When a conservative does something, it's OK, but not the same thing happens to a Democratic politician. It really doesn't matter what it is. Right now we're talking about rights for bombers, but it could be anything at all.
Liasson: ...don't forget Richard Reid, the shoe bomber was also mirandized and I don't remember a hue or a cry about that either. This is I think really unfortunate all around if you think that politics should stop at the water's edge, it should also stop at national security matters and alleged terrorists attacks.
Liasson reminds the Fox Crew that the shoe bomber was Mirandized the same way as the underwear bomber. Democrats on the Hill didn't immediately attack Bush after this, but let the process work. That's not part of the landscape now. Conservatives attack every second of every day, even when it compromises our national security. Why do they hate America so?
And apart from asking for a lap dance, why is Chris Wallace taking a political position on whether the underwear bomber is talking or not? I thought Fox's "news shows" didn't indulge in opinions ...
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Dylan Ratigan allows Marsha Blackburn to come on his show and play populist with her concerns for transparency and the national debt. This woman is about as far to the right as you can get with her voting record but he's going to allow her to come out and paint herself as some politician that's just concerned for the average working person out there.
BLACKBURN: Dylan one of the things you have to do is regain their trust. You do that by transparency, by moving these discussions out in the open where the American people can see and hear what is being done and said and I think that's an important step in this process. Certainly you mentioned the Tea Party movement and Enough is Enough. That is what people are saying. They've had it. Enough is enough. They are looking at a budget that the President has brought forward today that is focused on debt. It is not focused on jobs and creating jobs. And I think that's why so many people have said look, we're frustrated with this.
One of the things I'm going to do is immediately file the bills I file every year that call for 1%, 2% and 5% across the board spending reducations. Let's actually begin to cut what the Federal government spends.
The Republicans are all suddenly worried about the debt now that a Democrat is in charge when we never heard this kind of carping out of them while Bush was running the show. Blackburn goes on to claim that she "doesn't do earmarks". From Media Matters -- Rep. Blackburn Blasts Earmarks, Forgetting Her Own:
In a December 2, 2009 op-ed in the Washington Times, Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) urged Republicans to campaign on earmark reform, noting she had "sworn off" earmarks herself. During the preceding year, Congresswoman Blackburn requested nearly $12 million in earmarks. As Blackburn has no doubt realized, it's easy to fast immediately after a $12 million meal.
She then goes on to cite Rep. Paul Ryan's "Roadmap to Recovery" as a solution to America's financial problems.
Since the Roberts Court has now ruled that corporations have the same rights as people and overturned decades of laws regulating their speech, I'm wondering: Do they now have the right to arm themselves by employing Blackwater-type mercenaries and post them all over their office buildings?
Will Wal-Mart post armed guards in their parking lots?
Seems like a natural consequence. If corporations can enjoy full First Amendment protections, wouldn't they likewise get Second Amendment rights?
I never understood why the Obama campaign and even his administration refused to call out Reagan and conservatism, ever. Is David Axelrod that daffy? I hated his campaign approach during the summer because he allowed conservatives to define Obama without putting up much of a fight until the end of September, and he also allowed them to define the health-care debate and kept Obama on the sidelines for the most part. What is wrong with him? I'd like to say that they are novices, but he's been in politics a very long time.
Digby and I were screaming the last two years that the word "conservatism" should have been called out for being the manifest cause of the destruction wreaked on the American people and the world during eight years of Bush-Cheney-GOP congressional rule. But did you hear a peep out of President Obama? He actually brought up Reagan's name in the election in a positive fashion.
I've been toying with an idea to bring back Bush because his administration laid waste to our land except for the very wealthy. There's a reason why he has disappeared for almost an entire year. His visage still causes a lot of distress in America, even when deployed for a worthy cause such as the Haiti earthquake disaster -- even Bush himself looked like annoyed that he had been roped into helping. Well, we do need someone to look after those Shysters.
Finally, about that narrative: It’s instructive to compare Mr. Obama’s rhetorical stance on the economy with that of Ronald Reagan. It’s often forgotten now, but unemployment actually soared after Reagan’s 1981 tax cut. Reagan, however, had a ready answer for critics: everything going wrong was the result of the failed policies of the past. In effect, Reagan spent his first few years in office continuing to run against Jimmy Carter.
Mr. Obama could have done the same — with, I’d argue, considerably more justice. He could have pointed out, repeatedly, that the continuing troubles of America’s economy are the result of a financial crisis that developed under the Bush administration, and was at least in part the result of the Bush administration’s refusal to regulate the banks.
But he didn’t. Maybe he still dreams of bridging the partisan divide; maybe he fears the ire of pundits who consider blaming your predecessor for current problems uncouth — if you’re a Democrat. (It’s O.K. if you’re a Republican.) Whatever the reason, Mr. Obama has allowed the public to forget, with remarkable speed, that the economy’s troubles didn’t start on his watch.
I remember there was a poll done in the beginning of his term which said that Americans were willing to give the new president at least eighteen months to get it together because we recognized the failure of Bush and Cheney as a nation, but as economic conditions get worse, patience is the first to go. And then Axelrod allowed the populist anger to get away from them, when it was legitimate for his administration to have gone after the Wall Street fat cats right from the beginning of his presidency. And it should have been critical to included conservative principles in their critiques, rather than let the Tea Parties resurrect them as somehow a solution to the very problems they caused in the first place.
It was clear during the campaign that Obama was reluctant to confront the Reagan legacy on its basic terms, preferring to dryly characterize his governing philosophy as technocratic and competent. I think that was a mistake, since people really have no other framework within which to understand their problems, when things go badly, they have no other way of understanding it except for blaming "big government" for either causing it or failing to fix it.
Today, they may be angry at the banks, but they see the problem being that the government gave these institutions preferential treatment over them rather than that they caused this worldwide economic crisis with their irresponsible, swashbuckling, gambling culture --- which now must be regulated by the government. I think most people see the recession, the banking crisis, unemployment and the rest as only a failure of government --- and they are assuming that the way to fix it is by making government smaller. After all, both Democrats and Republicans keep telling them that it's so.
I'm very glad to see that Obama is finally taking some action against the banks. It is the Democrats' best hope of reframing the debate, although I think it's awfully late in the game. Today, he seemed to sideline Geithner and Summers publicly, but the question is whether or not he's finally figured out that they are part of the problem, not the solution.
I don't think Obama's words alone have enough credibility anymore to fix this. He's going to have to take some concrete action.
And Democrats are going to have to accept that need to attack the Reagan legacy more directly and make an affirmative case for government. I would have thought that was obvious, but the Democratic party and Obama himself seem to have believed otherwise. If they persist with merely tweaking the Reagan legacy, they will find themselves in this same situation over and over again. As long as people see government as the problem, progressivism, liberalism, whatever you want to call it, will fail.
As usual it will remain the job of us bloggers to remind America how bad conservatism has been for the country. Maybe someday there will be a few more politicians who will state the obvious and not be afraid of the Broders in the Village, who only hold Democrats to their standard of "bipartisanship."
Obama clearly bought into the Village idea that "bipartisanship" was an ideal end unto itself. He's been disabused by the reality that the Village version of it permits conservatives to lie with impunity while punishing liberals for having the temerity to point that ugly fact out, and forces liberals to compromise on each and every one of their principles in order to prove their "seriousness" (a quality always defined by how far to the right it is). We'll see if the lesson sinks in.
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A golden oldie from the incredible C&L archives on Harold Ford from an appearance he had with Hannity & Colmes:
Colmes: Barack Obama had a great point when he said those who voted for the war in Iraq and then had to apologize for that vote should probably be the last people to criticize he---who was right about the war in Iraq all along.
Ford: I don't know who's been right about this war all along...
Colmes: Sure you do...
Ford: That's open for dispute.
Colmes: You don't know who's been right about the war all along?
Ford: One thing is clear. What we're doing now is not working.
BNF's made a nice video mash-up for us that exposes his anti-gay, pro gun, anti civil rights, anti- choice, Bush loving creds. His sudden change of positions to justify his entrance into NY politics is incredible.
I remember Ford's 2006 election very well. I wouldn't raise him any money, but did write a lot on the smear ad that the republican party promoted about him. It was tough watching him proclaim his Blue Dog credentials and then he did a campaign commercial inside a church.
Now he's a carpetbagger trying to run in NY and running away from his old positions as fast as he can.
I imagine NYers are smart enough to see right through his lies.
Happy Chanukah (Hanukkah) everybody! And if you can this season, drop five bucks via the paypal button below, rather than under the Crooks and Liars' Hanukkah Bush.**
Every little contribution makes a huge difference in our monthly server bill. Thank you for making this blog possible.
The tenure of Berkeley law professor John Yoo has come under fire amid a backlash over the role he played in the Bush administration, advising on the legalities of now-controversial interrogation tactics used on terror suspects. Spencer Michels reports.
SPENCER MICHELS: Since the beginning of the school year, protesters dressed as prisoners or detainees have dogged law professor John Yoo at the University of California at Berkeley. They want the university to fire him for advising the Bush administration, as an attorney in the Justice Department, that it could legally torture suspected terrorists to get information.
PROTESTER: This is a not just a question of academic opinions. This is a question of war crimes. People like John Yoo, these people should be fired.
SPENCER MICHELS: Forty-two-year-old John Yoo has taught here since 1993, except for 2001 to 2003, when he worked for the Justice Department in the Office of Legal Counsel.
During those years, after 9/11, the U.S. was interrogating prisoners, suspected terrorists, at places like Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Yoo wrote several memos on how far the interrogators could go in pressuring prisoners to reveal information. Those memos argued that techniques such as water- boarding, sleep deprivation, and exploiting a detainee's fear of insects were, in fact, legal.
Yoo's actions have reverberated throughout Boalt Hall, the Berkeley law school where Yoo teaches. Students and faculty are debating the bounds of academic freedom, and whether a professor should be held responsible for controversial work done outside the university.
DAVID ARABELLA, law student: I believe that he does have a right to teach here, because people can have controversial views. But, personally, I'm not going to enroll in his class.
SPENCER MICHELS: The law school dean, Christopher Edley, who has served in several Democratic administrations, has been besieged by messages, the majority against Professor Yoo.
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To the Villagers, the left have to be the ones to always, always compromise. If a president dares to govern to the left, it's mutiny in the Beltway. I don't remember the media getting all too upset when Bush's wingnut base freaked out over immigration reform and killed it. Tom Tancredo was invited to go on every talk show there was and even ran for president on it.
Tweety goes on and on saying the Democrats never even had fifty votes so if they wanted to use reconciliation they never had the votes to do it anyway, so they are just total failures. Really, Tweety? I wonder where he got his information from. A 900 number maybe...the Psychic Network...
Matthews: Yeah, so a lot of this has been talk, so Vick you pick up on this. Given the fact that the Senate's not going to approve a public option because they can't get any where near sixty...
Right...
...and by the way I'm wondering were they ever going to get fifty.
Yeah.And all these guys are going through reconciliation-- we're going to ram it through-- they never had fifty! Okay, that's just my hunch and my belief.
Matthews: And I would argue that if you're going to be the party that believes in government, which the Democrats do believe more than Republicans do, they believe in positive government-- you have to be able to govern and prove that you're affective at governing. If you blow it, you can't say you believe in government because you've failed at government. Thank you very much. That's a little redundant.
WTF does this mean? If you believe in government, but you fail to pass a bill---does that mean you don't believe in government? Isn't that what governing is all about? Republicans just say they hate the government so they can get elected to work FOR the government. Conservatives make a lot of money being IN the government, you freaking buffoon.
This type of health-care reform has never been done before. Ever. And with idiots on my dial only talking bullshit it really makes it hard for working families to ever get a fair shake. The Villagers like Tweety, with their million-dollar houses, actually think they represent average working-class families, but his rant just shows a lack of understanding about the basic workings of how political parties operate in America.
What does it mean to Chris when Bush (at one time Chris Matthews got very warm and fuzzy looking at the codpiece) failed to privatize Social Security? Lucky for us he didn't get a chance to destroy that also. OK...NEXT!
The Obama administration has been sticking to many of the tactics Bush used in his efforts in dealing with terrorism. The FISA fiasco was telling and now we have The Patriot Act. It's not surprising that any president would like to keep the status quo when they take office if they've been handed an office that has more power over our civil liberties than ever before. Sure, Obama is not Bush or Cheney, and I doubt he'd ever act like them, but that is no justification for not reining in the Patriot Act.
Reining in the excesses of the Patriot Act (and, relatedly, of ever-expanding eavesdropping powers) has long been a top agenda item for civil liberties groups -- and, at least so they claimed, for Democrats generally. In fact, when Obama voted for the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 last year in the middle of the campaign, he emphatically vowed that he would "fix" the problems with the FISA framework. But right as these reforms are finally being considered, the administration seizes on the Zazi case to insist that no such changes should be made:
At the same time, the Obama administration is pressing Congress to move swiftly to reauthorize three provisions of the USA Patriot Act set to expire in late December. They include the use of "roving wiretaps" to track movement, e-mail and phone communications, a tool that federal officials used in the weeks leading up to Zazi's arrest. . . .
"The Zazi case was the first test of this administration being able to successfully uncover and deal with this type of threat in the United States," a senior administration official said. "It demonstrated that we were able to successfully neutralize this threat, and to have insight into it, with existing statutory authorities, with the system as it currently operates."
So the Obama administration has its first allegedly big Terrorism case, and they can hardly contain themselves as they exploit it to justify a continuation of the very Patriot Act and FISA powers which Democrats (and, in the case of FISA, Obama himself) long claimed to oppose. Indeed, key Obama ally Dianne Feinstein has worked diligently in the Senate not just to block Patriot Act reforms, but to make the law even worse, and has repeatedly cited the Zazi case to justify that.
Glenn posted the above video from Julian Sanchez, who destroys the FOX Noise fearmongering arguments of why we just have to have FISA and TPA.
Cato's Julian Sanchez examines -- and absolutely destroys -- the fear-mongering claims from Fox News about efforts to reform the Patriot Act and FISA, with a particular focus on Fox's efforts to use the Zazi plot to justify the need for these powers
The Sunday talk shows certainly love John McCain. It's a joke that ABC has John McCain on as its guest almost weekly. He was just on August 23rd. Didn't he lose the general election? Being a guest once in a while is no biggie, but ABC's slavish behavior towards Sen. McCain is disturbing. They should just consummate their love affair and have him on every Sunday if they think his opinion outweighs all others.
I sure don't remember the media putting on John Kerry every week after he lost to Bush in 2005.
