2016.

The thing is, he and so many others simply forgot to ask the most basic question: Why in the hell would you want Hillary Clinton to be President in the first place?

Troubadour maintains (emphasis his) "The objective reality of Hillary Clinton's career and personality is far, far below any sane standard of Presidential leadership: Every step of the way has been characterized by the Washington version of "social promotion..."  He notes that assessing her performance as Secretary of State is difficult to determine without knowledge of the inner workings of the Department, and believes her efforts in the U.S. Senate were driven by political calculation.

Troubadour's scathing criticism is overly harsh.  The political career which began as First Lady, he states, "became hers simply because she had married a man decades earlier who would later become President." Whatever the merits of that assessment, it is ironic given that Barack Obama, newly re-elected as President, lost a race for the U.S. House of Representatives, became State Senator only after his opponent was forced out of the race, and became a U.S. Senator after the GOP nominee quit the race amid a sex scandal. Obama then faced far-right Republican Alan Keyes, who had flown in from Maryland for the occasion, and who would have been beaten by a block of wood.

Paul Waldman knows that Obama's primary (pun intended) challenger in 2008 would be confronted with some of the same gender-based contempt she had faced until dropping out and endorsing Senator Obama that spring.  He explains

It's also tempting to forget, when looking at her today, just how much ugly sexist vitriol was aimed at her during her time as First Lady and, to a slightly lesser but still significant degree, in her 2008 campaign. If she runs again, and especially if she becomes the Democratic nominee, it will come back in greater force than ever. Ann Friedman laments Clinton's Catch-22:

Herein lies one of the most useful, but also saddest, lessons of Hillary Clinton's career: The best defense against being labeled a raging bitch is to convince people you're an underdog. The ability to eat shit, to suck it up and earn the affection of skeptical voters or older male colleagues or your cheating husband, again and again, is an essential skill for successful women of Hillary's generation. A skill that is becoming less essential, sure, but one that few women would declare irrelevant.

To say that Clinton was the victim of sexism is too simple, true though it is. There was what can only be described as a tornado of male sexual panic directed at her. It sometimes seemed that decades of resentment and insecurity over the attacks on patriarchal privilege was poured into a cauldron, simmered down to a thick sauce, and then poured on Clinton's head. It came in the form of angry screeds, and it came in the form of jokes, all far more revealing about the sender than the target. Much of the humor, like the Spy magazine cover with which I illustrated this post, was premised on the hilarious idea that Clinton was not a woman at all but a man, because after all, how could she be FIrst Lady, work on policy, and still be a woman? (This continued into 2008;here's Amy Poehler as Clinton in a Saturday Night Live skit, saying "I invite the media to grow a pair. And if you can't, I will lend you mine.")

When she wasn't portrayed as male, Clinton was described as a castrating harpy; to take just one example, Tucker Carlson said multiple times during the 2008 campaign that whenever he saw Clinton on television, "I involuntarily cross my legs." I suppose Carlson was being refreshingly frank about his own sexual insecurity; his manhood apparently hangs by such a thin thread that just seeing a powerful woman on television was enough for him to fear that she would come through the screen and steal his testicles. But he was hardly the only one who saw in Clinton such a threat to their masculinity. The examples are too numerous to go through, but I'd just mention one of my favorites, when U.S. News complimented Clinton for a speech she gave, saying, "Her presentation was devoid of hard edges, contrary to her longtime image among critics as a harridan and a polarizer." That's right, a "harridan." That was written not in 1907, but in 2007.

As I said, I have no idea whether Clinton is going to run for president again. But if she does, all that stuff is going to come roaring back. There are many more women in politics today than there were 20 years ago when Hillary Clinton first became a national figure, and I'm sure that before long one of them will run for president and be faced with only a fraction of the kind of sexist venom that Clinton has been the target of (particularly if she's a Republican). But Clinton herself will never be able to escape it.

While Waldman is empathetic, Troubadour slams Mrs. Clinton's "presence, personality, image, and style."  But he does recognize "Comparing a recent Secretary of State with positive name recognition and negatives only from years in the past to GOP politicos who have been actively engaged in partisan politics up to the present time."  He also remarks "We have better, more talented, more courageous people than this available to lead, so there is no excuse for Hillary Clinton being the Democratic nominee in 2016, and even less excuse for we in the base to act like it's reasonable to favor her just because the cogs of the machine are once again turning around to her position."

There may, instead, prove to be no one better, more talented, and more courageous to lead. But less than one month into the second presidential term of the incumbent is too early for Markos Moulitsas or anyone else to assume otherwise.

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Kick 'Em To The Curb



Oh, he's good... very, very good.  In his address on Tuesday emphasizing his opposition to implementation of the budget sequester, President Obama remarked

I just want to repeat; the deals that I put forward, the balanced approach of spending cuts and entitlement reform and tax reform that I put forward are still on the table.
I’ve offered sensible reforms to Medicare and other entitlements and my healthcare proposals achieved the same amount of savings by the beginning of the next decade as the reforms that have been proposed by the bipartisan Bowles-Simpson fiscal commission.

These reforms would reduce our government spending bill. [mechanical noise interruption] What’s up cameramen? [laughter] Come on, guys. They’re breaking my flow all the time.
These reforms would reduce our governments bills by reducing the cost of healthcare, not shifting all those costs onto middle class seniors or the working poor or children with disability but nevertheless achieving the kind of savings that we’re looking for.

But in order to achieve the full 4-trillion dollars in deficit reductions, that is the stated goal of economists and our elected leaders, these modest reforms in our social insurance programs have to go hand in hand with a process of tax reform so that the wealthiest individual and corporations can’t take advantage of loopholes and deductions that aren’t available to most Americans.

While recommending "modest reforms in our social insurance programs," the President emphasized his offer of "sensible reforms to Medicare and other entitlements."

It's hard to be opposed to "modesty" and "sensible" anything.  It's especially difficult when the President promises it "would reduce our government's bills by reducing the cost of healthcare, not shifting all those costs onto middle class seniors or the working poor or children with disability."

Use of effective buzzwords is critical to winning a political (or perhaps any) argument.  (Frank Luntz has built a very lucrative career around it.) Modest, sensible, and reform gets Obama halfway there.  But these "reforms" are cuts, notwithstanding the clever framing: "reducing the cost of healthcare, not shifting all those costs..."

Unfortunately, President Obama is not aiming to reduce the cost of healthcare overall but, as a careful reading of his message indicates, is aiming to reduce the cost of the government bill for healthcare.  This sleight-of-hand is effectuated when Obama says his plan "would reduce our government's bills by reducing the cost of healthcare."

This is no mere technicality.  It would be sheer folly for a President to state "I'm going to reduce benefits to the elderly, the poor, and the sick by cutting the most popular and effective government programs enacted since World War II."  Instead, he implies- but does not say, for it would be untrue- that slicing Medicare (a health care vehicle demonstrably more cost-effective than private insurance) would lower the cost to the American public of healthcare, but merely the government's bill.   Then he assures us that he is "not shifting all those costs onto middle class seniors or the working poor or children with disability."   For he is not shifting all those costs; only some.

A recent poll of sentiment toward Social Security found most respondents opposed to raising the retirement age or means testing benefits, but in favor of eliminating the payroll tax cap, increasing the tax rate, and applying a more generous inflation index to determine benefits.Yet, to President Obama this means his "balanced mix of spending cuts and tax reform is the best way to finish the job of deficit reduction. The overwhelming majority of the American people Democrats, Republicans and Independents have the same view."  Reality, it seems, is sometimes ignored even by Democrats. Or in this case, President Obama.

"The greediest generation" former Senator Alan Simpson calls them, while the more subtle critics of earned benefits, including the Peter G. Peterson Foundation and the Washington Post editorial page, pose as supporters of the younger generation against the pampered, old cranks. But as The New York Times recently reported

In the current listless economy, every generation has a claim to having been most injured. But the Labor Department’s latest jobs snapshot and other recent data reports present a strong case for crowning baby boomers as the greatest victims of the recession and its grim aftermath.

These Americans in their 50s and early 60s — those near retirement age who do not yet have access to Medicare and Social Security— have lost the most earnings power of any age group, with their household incomes 10 percent below what they made when the recovery began three years ago, according to Sentier Research, a data analysis company.

Their retirement savings and home values fell sharply at the worst possible time: just before they needed to cash out. They are supporting both aged parents and unemployed young-adult children, earning them the inauspicious nickname “Generation Squeeze.”

New research suggests that they may die sooner, because their health, income security and mental well-being were battered by recession at a crucial time in their lives. A recent study by economists at Wellesley College found that people who lost their jobs in the few years before becoming eligible for Social Security lost up to three years from their life expectancy, largely because they no longer had access to affordable health care.

Other than promoting the use of chained CPI to underestimate the true cost of inflation and thus reduce Social Security benefits, the proposals to cut Social Security would exclude individuals above a certain age.  Opposition by the oldest cohort to weakening the program, then, reflects a concern for the younger generation, as well as an understanding of the value to the country of a program which enhances inter-generational equity and national cohesion.

In case anyone was uncertain that the President wants most of the sacrifice to be borne by recipients of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, Obama maintained "deep and indiscriminate cuts to things like education and training, energy and national security, will cost us jobs and it will slow down our recovery."   Viewing his approach and the GOP's sudden willingness to consider letting the sequester occur, Digby comments

The Republicans have been winning at every step along the way and they just keep demanding more, more, more.   And they will again, even if they agree to the President's proposals. And that's because the President's proposals at every step of the way have also been Republican proposals.



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All Hail Entertainers


Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse, comprising a group of individuals which periodically contributes to Daily Kos, explained

When you look at individual ads or pictures that objectify women, it's not that a single ad directly causes violence or is the sole contributor to harm against women. When society and culture turn women's bodies into objects, this creates a climate where "violence and exploitation of women are both tolerated and tacitly encouraged." It makes it easier to mistreat women when we have the status of objects rather than people.   Whether it is racism, sexism, heterosexism, transgender discrimination, or terrorism, objectification is "almost always the first step toward justifying violence against that person."

Sometimes when a woman objects to a picture that objectifies women and girls, she is accused of being a sexual prude, or previously abused by men, or just can't take a joke.  However,there is a difference between our sexuality and women as sexual objects. It is the objectification that dehumanizes women, and harms women personally, and in all spheres of our lives, including economic, political, educational, health care, social and cultural.

The post was dated August 12, 2012, which apparently was a long, long time ago.  Today, Think Progress' Alyssa Rosenberg sharply criticizes the Weekly Standard's Kathryn Lopez, who blogged of Beyonce's halftime performance

I don’t want to linger on this, but last night’s Super Bowl half-time show was ridiculous — and gratuitously so. Watching Twitter, it was really no surprise that men made comments about stripper poles and putting dollar bills through their TV sets, was it?

Why can’t we have a national entertainment moment that does not include a mother gyrating in a black teddy?

Rosenberg argued

What Lopez appears to object to, and what overrides for her any other consideration of ways in which Beyoncé might be a role model—including her financial success and careful control of her image— is the sight of a woman living in and very much enjoying her body, without needing to secure anyone else’s approval or ensure anyone else’s enjoyment. One of the hallmarks of Beyoncé’s lyrics, both with Destiny’s Child, and as a solo artist, is that no one is entitled to access to her. “Move, groove, prove you can hang with me / By the looks I got you shook up and scared of me,” she sang in “Bootylicious,” with its famous chorus. She warned a loutish boyfriend “Don’t you ever for a second get to thinking you’re irreplaceable.” In “Countdown,” she describes a relationship of equals, where she’ll “Do whatever that it takes, he got a winner’s mind / Give it all to him, meet him at the finish line,” and where “Yup, I buy my own, if he deserve it, buy his shit too.” And in “Independent Women,” Beyoncé and Destiny’s Child warned women “If you’re gonna brag make sure it’s your money you flaunt / Depend on no one else to give you what you want.”

This wasn't a Beyonce concert nor a brief appearance singing on a television program which would be watched disproportionately by her fans, but a performance before a (nearly captive) audience of hundreds of millions of individuals, young, old, and middle-aged, and of every demographic stripe.  It was, presumably, geared to the enjoyment of a tremendously wide swath of the American people- and of people worldwide, to innumerable individuals who also don't know much about Beyonce nor much care. So in the interests of full disclosure:  I, like those individuals, don't know much about Beyonce's lyrics or whether Rosenberg has quoted them in context, nor do I care. Nor do I know of the performer's careful control of her marriage, nor do I care- anymore than I cared about whether President Clinton "had sex with that woman" or President Obama goes skeet shooting.  All that now has been eclipsed by a performance on the third most-viewed television program in American history.

My impressions, therefore- like those of the others- are not likely to be of Beyonce's fine marriage or compelling lyrics but of her objectification, or what liberals/progressives as recently as six months ago identified as objectification.    Nor are those impressions intended- by CBS, Beyonce, corporate sponsors or anyone else in any way involved in the production- meant to be of her lyrics or marriage.  Rosenberg has been played, and is blissfully unaware.

Rosenberg can be forgiven for being manipulated.  She likely was provoked in part by the swipe taken by Lopez at the wife of the President.  The NRO blogger had remarked "it seems quite disappointing that Michelle Obama would feel the need to tweet about how 'proud' she is of Beyonce."

Lopez does not go into detail about being disappointed but she might have added "revealing."  Dictionary.com defines "proud" as "feeling pleasure or satisfaction over something regarded as highly honorable or creditable to oneself."    Merriam-Webster gives examples:   They are the proud parents of a hero; I was proud that I never gave in; She's the proud owner of a new car; Her proudest accomplishment was to finish high school.

In what sense, then, is Michelle Obama- a big fan of Beyonce- proud of the performer?  Is Mrs. Obama, unbeknownst to most of us, a relative?  Perhaps she was once her agent? She was, at least, once Beyonce's mentor, no?

No.  In addition to being gleeful about Beyonce's performance, Michelle Obama is- if on the left we're allowed to say so- a bit prideful.    The second definition Dictionary.com gives for "proud" is, conveniently, "having proceeding from, or showing a high opinion of one's own dignity, importance, or superiority."  While Michelle Obama ought to know a great deal about pride, she clearly knows less of women as sexual objects.  But so it goes with Mrs. Obama, and so it goes with entertainers.  It would be so declasse to linger.





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A Different Kind Of Legacy


On a 30-minute podcast, Chris Mooney of Mother Jones asked Paul Krugman

Why are we currently so obsessed with deficits?

Krugman's answer was twofold: People make up their minds about economics based on heuristics and shortcuts—for instance, the misleading metaphor that likens government finances to the budget of an individual family—and Keynesianism can be complex and counterintuitive. It also runs up against the popular notion that the government shouldn't lean on the scales, because a fair system is one in which people get ahead or fall behind based on their own merits, without external help. As Krugman explained, that's not actually how it works at all—you can fail in this world for reasons that are totally beyond your control...

Where could people possibly have gotten the idea- or, rather, had the idea reinforced that government manage its finances like a household runs its finances?

Perhaps from a President who claims "Government has to start living within its means, just like families do. We have to cut the spending we can’t afford so we can put the economy on sounder footing, and give our businesses the confidence they need to grow and create jobs.”

But Wheaton College economics professor John Miller explains

Few families balance their budgets the way the guardians of financial rectitude are now demanding of government. Nearly all families spend more than they earn and borrow to do so. When a family takes out a car loan, a student loan, or a mortgage on a house, it’s spending money it doesn’t have.

Is borrowing the road to ruin? Not if the debt is affordable. That depends not just on the size of the debt relative to the income available to service that debt, but also on how the family spends the borrowed money. For instance, assuming the size of the debt is manageable, borrowing to pay for education is justified if the education improves the family’s earning potential and so helps provide the income necessary to service the debt.

The same holds true of businesses. They borrow to invest and operate, especially in the United States where corporations finance the bulk of their investments by borrowing rather than by issuing stock. While exact numbers are not available about the privately held Boch auto dealerships, rest assured that Boch’s company borrows to put the cars on his lot that he sells to the public or to build yet another dealership. That borrowing allows Boch’s and other businesses to spend more than they are taking in—Business 101.

Repeating the false analogy between household debt and public debt is not the only piece of conservative disinformation President Obama spreads.  As Roger Bybee pointed out during the presidential campaign, Obama has continually touted the growth of private sector jobs while ignoring the loss of public sector jobs, discouraging the understanding that recovery of the economy depends on employment growth in both areas.   And at a campaign event in Milwaukee, he contended "companies that are doing the right thing and choosing to stay here, they get hit with one of the highest tax rates in the world.  That doesn't make sense."

It doesn't make sense but it is disingenuous, especially with American corporations sitting on $1trillion+ in cash and enjoying record profits, for the President to point to high tax rates and ignore the unusually low effective tax rates paid by companies in the U.S.A.

Nor is it helpful for the President to maintain, as he did in his 2012 State of the Union address, "I also hear from many business leaders who want to hire in the United States but can't find workers with the right skills."  Of course, he hears that from them; it's the myth they want repeated, as the President had done on June 9, 2011 at Northern Virginia Community College when he claimed "the irony is that even though a lot of folks are looking for work, there are a lot of companies looking for skilled workers."  Try this for irony, Mr. President: American workers are skilled but are not being hired. Donald Bartlett and James Steele note

Sure, it was sad about all those people losing their factory jobs to imports, but foreign competition would make our remaining plants more competitive, and the upheaval would be just a pit stop on the way to a bright postindustrial America...

But there were fatal flaws in this theory. The first was that America's corporate leaders- executives and their boadrs- saw quickly that they could make enormous profits producing goods offshore rather than reinvesting at home.  Labor was cheap abroad, and the developing countries would do anything to get the jobs...

The other flaw in the theory, and the one that will be causing grief for working Americans for year s to come, is that while bright, talented people eager to work at a fraction of what bright, talented people need in the United States to maintain a middle-class lifestyle here...

The first of the service jobs to be outsourced in great numbers were the back-office operations of banks, investment houses, insurance companies, and any business that processed huge amounts of paper, from credit card charges to procurement manifests to legal exhibits... (and now) even the jobs requiring ingenuity and brain power are going too.

So it's not only President Obama's rhetoric, it is- at least in the case of the "free trade" he always has championed- policies which are antithetical to the progressive cause and middle class progress.  There will be a price to pay, inevitably, but it will be ignored by the nation's power players, spread throughout the population over an extended period of time, and will hit largely after Barack Obama passes from the political scene.



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Theirs Is The Only Way


It's nearly the height of political incorrectness to question the male politicians or media personalities who boast of their experience with firearms or periodically tell us that they really, really do like sports.  Still, it seemed like only common sense when Steve M. on Saturday wrote on his No More Mister Nice Guy blog

Me, I'm just tired of it. I'm tired of American politicians having to prove they're fit to hold office by shooting guns -- or demonstrating interest in any sporting activity they have a damn good reason not to care about.

I don't hunt. Why? Because I grew up in a large city (Boston) and live in another large city (New York). Barack Obama grew up mostly in Honolulu. He's lived since then in places such as New York, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. Of course he doesn't spend a lot of time shooting.

Gun lovers want us to understand and respect their culture. Hey, why don't you guys try understanding and respecting ours? If you say we shouldn't have contempt for your enjoyment of hunting and target shooting, well, fine, I accept that -- but you need to drop the contempt for those of us who didn't grow up with those recreations, and never developed a fondness for them. It just wasn't part of our culture, and that's OK.

I hate that U.S. pols, in order to seem "down to earth" (which most of them aren't), have to feign an interest in hunting or NASCAR (yeah, I even felt sorry for Mitt Romney to some extent, although his NASCAR comments were an unforced error). 

The New York Times, however, apparently doesn't see it the same way, as it invited former Representative John Dingell of Michigan and former Bush 41 Secretary of State James A. Baker III to offer up their bipartisan love of conventional wisdom.   In their op-ed on Wednesday, they demand their views of gun control to be taken seriously because one is a liberal Midwestern Democrat and the other a conservative Southern Republican.   But the real reason we must listen to them is because they

... share some beliefs. One is a strong love of guns and the outdoors and, just as important, a respect for both. Since we were boys, some of our best times have come with rifles or shotguns in our hands, especially when hunting with our fathers. Jim hunted ducks in the wetlands of southeast Texas and elk in the Rocky Mountains. John hunted small game along the banks of the Detroit River and Lake Erie. As adults, we have hunted together, using our common bond to bridge our differences.

They then boldly assert "any approach demands bipartisan support," remind us "commonsense should prevail," and beseech "each of us (to) look into our own hearts to consider what type of nation we want to have."  And just when I was convinced that, with 60 votes needed to pass virtually anything in the U.S. Senate, Democrats will enact legislation with their 55 members; and that ill-informed emotion should prevail; and that I need to look into my heart to consider what type of nation Peru should have.

But though silly, the admonitions aren't the worse of it.   Dingell/Baker conclude by scolding us:

... we think parents should spend less time leaving their children alone playing shoot-’em-up video games and more time with them doing activities they both enjoy. This includes taking children into the country to hunt and to gain, as we did as boys, a love for the abundance and beauty of nature as well as a respect for the responsible and legitimate use of guns.

There is little quite as satisfying as being lectured by Beltway pols about values.

If you want to take your  children into the country to hunt, knock yourself out.  If you like taking them to the local ball field to teach them to hit a curve ball, more power to you.   If you choose to accompany them to an art or history museum, not a bad idea.  And if you opt to do none of those, that is no more my business than it is of Dingell or Baker.  And your children may somehow, miraculously, nevertheless gain a love for the abundance and beauty of nature and avoid the fate of Dylan Klebold, James Eagan Holmes, Gerald Laughner, or Adam Lanza.

Four years into the administration of Barack Hussein Obama of Chicago, Illinois and we're still told by avatars of the Establishment that only a love for hunting and nature is what stands between us and a nation of homocidal maniacs.  And if you're from Chicago, Boston, Atlanta, Seattle, or Phoenix, you just don't have the values of real Americans.


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The Death March



Marco Rubio is the toast of the town, or at least of the Beltway and the mainstream media.   Here is a Republican the latter can rally around- he doesn't hate Hispanics! He even has mollified some of the sharpest critics of comprehensive immigration reform.   The far-right Breitbart.com reported Wednesday

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) went on the so-called "Big Three" conservative talk radio shows on Tuesday to sell his comprehensive immigration reform plan on the day President Barack Obama gave an immigration speech in Las Vegas, Nevada and the day after a bipartisan group of senators announced a framework for immigration reform.

Rubio went on radio shows hosted by Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and Mark Levin. His appearance on Limbaugh's and Levin's programs were important because, while Hannity has expressed support for immigration reform, Limbaugh and Levin have been critical of such efforts, with Limbaugh calling the plan "amnesty" just a day before Rubio appeared on the program. He was received favorably by the two conservative firebrands, who have in the past ginned up significant opposition against so-called comprehensive immigration reform. 

As Limbaugh noted–and to Rubio's credit–Rubio at least appeared on conservative talk radio to discuss his proposals and ideas, which is something other Republicans who supported immigration reform legislation have not done in the past. 

“Here’s a guy who doesn’t fear talk radio, he embraced it,” Limbaugh said, of Rubio.

On Limbaugh's show, Rubio noted the immigration reform framework he supports requires the nation's borders to be secured before illegal immigrants are put on a path to citizenship and said he would not support a bill that extends Obamacare to illegal immigrants who may be granted temporary legal status...

On Mark Levin's show, Rubio said he would rather do immigration reform "right" than "fast" and said conservatism–along with a "vast majority of Americans"--is for legal immigration. 

Levin said Rubio comes off as a Senator who "tries to do the right thing."

While the Florida senator, currently one of the two leading candidates for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination, strives to be seen as a leader of immigration reform, otherwise he remains, well, loathsome.    Following a town-hall meeting in Jacksonville on January 15, Rubio addressed the issue of gun violence or, as Repubs call it, "gun rights."     Local radio station WOKV reported

"The issue is not gun control.  The issue is violence," Rubio told reporters after his town hall meeting.

The issue is sure to take on a life of its own in the news media over the next couple of days as President Obama hears suggestions from the Vice President's task force on stricter gun contro laws and curbing violence.  He'll also explore several options that would not require him to pass anything through Congress to enact.

Sen. Rubio says the discussion should center around what is happening in this country that is fostering a culture of violence and causing people to carry out shooting massacres like those in Aurora, Colorado and Newtown, Connecticut. 

"Ultimately, violence is violence, whether it's carried out with a bomb, a knife, or a gun.That's the problem is that we have increased violence in our society."

Rubio says he obviously wants to see something done to keep guns out of the hands dangerous people so we don’t have another Newtown or Aurora, but says he won’t support anything that undermines your second amendment rights

"If there are reasonable things that we can do that protect the second amendment right to bare arms but keep guns out of the hands of criminals, we should explore those things.  But to somehow undermine the ability of law-abiding citizens to exercise their second amendment right in exchange for things that won't work, I mean, that's not something I'll support.

Ultimately, violence is violence, whether it's carried out with a bomb, a knife, or a gun. That's the problem is that we have increased violence in our society.  On the same day in which a man with two semi-automatic weapons killed twenty-seven of twenty-eight people he shot in an elementary school in Newton, Connecticut, a man with a knife attacked students

...at a school in central China, leaving 22 children and one adult injured, according to state-run media reports.

The attack occurred at the gate of an elementary school in the village of Chengping, in Henan Province. Police arrested the attacker, who they identified as local resident Min Yingjun, 36.

Children as young as six were among those hospitalized after the attack, suffering injuries including slashes to the ears and head.

An official at Guangshan Traditional Chinese Medicine Hospital, the local facility, told CBS News at least two students had been transferred to the larger city of Wuhan, not far from Chengping, for treatment. The editor of the local newspaper which first reported the story said none of the children had injuries severe enough to threaten their lives.

The attack marks the latest in a series of violent assaults at elementary schools in China. In 2010, a total of 18 children were killed in four separate attacks. On March 23 of that year, Zheng Minsheng attacked children at an elementary school in Fujian Province, killing eight.

In the United States of America, twenty-eight (28) persons were attacked and twenty-seven (27) killed.  In Chengping, China twenty-three (23) persons were attacked by knife and none (0) was killed. And that, apparently, is because"violence is violence, whether it's carried out with a bomb, a knife, or a gun."

Gun violence is an American malady, a distinctively American problem, which toll is now 1501 since the atrocity at Sandy Hook Elementary School.  A comparison of per capita gun deaths per 100,000 people in 22 "economically successful nations" finds that the rate ranges from .007 in Japan to 4.78 in Canada.... except in the U.S.A., in which there are 10.2 fatalities from firearms per 100,000 people.

The problem is that we have increased violence in our society.  Uh, no.  On October, 29 CNN inconveniently pointed out

Violent crime in the United States fell for the fifth consecutive year in 2011 with murder, rape and robbery all going down, although crime remains a serious problem in many urban areas, the FBI said on Monday.

The report of all crimes reported to police nationwide showed slightly more than 1.2 million violent incidents nationwide, while property crimes hit a nine-year low.

Compared with 2010, the new figures show violent crime down 3.8 percent overall. Property crime was down 0.5 percent.

Among violent incidents reported to police, murders were down about 0.7 percent, robberies dropped 4 percent, aggravated assaults declined 3.9 percent, and forcible rapes were down 2.5 percent.

But to somehow undermine the ability of law-abiding citizens to exercise their second amendment right in exchange for things that won't work, I mean, that's not something I'll support.  On Wednesday, Gabby Giffords' husband, Mark Kelly, recommended to the Senate Judiciary Committee

some ideas on how we can take responsibility. First, fixed on background checks. The holes and our laws make a mockery of the background check system. Congress should close the private sales loophole, and the dangers people entered into that system. Second, remove the limitations on collecting data and conducting scientific research on gun violence. Enact -- enact a tough federal gun trafficking statute, this is really important . And finally, let’s have a careful and civil conversation about the lethality of fire arms we permit to be legally bought and sold in this country.

Evidently, Senator Rubio believes there is something in proposals such as these which violates the right of the people to keep and bear arms as part of a well-regulated militia that's necessary to the security of a free state.   However, even Justice Scalia in District of Columbia vs. Heller suggested that only a prohibition of weapons in 'common use' at the time the Constitution was written runs afoul of the Second Amendment.

Wrapping oneself in the Second Amendment- or, rather, in what conservatives imagine it to be- continues as victims line the killing fields of the nation.  Senator Rubio and other Republicans are frightened that the Hispanic vote eventually will relegate them to minority-party status if they don't appear enlightened.   But no matter how much they wring their hands over immigration policy and proclaim their love for Mexicans, they they still march to the drumbeat of America's most powerful pro-crime lobby, the National Rifle Association.


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Link To The Past


It was February 3, 2011, three days before what would have been the birthday of Ronald(6) Wilson(6) Reagan(6), and the U.S. Senate was celebrating the legacy of the 40th President. The Hill observed 

Republicans, Democrats, and one Independent senator highlighted moments of Reagan's life and presidency today in a two-hour tribute that is expected to be followed by a similar tribute in the House on Feb. 9...

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) lamented that today, Americans are faced with 'whining' that the nation cannot reduce spending, and said the United States needs to rediscover Reagan’s approach. “That's what we need to return to,” he said."

The Alabaman served as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Alabama under President Reagan, who later nominated him to a judgeship of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Alabama, though he was not confirmed.  To Sessions, as to many Republicans, Reagan was nearly a deity and in a defense of the latter's Strategic Defense Initiative, Sessions wrote glowingly in 2008 in the Strategic Defense Quarterly

The president argued that “the human spirit must be capable of rising above dealing with other nations and human beings by threatening their existence.” While acknowledging the technological challenges inherent in missile defense, often compared to “hitting a bullet with a bullet,” Reagan nevertheless “call[ed] upon the scientiic community in our country, those who gave us nuclear weap­ons, to turn their great talents now to the cause of mankind and world peace, to give us the means of rendering these nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete.”

Senator Sessions, meet Senator Sessions.   The conservative Washington Free Beacon reports  

On nuclear weapons, Hagel was questioned by Sen. Jeff Sessions (R., Ala.), chairman of the armed services strategic forces subcommittee, about recent efforts to backtrack on his support for an international anti-nuclear weapons forum called Global Zero and a report by the group that advocated sharp cuts in U.S. nuclear forces.

The Global Zero report called for the total elimination of land-based ICBMs and tactical nuclear arms, in talks with Russia or unilaterally by the United States.

Hagel asserted that Global Zero “didn’t propose or call for anything” and that other administrations had proposed such bilateral, not unilateral arms cuts.

Quoting the Global Zero report, Session stated that it called for either bilateral cuts with Russia or cuts to be “implemented unilaterally.”

“I don’t believe that’s consistent with the policy of the country as a whole,” Sessions said.

Sessions said he was troubled by Hagel’s anti-nuclear views.

“I believe the secretary of defense should be the core, the rock-solid person for defense of America,” Sessions said. “I believe he should project an image of solidity and steadfastness that the whole world and American people can depend on. And I’m more than a little troubled by the report that you participated in, Global Zero report, that calls for the total elimination of nuclear weapons and clearly suggests that’s an achievable goal in a realistic period of time, although certainly not immediately.”

Hagel, as would be expected, denies the charge.  So, too, does Politifact, which assessed the validity of the accusation of Americans for a Strong Defense- which was formed to oppose the nomination of the Nebraskan to Defense Secretary-  that the nominee has advocated "an end to our nuclear program."  Politifact concluded

Hagel has called for the eventual elimination of nuclear weapons, but with some major caveats the ad ignores. He is a supporter of Global Zero, which has called for worldwide elimination by 2030. The report he co-authored calls for reducing the U.S. stockpile to 900 nuclear warheads by 2022, but it says that the best way to achieve that reduction is together with Russia and other countries.

But an official who blissfully ignores dangers posed to the Free World by our enemies and naively "calls for the total elimination of nuclear weapons" is irresponsible.  So, too, it was in, respectively, 1985, 1984, 1986, and 1983 when the President of the United States declared

“We seek the total elimination one day of nuclear weapons from the face of the Earth.”

“A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought. The only value in our two nations possessing nuclear weapons is to make sure they will never be used. But then would it not be better to do away with them entirely?”

“It is my fervent goal and hope…that we will some day no longer have to rely on nuclear weapons to deter aggression and assure world peace. To that end the United States is now engaged in a serious and sustained effort to negotiate major reductions in levels of offensive nuclear weapons with the ultimate goal of eliminating these weapons from the face of the earth.”

“I can’t believe that this world can go on beyond our generation and on down to succeeding generations with this kind of weapon on both sides poised at each other without someday some fool or some maniac or some accident triggering the kind of war that is the end of the line for all of us. And I just think of what a sigh of relief would go up from everyone on this earth if someday–and this is what I have–my hope, way in the back of my head–is that if we start down the road to reduction, maybe one day in doing that, somebody will say, ‘Why not all the way? Let’s get rid of all these things’.”

Republicans revere (or pretend to revere) Reagan.  Democrats are intimidated into withholding any criticism of the former President and instead praise him in an effort to establish their centrist bonafide.   Few in the mainstream media, therefore, will recognize in Jeff Sessions' overblown criticism of Chuck Hagel a classic case of GOP mythmaking.




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