Mt. Rainier In The Sunshine

Haven't felt much like writing lately, as you might have guessed. By way of apology, here's a photo of Mt. Rainier on one of those extremely rare clear spring days:
Image credit: Cujo359

It's been a crappy day, both in the news and otherwise. I'm sure there are plenty of folks who want to tell you about that, but today I'm not one of them.

Click on the picture to enlarge. Have a good weekend.

Quote Of The Day

Paul Rosenberg, discussing how both political parties are failing in America, cuts to the heart of Barack Obama's "pragmatism" by contrasting him with Franklin Roosevelt (FDR):

It is not that FDR was an ideologue - quite the opposite. FDR was a profound pragmatist, whereas Obama is a centrist, neoliberal ideologue, whose thinking is so rigid that he won't even consider empowering his own more leftish supporters, even to strategically counterbalance hard right Republicans, who still do not regard his presidency as legitimate.

Regardless of your own ideology - conscious or unconscious - you just have to wonder why Obama clings so doggedly to both substantive policies and political strategies that repeatedly fail so profoundly. No doubt there are multiple factors involved, but the most compelling answer, I have come to believe, comes down to a lack of vision: Obama quite simply cannot see any alternative. His politics are drastically confined by the crabbed nature of his neoliberal imagination, formed in the shadows of Reagan and Thatcher.

...

There was a time when virtually every Democratic officeholder, from dogcatcher on up, realised that their party's fate was inextricably linked to the welfare of its core constituencies. FDR Democrats knew that in the marrow of their bones. But Obama is a neoliberal Reagan Democrat, who knows nothing of the sort.

Double trouble: In US both political parties are failing - and in denial

I disagree with his assertion that the Democrats focused solely on diversity as a political goal; it's just something that the rich don't oppose enough to punish them for, so it's an easy goal. It's pretty clear that's all they have left at this point. Nonetheless, Rosenberg's conclusion that we're all going to end up equal in the poorhouse is all too true. Nor do I disagree with him at all about his conclusion about the state of the two parties:

The Republicans were once the Party of Lincoln, but they are that no longer. They are much, much closer to being the Party of Jefferson Davis, with their government hatred, animosity towards minorities and their knee-jerk fealty to the idea of states' rights.

Meanwhile, Democrats, under Barack Obama, are no longer the Party of FDR. They are much, much closer to being the Party of Herbert Hoover, following Obama's initial protection of the bankers and neglect of foreclosed and imperiled homeowners, and his persistent obsession placing budget-balancing over job-creation and caring for the most urgent needs of tens of millions, victimised by the bad behaviour, bad judgment and bad ideas of their so-called "betters".

Double trouble: In US both political parties are failing - and in denial

At least, other than to nit-pick that at least Hoover was willing to consider strong regulation of the banks after that collapse. Neither of our current political parties, nor our President, appear to care about that goal at all.

It's a sad place we've gotten ourselves to, that's for sure. It's worth reading Rosenberg's essay, if for no other reason than for a quick itemization of where our politics are these days.

UPDATE: Altered the second paragraph to say what I meant about Democrats and diversity.

Bill Maher Smacks Down Libertarianism

Bill Maher lays a well-deserved smackdown on what may be the silliest of modern political philosophies:

"Somewhere along the way [libertarianism] morphed into some creepy philosophy based on a novel by Ayn Rand"

I don't know that libertarianism ever made much sense really, but the idea that the government that governs best governs least has been a guiding principle that Americans have applied to their political philosophies for a long time. Even we liberals tend to think that there are times, as in the case of making marijuana illegal, where too much government activism isn't a good thing.

Unfortunately, applying that idea as some form of absolute, and particularly saying that the government has no business regulating a magical fairyland called "the free market" is complete nonsense. When the marketplace can't take care of something vital in our lives like health care, then using the government to fix it is not only OK, it's quite often essential. Markets don't fix themselves. That's particularly true of markets where there are economies of scale, because it is quite often the most ruthless people who end up running them.

"Libertarians also hate Medicare and Social Security, and there are problems with those programs, but .. it beats stepping over lepers and watching human skeletons shit in the river, and I also like not seeing those things. I'm selfish that way."

As far as I'm concerned, liberalism (or socialism, if it goes a little further) makes sense from a selfish perspective as well as from a humane one, as Maher alludes in that quote. When the world around us is full of safe, healthy, and secure people it's a better place than when it isn't. I sometimes wonder if most Americans will ever grapple with that notion, let alone embrace it.

For that, and many other reasons, libertarianism justly deserves this smackdown. It really is the province of people who have never had reason to find out how arbitrary and capricious life can be. In other words, it's for people who have yet to grow up, in at least some sense of that phrase.

Progressive Idiocy: Who Could Have Predicted?

Image credit: Twitter image via Matt Stoller

Over the next few days, there will be an opportunity to discover which progressive political commentators have been paying attention and which ones haven't. That opportunity is described by Jon Walker at FireDogLake:

If it wasn’t already abundantly clear there is now more proof President Obama really really really wants to cut Social Security benefits for current retirees. Obama will include the chained-CPI, which is a yearly and continuously growing cut to your Social Security benefits, in his budget.

Obama Is the Driving Force Behind Cutting Your Social Security

He quotes this Politico piece:

The budget proposal sets Obama up for major fights on his right and left. Republicans will not accept any new tax revenues and liberal Democrats have already signaled they will resist any cuts to Social Security and other entitlement programs that Obama is proposing.

The White House says the budget proposal would reduce the deficit by $1.8 trillion over 10 years, but it assumes the elimination of the sequester, which would otherwise account for $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction.

Already, Obama’s budget proposal goes farther than many in his own party and base said they would bear by including “chained CPI,” the adjustment that would over time reduce cost-of-living increases to Social Security and other federal benefit programs — effectively, a cut to Social Security benefits by tying them to inflation.

Boehner rejects Obama cuts-revenue proposal

The only good news there is that, once again, the Republicans are playing hard to get.

Still, Walker is one of the people who have been paying attention. It's not hard to figure out that President Obama has had a fetish for cutting Social Security since the Democratic presidential primary back in 2008. In his interview with George Will, he said quite clearly that something needed to be done about Social Security to "save" it. Why someone feels the need to "save" a program that's been funded for the next few decades is beyond me, other than as an excuse to cut it. Since then, he's hired Wall Street pirates as economic advisers, and set up a commission to resolve the "budget crisis" that was stacked with folks well known for their desire to cut entitlement programs.

So, if you're surprised that Obama would be cutting Social Security now that he doesn't have to worry about being re-elected, you weren't paying attention.

And who hasn't been paying attention? Let's start with Paul Krugman. After offering a good explanation for why cutting the CPI is a bad idea (worth reading, if you're not familiar with the concept), he then writes:

So what’s this about? The answer, I fear, is that Obama is still trying to win over the Serious People, by showing that he’s willing to do what they consider Serious — which just about always means sticking it to the poor and the middle class. The idea is that they will finally drop the false equivalence, and admit that he’s reasonable while the GOP is mean-spirited and crazy.

Desperately Seeking “Serious” Approval

Of course, this is absurd. President Obama is one of the "Serious People". He always has been. He has never said otherwise, near as I can recall. Yes, he promised not to cut Social Security once back in 2008, but he clearly misspoke. He was going to "save" Social Security and Medicare, even if he had to destroy them.

Over at Talking Points Memo, Brian Beutler seems similarly confused. He starts out well enough, explaining that Obama has always had a hankering to mess with Social Security, then goes off the rails:

First, policy. Obama has been clear about his willingness to reduce cost of living increases to Social Security for years — but only if Republicans agree to higher taxes on rich people simultaneously The not-so-secret truth is that some people in the Obama administration simply think it’s a good idea, which is why you occasionally hear them slip and call it “correcting the CPI” or some other euphemism.

But for some reason this has never been good enough for Republicans and media elites many of whom continue to act as if Obama’s never given an inch to Republicans on entitlement spending. So now it’s officially official. And the good news is we’ll soon have some closure on this frustrating chapter in U.S. politics. If throwing a benefit cut into his budget was the Kabuki concession Republicans needed to cut a deal, we’ll know soon. If they remain adamant that rich people’s taxes aren’t going up anymore under their watch, then this charade can come to an end and everyone can move on. That would leave sequestration in place, and thus many more months of weak job growth in the months ahead. But, the Obama administration hopes, at least opinion makers would have to stop playing the false equivalence game and tell the country who’s really at fault.

Bad News Friday

Yes, to some extent this is Beutler explicitly passing on conventional wisdom from the Obama Administration, but does anyone really believe that things are going to in some different direction if the press, which in DC is largely owned by conservatives, gives up on portraying this as "both sides" being unreasonable? There's not a chance of that happening.

As an aside, Robert Reich posted a video, explaining what the CPI is. He seems to have figured out the politics, too:

Why are Democrats even suggesting the inflation adjustment be reduced? Republicans aren’t asking for it. Not even Paul Ryan’s draconian budget includes it.

What’s The “Chained CPI,” Why It's Bad For Social Security, And Why The White House Shouldn't Be Touting It

So, for the moment at least, Reich appears to get it. He describes this budget proposal as clearly Democratic in origin, that the GOP had nothing to do with it beyond being intransigent supporters of the rich. These days, though, it's getting really hard for anyone with any sense of perspective to think they're the only major party who are on board with that platform.

Speaking of having no sense of perspective, several outlets, including NPR, have quoted MoveOn.org as saying:

From the liberal group MoveOn.org's Executive Director Anna Galland:

"Millions of MoveOn members did not work night and day to put President Obama into office so that he could propose policies that would hurt some of our most vulnerable people. Just as we fought and defeated President Bush's plan to privatize Social Security, we will mobilize and stop this attempt to diminish the vital guarantee of Social Security."

Obama Riles His Own Party With Social Security Offer

Image credit: Parody by Cujo359 (See NOTE)

Now, let me just pause for a moment, Dear Reader, and explain to you why MoveOn.org are idiots. When a political candidate tells you over and over and over again that he is going to cut Social Security when he gets into office, and you work for him anyway, you put him in office so he could do that. There were alternatives, including not supporting any candidate because they all suck too much, should MoveOn's membership have felt that way, yet they supported this con artist. This is obvious to the point of absurdity, yet MoveOn still seems unable to grasp this basic fact.

That's why they're idiots.

Oh, and another bit about perspective - note NPR's lovely headline. If NPR ever got over its urge to punch hippies I swear I'd never be able to stand up again, the vertigo would be so bad.

So, there you have it, a small sampling of the genius that makes progressivism the powerful force in politics that it is today. Ever onward, ever downward. As soon as the Progressive Caucus folds, we can get on with the process of lowering our expectations.

UPDATE: The often-entertaining Class War Kitteh gets the last word, at least for now:

Image credit: Class War Kitteh

Check the image credit link for commentary, and you can "like" it there, or some such.

Saturday Entertainment: Gorn To Be Wild

About the last thing I figured I'd be doing here is embedding a video of a commercial, but there's a good reason for this one. It's a video game commercial that features William Shatner in a parody from one of the more famous (or infamous, depending on your artistic sensibilities) scenes in the original Star Trek series. If you don't recognize it, and who could blame you, check out the Wired article a friend steered me to where I first saw it:

Sadly, this was one of those episodes where the story was more than the special effects and costume budgets of the time could plausibly portray. The original fight scene was hilarious by modern day standards, though at the time I suspect it was about the best they could do. After all, they were trying to have a personal combat between Kirk and a creature far stronger than he was that lasted more than five seconds and didn't end with Kirk a puddle of goo on the ground. Quite the dramatic quandary.

The story of that episode, "Arena", at least as it was presented in the James Blish adaptation that I remember vividly to this day, was one that impressed me by its ambitions. The idea that Kirk, as a military commander, would spare an enemy when he had the chance to have them destroyed, and preferred trying to negotiate with them when they'd savagely attacked a Federation outpost was a thought nearly as foreign to most Americans back then as it seems to be today. Gene Roddenberry, who was a World War II veteran, perhaps understood the implications of both war and negotiation better than most people in this day of professional expeditionary forces. When a President is applauded for not negotiating with a country that isn't actually harming us but is doing something we don't approve of, as George W. Bush was with Iran, then I think maybe there are a few people who ought to watch the end of that episode and think about what real courage in the face of an enemy is. Often in war, being humane is the toughest thing to do.

Afterword: Believe it or not, Mythbusters looked into the plausibility of the "Gorn cannon" from "Arena".

Punctuated Political Equilibrium

Caption: Stephen Jay Gould. I'm not sure that he wanted his work applied to the sphere of politics, but it could be.

Image credit: Kathy Chapman/Wikimedia

Too bad Stephen Jay Gould didn't manage to live long enough to see this:

Florida Sen. Bill Nelson reversed his opposition to gay marriage on Thursday, joining a swell of moderate Democrats to do so recently as public support for gay marriage has grown.

Bill Nelson reverses opposition to gay marriage

Which, when you add it to the recent conversions of Republican Senators Rob Portman and Mark Kirk (IL), and Democratic Senators Tom Carper (DE), Bob Casey (PA), and Kay Hagan (NC), looks like there's a whole lot of evolution going on regarding this issue.

Back in the 1980s, Dr. Gould had proposed that evolution happens mostly in spurts, when something in the ecosystem changes. That idea was known as punctuated equilibrium. Many other biologists, Richard Dawkins being one of the more prominent, felt that this wasn't true, that evolution is just something that mostly happens gradually.

At least in the case of political ecosystems, it looks like Gould was right. Folks sure are evolving quickly, now that the ecosystem has changed.

Bizarre Headline Of The Day

Irony can be both cruel and painful sometimes:

NRA instructor Eugene Kenny would have joined his fellow gun-rights supporters at the state Capitol Wednesday—if he hadn’t accidentally shot himself in the foot.

...

Kenny, a 49-year-old licensed National Rifle Association instructor who leads training classes in pistol and rifle use, delivered his arguments in the front foyer of the two-family Edgewood Avenue house where he rents an upstairs apartment in the Edgewood neighborhood.

Despite Mishaps, NRA Instructor Blasts Bills

I sometimes wonder if anyone on Eugene Kenny's side of this debate even has a sense of irony. The guy is a living reminder of how dangerous firearms are to the people who own them. Yes, I'm sure none of the provisions of the law he was arguing against would have spared him that round through his foot, but when people fight this hard to be able to keep dangerous things in their houses with no more restrictions, it does make you wonder just what, if anything, is on their minds.

(h/t Joshua Holland.)

Isolation And What Follows

Here's an example of why I was interested that Chris Hayes now has his own prime time show on MSNBC:

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

In it, Hayes interviews Washington Post blogger Ezra Klein and three people you've probably never heard of about how the sequestration is affecting Americans who don't live in DC. In addition to the extraordinary step of interviewing people who have some local knowledge of how it's affecting them, he also got some intelligent commentary out of Ezra Klein.

What struck me most about this conversation is mostly contained in the second segment, where Hayes mentions that one of the things Congress is complaining about is that the White House has cut back on tours. Of all the things we don't need. Then, one of his guests, Heather McGhee, stated what is probably obvious to most of us who don't live or work in the vicinity of DC:

"The issue behind this is the donor class in Washington, and that little goody [the White House tours] is what goes to donors."

And later:

Hayes: "Is there a point where the effects of austerity go from being invisible to being visible, where the folks in DC wake up?"

McGhee: "It becoming visible to people out in communities is one thing. It becoming visible, beyond White House tours, to the people who are decision makers is a completely different thing. What more visibility do you need than 20 million people who are un- or underemployed?"

[Those are my attempts at transcription, by the way, not MSNBC's.]

It really is, as she concluded, a democracy question, as in how much longer can our country go on when the needs of its citizens are so clearly beyond the attention span of the people who run it? At Corrente, Lambert Strether refers to DC as Versailles, the isolated and largely dysfunctional seat of the French government at the time of the revolution. That isolation has been a subject of discussion here a time or two, as well.

And no, I don't know the answer to my question. I hope that when change happens it won't be of the sort that obviated Versailles, but at this point I'm not optimistic. Too many people need to learn too many things for that to happen.

Twitter Message Of The Day

Harry Shearer summarizes our national priorities in 140 characters or fewer:

Twitter message by Harry Shearer, April 2, 2013

I've remarked a time or two just how bizarre and self-contradictory our spending priorities have been. Still, I think the point about solar is particularly telling. It's by no means certain, but it seems to me that if we had continued on with conservation and alternative energy in the 1980s, instead of deciding that the best course was to engage in continual war in the Middle East in the name of keeping our oil options open, we probably wouldn't have had an Al Qaeda problem or the last four wars to deal with. Or is it five? I lose track sometimes.

Quote Of The Day

Usually, quotes of the day here at Slobber And Spittle are statements that I agree with to some degree. I'm sad to say, this isn't one of them. Today's QOTD comes from attorney Wylie Stecklow, who represented two women who were abused by then New York Police Department Captain Christopher McCormack, who has since been promoted to Deputy Inspector:

Lawyer Wylie Stecklow, who represented Corbin and another arrested protester, Robin Wilson, called McCormack’s subsequent promotion “a prime example of failing upward,” which he said “happens too often with the NYPD.”

McCormack is expected to testify at the stop-and-frisk trial in Manhattan federal court about allegations that he was secretly recorded telling a Bronx cop to stop “black males” between 14 and 21 to fight crime in the Mott Haven section.

‘Taped’ cop cost city 78G

I don't think of this as failing upwards. That term, to me, implies that the individual failed to achieve the goals set out for him, but was promoted anyway. It's pretty clear, given the cases Mr. Wylie refers to, including this one, that McCormack did exactly what was expected of him, and was promoted for it. In none of those cases has anyone received more than a mild penalty. In that case, the one I linked to, the police officer in question had a long history of that sort of behavior.

It's hard to see this as anything other than employees fulfilling their responsibilities to the satisfaction of their bosses.