I wouldn't read too much into Gallup's weekly average of the generic congressional ballot, which has Democrats surpassing Republicans for a second consecutive week. But it does raise the question of what the ceiling of support is for Republicans, and whether that ceiling has already been reached. It's not as if Republicans face the same enthusiasm gap as Democrats, and there's only so much energy to be drawn from the "independent" voter.
The insight to be gleaned from this frustrating Ezra Kleininterview with Paul Ryan isn't that one of the most "intellectually ambitious" members of the Republican caucus doesn't know what he's talking about but that he provides no indication that the Republican Party is anywhere near coming back to reality on economic policy. And this means Democrats will simply have to go it alone on policy, provided majority rule somehow permeates the Senate.
Max Bootargues, in all seriousness, that reducing the size of America's standing army leads directly to future military conflagerations. Thus, the War of 1812 followed the post-Revolutionary War reduction, WWII followed the post-WWI drawdown, etc. Alternatively, you could go the Newt Gingrich route of cheering on preemptive war by taking out the remaining members of the "Axis of Evil." Sadly, this makes Boot's crude "peace through strength" argument sound wise and reasonable.
James C. Capretta on privatizing Social Security: "Once instituted, the personal accounts would be entirely voluntary. Enrollees would still get a defined benefit from Social Security, but they would also get an annuity from an investment that they own and that is no longer subject to the unpredictable whims of political control." In comparison to the highly predictable and stable financial markets, I assume.
Remainders: It looks like pissing off liberals is the sole remaining priority of the GOP; Lisa Jackson's EPA is one of the bright spots of the Obama administration; to repeat, Republicans don't give a damn about reducing the deficit; yep, I'd say the Reagan cult has definitely devolved into a racket; the appeal of Fred Thompson mystifies me; look up "clueless" in the dictionary and you'll see Rep. Lamar Smith's (R-TX) picture accompanying the definition; and the banality of Journolist, exposed.
Thanks to Paul Waldman's post earlier today, I have now read Stanley Kurtz's attack on President Obama's socialist agenda from The Corner, the blog of National Review. Kurtz's thesis begins with the indisputable fact that I have commended portions of Obama's program -- he cites my column in Wednesday's Post, in which I praised the administration's proposal to increase the tax credit for domestic manufacturing of green technology and advocated increased public investment in roads, rail, and broadband -- and that I am a publicly avowed democratic socialist, albeit one who promotes reformist ideas. He concludes by saying that Obama is just like me -- a sophisticated socialist working "to bring about a socialist transformation in the long term."
Jeesh -- where to begin? I could point out how often I -- and other liberals who don't come out of any socialist or social democratic tradition -- have criticized Obama for hewing too close to the Rubinomics Wall Street camp within the Democratic Party. I could point out how every socialist and social democratic party of the West, not to mention in many other parts of the world, has long since abandoned nationalization of the economy as part of their socialist vision.
But since the main thrust of Kurtz's post is guilt by association, I thought I'd dig up some lefty praise for a reformist president from a socialist far more prominent than I, writing of a president far more prominent than Obama. On Jan. 28, 1865, an exiled German writer presented an open letter to Abraham Lincoln to the U.S. Ambassador to Britain, Charles Francis Adams. It began:
We congratulate the American people upon your re-election by a large majority. If resistance to the Slave Power was the reserved watchword of your first election, the triumphant war cry of your re-election is Death to Slavery.
And it ended:
The workingmen of Europe feel sure that, as the American War of Independence initiated a new era of ascendency for the middle class, so the American Antislavery War will do for the working classes. They consider it an earnest of the epoch to come that it fell to the lot of Abraham Lincoln, the single-minded son of the working class, to lead his country through the matchless struggle for the rescue of an enchained race and the reconstruction of a social world.
The letter, of course, was written by Karl Marx. Throughout the Civil War, Marx had authored a series of articles that were not merely pro-abolitionist, but, as the war drove the Republicans more and more into the abolitionist camp, also pro-Republican and pro-Lincoln. For whatever it's worth, I've been a lot more critical of Obama than Marx ever was of Lincoln.
Does that mean that there were aspects of Marx's agenda and Lincoln's agenda that coincided? Of course there were. Does that mean that Lincoln was a Marxian socialist? Not exactly. Not quite. More precisely, no way in hell.
Of course, if Stanley Kurtz had been writing in 1865, he might have seen it differently.
Shirley Sherrod indicated yesterday that she will sueAndrew Breitbart for editing and posting a video of her, which resulted in her losing her job (only to be offered another) at the USDA. There has been a lot of encouragement online, urging Sherrod to hold Breitbart -- and Fox News, which disseminated the story -- accountable. But legally, it’s not clear she would be successful, or that it would be worth it.
Lawyers Jonathan Turley and John W. Dean looked into the matter and raise questions about the ultimate success of a legal showdown. They say Sherrod’s best option, a “false-light invasion of privacy” suit, would require proving malice in the creation and posting of the video, which is difficult. Additionally, under the free-speech protections of the First Amendment, the Supreme Court “has required extremely high levels of proof and evidence before anyone making a public statement will be held accountable for it.” Generally good provisions that encourage public speech would probably thwart a Sherrod’s suit.
Dean cautions that Breitbart would be so difficult and nasty in court that Sherrod would enter into a prolonged legal feud. On the bright side, Turley points to the best possible outcome:
Of course, if Sherrod were to sue, she would likely make it past initial motions to dismiss and could secure embarrassing discovery in the case, including possible internal emails and communications on the purpose of the editing and release of the video.
The idea of holding Breitbart accountable in court -- and possibly embarrassing him -- is tempting, but it won’t heal the serious problems with race that this sad episode has exposed. While Breitbart ignited -- and has not apologized for -- the Sherrod episode, he is only a symptom of a larger problem. It is our inability as a nation to talk about race, and the administration's fear of the "race issue," that Breitbart was able to exploit.
Ultimately, while a swift and successful suit against Breitbart could discourage him from this kind of misinformation in the future, the likely drawn-out legal battle won't serve Sherrod well. A lawsuit against Breitbart would be fascinating, and he deserves to be held accountable, but it won't persuade the conservative media not to do this sort of thing in the future, truly holding Breitbart accountable, or even focus national attention on our paranoid treatment of race in America.
Sixty-six American troops died in Afghanistan this July, making it the deadliest month of the entire nine-year occupation. Approximately 265 American troops have died so far this year. For the Afghanis themselves, the situation has also gotten worse -- last year saw at least 2,200 civilian deaths due to the conflict.
It's hard to be rational about a politician when you disagree with nearly everything he or she does. That's a problem that plagues all of us who comment on politics. But those of us who want to be honest try to keep the danger of losing our grip on reality in mind as we evaluate what happens day to day.
One of the ways that danger manifests itself is in the way we deal with new evidence -- particularly that which might contradict the conclusions we've already come to. For instance, there was ample reason to conclude that Dick Cheney was a dark-hearted, sinister character with no trace of human feeling, based, among other things, on his apparent lust for war and torture. On the other hand, Cheney was (and remains) one of the only people in his party to favor marriage equality for gay people. Having a gay daughter -- a human relationship -- convinced him to extrapolate his personal affection into a belief in just public policy.
How do you deal with that when making a general evaluation of what kind of character Cheney is? It isn't easy. One way is to avoid making broad, sweeping conclusions about him, tempting though they may be. Or you could decide that his support of gay marriage is some kind of ruse, a carefully planned move in service of a larger strategy to eventually allow him to drink the blood of innocent children in his maniacal quest to defeat death.
That would be nuts, of course. But it isn't too far off from the way some people think about Barack Obama. Let's say you've made a broad, sweeping conclusion about Obama: that he's a hard-core socialist, yearning to nationalize all industry and turn America into a collectivist nightmare. How do you evaluate evidence indicating that maybe he really isn't such a socialist?
If you're a certain kind of conservative -- let's say Stanley Kurtz, of National Review -- the answer is easy, particularly if you've got a book coming out called Radical-In-Chief: Barack Obama and the Untold Story of American Socialism. The answer is that if Obama is really a socialist, everything he does is in service of his nefarious socialist goals, and all you have to do is define whatever he's doing as in service to those goals. If Obama's actions appear to involve not actually dismantling capitalism, then that's just part of the secret plan. If he dismantles capitalism, then, hey, socialist! If he's not dismantling capitalism, then he's lulling us into a false sense of security, before ... bam, socialism!
This is what happens when you invest in that kind of sweeping conclusion: You have to fit everything into it, no matter how stupid it makes you look. One option you don't have is to reassess the conclusion. You can read Kurtz's argument here, which seems to amount to: Barack Obama is a socialist, because I don't like (TAP's own) Harold Meyerson. Really. "Sophisticated socialists" like Meyerson and Obama, you see, "offer support to those Democratic Party initiatives most likely to bring about a socialist transformation in the long term." So when liberals support Democratic Party initiatives, they're just showing how socialist they are.
The handy thing about this argument is that it's unfalsifiable: There is literally nothing Obama could do, up to and including ditching Joe Biden, making Sarah Palin his VP, and then resigning so she could take office, that Kurtz wouldn't be able to define as part of the long-term secret plan to institute socialism in America.
TAP talks to economistMatthew Kahnabout the promise of California's fledgling cap-and-trade system -- and the campaign to undo it:
How do you sell the idea of California being a guinea pig?
Personally, I take pride in that. A society needs first movers. In a world of uncertainty, we need somebody to be the risk taker. And whether you're a hero or a sucker is sort of in the eyes of the beholder. And I view us as a hero here.
Doug Kendall notes that, for all the Republican whining about the obstruction of federal court nominees under the Bush administration, things have gotten even slower during Obama's first term:
By this point in his first term (July 2002), President George W. Bush had had 61 nominees confirmed to the federal bench, to President Obama's 36, and the Senate took less time to confirm Bush's nominees on average than they have taken to confirm Obama's. ... From the date they were approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee, Bush's nominees waited an average of 16 days to receive a vote on the Senate floor. By contrast, the average time from Committee vote to floor vote for Obama's nominees is 82 days (so far).
Not all of the blame for the paltry number of confirmations rests with Senate Republicans, though. Obama has also been notably and inexplicably slow to put nominees forward, and getting nominees confirmed is about to get a lot harder after the midterms.
Of course the larger story here is that the Senate is broken, and the problem is going to get worse before it gets better. Given a breakdown in traditional norms of comity and weak party discipline -- norms that aren't coming back, and at least in the latter case shouldn't be mourned -- Republicans are just acting consistently with their incentives. If the rules allow you to slow the appointment of new judges to currently Republican-dominated federal courts, why wouldn't you take advantage of them? Until the rules change, the Senate is going to get more and more dysfunctional.
Yesterday, as reported by The Washington Independent's Andrew Restuccia, Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski came out swinging against Democrats who attack the Republican energy bill as a "bailout" for the oil industry:
The Republican bill holds oil companies accountable and makes sure taxpayers are never on the hook for spill clean up costs. But, and this is a big difference, it ensures that smaller, independent oil companies can still get insurance to explore in the Gulf of Mexico – saving tens of thousands of Americans from being forced unnecessarily onto the unemployment line simply because Democrats want to punish Big Oil.
Of course, Murkowski's protesting notwithstanding, the Republican energy bill is pretty much a giveaway to the oil industry. The "American Energy Act" aims to achieve energy independence by hugely expanding the scale of domestic drilling and massively subsidizing nuclear energy. It would lift the ban on oil exploration in the "outer continental shelf," expedite construction of oil refineries, open up the Arctic to drilling, and increase production of oil shale. What's more, the bill's authors aim to build 100 additional nuclear power plants by 2030. Given the huge cost of new nuclear power plants -- an estimated $8 billion per plant -- even a partial subsidy would constitute a massive taxpayer giveaway to the nuclear industry, to say nothing of the costs borne by the taxpayer in the event of reactor failure.
Beyond that, the AEA would amend the Clean Air Act to state "that the term air pollutant does not include carbon dioxide and certain other greenhouse gases" -- to circumvent EPA regulation of carbon -- and it would prohibit "any consideration of the impacts of greenhouse gases on any species of fish or wildlife or plant," so that the Endangered Species Act could not be used to regulate climate change. In all, the AEA does everything it can -- short of a constitutional amendment -- to keep the federal government from addressing climate change. Which, I'm sure, greatly benefits the coal and oil companies that donate millions to Republicans (and their allies among conservative Democrats).
On this one, Democrats are absolutely right; the AEA doesn't even attempt to regulate or reduce greenhouse gases, and it doesn't do much to bring the United States closer to energy independence. Like most Republican proposals in the 111th Congress, it exists mostly so that Republicans can say that they've thought about the issue. But even that's only partially true; like nearly everything else on their agenda, Republican ideas on energy independence are a simple throwback to the failed policies of George W. Bush.
Julian Sanchezdelves into theObamaadministration's desire to "clarify" FBI power to get online records without warrants -- and vastly expand it:
At issue is the scope of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's power to obtain information from "electronic communications service providers" using national security letters (NLS), which compel private companies to allow government access to communication records without a court order. The administration wants to add four words -- "electronic communication transactional records" -- to Section 2709 of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which spells out the types of communications data that can be obtained with an NSL. Yet those four little words would make a huge difference, potentially allowing investigators to draw detailed road maps of the online activity of citizens not even suspected of any connection to terrorism.
The image at right is a screenshot of Yahoo News from this morning, with stories about the fact that a package of programs to boost small business was filibustered by Republicans in the Senate. You'll notice that while some of the stories make clear who actually killed this bill, many do not. The facts are clear: Democrats want to pass the package, and Republicans don't. Republicans filibustered. Democrats have been unable to overcome the Republican filibuster. But to read many of these articles, you'd barely be able to figure out that there's a difference between the parties on this question. Instead, what we get is a lot of passive-voice construction about procedural matters and a hamstrung institution. The clearest case may be this ABC News article, which says the bill "failed to overcome a procedural hurdle in the Senate" and that "the bill has languished in the Senate because of partisan gridlock."
Needless to say, this is precisely the storyline Republicans want. They obstruct anything and everything, but the blame gets cast on "partisan gridlock," which allows them to condemn the very dysfunction they're causing.
Jamelle Bouiesays Americans don't know how to talk about race because they only do it when they absolutely have to:
You can't treat race as a box to be checked off. Not only is race a crucial part of American identity; it's impossible to talk about policy in this country without also, somewhere, mentioning race. Indeed, to talk about race as if it were some "thing" apart is to deny the central role it plays in nearly every aspect of American life.
The Washington Post has a story lamenting D.C.'s lack of a cool nickname and announcing one that's catching on: DMV, an acronym for the "District," Maryland, and Virginia, the city and suburbs that make up the metropolitan area. This of course is already an acronym for the Department of Motor Vehicles, which you can either decry as unfortunate -- or "painful" or "ugly" -- or apt. Who doesn't remember the distinct air of DMV ennui? Perhaps the implicit comparison to one of the country's most hated and inept bureaucracies expresses how people feel about government, but for PR's sake, D.C. residents should hope the Post is just inventing a trend, as newspapers tend to do, when it says DMV is "picking up speed." Plus, doesn't D.C. already have a decent nickname -- the "Beltway"?
Sen. John Thune (R-SD) is mighty confused about deficit reduction, suggesting that we should reduce the deficit by 10 percent every year. Perhaps if Thune had majored in philosophy instead of earning an MBA, he would be aware of Zeno's Dichotomy Paradox, whereby reducing the distance between yourself and a goal by a fixed percent leads to infinite steps, never fully reaching the goal.
Matt Yglesias writes, "I think it’s genuinely too bad that so much of the right-wing’s energy is dedicated to idiotic made-up stuff" and lists several examples. My question is why the right-wing is so obsessed with nonexistent conspiracies. Let's set aside "paranoid style" explanations and ask what the actors have to gain by advocating fringe beliefs. For some conservative media personalities, there's every incentive to milk the wingnuts for personal gain. There's also base mobilization in an election year, but the side effect is that it could actually help Democrats.
Evan McMorris-Santorointerviews mosque protester Diane Serafin, and the result is a fascinating peek into a delusional mind. For example: "They [local government officials] feel there's religious freedom. And I know it's there in the Constitution and everything, but everything I read says Islam is a political movement." This would-be "political movement" Serafin believes is making headway in instituting Sharia law "in every Christian city." Well, at least we know Serafin's ideas haven't penetrated the broader conservative movement ... oh wait.
Remainders: Introducing the Pennometer; never underestimate the ability of Congress to come up with creative ways to trivially increase revenues; Obama, like all presidents, pretends to "not care" what the polls say, spends lavishly on them; and they're called "glibertarians" because there's a silver lining to everything.
A new poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation shows support for the Affordable Care Act building, but it also shows some other interesting things, including this:
On the other hand, large shares of seniors mistakenly believe the law includes provisions that cut some previously universal Medicare benefits and creates “death panels.” Half of seniors (50%) say the law will cut benefits that were previously provided to all people on Medicare, and more than a third (36%) incorrectly believe the law will “allow a government panel to make decisions about end-of-life care for people on Medicare.”
Keep in mind that when it came to the "death panels," the press pretty much did its job. Not perfectly, by any means, but most of the time, when it was mentioned, reporters pointed out that the claim was, in fact, false. But let's also remember that in an act of cowardice, Democrats knuckled under and eliminated the provision that spawned the "death panel" lie, which would have reimbursed Medicare providers for discussing end-of-life options with their patients. They wouldn't have gotten paid much, but at least it would have made those discussions a bit more likely, and therefore made it more likely people would plan for the end of their lives.
This matters. As national treasure Atul Gawande discusses in his latest piece in The New Yorker about end-of-life care, surprisingly, research has shown that people with some conditions who go to hospice actually live longer than those who don't: "The lesson seems almost Zen: you live longer only when you stop trying to live longer." And Gawande reports the remarkable results of one study:
Two-thirds of the terminal-cancer patients in the Coping with Cancer study reported having had no discussion with their doctors about their goals for end-of-life care, despite being, on average, just four months from death. But the third who did were far less likely to undergo cardiopulmonary resuscitation or be put on a ventilator or end up in an intensive-care unit. Two-thirds enrolled in hospice. These patients suffered less, were physically more capable, and were better able, for a longer period, to interact with others. Moreover, six months after the patients died their family members were much less likely to experience persistent major depression. In other words, people who had substantive discussions with their doctor about their end-of-life preferences were far more likely to die at peace and in control of their situation, and to spare their family anguish.
Most Americans may not have been snookered by Sarah Palin's "death panel" lie (and we should give credit to its originator, the infinitely despicable Betsy McCaughey; Palin gave it its snappy moniker). But she nevertheless won the battle, because the provision was removed. It's difficult to say just how many fewer patients talked to their doctors, planned for their deaths, and saved themselves and their families so much suffering as a result. But every family that goes through the anguish of watching their loved one suffer, not knowing what choices to make on their behalf, drawing out everyone's misery, can give a great big thanks to the former governor of Alaska.
After months of sometimes violent protests, garment workers in Bangladesh -- largely women and among the lowest paid in the world -- have won an increase in their wages. The new pay scale raises the minimum from 1662 takas to 3,000 takas a month (equivalent to $25 and $45, respectively) and goes into effect in November.
The cover of the latest issue of Time features Aisha, an 18 year-old Afghan girl whose face was mutilated by the Taliban because she fled her abusive in-laws. But this story isn't about Aisha or the monsters who wish to take Afghanistan back to the Dark Ages -- it's about the moral responsibility of the U.S. military to remain in Afghanistan. The cover headline asks, "What happens if we leave?" but doesn't talk about tactics or grand strategy -- the story is essentially saying, "If we leave, all Afghan women will end up like Aisha."
Of course, Aisha's abuse occurred under the auspices of a U.S. occupation of Afghanistan, going on nine years now. What Time is employing is a crude moral cudgel to shame anyone who would dare question why we're still occupying two foreign countries in a feeble attempt at "nation building." Time is using Aisha's mutilated face to morally blackmail critics of U.S. foreign policy, and that's outrageous. Of course, I find it horrible that women in Afghanistan (and elsewhere) must live under such circumstances. But it's not as though our presence there was able to prevent such evil from occurring.
Yesterday, Annie Lowrey had a great piece about the political activism of the unemployed. Many unemployed Americans have turned to political activism, particularly online, as their job searches have come up empty and benefits run dry:
Among the biggest sites in the unemployment netroots is LayoffList, managed by Michael Thornton, a native of Rochester, N.Y. Thornton started LayoffList in 2008; five months ago, he began writing articles and posting legislators’ information on the Rochester Unemployment Examiner. He now receives hundreds of emails and has logged more than a million hits at the Examiner. Thornton is finding that, rather than losing interest in politics since the end of the fight for extended benefits, the unemployed are “energized and motivated” and have started looking forward to the fall.
They key here is to turn frustration over the economy into turnout on Election Day and to portray Republicans as interfering with the economic recovery -- namely, by obstructing efforts to extend unemployment benefits and create jobs. Whether Republicans' motivation for abandoning the unemployed is political or a principled loyalty to deficit reduction (probably both), Republicans benefit politically by being the minority party in a bad economy. However, the activism of the unemployed could be the best way to show Republicans that exploiting this advantage by refusing to help the unemployed is actually bad politics.
Now, coming into the fall and the midterms, King and other grassroots organizers for the unemployed are hooking up with formal organizing groups to add institutional oomph to the effort. They say they do not want to let the long battle for simple extensions go to waste.
This kind of organizing is not without precedent. In the early 1932s, the unemployed organized a march on Washington that helped push FDR toward the New Deal programs that put millions of Americans to work. One of the events which sealed Herbert Hoover's fate was a Washington rally over benefits for veterans. Today, labor, including the AFL-CIO, SEIU, and the NAACP, is organizing a similar demonstration this October.
Demonstrations help set the mood, but the real test of political clout is whether or not supporters turn out in November andvote in their economic self-interest. It's not a guarantee, but if Lowrey's piece is any indication, the unemployed are increasingly engaged. As Jonathan Chaitnoted, the unemployed are now a huge percentage of the electorate, such that “even modest levels of political organization could make this a potent political force.”
Lowrey quotes an unemployed man in Nevada, a Republican, who is fed up with his party calling the unemployed "lazy." It's these folks who could make a difference this fall if they realize which party is on their side.
Discussing an excellent piece by Hendrik Hertzberg about the indefensibility of the electoral college, Jon Chaitmakes an important point:
Whatever mental process Ross was employing, it's pretty clear she did not set out by defining the important goals of an electoral system and then, through careful side-by-side comparison, arrive at the conclusion that the electoral college best achieves these ends. ... I suspect that two factors are at work here. The first is an attachment to the status quo and a reverence for American political institutions of all stripes, which is certainly commendable up to a point (the point being a recognition of when the institution has failed.)
This tendency to develop ad hoc arguments to defend institutional arrangements nobody would defend if they were creating a constitution from scratch is particularly glaring with respect to the filibuster. I have a hard time believing that, say, Russ Feingold would support a super-majority vote rule 1) rarely seen in any of the world's democratic legislatures and 2) that would predictably obstruct many of his cherished legislative priorities. And unlike the electoral college, the filibuster isn't even established by the Constitution. It's a procedural rule under the Senate's discretion, and its current incarnation as an across-the-board supermajority requirement is actually a recent development. And yet, status quo bias is so strong that even the filibuster rule can generate a sentimental attachment among people who should know better.
Tim Fernholz recently butted ideological heads on bloggingheads with Conn Carroll of The Heritage Foundation. They discussed the Dodd-Frank financial-regulation bill and the merits of consumer financial protection.
On Tuesday, I wrote about President Obama's visit to The View today and suggested he bring up his new initiative to fight the HIV/AIDS in the black community. But as I predicted, Obama did not mention it, nor did he confront host Sherri Shepherd for blaming high rates of HIV/AIDS in the black community on the "down low" (DL) phenomenon -- the theory that bisexual black men get infected with HIV by other men, and then go on to infect women who are not aware that their partners are having sex with men. The theory took off in the late '90s and after several black fiction authors presented it as a common lifestyle.
My tendency has been to dismiss the DL phenomenon because there is no hard data around it, while there is plenty of data showing the relationship between poverty, lack of health care, increased STDs, and HIV/AIDS. But I was pointed to a 2009 study that tackles the question from an empirical standpoint. And despite the frequently stoked fear of predatory and furtive gay black men, the researchers ultimately found that DL bisexual black men engage in essentially the same behaviors as bisexual black men who are not "down low." Trenton Straube at Real Health magazine interviewed one of the researchers, Lisa Bond, who said:
Most of what we know about men on the down low has come from highly publicized accounts of just a handful of individuals who have been prominently featured in the media. And I think men on the down low—in particular black men on the down low—have been portrayed as dishonest and duplicitous heterosexuals and vectors of HIV transmission. We should touch on the whole notion that the down low myth is unique to black men. Which it is not. Men of other racial and ethnic backgrounds use the term down low to denote preference for privacy about their sexual behaviors, which may include bisexuality.
So, the term DL doesn't always include bisexuality. But even more interesting, DL bisexual men who have unprotected sex with women are actually slightly less likely to have HIV than non-DL bisexual men who have unprotected sex with women. Forty-four percent of DL men who have sex with women have the disease, versus 56 percent of non-DL men.
Bond concluded:
We need to shift our focus away from the down low. It’s been used quite extensively to demonize black gay and bisexual men, and we need to shift our focus on to more meaningful issues that do drive the HIV epidemic among HIV communities of color and particularly among black gay and bisexual men. And those are much bigger issues like poverty and racism and homelessness and crime incarceration rates.
Not too long ago, The New York TimeslabeledLindsay Graham "this year's maverick." Thanks to his occasional willingness to work with Democrats on legislation -- including major items like climate change and immigration -- the senior senator from South Carolina had earned something of a reputation for independence, replacing his friend John McCain as the go-to Republican on important legislation.
Of course, we should be careful not to confuse independence with moderation. Yes, Graham has been willing to work with Democrats, but he's consistently brought a conservative approach to the issues. And when working on his own, he doesn't hesitate to champion conservative causes. For instance, Graham isn't too fond of children born to illegal immigrants in the United States -- "anchor babies," as the right-wing describes them. Indeed, Graham is so incensed by this that he wants to amend the Constitution to end it:
“I may introduce a constitutional amendment that changes the rules if you have a child here,” Graham said during an interview with Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren. “Birthright citizenship I think is a mistake, that we should change our Constitution and say if you come here illegally and you have a child, that child's automatically not a citizen.” […]
“People come here to have babies,” he said. “They come here to drop a child. It's called "drop and leave." To have a child in America, they cross the border, they go to the emergency room, have a child, and that child's automatically an American citizen. That shouldn't be the case. That attracts people here for all the wrong reasons.”
It's genuinely difficult to overstate the radicalism necessary to seek a transformation of the Fourteenth Amendment, which was designed to ensure that slavery could never again happen in the United States and is now integral to keeping the United States free of a permanent underclass of immigrant workers. At its core, birthright citizenship gives immigrants a reason to stay and provide lasting contributions to the United States.
In assaulting birthright citizenship, Graham is attacking an incredibly important part of the American social contract. If the media has any sense, this should kill the narrative that Lindsey Graham is a maverick or a reasonable Republican.
TAP talks withFrank Vogelabout Sharia-compliant finance, the financial crisis, and why banking is a chance to engage with the Islamic world:
In establishing a study program for Islamic, Sharia-compliant finance, are you trying to facilitate an Islamic takeover of the United States?
[Laughs] No. Islamic finance is one of the most opportune ways to engage with the Islamic world right now if you are concerned about terrorism. It strengthens economic links, it is being put forward by sort of the most Western-leaning individuals throughout the Muslim world, it draws them closer to the Western financial system. There are many, many aspects of it that are extremely favorable to a Western point of view. It's worlds apart from anything related to terrorism.
Tom Leesays that while the new DMCA exemptions are an improvement, the basic paradox of telling consumers how they may use electronics remains unaddressed:
Many of the exemptions are like this: They establish an island of protected use that slopes sharply down to the treacherous, crashing surf of consumer behavior -- a zone where the authorities will never bother to venture, and where an Xbox mod chip based on protected research can easily enable piracy with firmware downloaded from an overseas server. Research done to make locked-down eBooks useful to the visually impaired also helps to make it easier to pirate them on Bittorrent. It's a compromise. The DVD companies retain their nominal rights, consumers are mostly free to make reasonable use of things they've bought, and no one else has to go to jail -- not unless they have the temerity to start making money off this arrangement, anyway.
As you might have heard, yesterday the House passed a bill addressing the inequities in sentencing between possession of crack cocaine and powder cocaine. Yay! Oh wait...
It's never easy, politically, to lower criminal sentences. But a compromise earlier this year between Illinois Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin and Alabama Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions finally got the ball rolling. Their proposal, adopted today by the House, narrowed the gap between criminal penalties for crack and powder cocaine to 18 to 1 from the old 100 to 1 ratio...
Well, that's progress, right? We should be thanking Jeff Sessions for acknowledging that someone convicted of possessing a drug used mostly by black people should only be punished 18 times as severely as someone convicted of possessing a functionally identical drug used mostly by white people.
Just for a bit of context, consider that in last year alone, the NYPD conducted 574,304 "stop and frisk" greetings of New Yorkers. Fifty-five percent of the people cops thought looked a little fishy and decided to pat down were black, 32 percent were Hispanic, and weirdly, only 10 percent were white.
I'm guessing that because of this new day in sentencing, the police in Scarsdale will now start doing routine "stop and frisks" of young white men, because something tells me there's a fair bit of coke being done there. But maybe not.
The takeaway point from a new analysis of the government's response to the economic collapse in 2008 isn't that any of the individual programs were instrumental in preventing an economic depression but that taken together they were. I don't expect this to change anyone's opinion about government intervention, but it's worth considering what the alternatives would have been. Do nothing? A five-year spending freeze? More upper income tax cuts? Intervention might not have been bold enough, but at least it was an actual response to a crisis.
It's something of a watershed moment when someone with the Beltway cred of Mark Halperin proclaims that it's conservatives who are the driving force of media firestorms. My advice for traditional media is to simply ignore Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Andrew Breitbart, etc. and let them talk among themselves so people with a genuine interest in getting information from legitimate news sources can avoid the distraction the freak-show right-wingers provide on a near-daily basis.
Hendrick Hertzbergconcludes, after viewing a recent debate with Electoral College crusader Tara Ross, that "the arguments sound feeble because they are feeble." I don't think the motivation is too hard to devine. Ross, like most American conservatives, believes so strongly in American Exceptionalism that tampering with any of our constitutional arrangements, no matter how archaic or unnecessary, will somehow lessen us. Thus the impulse to make feeble post-hoc arguments defending said archaic arrangements.
Remainders: Opposition to filibuster reform is largely coming from veteran senators who remember a long-gone Senate; Roger Simon ought to take a moment to look up "irony" in the dictionary; and are Americans willing to accept higher taxes in the abstract?
Jonathan Chait, in a post that proves his wisdom by linking to a prior post of mine, points us to this rather remarkable column by conservative radio host and columnist Dennis Prager, which is worth discussing. Prager argues that conservatives just don't have the same kind of dislike for their opponents that liberals do:
Granting the exceptions that all generalizations allow for, conservatives believe that those on the left are wrong, while those on the left believe that those on the right are bad. Examples are innumerable. Howard Dean, the former head of theDemocratic party, said, “In contradistinction to the Republicans, Democrats don’t believe kids ought to go to bed hungry at night.” Rep. Alan Grayson (D., Fla.), among many similar comments, said, “I want to say a few words about what it means to be a Democrat. It’s very simple: We have a conscience.”
Has any spokesman of the Republican party ever said anything analogous about Democrats’ not caring about the suffering of children or not having a conscience?
Indeed -- when has a prominent conservative ever said anything mean about liberals? You've trumped us with those two examples, Dennis -- well done!
Actually, survey data from sources like the National Election Studies has shown for a long time that conservatives have lower opinions of liberals than vice-versa. But I don't think that's what Prager is really talking about here -- he's talking about raw hatred. People saying really, really nasty things. Like comparing your political opponents to Nazis, the way Glenn Beck does. Or advocating the murder of figures from the opposite party, like Ann Coulter does. Or regularly saying that people who disagree with you on the wisdom of going to war hate the troops and don't love America. It sure is good conservatives never stoop to that sort of thing but instead calmly and rationally critique the other side's policy prescriptions, without casting any aspersions on their character.
What I think the interesting question this raises is, does Dennis Prager actually believe this? It's possible, of course, that he knows it's absurd but is just trying to score some points. Maybe. But I think it's more likely that he does believe it. I think if you asked him about Beck, he'd probably respond, "Well, some things Obama is doing really are like Hitler!" In other words, when someone on my side says something extreme, I'll look for some justification for why it's actually not totally unreasonable, while when someone on the other side says something extreme, I'll conclude that it's the product of their dark heart.
This is a version of what psychologists call the "fundamental attribution error," which says that we explain our own behavior in terms of situations and outside influences (I tripped on the sidewalk because of poor sidewalk construction) and others' behavior in terms of their character (you tripped on the sidewalk because you're a clumsy fool). We are all prey to it to a degree. But if you reach the point where you think conservatives don't hate liberals, for God's freakin' sake, you really have left planet Earth.
This November, California voters will be voting on Proposition 19, which would legalize recreational marijuana use and tax it at $50 per ounce. Nate Silverhomes in on the polling, noting that automated polls show greater support than person-to-person polling. Among black voters, for example, the automated call polls show a 28 to 38 point lead. But traditional polls show Prop. 19 trailing by 12 points among blacks. Silver's hypothesizes that voters may be loath to admit they're OK with legalizing marijuana to a live pollster, which could be a reversed Bradley Effect -- or as he dubs it, the Broadus Effect, named after rapper Snoop Dogg, who frequently discusses the pleasures of marijuana use. The Bradley Effect is a political phenomenon where a voters tells pollsters that they will support a black candidate but do not once they enter the voting booth.
I think Silver's analysis is plausible but not likely. Marijuana use in California doesn't have much of a stigma attached to it and is pretty widespread across races and genders. (As Silver says, it's used only slightly more among blacks than whites, and blacks make up a whopping 7 percent of Californians.)
My hometown of Stockton, California, happens to be one of the places where two dozen "grow houses" were raided in 2006. These houses -- some of which were located in my parents' middle-class suburban neighborhood -- were set up for thousands of marijuana plants each. The owners often applied for low-income energy price breaks from the utility companies while using much more energy and water than the human-occupied homes in the neighborhood. This meant that taxpayers were subsidizing the energy-hogging grow houses.
With so much cheap housing inventory available in California post-bust (eight California cities made the list of 20 cities with the highest foreclosure rates nationwide), and grow-house raids continuing, it seems that some sort of regulation of the growth and sale of marijuana would save the state money and bring in enough tax revenue to help with its faltering economy.
Perhaps California voters are considering the pleasures of more than just one kind of green.
Today, Judge Susan Boltonstopped [PDF] the most controversial provisions of Arizona's immigration-enforcement law, SB 1070, from going into effect but declined to put the entire law on hold as the Obama Justice Department had requested. In a 38-page ruling, Judge Bolton let stand most of the law's 13 sections but found that certain provisions satisfied the requirements for a preliminary injunction -- irreparable harm and likelihood of success at trial. The Justice Department had argued that the Arizona law unconstitutionally usurped federal power to regulate immigration. The judge put the following provisions on hold:
Portion of Section 2 of S.B. 1070 -- requiring that an officer make a reasonable attempt to determine the immigration status of a person stopped, detained, or arrested if there is a reasonable suspicion that the person is unlawfully present in the United States, and requiring verification of the immigration status of any person arrested prior to releasing that person
In addition to finding that the Justice Department was likely to succeed in its claim that federal law preempts this portion of SB 1070, Bolton suggested it would place an undue burden on federal immigration-enforcement officials and legally present immigrants.
Section 3 of S.B. 1070 -- creating a crime for the failure to apply for or carry alien registration papers
States are prohibited from applying immigration law "inconsistently with the purpose of Congress," so the judge found they can't create a separate state-level crime with further penalties for violating federal immigration law. Bolton also wrote that the section posed an obstacle to uniform federal regulation of immigration law.
Portion of Section 5 of S.B. 1070 -- creating a crime for an unauthorized alien to solicit, apply for, or perform work
As with Section 3, the judge found that the federal government has not set penalties for unauthorized work and thus this portion is likely to be preempted by federal law.
Section 6 of S.B. 1070 -- authorizing the warrantless arrest of a person where there is probable cause to believe the person has committed a public offense that makes the person removable from the United States
Judge Bolton objected to this provision mainly on the basis that there were no clear criteria for "probable cause to believe the person has committed a public offense" and that there is a "substantial likelihood" that officers will arrest those who have committed no crime.
Thankfully, the narrowly tailored ruling stops these egregious portions of the law -- those that sparked the public outcry over possible civil-rights violations -- from going into effect. But as I've argued before, neither immigrant-rights supporters nor enforcement advocates are likely to be satisfied. It is, however, a vindication of the Justice Department's strategy of suing on the basis of federal preemption as opposed to civil rights. Many had criticized the decision and speculated that the administration was avoiding the race issue. In the end the Obama Justice Department chose the stronger legal argument, as opposed to the more "sincere" one, allowing it to secure this minor win.
Politico's Carrie Budoff Brownreports on a little-noticed section of the financial-reform law, which gives the federal government power to end its contracts with any financial firm that "fails to ensure the 'fair inclusion' of women and minorities":
At its core, the section establishes at least 20 new Offices of Minority and Women Inclusion across the Treasury Department, Federal Reserve, Securities and Exchange Commission and other finance-related agencies. It orders the directors of these offices to develop standards that “ensure, to the maximum extent possible, the fair inclusion and utilization of minorities, women, and minority-owned and women-owned businesses in all business and activities of the agency at all levels, including in procurement, insurance, and all types of contracts.”
This applies to “services of any kind,” including investment firms, mortgage banking firms, asset management firms, brokers, dealers, underwriters, accountants, consultants and law firms, the legislation states. Every contractor and subcontractor must now certify that their workforces reflect a “fair inclusion” of women and minorities.
Conservatives are predictably infuriated by this provision, but if you're OK with the idea of minority-hiring preferences, it makes perfect sense given the demographics of the financial-service industry -- particularly at the management level. As of 2008, according to a report released this year by the Government Accountability Office, white males held 64 percent of management-level positions in the financial-services industry. White women held 26 percent of those positions, with the remaining 10 percent filled out by minorities. Here's a graph from the report:
This is all speculation, but I wouldn't be surprised if you could trace the targeting of minority communities with subprime mortgages to the fact that there are vanishingly few minorities working on the management level in the financial-services industry. By encouraging companies to change that, it's possible that the provision could help prevent a recurrence of the past few years.
Yesterday, the House approved a war-funding bill, but Democrats are torn after the site WikiLeaks exposed several new documents and raised new questions about President Obama's counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan. Above, a lieutenant colonel shakes a child's hand outside Bagram Air Force Base in Janquadam, Afghanistan.
Lisa Belkinwrites today about a new study finding not only that the sexual orientation of parents doesn't affect children's well-being but actually goes beyond that to recommend against policies that exclude gay and lesbian couples from adopting children. Florida, Mississippi, and Utah currently ban adoption by same-sex couples explicitly. An Arkansas law prohibiting unmarried, co-habitating couples from adopting passed by public referendum in 2008 is still being challenged in the courts.
Belkin writes that the study should, but probably won't, put the issue to rest. She points to several facts that should make the study seem more airtight to detractors than previous studies: the outcomes of the children weren't based on parents' self-reporting but on observations from third parties who dealt with the children, the study included gay men as well as gay women, and it had a control group of heterosexual couples who also adopted.
But if facts mattered to detractors, they would have dropped this issue long ago. Their claims, that children do best with a mother and father in the home, are so deep-seated in their religious world view that they still protest single-motherhood and cohabitation by straight couples who are not married. This is, to some extent, why I'm usually confused about why we still care about convincing the far, religious right. The court system is, luckily, designed to protect against the tyranny of the majority as in Arkansas. Achieving gay rights through the courts might be slow and perhaps less desirable than changing public attitudes. But in many cases it's a stopgap. Before public sentiment catches up, families are threatened and children remain without homes; those are immediate problems we can't wait 20 years to fix.
Mark Schmittconsiders what Rep. John Boehner -- who would become speaker of the House should Republicans gain the majority in the midterm elections -- will do after his first moves fail:
I've seen this movie before, having worked on the Hill when the Republicans took over in 1995. But they've seen it before, too, and will want to avoid making the same mistakes. (Though fewer of them have seen it than you might think -- only 55 current House Republicans were there in 1995, and 10 of them are retiring this year, meaning that if Republicans win a bare majority, 80 percent of their caucus will not have had that experience.)
Nothing conveys a legislator's deep commitment to being a constructive part of the democratic process like accusing your colleagues of being complicit in stealing elections. The DISCLOSE Act, you've probably heard, failed to get past filibuster yesterday, coming in short with 57 votes. DISCLOSE was a Democratic-sponsored response to the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling that aimed to fight big money with transparency. Certain big donors behind ads and other campaign activities would have to be made public. It's a fairly modest response to a troubling situation. But not in the eyes of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. McConnell was on NPR explaining that anyone considering supporting the bill was complicit in a bid to thwart elections themselves. "You talk about transparency," said McConnell. "This is a transparent effort to rig the fall election."
First up, it's an interesting admission from McConnell: in his eyes, disclosing certain big donors tilts the political playing field to such a degree that Republicans can't get elected. The DISCLOSE Act isn't perfect, but it's ugly bits are a testament to why it's needed; the act's artful wording that carves out an exemption for the NRA is a demonstration of just how quickly, and with what dedication, Washington can cower in the face of special interests. That pulling back the curtain on even some of who's funding pro-Republican efforts is going to hurt those Republicans -- well, that too seems to add ballast to the idea that some measure of greater transparency is needed.
But second, and what jumped out from McConnell's comments on the radio, is the Senate minority leader's casual willingness to preemptively tar any Republicans who might be expected to support the campaign finance measure on its merits, like John McCain, Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, and the reformer Scott Brown. McConnell let it be known to those Republicans and others that a vote in support of DISCLOSE was a vote in support of, well, criminality -- of wanting to "rig the fall" election. Quite a strong-arm tactic, even as these things go. But hey, at least he did it out in the open.
If this interview with Talking Points Memo's Brian Beutler is any indication, Jeffrey Lord's historical ignorance extends far beyond lynching; he even has a hard time grasping the basics of American political history:
"I have felt for a long time that my friends on the American left, in the Democratic party have just had this atrocious history with racial issue," Lord said. "I mean it just can't possibly be any worse. I've gone back and read all the platforms for the Democratic party starting in 1840 which was the first one."
[…]
"I understand that people on the other side are going to go poopoopoo and the Nixon Southern Strategy and all that kind of thing," Lord said. "To think that this was just, all these people just switched their party and made the Republican party segregationist is just nuts. I was there."
No, it really isn't. I'm not going to rehash the history of the conservative movement, but it suffices to say that the Republican Party owes much of its electoral success to the mass exodus of Southern whites from the Democratic Party, beginning in the 1960s and easing off in the early 1990s. To illustrate things a bit, here is a graph from National Journal showing the GOP's share of the Southern popular vote over the last 20 presidential elections. In the interest of space, I'm going to limit it to the last 13 elections:
Since African Americans vote for Democrats at staggeringly high rates, I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that the GOP's share of the Southern popular vote is mostly -- if not entirely -- white, especially as we move closer to the present day and the parties become more polarized.
I don't expect an ounce of intellectual honesty or basic knowledge from Lords, but it's worth clarifying this for everyone else; beginning in 1964, there was a massive realignment in American politics. Conservative Southern Democrats retired or left the party, and liberal Republicans did the same. Over the next 30 years, the parties would sort themselves out ideologically, as Democratic voters became more liberal and Republican voters became more conservative. And the single major catalyst for this realignment? The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
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