Tag Archives: mother

Chuck Schumer Is Not Working the Refs Very Well

by MairaSiler Posted on June 10, 2015

Mother Jones

This is kind of fascinating:

After almost six months in the minority, Charles E. Schumer says Senate Democrats aren’t afraid to be obstructionists, detailing a strategy of blocking appropriations bills and other Republican agenda items until they get what they want….Schumer (D-N.Y.) said they are joining with President Barack Obama behind a plan to try to force Republicans to the negotiating table over everything from domestic and defense spending to highway funding and international tax reform.

….The White House-backed plan to get Republicans to support more spending for domestic programs by blocking floor consideration of appropriations bills was developed in a series of closed-door meetings held over the course of several weeks.

….To maintain their leverage, Democrats have decided to block all spending bills starting with the defense appropriations measure headed to the floor next week. Durbin told reporters on Tuesday that there is also no ruling out a blockade of program authorizations, like upcoming votes on highway funding.

It’s not the substance of Schumer’s comments that’s fascinating. By now, even the checkout clerks at the local Safeway know that Democrats plan to obstruct everything and anything. It’s time for Republicans to get a taste of their own dog food.

No, what’s fascinating is that Schumer is so open about it. As I recall, ever since 2009 Republicans have adamantly refused to ever publicly admit that this was their strategy.1 And there was sound thinking behind that. The rules of objective journalism prevent reporters from just flatly attributing something to a party unless they have a party leader on the record fessing up to it. So instead they have to tiptoe around the subject, or quote liberal activists accusing Republicans of obstructionism, or something like that. This leaves things a little fuzzy or “controversial” in a lot of people’s minds, which means they never really accept the whole obstructionism story. Hey, maybe each individual filibuster really is a matter of principle.

But if a party leader just comes out and admits it, then that’s that. No one will ever believe that Democrats are being principled because Schumer has already given the game away. Republicans were obstructionist, so we’re going to be too.

That’s a mistake. It may seem dumb to keep up a pretense that everyone knows is baloney, but there really is a reason for it. It won’t fool all the people all the time, but who cares? It will handcuff the press, and thereby fool some of the people some of the time. That’s worth a lot.

1This is why President Obama keeps talking about “working” with Republicans and “finding common ground” even though he knows perfectly well by now that this isn’t going to happen. He knows the press has to report it regardless of whether they think he really believes it. This means people see it on the news, and some of them will continue to believe that this is what he’s trying to do.2

2Which, admittedly, he is trying to do in a few special cases. But not many.

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Chuck Schumer Is Not Working the Refs Very Well

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Obama Announces Bold New Decade-Old Strategy in Iraq

by MereditKraker Posted on June 10, 2015

Mother Jones

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Here’s our bold, new, never-before-tried strategy for beating ISIS:

In a major shift of focus in the battle against the Islamic State, the Obama administration is planning to establish a new military base in Anbar Province, Iraq, and to send up to 450 more American military trainers to help Iraqi forces retake the city of Ramadi.

….To assemble a force to retake Ramadi, the number of Iraqi tribal fighters in Anbar who are trained and equipped is expected to increase to as many as 10,000 from about 5,500.

More than 3,000 new Iraqi soldiers are to be recruited to fill the ranks of the Seventh Iraqi Army division in Anbar and the Eighth Iraqi Army division, which is in Habbaniyah, where the Iraqi military operations center for the province is also based.

Roger that. More American “trainers.” More Iraqi fighters, who will turn out to be great this time. Honest. Oh, and a brand new target: Ramadi instead of Mosul.

Should work like a dream. I can’t think of anything that could go wrong this time.

Read article here – 

Obama Announces Bold New Decade-Old Strategy in Iraq

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Louisiana Republicans Now Wish They’d Never Heard of Grover Norquist

by HassanE54kqinqhe Posted on June 9, 2015

Mother Jones

It’s hardly surprising when Democrats criticize Grover Norquist, the godfather of the anti-tax movement. But following like sheep behind Norquist’s demands to lower taxes always and everywhere has gotten states in so much trouble that even some Republicans are now begging him to be a little less obstinate. Sadly for Louisiana, Norquist is having none of it:

A group of self-described “conservative” Republican state representatives took their complaints to Norquist himself, asking him to give them some wiggle room on raising taxes and to shoot down some Jindal-backed legislation that they say would set a “dangerous precedent” in how government could mask revenue hikes.

….Sunday’s letter — signed by Louisiana House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Joel Robideaux (R) and 10 other state Republican representatives — asked Norquist to take into account the previous tax cuts Louisiana has passed in recent years and the effect they will have in the future when assessing whether the state is in compliance with the no tax pledge….Furthermore it asked Norquist to weigh in on the so-called SAVE proposal, which they said would allow governments in the future to raise billions of dollars in revenue in the guise of a revenue-neutral budget.

….However, Norquist refused to take the bait. While declining to come out for or against the tax credit proposal, he said it qualified as an offset and asked the lawmakers, “If you don’t like the SAVE Act, why not find other offsetting tax cuts that are more to your liking? “Norquist also scoffed at the Republicans’ plea that their past tax cuts be taken into account, writing “under that logic, President Obama could argue he didn’t raise taxes.”

In other words, go pound sand. But then, what did they expect? Norquist has one and only one thing going for him—thou shalt never raise taxes, no how, no way—and Bobby Jindal is still delusional enough to think he’s running for president. So no taxes are going to be raised in the Pelican State. And if that causes massive pain and dislocation? Well, that’s just tough, isn’t it?

Source – 

Louisiana Republicans Now Wish They’d Never Heard of Grover Norquist

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Friday Cat Blogging – 5 June 2015

by LelandFountain Posted on June 5, 2015

Mother Jones

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I suppose I could write a post about the Rubio family’s many traffic tickets, but I dunno. Seems to me that 23 mph in a school zone is pretty safe driving. Florida sure does have some strict rules about that, I guess.

In any case, it’s far more pleasant to round out the week with some catblogging. Here is Hopper blissfully stretched out while her brother grooms her chin. So sweet. At least, it was until Hilbert got tired of licking and decided to clamp his jaws around Hopper’s neck. I pushed him away, but this is sadly typical behavior from our own Dr. Hilbert and Mr. Hyde.

At the moment, Hilbert is resting right next to me. He exhausted himself running from window to window to watch our local squirrel hopping along the fence. At one point his tail was flapping so vigorously he was knocking stuff off my desk. But now the squirrel is gone and it’s snoozing time.

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Friday Cat Blogging – 5 June 2015

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Yet Again, Congress Is Too Scared to Assert Its Warmaking Powers

by Eloise74Kurnfy Posted on June 4, 2015

Mother Jones

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Our Congress is really a piece of work when it comes to national security. In 2011, President Obama announced that he could go to war against Libya without congressional approval. Congress hemmed and hawed, but in the end was unable to agree to do anything about it. Two years later members of Congress were vocal about Obama’s lack of action against Syria when it was revealed that the Assad regime had been using chemical weapons. Obama eventually responded and asked Congress for approval to take military action. Congress did nothing. Now we have yet another war, this time against ISIS, and Obama asked for congressional approval months ago. Result: nothing. Members of Congress would rather be free to lambaste Obama on the campaign trail than to actually commit themselves to a strategy.

So now what? HuffPo’s Jennifer Bendery reports that Rep. Barbara Lee (D–Calif.) added a clause to the 2016 defense spending bill stating that “Congress has a constitutional duty to debate and determine whether or not to authorize the use of military force” against ISIS. It passed, but only barely. Steve Benen is acerbic:

Right. So, the Obama administration launched airstrikes in August 2014. The president called on Congress to authorize the mission in December 2014. Obama devoted part of his State of the Union address to this in January 2015. The White House even sent draft legislative language to Capitol Hill in February 2015.

And in June 2015, a committee was willing to endorse a non-binding measure that said Congress really should, someday, do something to meet its constitutional obligations.

That’s it. That’s as far as lawmakers have been willing to go.

Indeed, much the committee didn’t even want to even go this far. When Barbara Lee urged members to support her proposal, the committee chairman held a voice vote and deemed it defeated. When Lee insisted on a roll call, it passed 29 to 22, overcoming Republican opposition. (All 22 “no” votes came from GOP members.)

In other words, nearly half the committee wasn’t even willing to go this far.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is your Congress. Makes you proud to be an American, doesn’t it?

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Yet Again, Congress Is Too Scared to Assert Its Warmaking Powers

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This Is What the FBI Really Thought About LBJ’s Top Civil Rights Lawyer

by MarylouSoderlund Posted on June 4, 2015

Mother Jones

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Few people in the federal government did as much for the civil rights movement as John Doar. As a lawyer in the Department of Justice, he rode through the South with the Freedom Riders in 1961, investigated the murders of three civil rights workers in 1964, and at one point in Jackson, Mississippi, put himself between police and demonstrators to defuse a violent situation using only his reputation. As the New York Times recounted in his obituary last year:

“My name is John Doar—D-O-A-R,” he shouted to the crowd. “I’m from the Justice Department, and anybody here knows what I stand for is right.” That qualified as a full-length speech from the laconic Mr. Doar. At his continued urging, the crowd slowly melted away.

The FBI’s files on Doar, which was released to Mother Jones this week under the Freedom of Information Act, included a fascinating behind-the-scenes glimpse of how J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI viewed this civil rights crusader. When he was promoted to head the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice by President Lyndon Johnson in 1964, for instance, agents noted that Doar had been “straightened out” after complaining about the bureau’s slow response to civil rights violations in the Deep South:

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His file also contained an interview with a former colleague of Doar’s which revealed a persistent character flaw—he cared way too much about civil rights and prioritized such cases over other issues:

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All was not forgiven, despite what the memo to Hoover suggested. In 1967, after Doar had resigned from the Civil Rights Division and taken a new job in Brooklyn, an agent proposed using the former adversary as a liaison in handling racial unrest in Bedford-Stuyvesant. Hoover and his deputy, Clyde Tolson, gave the proposal an emphatic rejection:

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You can read the FBI’s full file on Doar here.

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This Is What the FBI Really Thought About LBJ’s Top Civil Rights Lawyer

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Is Campaign Finance Reform Really the Key to Winning the White Working Class?

by ShielaKater Posted on June 2, 2015

Mother Jones

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Stan Greenberg says that white working-class voters aren’t lost to the Democratic Party. In fact, most of them strongly support a progressive agenda in the mold of Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders. The problem is that they don’t trust the system, and they want to see reform first, before they’re willing to vote for Democratic candidates with expansive social welfare programs:

Three-quarters of voters in the twelve most competitive Senate battleground states in 2014—states flooded with campaign money—support a constitutional amendment to overturn the Citizens United ruling. Three in five of those voters support “a plan to overhaul campaign spending by getting rid of big donations and allowing only small donations to candidates, matched by taxpayer funds.”

….Yet most important for our purposes are the results for white unmarried women and working-class women. These groups both put a “streamline government” initiative ahead of everything except protecting Social Security and Medicare. They want to “streamline government and reduce waste and bureaucracy to make sure every dollar spent is a dollar spent serving people, not serving government.” They gave even greater importance than white working-class men to streamlining government. For these women, being on the edge means feeling more strongly that government should pinch pennies and start working for them.

….What really strengthens and empowers the progressive economic narrative, however, is a commitment to reform politics and government. That may seem ironic or contradictory, since the narrative calls for a period of government activism. But, of course, it does make sense: Why would you expect government to act on behalf of the ordinary citizen when it is clearly dominated by special interests? Why would you expect people who are financially on the edge, earning flat or falling wages and paying a fair amount of taxes and fees, not to be upset about tax money being wasted or channeled to individuals and corporations vastly more wealthy and powerful than themselves?

I’ll admit to some skepticism here. Are working-class voters, white or otherwise, really pining away for campaign finance reform? The evidence of the past 40 years sure doesn’t seem to suggest this is a big winner. Still, times have changed, and the influence of big money has become far more obvious and far more insidious than in the past. Maybe this really is a winner.

As for streamlining government, my only question is: where’s the beef? That is, what kind of concrete plan are we talking about here? “Streamlining” seems a little too fuzzy to capture many votes.

In any case, read the whole thing if this is the sort of thing you enjoy arguing about. It’s food for thought at the very least. As for me, I’m off to see my doctor. I’ll be back sooner or later depending on how streamlined his office is.

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Is Campaign Finance Reform Really the Key to Winning the White Working Class?

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Why Bernie Sanders Was Talking About "Fifty Shades of Grey" on "Meet the Press"

by coolmathgamesK Posted on June 1, 2015

Mother Jones

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This wasn’t the way Bernie Sanders expected to conclude the first week of his presidential campaign—comparing a 1972 essay he wrote for the Vermont Freeman to E.L. James’ Fifty Shades of Grey. But the article, first reported in Mother Jones, quickly caught fire because of its description of a woman who “fantasizes being raped,” and by the weekend, Sanders had taken steps to renounce it.

Per Bloomberg:

“This is a piece of fiction that I wrote in 1972, I think,” the Vermont Senator said, appearing on Meet the Press. “That was 43 years ago. It was very poorly written and if you read it, what it was dealing with was gender stereotypes, why some men like to oppress women, why other women like to be submissive, you know, something like Fifty Shades of Grey.”

But if the 1972 essay ruined his media tour, it didn’t do anything to suppress the enthusiasm of the progressive activists Sanders aims to make his base. Sanders spent his first week of the campaign speaking to overflow crowds across the Midwest (3,000 people in Minneapolis) and New Hampshire. And, evidently, he’s turned some heads. Here’s the New York Times:

DES MOINES — A mere 240 people live in the rural northeast Iowa town of Kensett, so when more than 300 crowded into the community center on Saturday night to hear Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, many driving 50 miles, the cellphones of Democratic leaders statewide began to buzz.

Kurt Meyer, the county party chairman who organized the event, sent a text message to Troy Price, the Iowa political director for Hillary Rodham Clinton. Mr. Price called back immediately.

“Objects in your rearview mirror are closer than they appear,” Mr. Meyer said he had told Mr. Price about Mr. Sanders. “Mrs. Clinton had better get out here.”

Clinton’s strategy, to this point, has been to act as if her other prospective Democratic primary opponents don’t exist. Sanders might have just changed that calculus.

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Why Bernie Sanders Was Talking About "Fifty Shades of Grey" on "Meet the Press"

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Bonus Homecoming Cat Blogging – 30 May 2015

by toplaptopsforcollege Posted on May 30, 2015

Mother Jones

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Everyone is back home. It took Hilbert about a minute to settle in and recognize everything. Hopper took a little more convincing. She spent several hours sniffing everything in sight before she finally decided things were OK.

In the top photo, Hilbert has taken possession of his favorite teal chair. It’s as if he never left. Below, Hopper finally hopped into my lap after lunch and purred herself to sleep, which surely means she’s now settled in too. If you look closely, you’ll also see that my hair is starting to grow back. But you have to look pretty closely.

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Bonus Homecoming Cat Blogging – 30 May 2015

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Friday Cat Blogging – 29 May 2015

by GustavoMorice Posted on May 29, 2015

Mother Jones

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For the past two weeks, Hopper and Hilbert have apparently been fighting a rearguard battle over their latest acquisition: a cardboard box. Hilbert took possession first, but Hopper got into the act pretty quickly. Her expression is clearly a declaration that this is her box now, and other cats better stay away. I’m reliably informed that she backed this up with some fancy paw action and sent Hilbert scampering away.

And with that, let’s all give three cheers for my sister, who has taken such good care of Hilbert and Hopper that we’re not sure they’ll even recognize us when they come home. I should add that her six weeks of catsitting was an even bigger favor than you might think, given H&H’s penchant for destruction of anything left lying around accidentally. But tomorrow they come home. Marian has been catproofing our house for the past week, and on Saturday Karen will deliver the furballs back to us. I’m sure they’ll show us very quickly if there are any catproofing spots we missed.

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Friday Cat Blogging – 29 May 2015

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