DemocratsForProgress

DemocratsForProgress's Journal

June 30, 2014

Stormy Monday, 6/30/14

Jeff Rosenzweig: Stormy Monday, 6/30/14

The Supreme Court might get the week off to a terrible start with a bad decision in Harris v. Quinn, which could hobble the right of public sector unions to act as sole representatives of their membership, and/or a bad decision in Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby, which could open a mile-wide “religious conscience” loophole in Obamacare requirements that for-profit corporations furnish particular birth control services under employee health plans.

Monday, the President will nominate former Procter & Gamble CEO Bob McDonald to head the Department of Veterans Affairs, which could sure as hell use a good cleaning. McDonald is a West Point grad with five years of Army service, but he would enter the job as an outsider. If you’re impressed by such things, be advised that he apparently acquitted himself with some distinction at P&G. Whether that’s any qualification for straightening out his new organization is very much an open question.

With Arizona’s Joe Arpaio teetering on the brink of jail and/or senility, the title of America’s Worst Sheriff could soon go to Louisiana’s Julian Whittington, of Bossier Parish (“fastest-growing parish north of Interstate 10? ). Whittington will celebrate the Fourth with his second annual “In God We Trust” rally. Roll your eyes if you want, Mr. or Ms. Smartypants Lieberal, but the event will feature, among many other delights, “patriotic and God-lifting music,” just as the Founders – George Washington, Ronald Reagan, Pat Robertson, Ron Paul and PT Barnum – intended. Bobby Jindal can’t make it this time around, but he’s recorded a video for the occasion, and we all know how scintillating Jindal is in front of a video camera.

Teabagger Chris McDaniel, who failed to dethrone Senator Thad Cochran in last week’s Mississippi Republican primary runoff, continues his inspiring quest to become the highest-profile crybaby in US politics, as he ratchets up claims that Cochran won with votes cast by Democrats who had already voted in the Democratic primary. Should that desperate tack fail, McDaniel will likely have to spend the rest of the summer rummaging under couch cushions and down sewer grates for the roughly 7,000 votes he would need to edge Cochran...

More at: http://www.democratsforprogress.com/2014/06/30/stormy-monday-63014/

June 25, 2014

How Black Voters Decided Mississippi’s Republican Senate Run-Off

Walter Rhett: How Black Voters Decided Mississippi’s Republican Senate Run-Off

Listening and ordering too many songs from Amazon of Cape Verdean music as I sipped a single source Ethiopian coffee delivered by United States Postal Service (USPS) from Durham’s legendary wholesaler, Counter Coffee, I began to think about how the world is organized. Then I turned to the Republican run-off after their primary for one of the Senate seats in Mississippi.

The establishment won; Thad Cochran is the last of the Southern elder statesman who manages a pipeline of public funds for his state. First elected in 1984, he won the run-off to earn his seventh Republican nomination with help from African-American voters who hadn’t even bothered to vote in the earlier Democratic primary. Who would think Mississippi politics would transcend party labels? Not to mention race! That a Republican in a run-off would successfully turn out the African-American vote in Mississippi?

Astoundingly, the run-off drew a larger turnout than the primary two weeks earlier, It polled 374,000 voters as compared to a turn out of 319,000 for the primary; then, Cochran had trailed his party challenger by 1,500 votes after the vote. Combined, the campaigns spent $17.4 million. The Super PACs invested $11.4 million, as the outside groups invested in Cochran’s opponent by almost 2 to 1.

Never one to concede, his Tea Party opponent called Cochran’s election victory and increased turnout and broader appeal the beginning of the end of the power of the establishment in Mississippi...

More at: http://www.democratsforprogress.com/2014/06/25/how-black-voters-decided-mississippis-republican-senate-run-off/

June 23, 2014

Stormy Monday, 6/23/14

Jeff Rosenzweig: Stormy Monday, 6/23/14

In a primary season that has already seen the odious Eric Cantor kicked to the curb by voters for not being quite odious enough, it’s probably smart to take nothing for granted. Charlie Rangel certainly isn’t, despite the latest poll showing him up by double digits over rival Adriano Espaillat mere days before tomorrow’s vote in the New York 13th. If he wins, Rangel might want to mend some fences with the New York Times, which endorsed Espaillat last week.

Mississippi Senator Thad Cochran, another odious Republican, faces a runoff against teabagger Chris McDaniel on Tuesday, after nearly being bested by him in the June 3 primary. McDaniel’s support among blinkered conservative tax-me-not voters has been steadily increasing even as their state slides ever further toward Third World status. If Republican infighting is one of your favorite spectator sports, check out the Cochran campaign’s eleventh-hour ad, which takes a metaphorical 2×4 to McDaniel’s metaphorical cranium.

After passing a resolution on Saturday calling for President Obama’s impeachment (ostensibly for exchanging five Taliban detainees for POW Bowe Bergdahl, though mostly, I suspect, for being not entirely white) the South Dakota Republican Party can now go on to other important business, like resolutions opposing gravity and the changing of the seasons. Word is they’ll also consider a resolution to seize Mount Rushmore from the National Park Service and alter all the faces to likenesses of Ronald Reagan.

Speaking of Sgt. Bergdahl, he was discharged from hospital last week and transferred to Joint Base San Antonio-Fort Sam Houston, where he will receive outpatient care for up to a month. His long-term prognosis is still unknown, but what’s already certain is there’s no known cure for the syndrome that has so many on the right still howling about his release and repatriation...

More at: http://www.democratsforprogress.com/2014/06/23/stormy-monday-62314/

June 19, 2014

Race and Obama: The Longstanding Silence of Hate’s Empty Dream

Walter Rhett: Race and Obama: The Longstanding Silence of Hate’s Empty Dream

For President Obama, a list of difficulties has become the equivalent of a list of failures. If the world is a mess, it is because of his foreign policy. If Republicans are obstructionists, he didn’t “lead” and win them over. If a mid-level bureaucrat in one of the six far-flung federal districts creates a public crisis and embarrasses the government, the President should have been standing over his shoulder. Scope or scale no longer matter. The only accounting is a single ledger list of his faults—which includes policies and fights that were on Democrats’ wish list–and even things he should have done, extrapolated from current events. How dare he not have a prophetic vision?

This idea of a list of his failings has expanded to include even his obvious victories. Obama fail is a helpless craving, prompted by a President who inspired a phantasmagoria of fallacies and fear so rich that he alternates between being considered utterly inept and having embedded diabolical wiles whose ruses and ploys are able to summon and capture world-class terrorists in faraway lands on command, to protect and distract the public from his failures.

“Too neat,” several pundits have described Obama’s announcement of the capture of one of the leaders of the 2012 armed strike on the US consul in Benghazi. Add it to the list as a coarse example of another Obama political stunt.

Boehner pointedly thanked the troops...

More at: http://www.democratsforprogress.com/2014/06/18/race-and-obama-the-longstanding-silence-of-hates-empty-dream/

June 12, 2014

Lessons Celebrating Eric Cantor’s Primary Loss

Walter Rhett: Lessons Celebrating Eric Cantor’s Primary Loss

Who speaks today of Jim Wright or Dennis Hastert?

Eric Cantor is a name that will slip easily into the past, having achieved little on his watch expect his own ambitions, which now will remain forever incomplete. The ladder of success is a two-way passage, and Cantor obviously forgot the Old Testament teachings that, among the many meanings of Jacob’s ladder, is the changing affairs of human community. Tuesday, Cantor’s fates changed; his Congressional career and ambitions perished in a hell of his own making. He wakes up today to find the gates slammed shut on his dreams.

He earned his current infamy. Yet by all accounts, he never saw it coming. That he missed what should have been in plain sight is explained in the text of an old southern African proverb: A blind mule is never afraid of the dark.

Cantor’s blindness begins when he miscalculated the dynamics of his gerrymandered district, which runs from Richmond to the Washington suburbs. His briar patch of safety was filled with thorns and he got stuck, having created many reasons for personal grudges in a district both conservative, educated and middle class–“rich and stupid” is the shorthand I have used to describe it. Conservative, yes. Loyal, no. Reactionary, yes. Racist, yes. Invested in a Koch brothers-writ future? No. Despite Cantor’s loss...

More at: http://www.democratsforprogress.com/2014/06/11/lessons-celebrating-eric-cantors-primary-loss/

June 9, 2014

Stormy Monday, 6/9/14

Jeff Rosenzweig: Stormy Monday, 6/9/14

With every lurid allegation and wheezing harrumph over Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl and the circumstances of his captivity and release being debunked, Republicans are left to stand around looking not just damn foolish, but hypocritical and heartless. That’s not a novelty, of course; they’ve been doing it pretty much forever. Sgt. Berhdahl is simply the latest excuse for GOP poutrage spun out of whole cloth. On the brighter side, at least Republicans are spending so much time hyperventilating about him that they’ve hardly had time to keep grinding the stubs of their ax handles over Benghazi, the IRS, Syria, and whatever other pseudo-scandals have slipped my mind at the moment. Small mercies. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel testifies on the Bergdahl release before the House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday.

Any remaining unexploded Republican heads will probably explode today as direct talks begin in Geneva between officials of the US and Iran, as efforts continue to reach a final deal on Iran’s nuclear program by July. Deputy Secretary of State William Burns leads the US delegation.

The results of an internal audit on the VA’s hospital scheduling issues were released this morning. The details were heartbreaking and infuriating. Over 57,000 vets have been awaiting initial appointments for more than 90 days, and 64,000 enrollees over the past decade have never got an appointment. Also today, the House Veterans Affairs Committee hears testimony from the office of the VA’s Inspector General and representatives from the GAO. Acting Veterans Affairs Secretary Sloan Gibson has vowed swift reform.

Hillary Clinton, who says in an interview with Diane Sawyer airing tonight that she won’t announce her presidential plans until 2015, is kicking off a national book tour this week, during which she’ll be asked by every local media figure and every autograph-seeking fan at every stop in every city whether she intends to run in ’16. She’ll also be campaigning for a variety of Democrats, each of whom will ask her whether she intends to run in ’16...

More at: http://www.democratsforprogress.com/2014/06/09/stormy-monday-6914/

June 4, 2014

The Five

Walter Rhett: The Five

I usually write analysis. I identify important points left out of the conversation (Ukrainian gas pipelines; the Koch brothers’ shadow governments in the states, race in the halls of power). I explain how these ideas and forces play out and their potential for unexpected turns. I keep open a global eye, especially in finance (recently, Argentina) and military force multipliers (the Navy’s AEGIS destroyer fleet). My slant is more German, the idea that the world has organic, multi-leveled interconnections, rather than English with its view of the sanctity of contracts or the French faith in rationalism.

I think the South wrote the book on how to leverage denial. And that Americans for Prosperity (AFP) has turned denial and fear into a major capital industry to direct politics without creating jobs. AFP just defeated a zoo levy in Columbus, Ohio by calling a slight increase in the zoo levy a “105 percent property tax hike,” calling their effort “education.”

By no means am I an Austrian, the counter flag for conservative ideology about government and markets whose views Paul Krugman describes as cockroach ideas—no matter how many times the ideas are defeated, proven wrong by experience, meticulously deconstructed by theory, they keep crawling back...

More at: http://www.democratsforprogress.com/2014/06/04/the-five/

June 2, 2014

Stormy Monday, 6/2/14

Jeff Rosenzweig: Stormy Monday, 6/2/14

Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl begins the week at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany after nearly five years as a prisoner of the Taliban. He was released Saturday after the conclusion of negotiations which included the release of five Afghani detainees from Guantanamo. Sgt. Bergdahl’s next stop is expected to be San Antonio Military Medical Center. And if his newfound freedom isn’t heartwarming enough, there’s this: Republicans are pissed off about it. So, apparently, is Hamid Karzai.

Thursday, the incomparable Bernie Sanders will chair a Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee hearing on his proposed Restoring Veterans’ Trust Act, which, among other important and overdue measures to enhance veterans’ benefits, would go a very long way toward straightening out the unconscionable VA healthcare mess that cost Eric Shinseki his job last week.

The President heads to Europe today for a five-day junket that will include stops in Poland (to honor the 25th anniversary of democratic elections there), France (to honor the 70th anniversary of D-Day), and Belgium (to honor whatever it is that gets honored at G7 meetings).

Today, the EPA proposed a 30-percent reduction in power plant carbon emissions over the next 15 years. The plan gives states considerable flexibility in achieving targeted reductions. Even Republicans have found something to like about the proposal: an opportunity to score cheap political points. Tomorrow, the National Republican Senatorial Committee begins a series of predictably dishonest robocalls in four states, portraying incumbent Democratic senators as radical tree-huggers determined to bankrupt their constituents with out-of-control electric bills...

More at: http://www.democratsforprogress.com/2014/06/02/stormy-monday-6214/

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