The Commentariat -- Dec. 4, 2014
Internal links removed.
Kelsey Snell of Politico: "The House voted overwhelmingly on Wednesday to renew more than 50 expired tax breaks for individuals and businesses through the end of this year, with the Senate looking increasingly likely to follow suit. The one-year retroactive renewal, which passed by a 378-46 vote, includes heavily lobbied business breaks like those for corporate research, wind production, renewable fuels, corporate expensing and expanded depreciation schedules. It also includes tax breaks for individuals including a deduction for mortgage debt forgiveness, a break for state and local sales taxes paid as well as breaks for teachers and commuters." ...
... Burgess Everett of Politico: "Republican senators panned Ted Cruz and his conservative colleagues' Wednesday as they picked up traction on their push to derail the House GOP's plan to keep the government funded. The high-profile Texas conservative made a splash on Wednesday in announcing his opposition to House leaders' plans to pass an omnibus spending bill to keep the government funded through September...." ...
... Gail Collins: "With maximum effort, it's possible Congress might manage to pass a last-minute retroactive bill to keep some popular tax cuts alive for the holiday season. Which Obama would sign. But I have seen the future, and it's worse." CW: The headline to Collins' column is "Of Taxes, Pigs & Congress." What's weird: there's no mention of "pigs" in the copy. I guess she did a last-minute edit. Update: See MAG's comment.
Surprise, Surprise. Manu Raju of Politico: "GOP senators were outraged at Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid for invoking the 'nuclear option' last year, calling his push to weaken the filibuster on presidential nominees a destructive and heavy-handed move with far-reaching consequences. But now that Republicans are about to take control of the Senate, they seem unlikely to reverse it."
James Hohmann of Politico: "Seventeen states filed a joint lawsuit in federal court Wednesday to try blocking President Barack Obama's executive order on immigration. Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, the Republican governor-elect, took the lead, filing the suit in the Southern District of Texas. Other states joining are Alabama, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, West Virginia and Wisconsin."
Michael Isikoff of Yahoo! News: "The U.S. attorney nominated by President Barack Obama to be his next attorney general is asking a federal judge to impose a stiff prison term of up to four and a half years on a former Hillary Clinton fundraiser convicted of making more than $180,000 in illegal campaign contributions.... 'It won't hurt for Loretta Lynch to be sending a major Democratic fundraiser to prison right before her confirmation hearing for attorney general,' said Brett Kappel, a Washington campaign-finance lawyer who closely tracks federal election law enforcement."
Joe Romm of Think Progress: "2014 is currently on track to be [the] hottest year on record, according to new reports from both the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the U.K.'s Met Office Wednesday.... What is remarkable, as the WMO explains, is that we're headed toward record high global temps 'in the absence of a full El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO).'"
Dahlia Lithwick: on Young v. UPS. Old white guys on Supreme Court are easily confused by pregnancy. Also, trouble with semicolons. "Nobody is quite sure, following argument, how the votes add up or what possible test the court might set out to resolve the issue, even if it sends the case back to the lower court for a full trial. What is clear is that the justices are treading softly, in ways that haven't always been in evidence in gender and employment cases. That's a good start." Helpful to Young, it cannot be emphasized enough, is that anti-abortion & other conservative groups are on her side. They don't think women should have to decide between giving birth & keeping their jobs.
"Diplomacy Is Not a Soap Opera":
Fire Chuck Schumer
As MAG pointed out toward the end of yesterday's thread, Tom Edsall of the New York Times has bought into Chuck Schumer's (D-N.Y.) argument that passing ObamaCare was a huge mistake because it didn't do enough to help middle-class voters, so they all abandoned the Democratic party: "... the Democratic plan for victory by demographics could implode, which would make the case for a full scale re-evaluation of its strategies and policies glaringly obvious. Whatever you think of Senator Schumer, you begin to understand why he spoke out as forcefully as he did." ...
... CW: First, let me just say that I didn't read Edsall's column initially because he (or the headline writer) framed it in the form of a question: "Is ObamaCare Destroying the Democratic Party?" This usually means that the writer won't answer the question, & Edsall is -- generally speaking -- a writer after the heart of Harry Truman's economists -- his "opinions" are chockful of "on-the-other-hand"'s. This column is no exception, though he does eventually take Chuck's side in that wishy-washy way of his. ...
... Paul Krugman, again as MAG highlights, responds to Edsall's column in a blogpost titled "Return of the Focus Hocus Pocus": "... 'focusing', whatever that means, wouldn't have delivered more job growth. What should Obama have done that he actually could have done in the face of scorched-earth Republican opposition? And how, if at all, did health reform stand in the way of doing whatever it is you're saying he should have done? I have seen no answer to these questions." ...
... ** Michael Hiltzig of the Los Angeles Times makes an even more forceful argument against Schumer's historical rewrite: "The biggest political error committed by Democrats over the last four years has been to run away from their signature legislative accomplishment, the Affordable Care Act. As a result, they've allowed Republicans and conservatives to depict a measure that improves the lives and health of millions of Americans as harmful, even un-American.... [Schumer's analysis] is a startling admission of political spinelessness. Schumer gets the positive impact of the legislation wrong, he gets the politics of it wrong, and he displays a shocking ignorance of the problems facing the American middle class. The only good thing about his remarks is that they confirm how bad today's Democrats are at messaging." Read the whole column. ...
... CW: It is worth noting, too, that Chuck Schumer is "the Democrats' top message man." If Chuck really wants to know why Democrats "took a shellacking" in 2010 & lost big in 2014, he should get a big ole mirror. If the middle class doesn't understand how the ACA is helping them & the general economy, it's because Message Man didn't tell them. Moreover, he "guided" Democratic candidates to hide from ObamaCare, when they should have been boasting about it & educating their constituents about its benefits. ...
... Plus, this part of Schumer's critique is hilarious: Edsall: "Schumer argued, the 'first step is to convince voters that we are on their side, and not in the grips of special interests.' He specifically suggested the prosecution of bankers for 'what seems, on its face, blatant fraud' and tax reform designed to ensure that C.E.O.s paid higher rates 'than their secretaries.'" Any Wall Street perp walk would feature a guy in a trench coat who looked exactly like Chuck Schumer halting the perp parade to frisk the pockets of the cuffed bankers for a few final payoffs.
... Charles Pierce: notes that outgoing Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) made a different -- but equally fact-free -- point yesterday about the trouble with ObamaCare. Pierce: "I am worried about the developing meme that the Affordable Care Act somehow doomed the Democratic party in some fundamental way. (Tom Edsall as much as said so this morning in the NYT.) It's not hard to see this line of thinking sliding toward some sort of really rancid compromise 'improvement' measure when the newer and more radical Senate comes to town in January. If it ever becomes the "centrist" position in the debate, then a lot of parents will be staying awake at night again." ...
... Here's the report on the Harkin interview, by Alexander Bolton of the Hill.
Single-payer right from the get go or at least put a public option would have simplified a lot. We had the votes to do that and we blew it. -- Tom Harkin
That "we had the votes to do it" is a lie. Bolton of course doesn't bother to challenge Harkin. That's not reporting; that's stenography. -- Constant Weader
... CW: Chuck Schumer's little rant was about saving Chuck Schumer's wrinkled ass. If Democrats want to dominate Washington again, a good first step would be to fire the Message Man. The rapid demise of Democrats has come on his watch, and as a result of his horrible advice.
Beyond the Beltway
Annals of "Justice," Ctd.
David Goodman, et al., of the New York Times: "A Staten Island grand jury voted on Wednesday not to bring criminal charges in the death of Eric Garner, a black man who died after being placed in a chokehold by a white police officer, a decision that triggered outrage by many public officials, spurred protesters to take to the streets and led President Obama to once again vow to help heal the rift that exists between the police and those they serve. Mayor Bill de Blasio, speaking at a news conference in Staten Island, said that he had been assured by Attorney General Eric Holder that a federal investigation would continue to probe the death and determine whether Mr. Garner's civil rights were violated." ...
... The story has been updated: "While hundreds of angry but generally peaceful demonstrators took to the streets in Manhattan as well as in Washington and other cities, the police in New York reported relatively few arrests, a stark contrast to the riots that unfolded in Ferguson in the hours after the grand jury decision was announced in the [Michael] Brown case." ...
... "It Was a Wrestling Move." Uh-huh. David Goodman & Michael Wilson of the New York Times: "It was never supposed to be a chokehold, the officer testified. It was a wrestling move.... [His] his account does not seem to match what is seen on the video, with Officer Pantaleo holding firm and not appearing to hurry to get off Mr. Garner." ...
... David McCabe of the Hill: "Attorney General Eric Holder announced Wednesday night that the federal government is launching a civil rights investigation into the chokehold death of Eric Garner, a black man who was killed by a white police officer in July." ...
... Margaret Hartmann of New York on what legal actions may follow. ...
... The New York Times is live-updating reactions here. ...
... Some Would Be Heroes: 8:44 pm ET: "Benjamin Carr, Mr. Garner's stepfather, was standing off to the side, bristling. 'When we needed them out here, we didn't get them,' he said, referring to the protesters. 'Now the cameras are out here.' 'Don't cause a problem now,' he told a protester with a megaphone." ...
... President Obama reacts to the grand-jury decision. "This is an American problem":
... Roberto Ferdman of the Washington Post: NYPD cops continue to use chokeholds even though the practice has been banned since 1985. That's because the NYPD doesn't enforce the rule. ...
... ** Steven Rosenfeld of AlterNet in the American Prospect: "Why is the justice system so biased against holding abusive officers accountable? The answer is both simple and complex. On the simple side, the system is substantially rigged in favor of letting officers off the hook for using excessive force in the line of duty -- especially if they say they needed to protect themselves. On the complex side are how the various stages of the process tilt toward covering up what abusive police have done, as well as biases built into the legal system that shield police from prosecution." Rosenfeld enumerates the complex ways. ...
... Josh Voorhees of Slate: "... the default setting for our criminal justice system -- both explicitly and implicitly -- is to believe that an on-duty officer who takes another citizen's life was justified in doing so. Unless that baseline assumption changes, we should expect the same result the next time a cop takes someone else's life in the line of duty. Even when the killing is caught on video. Even when the police officer uses a chokehold that's been barred by his department." ...
... Jesse Byrnes of the Hill: "Former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele on Wednesday criticized grand jury decisions to not indict white police officers in the deaths of black men in New York and Ferguson, Mo. 'They tell us, at least, a prosecutor can indict a ham sandwich. Well clearly a black man's life is not worth a ham sandwich when you put these stories together. And that is the frustration,' Steele said on MSNBC." ...
... Gene Robinson: "In the depressing reality series that should be called 'No Country for Black Men,' this sick plot twist was shocking beyond belief. There should have been an indictment in the Ferguson case, in my view, but at least the events that led to Michael Brown's killing were in dispute. Garner's homicide was captured on video. We saw him being choked, heard him plead of his distress, watched as no attempt was made to revive him and his life slipped away." ...
... David Love of the Grio: "Eric Garner proves body cameras won't save black men." Love cites numerous instances of unwarranted police killings or other bad acts against black men that caught on videotape but led to no findings of guilt. ...
... Uri Friedman of the Atlantic: Criminologist Barak "Ariel recently co-authored a study on the practice in Rialto, California, where he found that police officers who weren't wearing cameras were twice as likely to use force as those who were. During the 12-month experiment, the police department also saw a reduction in citizens' complaints compared with previous years. The researchers concluded that the benefits of wearing cameras trumped the costs. But Ariel insists that there isn't enough evidence so far to generalize the finding...." ...
... Charles Blow: "... racist is the word that we must use. Racism doesn't require the presence of malice, only the presence of bias and ignorance, willful or otherwise. It doesn't even require more than one race. There are plenty of members of aggrieved groups who are part of the self-flagellation industrial complex. They make a name (and a profit) saying inflammatory things about their own groups, things that are full of sting but lack context, things that others will say only behind tightly shut doors. These are often people who've 'made it' and look down their noses with be-more-like-me disdain at those who haven't, as if success were merely a result of a collection of choices and not also of a confluence of circumstances."
... Chris Smith of New York on Mayor de Blasio's problem. ...
... Tom Levenson of Balloon Juice: "I hope I may be forgiven for believing that Staten Island DA Daniel M. Donovan Jr. had no intention of putting a cop on trial. Never mind that Officer Pantaleo was captured on video tape performing an illegal act that led to the death of a human being who's threat to society consisted of dodging local tobacco taxes, cancer stick by stick. I got nothing. This is not a justice system. This is not policing in any form that I understand. This is how law serves as cover for power when the forms but not the substance of civil society are all that is left." ...
This Is Remarkable: "Eric Garner was killed by police for no reason.... John Edwards was right: there are Two Americas. There's an America where people who kill for no legitimate reason are held to account, and there's an America where homicide isn't really a big deal as long as you play for the right team. Unfortunately Eric Garner was a victim in the second America, where some homicides are apparently less equal than others." The writer further reminds us that "Less than a month after Garner was killed, the same DA's office tasked with handling his homicide case just happened to get a grand jury indictment against the man who filmed Garner's homicide." ...
... What's remarkable about the commentary above is that it comes from Sean Davis of the right-wing blog the Federalist. Davis's background: "... co-founder of The Federalist and also serves as COO of Media Trackers, a non-profit government watchdog. He previously worked as an economic policy adviser to Gov. Rick Perry, as CFO of Daily Caller, and as chief investigator for Sen. Tom Coburn." ...
... CW: Steve M. is not as impressed by Davis's post as I am: "But, um, folks ... does what happened in this case not make you the least bit skeptical about the narrative that emerged from the grand jury proceedings in Missouri?" His point is well-taken. ...
... CW: Meanwhile, the usual suspects are making excuses for the police & the grand jury. One of them -- I forget which; they're all imbecilic -- argued that white-cops-on-black murders can't be racist because occasionally the police also kill white people under questionable circumstances. By that standard, the KKK isn't racist because they also hate Catholics. ...
... Digby in Salon: "A certain sub-group of Americans" still believe, as they have since before the Civil War, that white people are the victims, whose "way of life" is constantly being challenged by nefarious forces. ...
... Mikey Likes It! Jesse Byrnes: "Embattled Rep. Michael Grimm (R-N.Y.) praised a grand jury in his Staten Island district after its Wednesday decision not to indict a white police officer in the choking death of Eric Garner, a black man.... Grimm, who won reelection last month [against a complete doofus], is under a 20-count federal indictment including allegations of hiding profits and employing undocumented immigrants at a Manhattan restaurant he previously owned." ...
... So Does IRA Bagman Peter King (R-N.Y.) Sara Fischer of CNN: "'Thanks to SI grand jury for doing justice & not yielding to outside pressure,' King tweeted. "Decision must be respected. Compassion for the Garner family. Later, he told Wolf Blitzer on CNN's 'The Situation Room' that he feels 'strongly' the police officer should not have been indicted, arguing that there is no way he could have known that Garner's health conditions would affect his ability to survive the chokehold." ...
... Now for the Libertarian Point of View. Sara Fischer: "Rand Paul blames Eric Garner's death on high NYC cigarette tax." CW: This is not a parody. (Actually, I guess there is a sin-tax argument to be made.) ...
... CW: It occurs to me that the grand-jury decision was another form of red-lining. The jurors -- whether consciously or unconsciously -- were telling black Americans not to come to Staten Island.
Adam Ferrise of the Northeast Ohio Media Group: "The Cleveland police officer who shot and killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice had issues with handling guns during his brief tenure with a suburban police department. A Nov. 29, 2012 letter contained in Tim Loehmann's personnel file from the Independence Police Department says that during firearms qualification training he was 'distracted' and 'weepy.' 'He could not follow simple directions, could not communicate clear thoughts nor recollections, and his handgun performance was dismal,' according to the letter written by Deputy Chief Jim Polak of the Independence police. The letter recommended that the department part ways with Loehmann, who went on to become a police officer with the Cleveland Division of Police." ...
... Adam Ferrise: "Cleveland officials drove to Independence to gather information about hiring the officer who eventually shot Tamir Rice, but never looked at his personnel file.... The personnel file contained reports by a top Independence police official who questioned Loehmann's ability to handle the duties of a police officer after an emotional breakdown during firearms training and other incidents that caused concern for his superiors. They eventually decided they wanted to release Loehmann from the department but allowed him to resign. ... Cleveland police on Wednesday amended their written policy on reviewing public personnel files for someone trying to get hired, [Cleveland Police spokesman Ali] Pillow said. They previously had no policies about viewing personnel files."
News Ledes
Washington Post: The mass shooting that killed a two-star Army general and wounded 18 other people in Afghanistan on Aug. 5 was carried out by a lone Afghan soldier who did not have any apparent ties to the Taliban and who simply seized 'a target of opportunity,' according to a U.S. military investigation."
USA Today: "A federal appeals court in New Orleans on Wednesday halted the execution of Texas killer Scott Panetti, whose case has sparked a global debate over whether people with severe mental illnesses should be put to death for their crimes.Panetti's lawyers say he is too delusional to be executed. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals granted a reprieve less than eight hours before Panetti was scheduled to receive a lethal injection." No word from Rick Perry or Greg Abbott.
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Reader Comments (19)
Re: worth repeating; got me a fancy new remote a few days back. Just starting to get a handle on it. No, not a satchel handle; I'm learning to use the remote's remarkable computing powers. Those ones and zeros are flying around at a rate that makes a mans head spin. I call'em remotes; most say device or tablet or smart phone, but you get to thinking about it and you realize it is a remote, no different than grandpa had for the the RCA TeeVee. You got data somewhere and you remotely access it. Grandpa remotely accessed "The Ed Sullivan Show from across the living room"; I remotely access two dogs from Sweden eating lemons; no big difference.
Anyways, god, old people carry on; I was trying to get to my morning fix of RealityChex and some how or another I ended up with a Marie Burns comment posted in the NYT concerning a Paul Krugman column from about 2009. It could be titled "Smooze Operator". The post calls them as she sees them and Ms. Burns sees the future like she was looking in the rear view mirror. It's, in my opinion of course, a spot on reality check on the the true nature of President Obama's desire for a place at the "big person's table". Added plus, she embedded a Sade music video. Cool. Check it out.
See with my remote grandpa, I can watch reruns too. Seen the one with the hamster eating tiny little burritos?
@CW: Easy to miss, but Gail Collins snuck it in about halfway down:
"Our current tax policy has about as many fans as that airplane passenger who took a pet pig to her seat as an “emotional support animal.”
More on pork and pigs, looks like it is harder and harder to indict that old ham sandwich! It will be interesting to see if we get the (full) Grand Jury details that the Staten Island D.A. now sez he wants to release.
@MAG: Thanks. Didn't see it when I read it; I then did what I thought was a search for "pig," but I bet I typed "pigs," which explains why I didn't find it. So, yes, a "pig."
Marie
Republicans Blaming Victims, chapter 245
Eric Garner was selling cigarettes. Cigarettes. For this he was tracked down by an undercover police unit and strangled. The officer who killed him (it was ruled a homicide) by using a chokehold specifically banned by the NYPD, is not to blame however. Not a bit of it.
Peter (Asshat) King, New York congressthing, has declared that the death of Eric Garner was his own fault.
Eric Garner would have survived that banned chokehold if only he were in better shape and given up Cheetos. He was too fat.
That's why he died.
This is taking blaming the victim to new heights. Or lows. Into a new King-dom, I suppose.
Now here's a thought....
Let's say some overweight kid on the upper east side was caught selling Ecstasy and roofies by a black cop who put him in a chokehold and strangled him to death.
Do you think Peter King would be giving the grand jury who declined to prosecute that cop a standing ovation? Do you think he'd be blaming that overweight upper east side drug dealer for his own death?
Rhetorical question. I know.
There are a lot of those these days.
Here's that link. Getting shiftless lately...
Look up "Asshole" in the dictionary and you'll see this guy.
Listen to this video. I'm not sure what kind of logic King is employing here, but it's a brand I've never encountered. Lewis Carroll could not invent this kind of creative bullshit.
If you've seen the video, you can hear Garner say "I can't breathe". King disputes this. "If you can't breathe, you can't talk"....by which he means, if you can't talk you can't tell the cop who is strangling you that you're about to die. And whose fault is that?
Garner's, of course. He was too fat. He was asthmatic (although asthma is not a condition affecting only overweight people), and because he couldn't breathe, he could not possibly have said stop. Unless King's point is that because he never said "stop", the cop kept going. But the next thought should be, well, if he couldn't talk, it might also be because he was in a FUCKING CHOKEHOLD!! Also, as the Atlantic writer suggests in the linked piece, a suspect with a visible medical condition should cause more, not less caution, on the part of the police. And probably would have if this were a white kid on the upper east side.
There's a black comedy (Arsenic and Old Lace) that was popular in the 40s that runs down a similar, but much more honest type of logic.
An insane killer and his partner are tallying up all the men he's murdered but there's a dispute about one of the dead men. The partner claimed that they can't count that last guy because he died of pneumonia, to which the killer says, "Well, he wouldn't have caught pneumonia if I hadn't shot him."
Insane fictional killers are more rational than Peter King.
What did we ever do to deserve an asshole like Peter King making our laws for us?
From the Are You Freaking Kidding Me Department:
Marie links a story about the cop who shot an unarmed child (another one!) in Cleveland last week.
This is almost beyond belief but it probably explains why the kid was shot within seconds of the cop's arrival. A report in the cop's personnel file from another police department states that the cop, during weapons training was "...'distracted' and 'weepy.'" It goes on to say that "He could not follow simple directions...and his handgun performance was dismal," and finishes with this chilling conclusion:
"I do not believe time, nor training, will be able to change or correct the deficiencies,"
But the Cleveland Police Department gave this guy a gun and sent him out to check on a kid who was waving around a toy pistol, a kid who was dead within seconds.
Can you imagine a hospital report saying that a young surgeon was pretty shaky with the scalpel but then being sent by another hospital into an operating room?
WTF is going on out there?
Do these people think this is Parcheesi?
@JJG: Doesn't your fancy new way-back machine have a link function? I'd love to know what I wrote in 2009 about President Obama's friendship with Wall Street.
Marie
CW and JJG: This it?
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/26/thousands-of-banks-watch/
@Whyte Owen. Thanks. Must be. Man, I was tough. I think I was right, too.
Marie
Li'l Randy grows littler by the day. He is a small man. In more ways than a yard stick can measure.
Last night he was asked his opinion of the Eric Garner grand jury decision.
Know what he said?
(synopsis)
"Yeah....uh.. that was bad...uh, but never mind that now. The real problem is taxes, and politicians not named "Paul" are to blame, and, um, police have it tough."
What???
I am not even kidding. This guy is a fucking loon.
Ah...sorry...I see that Marie had already informed you all of the foibles of the Little One.
Some days there's just so much out here it takes a while to scroll through it all.
Thanks, Marie!
It is hard to escape the conclusion that Schumer's critism of the ACA was a primo example of doubling down, most likely -as Marie puts it - to save his ass.
I cannot for the life of me figure out how the Dems were unable to sell the Act as a huge boon to the middle class, considering the various protections afforded such as against denial of coverage. But then I also don't get their failure to portray months of pretty steady economic progress as a plus.
Conclusion: we need more Sanders and Warren, less Schumer and other triangulators.
To add to Akhilleus' laments here is another loon based interview between Megyn Kelly and Al Green (D-Tex). member of the Black Caucus, although Peter King's takes the cake. Just a word here about Megyn: Someone must have told her years ago as she was beginning to be the beautiful blond with brains that Fox wanted to trot out and show us a thing or two, that she needed to be curt, sharp, domineering, ––just like a guy––and not be just another "blond bimbo." Al Green did his best, but Megyn, gosh darn it, wouldn't have any of it and wham! she shuts you up as she shuts you down––just like that––curt, sharp and domineering.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/03/megyn-kelly-hands-up-dont-shoot-al-green-congressman_n_6261250.html
Interesting stat from the Krugman blog found on the way-back machine link that CW responded to:
"All domestic BHCs [bank holding company] with year‐end 2008 assets exceeding $100 billion were required to participate in the SCAP as part of the ongoing supervisory process. These 19 firms collectively hold two‐thirds of the assets and more than one‐half of the loans in the U.S. banking system, and support a very significant portion of the credit intermediation done by the banking sector.
Whatever we do about the banks, we’re talking about a very small number of players."
According to the info mentioned in yesterday's link for Bernie's 12-step plan that number got even smaller, reduced from 19 down to only 6 financial institutions with these six having, a) total assets equally 61% of our GDP, b) more than 1/2 of all mortgages, and c) more than 2/3 of credit cards.
I guess we better prepare for an even bigger crash next time from our too big to fail/jail banksters. How soon it will be is the $100T question.
The Chuck Schumer Review of Recent History is so rife with mistakes in judgment, psychology, political acumen, and, as has been nicely pointed out, an understanding of the importance and necessity of healthcare in the lives of so many Americans who have lost jobs or been forced to take jobs with no benefits, that he has no business opining on anything even vaguely political outside of the best baby kissing strategies. As Marie says, Schumer is part of the problem for the Democrats and any Democrat who chose to do a dainty don't-upset-the-wingnuts two step around the ACA prior to the recent election deserved to lose.
Talk about focus...
The primary problem for many Democrats now, and for the Democratic party, generally, is that they don't seem to stand for anything other than a certain occasional and opportunistic fealty, of sorts, to certain interest groups. They need to adopt a more universal banner under which they can bring these various groups together and make a forceful appeal to others who have fallen away or who would benefit much more from Democratic rather than Republican control.
Economic and social justice are good places to begin. But the pitch cannot be made by wishy-washy, mealy mouthed apologizers like Schumer. Democrats need to stand for something and they need to say loud and clear what that is, how they intend to turn that stance into political action and how and why the other side is firmly and belligerently set against their best interests.
Schumer is a cowardly disgrace.
Statistics from the ACA's first couple of years should be emblazoned on every Democratic website. It is the single greatest, most successful and most impactful piece of legislation in several generations. Every candidate should hold it out there and not be ashamed of it, not be fearful that fucking Bill O'Reilly will make fun of them, and let everyone who now enjoys the first health care of the lives know that Republicans are working like dogs to take it away from them.
It took Obama six long years to learn that the other side hates him and everything he stands for. Democrats need to understand that that hatred extends to them too.
Stand up and be counted or sit down and go home.
There's the door, Chuck. Hold it open for Senator Warren, please, before you leave. At least she has a fucking clue.
Just caught a piece on the problems this particular node in Nightmare Alley (aka Right Wing Congressional World) appears to be having with their Benghazi addiction:
The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence
This discordant mouthful begs for a semiotic dissection of each word and the whole provides excellent raw material for an entry into the theater of the absurd.
House. Yeah...say no more.
Permanent. You mean like an inoperable tumor?
Select. Ha-ha-ha...we must have our comic relief now, mustn't we?
Committee. Oh, you thought that word was "comity"?
Intelligence. See "Select"
Simply placing "House" in the same phrase with "intelligence" is an express lane to cognitive dissonance.
I have written to Schumer, and to Mr. Iowa Harkin, and also have written to my "beloved" senator Bob Casey, who is himself so mealy-mouthed that he will be unable to tell the other two doofuses how I feel, that I am completely outraged by their remarks. Do they not know that EVERYTHING becomes fact to the outlying stupids when repeated loudly enough?? How dare they diss the Dems in public! We PAY these people to represent us! By speaking this way, they put us all in danger, through arrogance and naiveness. WE DON'T NEED THIS NONSENSE from our own people!! Especially the so-called leadership of the party. How dare they badmouth the ACA. Sheesh.
Not sure of it's even worth sharing this because the guy is clearly deranged and probably just says this psycho shit to get in the news, but he is a leader of a church in Arizona and thus influences whoever is dumb enough to listen. But here you go, a perfect example of the bottom of America's barrel, the apple so rotten it burns your nostrils when you walk in the room.
"In a sermon titled “Aids: The Judgement of God”, Steven Anderson told the congregation of the Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, Arizona, that the Bible advocates genocide of LGBT people."
"Anderson has gained a reputation as a fundamentalist and hate-preacher. He caused particular controversy in 2009 when he professed his hate for US President Barack Obama and prayed for him to die and go to hell.
He has also claimed that women who take the contraceptive pill are “whores” whose blood has turned green."
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-pastor-steven-anderson-says-gay-people-should-be-executed-for-an-aids-free-christmas-9903543.html
P.S. Thanks for linking the Blow piece, it's well worth the read. You can feel the fire in his belly as he put that well-directed rage into words.
And just the other day, I (along with the CW) was agreeing with Senator McCain, when he objected to ambassadorships bestowed via the spoils system. There I was nodding my head in bemused and uncomfortable agreement with a past shelf life politico it's recently been so easy to despise.
But now I see we have McCain blocking the appointment of an asst. secretary of state. Thought I'd read the lede wrong the first time around; just assumed McCain was objecting to a Dept. of Defense (in our more honest days, we used to call it War) nominee for not being warlike enough. We all know the Senator never thinks Defense is belligerent enough. Nothing new there; easily ignored.
But the Dept. of State, Senator?
Please. They're SUPPOSED to be diplomats, the ones who talk softly.
Not the ones who get the aging Senator all excited by flailing their big stick.