DOWNLOADS: (267)

PLAYS: (2963)

Embed

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman on Sunday asserted that the National Rifle Association (NRA) had been "revealed as an insane organization" that "has this vision that we're living in a Mad Max movie" because it wants to put more guns in schools instead of supporting universal background checks and limits on military-style weapons.

During a panel segment on ABC, former Republican Senate candidate Carly Fiorina said she supported universal background checks and a ban on high-capacity magazines, but "both sides have overplayed" their arguments on gun control after the December massacre of 20 school children in Newtown, Connecticut.

"We've gotten glimpse into the mindset of the pro-gun people," Krugman observed. "And we've seen certainly with [NRA CEO] Wayne LaPierre and some of these others, it's bizarre, they have this vision that we're living in a Mad Max movie and that nothing can be done about it, that America cannot manage unless everybody's prepared to shoot intruders, that the idea that we have a police force that provides public safety is somehow totally impractical, despite the fact that that is in fact the way we live."

"Now the craziness of the pro-gun lobby has been revealed," he added. "And that has got to move the debate and got to move legislation, at least to some degree."

But Republican Pennsylvania Rep. Lou Barletta said that he was comfortable with the NRA's opposition to universal background checks because the idea was a "perfect example of why Washington is broke."

"I know people will get guns no matter what laws we pass, just like the illegal drugs," Barletta argued.

"I just caught you on a false statement there," Krugman interrupted. "Because at least I do believe that guns are the root. There are crazy people everywhere, but mass murders are a lot more common here... I looked at the international differences, and countries that have effective gun control have a lot fewer incidents."

"Will banning a spoon stop obesity? Of course not," Barletta quipped.

"There are plenty of gun owners that are fine, but the NRA is now revealed as an insane organization," Krugman pointed out. "And that matters quite a lot."

DOWNLOADS: (412)

PLAYS: (5091)

Embed

Romney adviser Bay Buchanan on Tuesday declared that the release of leaked campaign videos showing the Republican presidential nominee writing off 47 percent of the country as "dependant" and "entitled" was just a "bump in the road."

In an edited video published by Mother Jones on Monday, Mitt Romney had told wealthy donors that almost half of the country "pay no income tax" and were going to vote for President Barack Obama.

"My job is is not to worry about those people," Romney asserted. "I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."

On Tuesday, Buchanan had the unenviable task of trying to do damage control while being grilled by CNN host Soledad O'Brien.

"As a candidate, he can't worry about those he can't get," Buchanan explained, adding that the media should be focusing on "one out of every six Americans are in poverty today and that 47 million are taking food stamps in order to take care of themselves and their families."

"Listen, I fully understand the strategy is to turn to the 'real problem' and talk about something else, but I'm going to keep you on this," O'Brien said. "He says 47 percent of Americans pay no tax. That's not correct. ... Forty-seven percent of those people who pay no income tax -- look at that chart there -- 61 percent of those folks, they're paying payroll tax, money is coming out of their paycheck. It's being described as the myth of sort of the deadbeat nation."

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (320)

PLAYS: (4726)

Embed

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman says that the Republican Party has adopted extreme anti-immigrant positions to appeal to their base, "which is, by and large, elderly white people arguing with empty chairs."

During a Sunday panel segment on ABC News, Krugman pointed out that Clint Eastwood's bizarre conversation with an empty chair at the Republican National Convention last month was illustrative of the party's base.

"Arizona is a third Hispanic," conservative columnist George Will noted. "The Republican Party spend 20 debates in the primary competing to see who could build the longest, thickest, tallest, most lethally-electrified fence. And Hispanics said, 'I detect some hostility here.' And it's going to take a long time to undo that."

Krugman agreed that the the GOP's move to the extreme right during the primary had hurt their standing with minority voters.

"The Republican Party is where it is because that's where the base is," Krugman agreed. "You watch that whole primary process, Republican candidates had to appeal to their base, which is, by and large, elderly white people arguing with empty chairs."

Tea party favorite Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) also lamented that the Republican Party had completely given up on winning certain parts of the country.

"So what I keep telling them is, maybe we need some libertarian-type Republicans who might be popular in those areas," he explained. "Maybe a less aggressive, more socially tolerant, but still fiscally conservative policy that that may be more libertarian might do better in California, might do better in Oregon, Washington, New England."

"Our problem in the presidential election is we've given up 150 electoral votes before we get started."

DOWNLOADS: (106)

PLAYS: (227)

Embed

From this Tuesday night's PBS Newshour, apparently the network decided their viewers just weren't getting enough of David Brooks' Villager conventional wisdom with his weekly appearance on Friday night and had him on to weigh in on the State of the Union Address as well. Par for the course with Brooks, he spent the better part of his time during this interview trying to whitewash whether Americans at at time when we've got record income disparity in the United States are going to care about Mitt Romney's finances and his time at Bain Capital.

Brooks doesn't think voters are going to care because hey... they just expect everyone who runs for president to be "super-rich." Maybe he's correct that the electorate is just looking for "he most assertive manly man" when it comes to some really angry Republican primary voters, especially given who they have to choose between right now, but in the general election, that's another story.

He's also enamored with the current crop of candidates for wanting to do something "big" like turn Medicare into a voucher program. As Ruth Marcus pointed out to Brooks, their proposals might be big things but they do nothing to address the concerns of everyday Americans and would primarily benefit the wealthy.

Brooks also came just short of repeating his spiel about the Republicans being the party of the working class again here. As I noted when he repeated that nonsense on Charlie Rose's show a few weeks ago, "Sadly, The New York Times, that supposed bastion of evil liberal ideology if you watch Fox or listen to right wing radio, is still paying this man way too much money to write a column there every week."

Transcript below the fold.

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (1070)

PLAYS: (4487)

Embed

This is exactly how Democrats should respond when someone like Ed Gillespie tries to pin our exploding deficits on the Obama administration. On this week's Face the Nation, DNC Chair Tim Kaine tossed it right back in the Bush administration's lap where it belongs. Republicans are really good at wrecking the economy and then blaming the Democrats for not cleaning up their mess quickly enough to suit them.

Kaine: And with respect to Ed Gillespie's position about the deficit, I chuckle to hear Ed Gillespie, part of the Bush administration, criticize Democrats about the deficit. A recent analysis by the New York Times showed that of the current deficit, 55% of it was caused by Bush administration policy, 33% caused by the economic climate, and only 10% caused by decisions that President Obama has made since he's been in office.

The good news is that the President has said "I'm going to do what the previous Democratic president, Bill Clinton, did - I'm going to get control of the deficit." And so he's cut domestic spending and frozen discretionary spending, they're making strategic cuts to defense. He's got a deficit commission working that the Republicans tried to block. The only party that's ever done anything about the deficits is the Democratic party in recent years. If you want to fight deficits, don't put the Republicans back in. They'll blow it sky-high.

I don't take any comfort from Kaine touting that deficit commission but he's exactly right about the Republicans. They cannot claim to be the party of fiscal conservatism after the way they've governed for the last several decades, but that won't stop them from doing what Gillespie did here and blaming their messes on the Democrats. Thomas Frank summed up their tactics perfectly in his book The Wrecking Crew. And as our own Jon Perr wrote last year, "the American economy overall almost always do better under Democratic presidents" -- Democrats. Saving American Capitalism Since 1933.

And even The Wall Street Journal recognized that the Bush administration had the worst track record when it came to job creation.

Ed Gillespie doesn't have any standing to be criticizing anyone when it comes to the economy or jobs. That won't stop the media from continuing to bring these Bushies back on the air to give their opinions though.

DOWNLOADS: (739)

PLAYS: (1818)

Embed

Fox News has gone too far in hyping 2008 case of alleged voter intimidation, according to one New York Times columnist.

The conservative news network has recently produced a flurry of reports about a case where a member of the New Black Panther Party is accused of wielding a billy club outside of a polling place in Philadelphia. Appearing on MSNBC Monday, The New York Times' Charles Blow called out the network for exploiting the case.

"I think that the media, depending on what you call the media, some parts of the media, I think have exploited this to a degree that the president of the New Black Panther Party is on Fox on a regular basis now, it seems," Blow told MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski.

"You have a tough case here, because, to my understanding, we still don't have any person who has come forward to make an official complaint that they have been -- they were intimidated. You have a voter intimidation case with no intimidated voters," he said.

No on-air personality has promoted the story more than Fox News' Megyn Kelly.

Writing for The Atlantic, Dave Weigel accused Kelly's reports of inciting a crowd at a town hall event hosted by California Democrat:

Watch her broadcasts and you become convinced that the New Black Panthers are a powerful group that hate white people and operate under the protection of Eric Holder's DOJ. That "Megyn Kelly DESTROYS Kirsten Powers" video that I mentioned begins with her introducing a clip of a town hall meeting with Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Ca.) in which he gets an angry question about whether the DOJ has a policy of not prosecuting African-Americans.

"I am extremely sure that we do not have a policy at the Department of Justice of never prosecuting a black defendent."

The crowd rises up. "Yes you do!" shouts one voter. When Sherman says he doesn't know much about the Panther case, the crowd erupts in boos. They've been driven to fear and distrust of their DOJ by round-the-clock videos of one racist idiot brandishing a nightstick for a couple hours in 2008.

Congratulations, Megyn.

Also appearing on MSNBC Monday, Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA) suggested that the Obama administration may have a political motivation in ignoring the case.

"Congressman, what is your suspicion about why they are fearful to look into it?" asked MSNBC's Willie Geist. "What are you suggesting?"

"I don't know that I really ought to comment what it is," replied Wolf. "I think there is politics involved, but I think until we see, it's really hard -- very difficult to say."

But Blow disagreed. "The idea that the Obama administration, which is what is happening here which is people are trying to tie the Obama administration to black radicalism and that has been happening since the campaign and it continues to happen," said Blow.

"It strains logic to think that this tiny group, [Obama] somehow benefits politically from protecting them," Blow continued. "There's nothing to gain. In fact, there's everything to gain in prosecuting them."

DOWNLOADS: (817)

PLAYS: (2814)

Embed

Paul Krugman discussed his recent article in the New York Times with GPS's Fareed Zakaria about why the deficit hawks are dead wrong on the path our country needs to take to get the economy back on track. It's too bad Krugman isn't a member of that deficit commission instead of wingnuts like Alan Simpson. I'd feel like they were sincere in trying to get our economy out of the ditch instead of using the problems we're having as an excuse to destroy Social Security and Medicaid and what's left of our middle class.

For "balance" Zakaria followed this interview with deficit hawk Niall Ferguson. In the end even Zakaria admitted that there is a strong case for short term government spending, not that the Republicans and the Ben Nelsons of the world are going to allow it.

Myths of Austerity:

When I was young and naïve, I believed that important people took positions based on careful consideration of the options. Now I know better. Much of what Serious People believe rests on prejudices, not analysis. And these prejudices are subject to fads and fashions.

Which brings me to the subject of today’s column. For the last few months, I and others have watched, with amazement and horror, the emergence of a consensus in policy circles in favor of immediate fiscal austerity. That is, somehow it has become conventional wisdom that now is the time to slash spending, despite the fact that the world’s major economies remain deeply depressed.

This conventional wisdom isn’t based on either evidence or careful analysis. Instead, it rests on what we might charitably call sheer speculation, and less charitably call figments of the policy elite’s imagination — specifically, on belief in what I’ve come to think of as the invisible bond vigilante and the confidence fairy. Read on...

Transcript via CNN below the fold.

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (579)

PLAYS: (1098)

Embed

Appearing on no less than three major networks Wednesday, BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles continued to deny the existence of oil plumes underneath the surface of the Gulf of Mexico.

Government and university scientist confirmed Tuesday that they had found large plumes of oil, according to The New York Times.

The tests, the first detailed chemical analyses of water from the deep sea, show that some of the most toxic components of the oil are not necessarily rising to the surface where they can evaporate, as would be expected in a shallow oil leak. Instead, they are drifting through deep water in plumes or layers that stretch as far as 50 miles from the leaking well.

But Suttles seemed to disagree. "There's yet to be anyone who has found any significant quantities below the surface. Whether that's just below the surface, or at deep levels," he told ABC's Elizabeth Vargas.

"We're hearing scientists say there are huge plumes below the surface. Are you denying that still?" Vargas asked.

"Well, what I can tell you is, no one yet has found any concentrations that measured below the parts -- or higher than parts per million. So I think it may be depending on how you're defining this. But what I can tell you -- and I looked at this data -- is that we have not found any significant concentration of oil below the surface," replied Suttles.

Suttles seems to be echoing comments made by BP CEO Tony Hayward last week.

"The oil is on the surface," said Hayward. "There aren't any plumes."

DOWNLOADS: (722)

PLAYS: (2194)

Embed

Ruh roh... looks like Driftie's favorite Republican turd polisher David f-ing Brooks hasn't been kissing Rush Limbaugh's boots well enough to pass the wingnut purity test. Tsk...tsk. The panel on Fox News Watch questions whether the New York Times op-ed columnist is even a conservative while discussing the paper's "lack of balance". Rather ironic given that this is coming from anyone at ClusterFox in the first place, and Scooter Libby's buddy Judith Miller who helped Dick Cheney sell the Iraq invasion on the front page of the New York Times is one of the panelists. Wow.

Welcome to David Frum's world Mr. Brooks.

DougJ at Baloon Juice made a good point about the little dance that "respectable conservatives" are playing with the rabid right wing of the party.

In another good piece on the state of journamalism, Marc Ambinder proposes something that won’t work:

Rather than end my disquisition on a complaint or a tale of misery, I want to provide a constructive bit of advice as to how we can begin to revivify the honor to which we used to hold truth-tellers. Consider the narrow point that conservative criticism of President Obama is unusually and often bafflingly, even embarrassingly facile. There are plenty of conservatives who recognize this. I can name six: Ross Douthat. Matt Lewis. David Frum. David Brooks. Conor Friedersdorf. Liz Mair. There are many more. But they have no incentive to police their own side. The moment they speak out, they’re branded as apostates, and the conservative movement narrows even further. An impoverished opposition is bad for democracy. I subscribe to the Brendan Nyhan/Robert Frank notion that social shaming may well be a valid way for fact-checkers to convince more than a handful of people that the other side is simply wrong. Frum has done a serviceable job in calling out his fellow conservatives, but he does not possess the power or the infrastructure to shame people who cross a line. As Nyhan proposes, when someone like Frank Gaffney, who still gets invited to major events by reputable people, implies that President Obama a Muslim, he should be shamed into hiding by his fellow conservatives. (Shaming by liberals, or mere corrections, won’t work, and will often promote the myth).

It’s a silly suggestion, people like have Frank Gaffney have no sense of shame and neither do their fellow travelers at the Weekly Standard and National Review. I’m not even sure that Douthat et al. do.

The current system seems like a pretty comfy set-up for conservatives. The crazies can make money off their radio shows and Regenery books and wingnut welfare. The “respectable conservatives” can be hailed as VSPs for their occasional mild, mealy-mouthed criticism of the crazies.

Why change it over a small thing like shame?

The one thing Doug failed to note is that whether they're "respectable" or not, they're all playing the same game and all supporting the same bankrupt conservative ideology. The "respectable" ones aren't any better than their wingnut brethren in that regard.

DOWNLOADS: (633)

PLAYS: (875)

Embed

President Obama gave the commencement speech at The University of Michigan and talked about the tone of our political discourse and the need for civility. He noted that too much overheated rhetoric can push people away from politics and stressed the need for a "thriving news business that is separate from opinion makers and talking heads".

Couldn't agree with him more on that. I could have done without the plug for the celebrity gossip ridden HuffPo and comparing the Wall Street Journal to the New York Times as though the New York Times is a liberal institution. They helped George Bush sell the invasion of Iraq for Pete's sake. Other than those gripes it was a pretty good speech. I'm sure Beck and Limbaugh and company won't like it.

Here's the final portion.

These arguments we’re having over government and health care and war and taxes are serious arguments. They should arouse people’s passions, and it’s important for everyone to join in the debate, with all the rigor that a free people require.

But we cannot expect to solve our problems if all we do is tear each other down. You can disagree with a certain policy without demonizing the person who espouses it. You can question someone’s views and their judgment without questioning their motives or their patriotism. Throwing around phrases like “socialist” and “Soviet-style takeover;” “fascist” and “right-wing nut” may grab headlines, but it also has the effect of comparing our government, or our political opponents, to authoritarian, and even murderous regimes.

Again, we have seen this kind of politics in the past. It’s been practiced by both fringes of the ideological spectrum, by the left and the right, since our nation’s birth.

The problem with it is not the hurt feelings or the bruised egos of the public officials who are criticized.

The problem is that this kind of vilification and over-the-top rhetoric closes the door to the possibility of compromise. It undermines democratic deliberation. It prevents learning – since after all, why should we listen to a “fascist” or “socialist” or “right wing nut?” It makes it nearly impossible for people who have legitimate but bridgeable differences to sit down at the same table and hash things out. It robs us of a rational and serious debate that we need to have about the very real and very big challenges facing this nation. It coarsens our culture, and at its worst, it can send signals to the most extreme elements of our society that perhaps violence is a justifiable response.

Continue reading »