The Republican Media- No. 39


Senator Lindsey Graham likes what he sees (literally) in Barack Obama, who is "showing a little bit of leg here" in the proposals expected to be included in the budget proposal to be unveiled on Wednesday.  Overcoming his apparent stimulation, the South Carolina Republican told David Gregory on Meet The Press (transcript, here)

There are nuggets of his budget that I think are optimistic. It’s overall a bad plan for the economy, but when you look at Chained CPI and Medicare reductions, we’re beginning to set the stage for the grand bargain. Chained CPI, adjust/harmonize the retirement age of Medicare with Social Security, do some means testing for both programs and in return flattening the tax code, generate about 600 billion dollars of revenue. And if you look at these changes over 30 years, there’s four to five trillion dollars in savings. So I’m looking for the biggest spending cut in American history by reforming entitlements, saving those entitlements. And the president is showing a little bit of leg here. This is-- this is somewhat encouraging. His overall budget is not going to make it but he has sort of made a step forward in the entitlement reform process that would allow a guy like me to begin talk about flattening the tax code and generating more revenue.

With the cuts in spending, it is "overall a bad plan for" an economy still suffering from lax demand. Graham, however, wasn't referring to that, but to sacrifice elderly people to achieve "the biggest spending cut in American history."     He wants to raise the eligibility age for Medicare and for Social Security, as his friends at the Business Roundtable have advocated.  
The primary driver of the long-term deficit, health care costs, are reduced by Medicare.  But less Medicare means more private insurance, and the health insurance companies just aren't getting enough out of the people Graham & Company view as parasites.   Chained CPI, which the President will recommend, won't be sufficient for Senator Graham, who prays increasing the age of eligibility and means testing will teach those old people a lesson they won't forget.    It would have the desired effect, unfortunately, because

The median income of people over age 65 is less than $20,000 a year. Nearly 70 percent of the elderly rely on Social Security benefits for more than half of their income and nearly 40 percent rely on Social Security for more than 90 percent of their income. These benefits average less than $15,000 a year.

The reason that seniors are so dependent on Social Security is that the other pillars of the retirement stool, employer pensions and individual savings, have largely collapsed.

And in return for decimating earned benefits, Senator Graham is willing- wait for this- to "flatten" the tax code, euphemism for lowering the tax rates of the wealthy and the nominal corporate tax rate, the latter nearly the highest among industrialized nation. However, as The Washington Post recently reported
 
Most of the 30 companies listed on the country’s most famous stock index, the Dow Jones industrial average, have seen a dramatically smaller percentage of their profits go to U.S. coffers over time, even as their share prices have driven the Dow to an all-time high.

A Washington Post analysis of data from S&P Capital IQ, a research firm, found that in the late 1960s and early 1970s, companies listed on the current Dow 30 routinely cited U.S. federal tax expenses that were 25 to 50 percent of their worldwide profits. Now, most are reporting less than half that share.

With the effective corporate tax rate on par with that in other industrialized nations, the South Carolina Senator wants to cut the income of elderly people and raise the costs of their health care, while also reducing the corporate tax rate and shifting the burden onto the middle class.

And to that David Gregory responds- really:  "I also want to follow up-- you’re putting new revenue, as a Republican, you’re putting that on the table and you think it ought to be…"

That, to the host of the longest-running television program in history, is what passes for a compromise position from a moderate Republican.  Presented with a plan which is practically a right-wing wish list of corporate tax breaks, slashing Medicare and Social Security, and giving the Pentagon a pass, David Gregory asks: "Is the Republican leader of the Senate there yet?"

No, David, the question is: Is the Republican leader of the Senate willing to admit he loves it or will he feign disapproval to gain further concessions from the President before negotiations have even begun?    



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That Manure Thing Would Be A Euphemism

US District Judge Edward R. Korman has ruled that the U.S. government cannot block an individual of any age, even if lacking a prescription or identification, from obtaining the emergency contraception pill.   One of the plaintiffs, Stephanie Seguin, responded by noting “This decision to grant immediate access to the Morning-After Pill is a huge step forward in the fight for women and girls to be able to control the course of their lives.”

Tell it to the President, Stephanie.  When HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius in December, 2011 overruled the recommendation of the FDA  by banning Plan B One-Step sales to individuals under the age of 17, President Obama argued

As the father two of daughters, I think it is important for us to make sure that, you know, we apply some common sense to various rules when it comes to over-the-counter medicine. And as I understand it, the reason Kathleen made this decision, was she could not be confident that a 10-year- old or an 11-year-old going to a drugstore should be able, alongside bubble gum or batteries, be able to buy a medication that potentially if not used properly could end up having an adverse effect.

The adverse effect is likely to be less than with aspirin, all manner of medication, and junk food, alongside those benign-sounding bubble gum or batteries.  And if you don't have children, don't even bother weighing in on the issue- your opinion is surely without merit and lacks legitimacy.    As Salon's Rebecca Traister wrote at the time,  "Obama’s invocation of his role as a father is an insult to the commitments and priorities of those on the other side of this issue. Are we to believe that those who support the increased availability of emergency contraception do not have daughters? That if they do, they care less about those daughters than Barack Obama does about his?"

After the Judge issued his ruling, Press Secretary Jay Carney said the President still "supports the decision" of the HHS Secretary. Apparently, the evolution of Barack Obama has been selective.  So, too, is some of his rhetoric designed (no accident) to reinforce conservative myths.  In February, 2011 the President asserted in a radio broadcast "Families across this country understand what it takes to manage a budget.  Well, it's time Washington acted as responsibly as our families do." A few months later, Bill Craighead blogged in the L.A. Times

Decisions about the federal budget are fundamentally different from those of individual households, because policymakers need to account for how their choices affect the economy as a whole. It is more appropriate to liken government budget deficits to prescription medicine. Just as medication can be helpful to a sick patient, deficits can aid a failing economy.

The U.S. economy slumped largely because of a reduction in spending by households and businesses. For households, this was a reasonable response to declining property values, job losses and insecurity. Likewise, it made sense for firms to cut back on investment as their customers spent less. If the federal government were to act this way, though, it would reinforce the decline in economic activity, not alleviate it.

To stabilize the economy, the federal government needs to counterbalance the swings in consumer and business expenditures by moving in the opposite direction. When consumers and firms cut back, government can help replace the lost economic activity through direct spending (on infrastructure projects, for example) and through indirect means, such as tax cuts, which increase households' disposable income.

Further, the federal government can print money.  Or it can borrow money- and not have to worry about paying it back soon.  The U.S. government never has reneged on its debt, and the bond buyers keep coming back.

There is a good chance the President understands he was promoting false equivalence.  So, too, is he aware that Social Security does not contribute to the deficit.  Apparently, however, that is not stopping him from including in his upcoming budget proposal a reduction in benefits by reducing the annual cost of living adjustment with use of the chained CPI, whose rationale is that people respond to price variations by adjusting their purchasing decisions. But as Dean Baker explains, elderly people are particularly ill-equipped to do so, both because of the nature of their purchases (e.g., health care) and their relative lack of mobility.

On to climate change (wait, there is a connection among all these issues.)  At a fund-raiser Wednesday night at the home of a well-healed opponent of the Keystone XL pipeline, Obama commented "You may be concerned about the temperature of the planet, but it’s probably not rising to your No. 1 concern.  And if people think, well, that’s shortsighted, that’s what happens when you’re struggling to get by.”  Charles Pierce responds

This is the argument we get from the oil companies, the extraction industries, and all the politicians they have sublet over the past 40 years — that environmental concerns are the province of the liberal elites, as though small farmers are not being killed by drought, small businesses being killed by what's killing the small farmers, and small homeowners along both seaboards being killed by increasingly massive storms.

Pierce adds "The interested parties have done a good job selling this bag of manure to the American people. To see a Democratic president making essentially the same argument — And that's what he's doing here. He's not just assessing the lay of the land. — is more than simply distressing. It's downright mortifying."

This "Democratic" President is doing a good job selling a bag of manure to the American people on climate change.   On Social Security, which he has linked, inaccurately, to the national debt.  To the health of young women, which he implies only parents care about.  To deficit spending, comparing it to household debt, which anyone who has had Economics 101, and many who haven't, would know is ridiculous.  And then there are the dissolution of privacy, the crackdown on whistleblowers, and all manner of  unprecedented action taken by this President in the name of the war on terrorism.

To be fair, President Obama did advocate what is considered a progressive position on the matter of same-sex marriage- once his vice president and running-mate made his continued evolution on the subject untenable.  To which the old cliche (is there such a thing as a new cliche?), "God is in His heaven and all's right with the world," may be applied sarcastically.




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Obama's Chess Move


The White House has given details to Speaker John Boehner, and an overview to reporters, of the 2014 budget it will release next week.  And in a less-than-shocking development reported by Politico, Boehner promptly has rejected the package of entitlement cuts tied to increased taxes as “no way to lead and move the country forward.”    Firedoglake's DS Wright observes he "started his negotiations by scoring into his own net. In what may be the dumbest plan yet proposed, Obama has offered cuts to Social Security hoping for a change in the Republican’s position on tax loopholes for the wealthy."

Or maybe not so dumb.   The plan is based on the fiscal cliff offer made by the President to Republicans in December and

slices $200 billion from already tight defense and domestic budgets. It would cut $400 billion from Medicare and other health programs by negotiating better prescription drug prices and asking wealthy seniors to pay more, among other policies. It would also generate $200 billion in savings by scaling back farm subsidies and federal retiree programs, among other proposals.

The proposal to change the formula to calculate Social Security payments, also originally part of the offer to Boehner, would generate $130 billion in savings and $100 billion in revenue, a result of the impact of the formula change on other government programs.

The most controversial part of the President's scheme is this scheme to cut benefits for a program which has nothing to do with the deficit, but nonetheless plays a role in Obama's  continuing effort, as Paul Krugman explains, "to win over the Serious People."

Digby accepts Krugman's interpretation and adds

I keep getting asked why I think the President wants to cut the so-called "entitlements."  "It just doesn't make sense," they say.  "There must be some good reason."

I do not know the answer to that. But he does want to cut them, there can be no doubt.  He said he wanted to do it since before he took office in 2009 and has continued to say it ever since.  No, he has not been explicit about it very often (although he has upon occasion) and campaigned on a murky fill-in-the-blank phrase "balanced approach to deficit reduction" but it's been out there for the past four years.

The President's proposal is bad politics for his Party and bad policy, "sticking it to the poor and the middle class," as Krugman recognizes.   Annual cost-of-living increases for Social Security would decline with use of the chained CPI, which "slows the growth of entitlement programs by assuming that when prices go up for something, people switch to cheaper substitutes." Dean Baker gives the details:

President Obama's proposal would reduce benefits by 0.3 percent for each year after a worker retires. After ten years benefits would be cut by 3.0 percent, after twenty years 6.0 percent, and after 30 years 9.0 percent. Over a twenty year retirement, the average cut would be 3.0 percent.

This cut would be a bigger hit to the typical retiree's income than President Obama's tax increases at the end of 2012 were to the typical person affected. A couple earning $500,000 a year would pay an additional 4.6 percentage points on income above $450,000. This would amount to $2,300 a year (4.6 percent of $50,000). That is less than 0.5 percent of their pre-tax income and around a 0.6 percent reduction in their after-tax income.

By comparison, Social Security is about 70 percent of the income of a typical retiree. Since President Obama's proposal would lead to a 3 percent cut in Social Security benefits, it would reduce the income of the typical retiree by more than 2.0 percent, more than three times the size of the hit from the tax increase to the wealthy.

But the political hit is far more likely to be on Democrats seeking election, or re-election in the future, than on the sitting President. Krugman concludes by arguing "Oh, and wanna bet that Republicans soon start running ads saying that Obama wants to cut your Social Security?" Those ads, however, can wait.  It would be more effective for the GOP to air ads following adoption of a budget containing reductions proposed by the President.  Doing so in the near future would expose Democratic legislators as fools before they have a chance to approve Obama's scheme.  They would be forced to reassess their loyalty to the President or risk losing face, as well as considerable support with an age cohort that votes.

Paul Lind, one of the nation's foremost defenders of the program, believes "President Obama, in reportedly proposing to cut benefits for the elderly with chained CPI, should be careful, or he will end up looking as right-wing in retrospect as President Clinton does now for signing rather than vetoing the Defense of Marriage Act."

But that is President Clinton. Bill Clinton, the private citizen and ex-president, has renounced his earlier support for the measure and is clearly the most popular politician in the United States of America. (His wife is second.)  Sponsoring the Defense of Marriage Act thus has done little to tarnish his legacy and less to diminish his popularity. In the short run, it probably enhanced his standing with the public- and as the great economist John Maynard Keynes once wrote, "in the long run, we are all dead."

The President began negotiations, as is his wont, at midfield.  The House Speaker reacted quickly and negatively- as the White House probably expected- by rejecting the call for a modest tax increase. The rejection is not a drawback but a boon to the White House, which can proceed to please the Village with a "compromise," thereby moving closer to the GOP's position.  The President, as he calculates, can then present reluctant Democrats with a Hobson's choice: my plan or theirs. But as Firedoglake's Jon Walker realizes

As de facto leader of the Democratic Party, Obama’s budget can easily be made into the “Democratic” budget. During the campaign Republicans can turn this budget into a millstone around the neck of every Democrat. Cutting Social Security benefits is one of the most unpopular ideas in American politics and Obama just made Democrats the only party officially pushing for it. It is most strongly opposed by seniors, who also tend to make up a greater share of the electorate in midterm elections.

Prepare for a re-run of 2010 when Republicans run on Democrats “slashing Medicare” because (of) Obamacare. Except this time it will be way worse, because the attack will actually be 100% true.




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A New Front In The Gun Culture

On March 28 Eric Dolan of Raw Story reported

A group participating in the “National Day to Demand Action” to end gun violence in Indianapolis this morning faced a counter-protest from gun rights advocates, who brought their loaded firearms with them.

The group Moms Demand Action held the rally outside the Indiana Statehouse on Thursday to call for an assault weapons ban, restrictions on magazine sizes, and an end to the so-called gun show loophole. A member of the organization told Think Progress she was unsettled by the presence of armed counter-protesters, who were from a group calling itself Indiana Moms Against Gun Control.

The National Day to Demand Action was organized by the group Mayors Against Illegal Guns. The event coincided with the release of a television ad featuring family members of those killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School last year...

It was not the first time armed protesters showed up at the Indiana Statehouse. In February,hundreds of gun advocates demonstrated at the Capital against new gun laws. Many of them came armed.

Moms Demand Action and Indiana Moms Against Gun Control also faced off at the Indiana Statehouse earlier this month.

On April 3 The Huffington Post noted

Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) says she received death threats at her Manhattan office Tuesday over a piece of proposed gun control legislation.

According to Maloney, three phone calls were made to her Upper East Side office about an hour apart from each other, ABC reports. Disturbed by the phone calls, the congresswoman decided to skip an event where she was scheduled to present an award that night.

"They said they were going to kill me," Maloney told The Daily News. "I couldn’t go. Who knows what could happen? I think any member of Congress would be scared after what happened to my good friend Gabby Giffords.”

The NYPD confirmed an investigation looking into the phone calls. Maloney said her staffer's received all three calls.

In March, Maloney introduced a bill to require gun owners nationwide to hold liability insurance before being able to purchase a weapon. Failure to show proper coverage would result in a $10,000 fine.

Following the tragic Newtown shooting, Maloney blogged for HuffPost advocating  fo increased gun control...

That morning (9:00 Pacific Time), the U.S.A.'s finest blogger remarked

Can we see what's happening here? 

I don't know the answer, but when you have an armed movement that fetishizes the potential necessity of revolution against the government you can certainly understand why politicians and citizens alike might not be eager to put themselves in the metaphorical --- and literal --- line of fire. In this case, many people, including pols, probably feel that their best insurance policy is "don't make trouble."

And I thought: there is no need to panic- two events (or 3-4, depending upon how the Indiana face-offs are counted) don't make a trend. But roughly five hours later, Digby conceded that she had not known

The National Rifle Association’s security guards gained notoriety earlier this year when, escorting NRA officials to a hearing, they were upbraided by Capitol authorities for pushing cameramen. The thugs were back Tuesday when the NRA rolled out its “National School Shield” — the gun lobbyists’ plan to get armed guards in public schools — and this time they were packing heat.

About 20 of them — roughly one for every three reporters — fanned out through the National Press Club, some in uniforms with gun holsters exposed, others with earpieces and bulges under their suit jackets.

In a spectacle that officials at the National Press Club said they had never seen before, the NRA gunmen directed some photographers not to take pictures, ordered reporters out of the lobby when NRA officials passed and inspected reporters’ briefcases before granting them access to the news conference.

The antics gave new meaning to the notion of disarming your critics.

By journalistic custom and D.C. law, of course, reporters don’t carry guns to news conferences — and certainly not when the person at the lectern is the NRA’s Asa Hutchinson, an unremarkable former congressman and Bush administration official whom most reporters couldn’t pick out of a lineup. But the NRA wasn’t going to leave any doubt about its superior firepower.

"Free speech isn't much of a "right" when people people who disagree with me are ostentatiously carrying a loaded gun," Digby noted.  But intimidating the media is, at least, a mainstream tactic.  The GOP has been using it, successfully, for years.

But now it's getting serious.   The Dallas Morning News has revealed

Jay Hileman, an assistant U.S. attorney in Houston, has withdrawn from a large Aryan Brotherhood of Texas racketeering case due to security concerns.

Richard O. Ely II, a Houston defense attorney who is representing one of the 34 defendants, said Hileman sent him an email on Tuesday, informing him that he was off the case.

Ely said another Justice Department prosecutor from Washington D.C. will be assigned to the case to replace Hileman...

The Aryan Brotherhood of Texas is a key focus in the investigation of the recent murders of the Kaufman County district attorney and one of his prosecutors. No evidence has emerged tying the prison gang to the killings. No one has been charged or named as a suspect.

District Attorney Mike McLelland and his wife, Cynthia, were found shot to death in their homes on Saturday. About two months earlier, felony prosecutor Mark Hasse was gunned down in a parking lot near the county courthouse.

Ely said Hileman, who he called a good friend of his, is likely concerned about his family after the killing of the DA and his wife.

“He’s obviously made a decision based on something,” Ely said.

It's nothing new for America's premier crime lobby, the National Rifle Association, to intimidate legislators.  But now its allies are going after law enforcement, and Charles Pierce recalls

I'm old enough to remember when the NRA joined an ensemble conniption fit to condemn Ice-T for merely writing a song called "Cop Killer." The NRA followed that up by fighting a ban on armor-piercing "cop killer" bullets, and everybody appreciated the irony, and things went on as usual. Now, actual cops are being killed and Ice-T's on a successful TV cop show, so I guess we're all good.



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Did You Hear The One About...?


In the "people say" dodge, we know "people" sometimes means "I."  So did you hear the one about President Obama and Mayor Rahm Emanuel being fans of gun violence?

Arguing against gun safety legislation, Rush Limbaugh on Monday claimed

Folks, this is a serious question.  Let me tell you why this is really hideous.  Because there is a theory. If Rahm Emanuel, the mayor of Chicago, big Democrat, former chief of staff for Obama and Clinton -- you know, Wayne LaPierre said this once of Clinton, too.  He said that Clinton is comfortable with a certain level of violence because it promotes the idea we need new laws.  Well, the same thing is being said about Rahm Emanuel, that there's not a lot being done to stop the murders in Chicago because they provide an excellent backdrop for the quest for more law.  And so people are starting to say to the media, "Why don't you ask the mayor and the president and others, why are they not enforcing existing gun laws in Chicago?  Why is there no effort being made to really reduce the murder rate in Chicago?  Is it because it's too useful?" 

Rush won't accuse Emanuel (or Obama) directly of encouraging violent crime but his audience knows he endorses "what people are starting to say."  Alleging "there is no effort, special or otherwise, to enforce current gun laws or to prosecute people" Rush asks rhetorically "Are they actually sitting idle and using the horrors of the Chicago murders" as a photo-op?

If Mayor Emanuel is encouraging firearm violence, he is as much a failure as George W. Bush was as President (well, almost).  Dylan Matthews evaluates the recent, huge drop in gun violence in Chicago, which in February experienced only 14 homicides, the lowest monthly total since 1957.  Particularly cold weather probably played a role but, additionally,

The Chicago Police Department claims that was achieved through “saturation policing,” in which the police department identifies high-crime areas and then focuses districts’ energies on them. In February, the CPD identified 10 zones, which account for about 2 percent of Chicago’s land area but 10 percent of its violent crimes, and sent 200 officers on overtime patrols in those zones. The approach was a modified version of a policy that Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Commissioner Garry McCarthy had initially abandoned.

Unfortunately, the increased patrols, continued efforts to target gang violence, educational and other forms of intervention are expensive. Matthews notes

Harold Pollack, co-director of the Crime Lab with Ludwig, suggests that barring a federal program like Community Oriented Policing Services, cities may just not have the resources to do what’s necessary. “Many innovative policing strategies are pretty labor-intensive,” he says. “In the current budgetary environment, a program such as COPS might be necessary for either hot-spot policing or different community-policing approaches to really take hold.” And with the federal government in a budget-cutting mood too, even that may be hoping for too much.

So efforts by the Emanuel administration to stem firearm violence may fail because of insufficient resources.  Still, it's curious that Rush Limbaugh would not have heard about the drop in violent crime in the city, which has not been kept a secret.

By contrast, it is likely that when Limbaugh claims "none of these background check laws, none of the new laws that they want to implement would have stopped what happened at the school in Newtown, Connecticut," he is willfully misleading his audience.   Laws mandating background checks for all firearm sales probably would not have prevented the Sandy Hook massacre. But since then, firearms and their owners have been responsible for 3,294 deaths (as of Thursday). Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper, who Wednesday signed three significant gun control measures.

pointed out that last year, some 2,000 people who underwent a background check in Colorado were denied the right to buy a firearms, either because of a criminal record, an outstanding warrant, a restraining order or some other reason.

"People would say to me, 'Well, criminals aren't stupid. They're not going to sign up for background checks.' It turns out many criminals are stupid," he said.

Limbaugh may have known of the drop in violent crime in Chicago and undoubtedly knows background checks would curb firearm violence. But he is less likely to have the self-awareness to understand that his views on the larger culture are muddled and contradictory.  Switching abruptly from gun legislation to "erosion of our culture," he remarked

Fifty-three percent of Hispanic babies are born out-of-wedlock.  Seventy percent of African-American babies are born out-of-wedlock.  Seventy percent of babies born to poor white women are born out-of-wedlock.  Half of the babies -- get this stat -- half of the babies born to mothers under 30 are born out-of-wedlock.  Let me run through this again, 'cause I maintain that you cannot get rid of the welfare state with these birth statistics.  Somebody has to take the place of the second parent, and the government has willingly, and, in fact, Democrat-led governments have eagerly done so.  So 70% of African-American babies are born out-of-wedlock.  Fifty-three percent of Hispanic babies born out-of-wedlock.

That is not mere race-baiting, only one of Limbaugh's specialties.   Wednesday, he was chagrined about babies born out of wedlock to minority and poor women.   Thirteen months ago, Sandra Fluke argued that birth control needs to be included in the health insurance plans offered by religiously-affiliated institutions for their employees.  Astonishingly Limbaugh, apparently unaware that more sex does not require more birth control, commented

Your daughter appears before a congressional committee and says she's having so much sex, she can't pay for it and wants a new welfare program to pay for it. Would you be proud?  I don't know about you, but I'd be embarrassed.  I'd disconnect the phone. I'd go into hiding and hope the media didn't find me.

But Rush contended also "I don't care, except when I'm told that policy makes it that the rest of society must assume responsibility and cost for behavior that people want to engage in with no consequences and no responsibility themselves."  Appalled last year by the specter of women having access to birth control.  he now rails at the proliferation of babies born out-of-wedlock, especially by the demographic with limited access to birth control.

Spanning a full range of subjects, Rush Limbaugh continues to confound many of us with his adroit use of wit, ignorance, and rank dishonesty.  But then, that sounds a lot like the modern Republican Party- minus the wit.




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It's The Ideas, Stupid


Dr. Benjamin Carson has died.

But don't take my word for it.  Trust instead perhaps his most stout defender, Gary Bauer, who on Monday wrote Dr. Carson is the victim of "leftist 'lynching.'"   Funeral arrangements are pending.

"Liberal Democrats," Bauer continued, "see a black conservative doctor with a wonderful personality and incredible achievements and no matter how popular he is, their first instinct is to take him down "  Similarly, Rush Limbaugh last week claimed "if you are a minority in this country and you make something of yourself and you dare stray from the Democrat Party plantation, you are going to pay the price for that in terms of what is said about you in public."  

Deftly repeating an emerging talking point, Carson himself on The Mark Levin show said of liberals "Well, they're the most racist people there are. Because you know, they put you in a little category, a little box, 'you have to think this way, how could you dare come off the plantation?'"  A moment earlier, Carson had accused these parasites of being "the most racist people" and argued "political correctness is threatening to destroy our nation because it puts a muzzle over honest conversation and the fabric of our nation is changed without the benefit of a conversation."

If you don't believe someone could almost simultaneously decry "political correctness (which) puts a muzzle over honest conversation" and call his critics "racist," check out the audio below, from Media Matters.









A sense of victimization is a common theme among ultra-conservatives, who exploit the sense of paranoia in the GOP base which believes the defunct ACORN got President Obama re-elected. If Democrats disagree with a black man or woman who is conservative, it must be because the individual is black and they want him to stay on "the plantation" or, as Limbaugh put it, to" bow down and be loyal to some big government or a series of programs." Rush maintained also

Only one acceptable way to be black in America, and you'd better not choose the route that Ben Carson chose. And you better not choose the route that Clarence Thomas chose. Or Shelby Steele. Or I could give you lists of prominent African Americans from now to the end of this show and not one of them is worth even a modicum of respect in today's Democrat Party.

Liberals might not hold in high esteem Clarence Thomas, Ann Coulter,  Bauer, and other conservatives who equate political differences with lynching. What could they be thinking?

Imagine! Democrats disagreeing with a conservative! How dare they do that- my gosh, he's black!  Some Republicans are flummoxed that Democrats can disagree with someone because they disagree with his ideas, irrespective of the subject's color.  It's difficult for some Repubs to get beyond race.  Sometimes motivated partly by bigotry, these individuals hold Barack Obama in low esteem because he's black, and so assume that Democrats make their assessment on the same basis.

The GOP is in the throes of a desperate re-branding effort, aiming to upgrade support among minorities without reassessing their extreme right-wing agenda.    Intermittently motivated partly by bigotry, some Repubs hold Barack Obama in low esteem because he's black, and so assume that Democrats make their assessment on the basis of race.    Notwithstanding their tolerance for the President's center-right policies, Democrats largely have the pesky habit of assessing the content of the ideas rather than the color of the subject's skin.  

Rush Limbaugh, held hostage by racial (and, even more so, class) prejudice, blathers on about conservatives being victimized.   It's more disturbing to see Gary Bauer and the GOP's newest heartthrob, Dr. Benjamin Carson, thinking along the same lines.



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Abortion Rights Left In The Dust


Last week, Sarah Kliff observed, as Steve M. notes,

The divergence in public opinion correlates with divergent state-level policies. For the past decade, the gay marriage movement has gained momentum. Ever since Massachusetts legalized gay marriage in 2003, eight states have followed to allow similar unions.

The landscape on abortion rights, however, has moved in the opposite direction.  States passed more abortion regulations in the 2000′s than they did in the 1990s. And no law to expand access has passed in at least five years.

She concluded "There’s no one explanation for why the two issues, once grouped together, moved in different directions."

There is no one explanation, but there are several possibilities.  Steve M. concludes

I think members of a group need to be politicized, and not easily mollified. If politicians feared that women (or fertile women, or fertile heterosexuals of both genders) were highly attuned across the country to the reproductive-rights threat, they might fear punishment at the polls if they pushed for draconian abortion laws. If poor and middle-class voters routinely voted their class interests, politicians would fear crossing them. 

Gay people (and their families and friends) have made it clear that they're politically engaged on gay issues. And that makes a big difference.

Even that, however, begs a question: why have gay people and their allies been able to mobilize politically while supporters of reproductive rights have not?    Commenting on Steve's blog, "Victor" notes there has been

more and more exposure of people who were gay to the homophobes - who saw that some of their friends and family members were gay, or co-workers, even some church members, and, outside of sexual orientation, weren't some sort of child-molesting deviants, but were people just like them, with the same hopes, dreams, and fears.

The exposure has been dramatized on television, most notably by Will and Grace, which ran on NBC and still is in syndication, and Modern Family, currently appearing on ABC.  The popularity (especially of Modern Family) of both programs, as well as the many awards garnered by each, has only added to the acceptance of homosexuals.

By contrast, there has been little knowing exposure to women who have obtained abortions. When a woman gets an abortion, it goes unnoticed by the general public and even to many of her acquaintances.  They are, for the most part, still in the closet.   Even in  libertine Hollywood, in which many gifted and beloved celebrities have declared their homosexuality or been "outed," there have been few women who have stated that they have voluntarily terminated a pregnancy.

The right, "Victor" notes, "had to drop the stigma on 'Adultery'  because it's something that conservative politicians, from Gingrich to Vitter to Sanford, have been routinely guilty of."  Instead, anti-choice conservatives, presumably convinced abortion is the termination of life, have not been satisfied to press the public into believing abortion is "killing," an arguable proposition.  Rather, they label it "murder," which it inarguably is not, given that murder is "the unlawful premeditated killing of one human being by another, especially with premeditated malice."    

Anti-abortion rights activists may claim for public consumption that the woman is a "victim," but the latter is keenly aware that she has engaged in what many individuals condemn as "murder."   But the pro-choice movement has decided to avoid countering that argument.  Emphasizing the importance of a woman's autonomy and the need to "get government out of the bedroom,"  rarely is it asserted that abortion- even in the first trimester- is not the taking of a life.

People now have come to know that co-workers, friends, or relatives of theirs are gay. Less common is the understanding that women who have chosen abortion are among their close acquaintances.  Many of these have few if any regrets about their choice.  But unlike homosexuals, who will live their life with their sexual orientation, the women believe they no longer will need to make a solemn, wrenching decision.  They are done, hopefully and probably.
 
A woman who has sought and procured an abortion cannot be expected to go public- especially when she probably would be standing alone.  She may admit of a private, unpopular medical decision and be in the vanguard of a political movement which would help nameless, faceless people whom she has never met, nor will ever meet.  Alternatively, she can go on quietly with her life and not face the scorn and verbal (at least) abuse of the anti-choice movement.  

Their backs to the wall on same-sex marriage, the right has, on reproductive freedom, done its work and done it very well.


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