Leverage, Again


House Republicans have decided they will reject the compromise Democrats and Republicans have approved to extend the payroll tax cut for two months and including provisions demanded by the GOP. According to Brian Buetler of Talking Points Memo, "they will vote on a single measure that rejects the Senate’s plan and simultaneously calls for a conference with Senate negotiators to iron out the (significant) differences between the two chambers’ plans."

And why shouldn't they? For what seems like months we've heard from Democrats, especially in the administration, that failure to approve this tax cut would bring economic calamity upon the nation. Worse, in an effort to coerce support from Republicans pretending to oppose it, they have framed the proposal, to avert the scheduled return of the tax to the previous level, not as a tax cut but as an effort to prevent taxes from rising. They thus stole a page from the GOP playbook, in which the effort to allow the Bush-era tax cuts to revert to the level called for in legislation approved by Congress and signed by then-President Bush, was inaccurately (but cleverly) framed not as a tax cut but as an effort to prevent liberals from increasing taxes.

And now, surprise! House Republicans not only have repositioned themselves as supporters of a temporary tax reduction, but of a longer-term reduction. "We don't need to be governing in two-month increments," House Majority Leader Eric Cantor declared, " people can't live their lives like that."

Having obtained from the White House a provision which would speed the review process for the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada to the Gulf Coast, House Speaker John Boehner took the Senate-passed measure back to his caucus, which overwhelmingly rejected it. Democrats, simulating ("simulating," not "stimulating') political virgins, expressed shock at the intransigence of House Republicans. House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer of Maryland intoned "We are witnessing the concluding convulsion of confrontation and obstruction in the most unproductive, tea-party-dominated, partisan session of Congress- the most partisan of which I have participated." Terming Boehner "a decent guy," New York Senator Chuck Schumer charged "he's got a caucus that is sort of out of control. He's afraid of the eighty Tea Party, way-out-there people in his caucus. He's letting them run the caucus, run his House."

Now the House GOP is poised for a meeting of the minds in a House-Senate conference, which will produce an additional concession or two for the conservative cause. All of this would have been avoided if instead of the dangerous payroll tax cut, President Obama had proposed extending the Make Work Pay tax cut, which would have prevented Republicans from posing, however transparently, as defenders of the Social Security trust fund.

Sometimes, political adversaries let slip their true motives. Eyeing re-election, President George HW Bush alarmed his strategists by explicitly stating "message: I care." So Democrats should have been warned when John Boehner remarked "I do trust him. It’s not that we have a tough time coming to an agreement. But the president and I have a very cordial relationship...."

Yes, John Boehner does trust Barack Obama. Otherwise, little progress could be made in advancing the GOP agenda.





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Almost Somewhat Accurate


The Atlantic's Kevin Drum and The New York Times' Paul Krugman are annoyed at Mitt Romney for claiming at the Sioux Falls GOP debate

is a president who fundamentally believes that this next century is the post-American century. Perhaps it's going to be the Chinese century. He is wrong.

Krugman terms "justified outrage" Drum's remark "where does he get this stuff? It's just made up out of thin air. Obama's never said this or anything even close to it." He himself adds "I can’t think of any candidate who has lied so freely, with so little compunction," obviously "playing into right-wing fantasies (of) what a liberal sound like."

Romney does lie rather freely, although with a campaign that includes Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry, Krugman really should think a little harder. Additionally, there is Newt Gingrich, whose discomfort with the truth is discomfiting to many of us, and who plays into right-wing fantasies of what a liberal sounds like. There was the time in 1999 he blamed the evil liberal triumvirate of media, university, and politicians for the Columbine horror, accusing "the elite of this country – the elite news media, the liberal the academic elite, the liberal political elite: I accuse you in Littleton.... of being afraid to talk about the mess you have made, and being afraid to take responsibility for things you have done, and instead foisting upon the rest of us pathetic banalities because you don’t have the courage to look at the world you have created.” Or in November, 2000, exploiting the horror of violent crime by remarking "I think that the mother killing the two children in South Carolina vividly reminds every American how sick the society is getting and how much we need to change things.... the only way you get change is to vote Republican." Or last year, appealing to fear of the other by contending "the folks who want to build this (not quite at Ground Zero, not an actual mosque) mosque-- who are really radical Islamists who want to triumphally prove that they can build a mosque right next to a place where 3,000 Americans were killed by radical Islamists-- those folks don't have any interest in reaching out to the community."

Compared to Gingrich, Romney is a piker when playing into right-wing fantasies- and occasionally, perhaps accidentally, he gets it right, such as when he recently charged President Obama with being

someone who is now so desperate to get reelection that he’s doing things that are very much counter to the interest of the country and he knows it.

There are many examples- e.g.,, withdrawing the nomination of Dawn Johnsen to the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel and bypassing Elizabeth Warren for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau- of President Obama subordinating principle to politics. More recently, however, Obama's Health and Human Services Secretary, the pro-choice Kathleen Sebelius, rejected the FDA's recommendation that Plan B be made available to girls under the age of 17, the first time HHS has rejected the FDA's position. Responding to a query posed at a news conference, Obama supported the decision, leading Amanda Marcotte to argue

Turns out a lot of people---especially men---who think of themselves as "reasonable" or moderate or even liberal, quickly glommed on to the argument that this ruling was addressing a parent's right to know. They falsely assumed that putting Plan B out of reach of teenagers will force teenagers to talk to their parents, and didn't consider that for many to most teenagers who were already not talking to parents, it will actually cause them to shut up about it and hope that they just don't get pregnant.

And take the payroll tax cut, a politically popular position, as with almost all tax cuts, and which has been used by the President as a cudgel to bash Republicans. Currently, as worked by President Obama, general revenue is compensating the Social Security trust fund for the loss in revenue to Social Security incurred by the payroll tax cut, as it presumably would by any extension. But redistricting prompted by the 2010 census is accruing to the benefit of the GOP, which controls state governments, and which is the stronger party in most of the states gaining congressional seat(s) due to population shifts. (If the new congressional map were in effect in 2008, John McCain would have won more than 270 electoral votes and the presidency.) In November 2012, Republicans will be defending 10 seats- and Democrats, 23. Barack Obama's re-election is in jeopardy.

And so it might be as early as January, 2013 that the Republican Party controls the federal government. The payroll tax cut, of course, would continue under the control of the GOP, which currently is opposed for leverage and/or because it is Barack Obama's idea, reasons completely unrelated to ideology. And the GOP will continue to reimburse the trust fund? Not on your life. The idea of either increasing fees or taxes to supplement Social Security or blowing a bigger hold in the deficit will be off the table, especiallly when the GOP will have an opportunity to bleed the trust fund, thereby enhancing its (fictitious) claim that Social Security isn't solvent, and strengthen its argument that it must be "reformed"- i.e., privatized.

Barack Obama isn't the smartest person in Washington- that would be Mitch McConnell, and Haley Barbour, when he's around. But he sees the end game as very few in his party do. When Mitt Romney says that the President is "so desperate to get reelection that he's doing things that are very much counter to the interest of the country and he knows it," he is not completely correct. he's only almost right, not in terms of the policies he means, and ony accidentally,but there is a germ of truth to the charge. And for a GOP presidential candidate, that's actually pretty good.





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Iran, Iraq And Bachmann

Watching the last GOP debate (transcript here), held in Sioux City, Iowa, the sober viewer was reminded how popular "beer muscles" are among the Repub aspirants. While Ron Paul wants to avoid war at almost all costs, the other candidates generally vie to prove how tough they are, especially compared to President Obama. The most explicit, Rick Santorum, declared "we should be planning a strike against their facilities and say, if you do not open up those facilities and not close them down, we will close them down for you." Mitt Romney charged Obama with "thinking somehow if we appease or accommodate the tyrants of the world, that the world will be safer." Michele Obama was certain Iran will develop a nuclear weapon and "will use it to wipe our ally, Israel, off the face of the map, and they've stated they will use it against the United States of America. Look no further than the Iranian constitution, which states unequivocally that their admission -- their mission is to extend jihad across the world and eventually to set up a worldwide caliphate. We would be fools and knaves to ignore their purpose and their plan."

But that was the more logical portion of the Minnesota congresswoman's critique of the Paul approach to the Persian Gulf. Lost in the translation was Bachmann's statement

Well, I think clearly the biggest mistake that President Obama has made -- and there are many when it comes to foreign policy -- has been the decision that he made regarding Iraq. He was essentially given on a silver platter victory in Iraq, and he's choosing intentionally to lose the peace.

And we all know what's going to happen. We know that Iran is going to be the hegemon and try to come into Iraq and have the dominant influence. And then Iraq will essentially have dominance from the Persian Gulf all the way to the Mediterranean through its ally, Syria.

I'm not referring to the idiotic allegation that the President is "choosing intentionally to lose the peace," which would be tantamount to treason, were the United States legally involved in a 'war' against Iraq, rather than merely carrying on yet another police action. Rather, it is the cognitive dissonance embodied in stating "he was essentially given a silver platter victory in Iraq" and "we know that Iran is going to be the hegemon and try to come into Iraq and have the dominant influence" which, presumably, displeases Bachmann.

Sadaam Hussein's Iraq had no "weapon of mass destruction." Nor did it have chemical or biological weapons (which, truth be told, are not weapons of mass destruction). Nor was it aiding Al Qaeda and our involvement in the war probably strengthened the hand of terrorists in the region.

Any "silver platter victory in Iraq," for those paying attention, would be regime change. A genocidal dictator was replaced by a government elected somewhat democratically and whose head, Nouri al-Maliki, is not the authoritarian Hussein was.

But al-Maliki, a Shiite Muslim, traditionally has been pro-Teheran. If Bachmann is as exorcised (should she be exorcised? Oh, never mind.) that Iran will "come into Iraq and have the dominant influence" there, it is curious that she would perceive some "silver platter victory in Iraq."

A realist ought to be skeptical of such certitude about the danger presented by the current government in Iran. But the threat is significantly greater than that acknowledged by Ron Paul. The degree of threat posed by Teheran (which remains unclear) should give Michele Bachmann, and the other conservatives who continue to defend Gulf War II, considerable pause.

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Gingrich And Clinton


"Existential Willie" is the phrase which popped into the mind of Timothy Noah of Slate in 1998. He correctly prophesied that "it depends on what the meaning of 'is' is" would become a defining moment in the Clinton presidency and noted that rationalizing

to the grand jury about why he wasn't lying when he said to his top aides that with respect to Monica Lewinsky, "there's nothing going on between us." How can this be? Here's what Clinton told the grand jury (according to footnote 1,128 in Starr's report):


"It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is. If the--if he--if 'is' means is and never has been, that is not--that is one thing. If it means there is none, that was a completely true statement....Now, if someone had asked me on that day, are you having any kind of sexual relations with Ms. Lewinsky, that is, asked me a question in the present tense, I would have said no. And it would have been completely true."

There is a clear parallel to the GOP presidential race, in which Newt Gingrich pocketed $1.6 million as an influence peddler- uh, er- historian for Freddie Mac which, as every good American knows, was, along with Fannie Mae, the Most Corrupt and Evil Institution In World History.

Gingrich has been put on the defensive for running interference for Freddie Mac and at the Repub presidential debate on Thursday night in Sioux Falls, protested "I never lobbied under any circumstance. I never went in and suggested in any way that we do this." Mitt Romney, perhaps recalling the mutual destruction of Richard Gephardt and Howard Dean in the 2004 Democratic race when they criticized each other, was somewhat muted in his criticism of the former House Speaker, avoiding the confrontation he preferred other candidates have with the Georgian. Michele Bachmann took up the challenge, departed from her normal role in the debates as laugher-in-chief, and charged

Well, after the debates that we had last week, PolitiFact came out and said that everything that I said was true. And the evidence is that Speaker Gingrich took $1.6 million. You don't need to be within the technical definition of being a lobbyist to still be influence-peddling with senior Republicans in Washington, D.C., to get them to do your bidding.
And the bidding was to keep this grandiose scam of Freddie Mac going. That's -- that is something that our nominee can't stand for. We have to shut down these government enterprises. And we've got to end them. And I think that's shocking that he's saying that.

The following day, Rick Perry, forgetting that as Texas governor he has considered lobbyists as merely part of his extended- no, immediate- family characterized "the idea that somehow or another ‘I’m a consultant, I wasn’t a lobbyist.’ For most of us, that is a very weak excuse at best."

Condemnation of Gingrich for his hubris, narcissism, flights of fancy, and ideological inconsistency has echoed throughout the conservative world as his poll numbers have dramatically risen and, now, dropped somewhat. But there is that one potential line of attack which appears to have gone unnoticed (or virtually so) among his (GOP) detractors: "it depends on what the meaning of lobbyist is."

Sure, Chris Dodd, Barney Frank, Nancy Pelosi, and Barack Obama have replaced Bill Clinton as Repub bogeymen. But there remains a well of hatred among Republicans, especially among rank-and-file voters, for the 42nd president. Now a part of standard political discourse, "it depends on what the meaning of 'is' is" has become emblematic of the parsing periodically engaged in by politicians, and which Americans despise.

It goes to the heart of our impatience with details- Gingrich legally was not actually not a "lobbyist"- and goes to the heart of the disgust people hold toward other people being overly technical and not seeing the big picture. The biggest sin committed by Newton, who recently had called for incarcerating Frank and Dodd over what Republicans perceive as their role in the financial crisis, was hypocrisy. But a snide reference to words of the guy Noah termed "existential Willie" and Republicans have derided as "slick Willy" could only damage Gingrich. And that would be a fine Christmas gift for GOP insiders and other Republicans who would like to win a presidential election.

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Literary Loss

Once a socialist, but also a fervent supporter of Persian Gulf War II, and always a biting wit, writer and author Christopher Hitchens died on Thursday of pneumonia brought on by esophageal cancer.

Hitchens was a fervent critic of Christianity, a difficult position to defend, and boldly called Mother Teresa "a fanatic, a fundamentalist, and a fraud," a position he defended quite well. It was hardly surprising, therefore, that his passing brought at least two tasteless reactions. According to Crooks and Liars, conservative Republican radio host Bill Bennett commented "He was left, I was right, but we had great debates, great drinking bouts. And I hope as the big atheist that he was, he's in for a big surprise."

Yes, always fun to wish Hell on a friend upon his death. Similarly, evangelical minister and literary sensation Rick Warren tweeted " My friend Christopher Hitchens has died. I loved & prayed for him constantly & grieve his loss. He knows the Truth now."

Now, that's the ticket. Roman Catholic Bennett prays for a fiery eternal existence for his friend while Protestant Warren gloats. Ecumenism, of a sort.

But at least one unbeliever, famed atheist Richard Dawkins, took his own opportunity to score points, tweeting" Christopher Hitchens, finest orator of our time, fellow horseman, valiant fighter against all tyrants including God."

Meanwhile, center-right columnist and ex-speechwriter David Frum, who never aspired to public display of religiosity nor its denial, tells of when

A friend of theirs once took Christopher Hitchens and his wife Carol Blue to dinner at Palm Beach’s Everglades Club, notorious for its exclusion of Jews.

“You will behave, won’t you?” Carol anxiously asked Christopher on the way into the club. No dice. When the headwaiter approached, Christopher demanded: “Do you have a kosher menu?”

And then, as only a writer and speechwriter could, Frum concludes with what would be a fitting epitaph for his friend Hitchens, who

offered a model of how to think – and how to live. Fully. Fearlessly. Joyously. And then, alas too soon, of how to die: without bluster but without flinching, boldly writing until the fingers moved no more.

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One Man Unaware, The Other Dishonest

The dishonesty is so stark, so brazen that he can congratulate himself while simultaneously presenting the facts which contradict his claim.

That would be, of course, our man in Florida, Rush Limbaugh. This is how it went yesterday on the program hosted by the guy who claims variously that he's 98+, 99+ per cent accurate:

So I was out there leading the charge, and this is what I said July 2nd, 2009, right here on this program in this very studio.

RUSH ARCHIVE: They're doing everything they can to blame this on Bush, to come out and say, "You know, it's worse than we thought it was," which, by the way, I predicted they would say: "Ah, it's worse than we thought it was;" and so now Obama is gonna head out there and he's gonna do a speech. He's gonna talk about the unemployment numbers at two o'clock this afternoon. What do you think he's gonna say? He's gonna say, "It's bad but I warned you it would be bad! I didn't know how bad because we didn't get the truth about how bad it was from what we inherited but just think how bad it would be if we hadn't acted." That's what he'll say. Want to take any bets on this?

RUSH: He didn't, on that occasion, quite go that ever....

Well, no, he didn't say it "on that occasion," on the occasion Rush predicted. The President did acknowledge it when he sat for an interview with Angela Russell of KIRO-TV channel 7 in Seattle on Tuesday night. Asked by Russell( beginning at 5:42 of this video) “What’s the one thing you know now that you wish you would have known when you were first sworn into office?” the President lamented

I wish I knew and I wish everybody knew how deep the crisis was when I was first sworn into office..... I think I could have prepared the American people better for how bad this was going to be, had we had a sense of that.

Barack Obama was regretting his underestimation of the depth of the recession in the months after he took office. Nonetheless, Rush reversed the meaning of the President's statement and on Wednesday stated

That is what he said last night. I said July 2009 that's what he's going to say. He has said it.

Yes, Limbaugh said in July 2009 that Obama would say i- but ib that day. Obama pointedly did otherwise, failing (from lack of evidence at the time, he maintains) to make that argument in July, 2009, instead noting 29 months later that he wished he had known and alerted the nation. The truth, clearly, turns out to have been 180 degrees from what Rush predicted.

Following Limbaugh's reference to July 2009, it didn't get any better, with a sleight of hand that demonstrates one reason for his immense popularity. He contended:

This is a lie, however. Barack Obama knows how bad it was. He has characterized this economy as almost as bad as the Great Depression, has he not? He knows how bad it's been. News outlets did, too.

This statement, probably intentionally, is not even internally consistent. Rush makes two separate claims:

a) Obama knew this was untrue as did news outlets;

b) Obama knows how bad it was; he has (emphasis mine) compared the economy to the Great Depression.

The listener is outraged by Limbaugh's false claims: Obama knew and so did the liberal media! But the listener also is given the truth, lending a sliver of false legitimacy to the host's claim(s): Obama knows how bad it was, not unlike the Great Depression.

A) and B) are two incompatible claims. Either President Obama recognized the scope of the economic downturn at the inception of his presidency, which would mark Obama, now maintaining otherwise, a liar; or he has learned only over time the extent of the economic catastrophe he faced early in his term.

Most of the evidence buttresses the President's claim. Despite early warnings from the left that the economy was worse than generally assumed, President Obama seems to have been unconvinced. In August, Ryan Avent of The Economist explained that two days after the House of Representatives on January 26, 2008 approved a stimulus bill

Americans received grim news about the economy: in the fourth quarter of 2008, GDP contracted at a 3.8% annual pace—the worst quarterly performance since the deep recession of 1982. More bad news hit on February 6th, when the BLS released new labour market figures. It reported an employment decline of 598,000 in January, following on revised drops in employment of 577,000 in December and 597,000 in November—a three-month drop of 1.8m jobs. On February 10th, the Senate passed its version of the stimulus, worth $838 billion. In conference committee, the bill shrank to $787. On February 17th, Mr Obama signed the bill into law.

In the months and years that followed, Washington provided additional support to the economy, perhaps ultimately contributing approximately $1 trillion in total stimulus. But that first bill was the big bite at the apple. The White House looked at the economic situation, sized up Congress, and took its shot. Unfortunately, the situation was far more dire than anyone in the administration or in Congress supposed.

Output in the third and fourth quarters fell by 3.7% and 8.9%, respectively, not at 0.5% and 3.8% as believed at the time. Employment was also falling much faster than estimated. Some 820,000 jobs were lost in January, rather than the 598,000 then reported. In the three months prior to the passage of stimulus, the economy cut loose 2.2m workers, not 1.8m. In January, total employment was already 1m workers below the level shown in the official data.

Avent reasoned

We can't know exactly how things would have played out in a world in which key policymakers had better data. If the true scope of the economic disaster in the fourth quarter had been clear, however, it seems certain that Ms Romer's models would have shown a need for more stimulus, that the White House would have agreed to push for more (and perhaps a lot more), and that Congress would have been much more receptive to a bigger bill. A drop of 8.9% does seem much more terrifying, after all, than a 3.8% decline. Bigger stimulus would have reduced the economic deterioration in subsequent months. The Fed might also have been more aggressive.

And he concluded

What's striking to me is that as new data have revealed the true dimensions of the 2008 collapse, the public's perception of events hasn't much changed. Critics still jeer the stimulus for its failure to deliver promised results, despite the now-obvious inadequacy of the package. Few in Washington seem willing to discuss how drastically officials underreacted in 2009, and how the results of that underreaction are still with us, waiting for a more appropriate policy response. I don't know which tragedy is the more troubling: the failure to see the true scope of the disaster when accurate numbers weren't available, or the failure to see it now that they are.

Striking, but not surprising. When the most popular radio talk show host in history skillfully employs extraordinary propaganda techniques, it isn't difficult to shelter a vast swath of the American people from reality.

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