Just how out of touch is John Boehner anyway?

Last year, he nearly caused the United States to default on its debt, and this year, he’s whistling the same tune, refusing to raise the debt ceiling and calling for spending cuts.

We shouldn’t dread the debt limit. As a matter of fact, I think we should welcome it. It’s an action-forcing event in a town that has become infamous for inaction.

A town “infamous for inaction?” Doesn’t he means a party infamous for inaction?

The GOP unanimously said “no” to the health care reform bill. “No” to the $787 billion stimulus package, which, by the way, is responsible for many job-creating infrastructural improvements across the nation, and “no” to nearly everything else Obama has put on the table.

U.S. House Speaker Boehner commemorate Holocaust victims and survivors in Washington (Benjamin Myers Reuters, REUTERS / May 16, 2012)

The GOP has languished in Washington the last four years and has been little more than dead weight, unceasingly complaining about Obama, yet accomplishing next to nothing, unless pushing the party even further to the right, “symbolically” passing votes and “symbolically” reading the Constitution counts for accomplishing something.

And at a time when we can clearly witness austerity cuts in Europe failing miserably, Boehner is calling for — wait for it — more austerity cuts. Lucid as ever, Fareed Zakaria identifies the problem with spending cuts in already sagging economy:

The problem is that as these governments cut spending in very depressed economies, it has caused growth to slow even further — you see government workers who have been fired tend to buy fewer goods and services, for example — and all this means falling tax receipts and thus even bigger deficits.

Spending cuts don’t just affect government workers. That’s just one obvious example. If the government starts hacking away at services that improve people’s lives, their quality of life diminishes, thus, not only are they less happy, more apathetic and more likely to hoard what little savings they do have, but they are less likely to turn around and invigorate the economy with new consumer-side spending.

I’m reminded of two memorable lines from Tony Benn, who was interviewed for the 2007 movie, “Sicko:”

Keeping people hopeless and pessimistic – see I think there are two ways in which people are controlled — first of all frighten people and secondly demoralize them.

and

An educated, healthy and confident nation is harder to govern.

So, let’s look at the other side. What about people that make more than $250,000 per year? When government hands them tax breaks, do they help stimulate the economy? Not so much. Sure, they spend some, but I would wager that rich people are not primarily concerned with consumer spending, but with saving and investing. After all, there is a reason some people are able to accumulate mass amounts of wealth. They happen to be good with managing money and have some smart investment sense. Good for them. But that doesn’t help the national economy or the American public.

Republicans bickering among themselves is always entertaining but even more so when they complain about who FOX News has favored the most in this election. The winner? Apparently not Gingrich.

He says that CNN has been more fair to him in its election coverage than FOX, claiming that Rupert Murdoch must be a fan of Romney. He seems to be wrong, of course, because Murdoch has already come out as a Santorum supporter. As for FOX’s fairness toward all candidates, I don’t think Murdoch cares much about the day-to-day “stance” that FOX takes on the election as long as the network continues making him money. Roger Ailes may very well be a Romney supporter, but the article above doesn’t have Gingrich making any claims about Ailes, oddly enough, since Gingrich must know that Ailes is really the one behind FOX’s particular brand of non-journalism.

Gingrich Says CNN is Less Biased than Fox News – NYTimes.com.

If, like me, you couldn’t muster the internal fortitude to watch the entire GOP presidential debate on Monday, one of the most divisive issues coming out of it was Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s executive order mandating that 11- and 12-year-old girls get an HPV vaccine that is supposed to stave off an STD that causes cervical cancer.

This, at least on the surface, appears to have been a noble cause. But when one learns that Merck, the maker of the vaccine, contributed $5,000 to Perry’s campaign and that its political action committee would go on to give $30,000 (and that Merck gave $377,000 to the Republican Governors Association, of which Perry was the chairman), one suspects other motives. And it’s no wonder that Merck is so enthusiastic about giving to the GOP since the party shamelessly kowtows to the pharmaceutical industry.

Read the rest of this entry »

Below is the video of HBO talk show host Bill Maher appearing on last night’s episode of Anderson Cooper 360, in which Maher and Cooper explore the connections between conservative rhetoric and cases like the recent Tucson shooting. Maher pointed to the June 12, 2010 newspaper ad purchased by the Jesse Kelly, who was at the time running against Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. Giffords, of course, was shot in the head recently by alleged gunman Jared Lee Loughner. The ad reads:

Get on Target for Victory in November Help remove Gabrielle Giffords from office Shoot a fully automatic M16 with Jesse Kelly

Maher in response:

This kind of stuff is not what goes on on the left. You can not point to any sort of equivalency here. And as always, the media gets that wrong. They try to make it like they’re being fair because they’re making everything 50-50. Well, if you’re not being truthful, and that’s not truthful, then you’re not being fair.

Maher also speaks on how conservatives often “float” words such as tyranny and secession, words that denote war and revolution, while discussing political topics:

You know, when you float terms like “tyranny” as they do or “treason” — remember in the health care debate, Republican congressmen were hoisting that banner that said “Don’t Tread On Me,” which really had only applied to enemies of America, not political opponents.

You create an atmosphere. Yes, you do. Governor Perry in — in Texas threatening secession over — over the tax hike that Obama wanted, over a 3 percent tax hike on the richest 1 percent? That’s reason to throw down the S-card? These people are hysterical. Hysterical is really the only word I can think of for it.

You know, these conservatives, they want to be known as tough guys. They’re girls — school girls who get hysterical about things. Health care made them hysterical. Government takeover. It wasn’t a government takeover. I know what a government takeover would have looked like. That’s called a single-payer system. We didn’t get that. We didn’t even try for that. We didn’t even get a public option.

So when you create an atmosphere of hysteria, yes, of course the nuts are going to hear it and some of them are going to do things like this guy did.

Here’s the video and the transcript:

I don’t think you’ll find New York Times columnists complimenting CNN’s reporting very often, but one exception came yesterday with Thomas Friedman’s piece, titled “Too Good To Check,” in which Friedman lauds Anderson Cooper’s recent efforts in unveiling a patent untruth circulating in conservative circles about the alleged cost of President Obama’s recent trip to India and elsewhere overseas. Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, radio host Michael Savage, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and others (I’m sure there are others. Although I have not listened to Mark Levin lately [Can't tolerate his nasally snarl], he surely hopped on the bandwagon like his like-minded-bash-the-Obama-administration-at-any-cost brethren) all claimed that the administration was spending some $200 million per day on the trip.

Here is Friedman quoting Bachman, who appeared on Cooper’s show:

I think we know that just within a day or so the president of the United States will be taking a trip over to India that is expected to cost the taxpayers $200 million a day. He’s taking 2,000 people with him. He’ll be renting over 870 rooms in India, and these are five-star hotel rooms at the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel. This is the kind of over-the-top spending.

Here is the Anderson Cooper video, in which he asks Bachmann what specifically she would like to cut in federal spending now that her party controls the House.

In the absence of any answers, she proceeds to immediately and ludicrously lampoon Obama’s “over the top” spending. The only sparse answer she gives as to how the Republicans would account for some $700 billion in lost revenue if the Bush tax cuts were extended is to suggest that Medicare eligibility levels may be too high. Cooper asked for three; he got one … half answer. Here is one exchange:

COOPER: But extending the Bush tax cuts will mean, in order to offset the costs of extending the Bush tax cuts, you have to come up with $700 billion dollars just in spending cuts alone just to offset that cost. If you acknowledge that that is true, what are three things you would cut immediately to help offset those costs?

BACHMANN: Well, it’s always considered a cost when people are allowed to keep their own money. I don’t think that it’s a cost when people get to keep their own money. Right now, the current tax policy is, in my mind, it’s actually too high. The taxes right now. If we don’t extend these tax cuts, for instance, in my district in Minnesota, we’ll see 1.6 … 1.2 billion dollars taken out of the pockets of my constituents and taken out of my local community, where it will be spent, instead, 1.2 additional dollars will be sent to Washington D.C. sucked into that hole.

Here, of course, Bachmann missed the point and dodged the question altogether. The federal government has to have money to continue to offer such services as Social Security and Medicare. The “cost” to which Cooper was referring was the cost the federal government incurs in continuing to offer services, not the cost to locals, and Bachmann failed miserably, and predictably, from the Palin mode.

But back to Friedman, who picks up Obama’s trip to India in his column:

The next night, Cooper explained that he felt compelled to trace that story back to its source, since someone had used his show to circulate it. His research, he said, found that it had originated from a quote by “an alleged Indian provincial official,” from the Indian state of Maharashtra, “reported by India’s Press Trust, their equivalent of our A.P. or Reuters. I say ‘alleged,’ provincial official,” Cooper added, “because we have no idea who this person is, no name was given.”

It is hard to get any more flimsy than a senior unnamed Indian official from Maharashtra talking about the cost of an Asian trip by the American president.

“It was an anonymous quote,” said Cooper. “Some reporter in India wrote this article with this figure in it. No proof was given; no follow-up reporting was done. Now you’d think if a member of Congress was going to use this figure as a fact, she would want to be pretty darn sure it was accurate, right? But there hasn’t been any follow-up reporting on this Indian story. The Indian article was picked up by The Drudge Report and other sites online, and it quickly made its way into conservative talk radio.”

Later, Friedman notes:

Cooper then added: “Again, no one really seemed to care to check the facts. For security reasons, the White House doesn’t comment on logistics of presidential trips, but they have made an exception this time. He then quoted Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, as saying, “I am not going to go into how much it costs to protect the president, [but this trip] is comparable to when President Clinton and when President Bush traveled abroad. This trip doesn’t cost $200 million a day.” Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary, said: “I will take the liberty this time of dismissing as absolutely absurd, this notion that somehow we were deploying 10 percent of the Navy and some 34 ships and an aircraft carrier in support of the president’s trip to Asia. That’s just comical. Nothing close to that is being done.”

The fringe right’s tactic here, as Bachmann, Savage and others use without fail, is to dodge substantive talk on specific reform with dodgy figures from even dodgier sources to blast Obama at all costs, never mind fact-checking any of their claims. Savage has even made analogies between Obama and the Red Army Faction, saying that while the RAF was a violent, left-wing movement, Obama was seeking to induce a nonviolent socialist revolution in America. For however untrue that may be, that kind of talk makes Savage and the gang look like raving lunatics. Some on the right, as Friedman notes, even called Obama’s trip a “vacation.” All the while, they proceed to make sweeping suggestions on how we must cut spending and rein in the government but offer barely anything in the way of substantive solutions. As I have said before, in the absence of intelligent ideas in political discourse, nothing is left but desperate and emotionally-charged ranting.

Friedman concludes by noting that

When widely followed public figures feel free to say anything, without any fact-checking, we have a problem. It becomes impossible for a democracy to think intelligently about big issues — deficit reduction, health care, taxes, energy/climate — let alone act on them. Facts, opinions and fabrications just blend together.

While I agree with him wholeheartedly, we can’t forget how these people became “widely followed” public figures: the public put them there, which is an unfortunate truth that seems to say less about the figures themselves (They just ride the wave to the bank) and more about the people, who, by and large, don’t know what is best for them or how to think critically about important issues. The best we can hope for, as he says, is that more people will learn not to swallow everything they hear on radio and television without doing their own fact-checking. But given that most people only watch or listen to commentators that reinforce, rather than challenge, their own views, I can’t be sure such a noble exercise will gain widespread popularity.

I’m deeply saddened by this news, but Chrisopher Htichens, a writer and thinker whom I deeply admire for both his literary mastery and intellectual thought, has announced in a characteristic brilliantly-written column that he has esophageal cancer, a form of the disease that most folks don’t come back from. He was diagnosed two months ago.

Here is the entire interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper:

And here is Hitchens himself on the Topic of Cancer.

The Associated Press this weekend released a good enterprise piece on BP’s tendency to consistently misrepresent or downplay the full effects of its oil rig debacle, which as of now has put somewhere between 18 million to 40 million gallons of crude in the ocean. Obviously, lowballing the estimates would behoove BP, since they face penalties based on how much oil actually leaks. According to the article:

On almost every issue — the amount of gushing oil, the environmental impact, even how to stop the leak — BP’s statements have proven wrong. The erosion of the company’s credibility may prove as difficult to stop as the oil spewing from the sea floor.

“They keep making one mistake after another. That gives the impression that they’re hiding things,” said U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat who has been critical of BP’s reluctance to publicly release videos of the underwater gusher. “These guys either do not have any sense of accountability to the public or they are Neanderthals when it comes to public relations.”

And later in the story, responding a question about why BP had presented wrong numbers on numerous fronts regarding the impact, BP spokesman David Nicholas said,

This event is unprecedented; no company, no one, has ever had to attempt to deal with a situation such as this at depths such as this before. BP, the Unified Command, the federal authorities and the hundreds of companies and thousands of individuals engaged on this effort, are doing everything we can to bring it under control and make it good.

as if “unprecedented” is a good enough excuse to not have a solution in case the worse happens. So too, BP Managing Director Robert Dudley clambered for excuses when quizzed on the company’s inept, or nonexistent, disaster policies on the Sunday edition of CNN’s State of the Union.

Here’s the video:

The reactionary behavior continued this week over passage of the most sweeping piece of legislation in decades, as lawmakers are getting incendiary and offensive messages and voicemails from their angry, to the point of irrational (or, perhaps, some protesters were irrational to begin with), constituents. Rep. Bart Stupak, for instance, an anti-abortion Democratic lawmaker who was key in getting the bill passed, received a voicemail with these comments:

Think about this. There are millions of people across the country who wish you ill, and all of those negative thoughts projected on you will materialize into something that is not very good for you.

Is the caller really talking about Karma here or some sort of mystical conjoining of the minds against a mutually hated individual? If so, that tells us all we need to know about the caller.

Here is content from two other calls from CNN’s story:

“Stupak, you are a lowlife, baby-murdering scumbag, pile of steaming crap. You’re a cowardly punk, Stupak, that’s what you are. You and your family are scum,” an unidentified caller said. “That’s what you are, Stupak. You are a piece of crap.”

“Go to hell, you piece of [expletive deleted]” another caller said.

And here’s a video detailing some of the broken windows and other ugly incidents, including one disgraceful act by Rep. Steve King:

In a recent interview with CNN’s John King, Sen. John McCain, while not villifying Sarah Palin’s recent graphic that placed crosshairs over 20 House Democrats that “we” (McCain/Palin) carried in 2008 who voted for the health care reform bill, McCain did speak against over-the-top, and frankly, offensive and childish gestures by Steve King in front of health care protesters at the Capitol. Encouragingly, before John King even got a question out about Steve King’s action, McCain said,

Uncalled for, of course that’s uncalled for. Of course that’s uncalled for, John. And we see, from the person who yelled, ‘baby killer.’ But I think that we’ve gotta urge everybody to be respectful.

While I don’t necessary agree with most of McCain’s political stances, he has always proven to me that he has a rational and independent-thinking mind.

Here’s the interview:

CNN has created an interactive graphic allowing users to view any of 189,577 Twitter comments in response to President Barack Obama’s State of the Union from Wednesday. The categories of commentators are “Support Obama,” “Oppose Obama,” “Mixed Reaction,” “Great Speech” and “Obama Too Liberal.”

Also, moveon.org held its first “real time dial test” of the speech, with about 10,000 moveon.org members participating. Understanding that this chart represents progressive reactions, here are those results:

Also, here are some thoughts from The Atlantic’s James Fallows and Andrew Sullivan.

The New York Times chimed in today with its unsigned editorial, lauding Obama as a “gifted orator,” with the ability to “inspire with grand vision and the simple truth frankly spoken,” and here are a some more comments from various luminaries posted by the San Francisco Chronicle:

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Republican
“Today’s announcement is fantastic news for job creation in California. … The Obama administration is strongly supporting California’s high-speed rail project, which is the largest public works project in the nation and will create jobs, save billions of pounds of greenhouse gases and be the first true high-speed rail system to break ground in the nation.”

Rep. Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena

“As families across the country tighten their belt, we need to do some trimming of the fat in Washington, too. However, I’m going to watch very carefully to make sure that the president lives up to his promise to go through the budget line by line, rather than make across-the-board spending cuts that might do more harm than good to our local and national economies.”

Gov. Bob McDonnell of Virginia, Republican

“We want results, not rhetoric. We want cooperation, not partisanship. … All Americans agree we need a health care system that is affordable, accessible and high quality. But most Americans do not want to turn over the best medical care system in the world to the federal government.”

Rep. Lois Capps, D-Santa Barbara

“I commend President Obama for calling for the repeal of the so-called “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. … We have been actively working on this issue in Congress and are more than ready to work with the president to ensure that this misguided policy is repealed as quickly as possible.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky

“I’m hopeful the administration’s new focus on the economy will lead it to say no to more spending and debt, more bailouts, and more government.”

Rep. George Miller, D-Martinez

“(Obama) hit it out of the park. He made it very clear why we’re in this struggle to change the economy – and took the Congress, took the Senate especially, to the woodshed for not getting these things done.”

I said here that my next post related to immigration would be about Lou Dobbs’ recent on-air announcement that he was leaving CNN, but I got a bit sidetracked thinking about the new movie, “2012.”

But back on point, previously I referenced a New York Times editorial titled, quite fondly so, “A Farewell to Lou,” in which the editorial board points out that Dobbs thoughts on illegal immigration, in particular, have been “corrosive” to the public discourse on the complex issue and damaging to any honest discussion.

As the piece notes, Dobbs stated Nov. 11 while on the air that he was leaving CNN, having been granted

a release from my contract that will enable me to pursue new opportunities

by CNN president Jon Klein. If you are interested, here’s the video:

As part of the short segment, Dobbs said,

Over the past six months, it’s become increasing clear that strong winds of change have begun buffetting this country and affecting all of us and some leaders and media, politics and business have been urging me to go beyond the role here at CNN and to engage in constructive problem-solving as well as to contribute positively to a better understanding of the great issues of our day and to continue to do so in the most honest and direct language possible.

He pointed to climate change, immigration, the two wars and other issues as some of the greatest challenges facing the country. Dobbs continued:

Unfortunately, these issues are now defined in the public arena by partisanship and ideology rather than by rigorous, empirical thought and forthright analysis and discussion. I will be working diligently to change that as best I can.

Before I continue, let me say that I agree with The Times that Dobbs is, indeed, the same polarizing figure of which he seems to be attempting to refute. The editorial said:

Mr. Dobbs couldn’t have phrased a more apt criticism of himself. He calls himself Mr. Independent, but he is far closer in style and method to the right-wing ranters who mold the facts to shape the argument on television and on AM radio, where Mr. Dobbs still has a show. Mr. Dobbs’s CNN program has long been a nesting ground for untruths and conspiracy theories: fretting over a nonexistent, immigrant-borne leprosy epidemic; questioning President Obama’s citizenship; issuing dark warnings about the “North American Union,” a supposed plot to strangle United States sovereignty.

No argument there, and again, I agree, but I must point out that The Times piece cut off the quote before Dobbs said, “I will be working diligently to change that as best I can.”

I don’t believe him, of course, and I think he was just throwing a bone to critics who say he is, indeed, a partisan in populist clothing, but I just thought it was important to note that The Times skewed what Dobbs was saying in that part, even though it’s clear to me, and undoubtedly to The Times, that either, A) Dobbs doesn’t really mean what he said, or B) Dobbs doesn’t know the difference between “partisanship and ideology” and approaching issues with “empirical thought and forthright analysis.”

Regardless, he really did make “the most trusted name in news” more partisan, and lest the network replace Dobbs with another talking head, it will be a somewhat more even-handed network. Even with Dobbs, it was more “sober,” as the editorial puts it, than FOX News and MSNBC, both of which really should be ashamed because they are each perfect foils of the other, right and left, respectively, and are doing their part to ensure that journalism will meet certain death.

It’s unclear what Dobbs will do next, but he’s apparently just going to focus on his radio show for now and continue to prop up the already right-wing dominated airwaves. Not that I care, and free speech for all, I say, but he’s certainly stewing in the cesspool along with Sean Hannity’s, Neal Boortz, Rush Limbaugh and others, and is far from independent.

A story from Reuters traces how Dobbs transitioned from a straight-laced newsman to an all-out commentator:

He returned two years later (after a stint at the network from 1980-1999) to become host and managing editor of a new general news broadcast, and for a time renewed his Moneyline show.

But Dobbs’ role at the network changed dramatically.

“He morphed from being an economic and finance guy to being much more in the style of an opinion commentator,” independent television news analyst Andrew Tyndall said. “He turned into specializing on the illegal immigrants story, which was very hot three years ago or four years ago.”

Thus, he probably did CNN a favor by stepping down (or maybe he was forced into the decision) if the network wants to be truer to its “most trusted name in news” mantra. Tyndall noted the “differences” between Dobbs line of thinking editorially and CNN officials.

“There’s clearly editorial differences between the way CNN wants to go and the direction he wants to go.”