Category Archives: Obama Administration

Martin O’Malley Wants It

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New Republic headline: Martin O’Malley Just Jumped to the Left of Elizabeth Warren. Your Move, Hillary.

Speaking at Harvard University on Thursday night, former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley cranked up the pressure on Hillary Clinton by calling for a $15 an hour minimum wage and voicing his opposition to President Barack Obama’s massive trade deal, the Trans Pacific Partnership.

“As we gather here tonight,” he said, “wealth and economic power in the United States of America have now been concentrated in the hands of the very few as almost never before in the history of our country.” …

… O’Malley’s comments are a reminder that other Democratic candidates besides Warren can put pressure on Clinton. While few, if any, political analysts think the former Maryland governor has a real shot at the nomination, he can certainly force Clinton into difficult positions. That’s good. She should have to answer questions on the minimum wage, the TPP, and other controversial issues in the Democratic Party.

IMO the only reason O’Malley or other potential candidates don’t have a “real shot” is that the media won’t cover them, because the media have collectively decided Hillary Clinton has it in the bag. And if she has it in the bag, it’s because the media have decided she does. Argh.

Senate Dems Wimp Out Again

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The bill approved unanimously by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee yesterday may be “watered down,” but it still puts limits on President Obama’s ability to reach an agreement with Iran. And Iran didn’t waste any time griping about it.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Wednesday dismissed pressure from the U.S. Congress over a preliminary deal on the Islamic Republic’s contested nuclear program, saying that Tehran is dealing with world powers — not American lawmakers.

In a speech to tens of thousands of Iranians in the northern city of Rasht, Rouhani said his nation is pursuing a “dignified” agreement with the six-member group, which includes the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany.

I found an article that said “Executive agreements have been used for more than two centuries. According to a February report from the Congressional Research Service, the U.S. has concluded more than 18,500 executive agreements since 1789.” What makes this executive agreement special? Wait, it’ll come to me …

Some people, including Meteor Blades at Daily Kos, are calling the bill a “clear White House victory.” But I still think it stinks. The New York Times editorial board thinks so, too.

With a unanimous vote on Tuesday, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved a bill that would require Congress to review, and then vote on, the final text of a nuclear deal. It would also prohibit Mr. Obama from waiving economic sanctions on Iran — the crucial element of any agreement under which Iran rolls back its nuclear program — for at least 30 days, and up to 52 days, after signing an agreement so Congress has time to weigh in.

The full Senate and the House will have to approve the bill. But the committee’s action gives momentum to those who have bitterly criticized Mr. Obama for negotiating with Iran, though they offer no credible alternative to the preliminary deal on the table. Republicans who control Congress have largely been the driving force behind the legislation, but this bill was passed overwhelmingly by the Senate committee thanks to Democratic support. …

… The nuclear deal is the product of a multinational negotiation with Iran conducted by the United States, France, Britain, China, Germany and Russia. In no other country has a legislative body demanded the right to block the agreement. Even if Congress barred Mr. Obama from waiving American sanctions, the European Union and the United Nations Security Council could lift the sanctions they imposed, thus undercutting the American decision.

Does anyone here think that Senate Republicans would give any deal — I repeat, any deal — a fair hearing? That they won’t try to obstruct it just because? That Cruz, Cotton et al. plus the Faux News crew won’t demagogue the thing to death and make blocking it a litmus test of True Conservatism?

Senator Barbara Boxer said that while she believed the original proposal would “disrupt and upend” the negotiations, “I believe this new bill will not do that.”

I don’t see why the hell not. The original bill was unworkable, but this one still leaves room for plenty of mischief.

The Wonder Weenies and Sharia Law

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Cities across the United States have been taken over by Islamic extremists and have enacted Sharia law! Never mind the phantom no-go zones in Europe, we have phantom no-go zones here, too! Or at least that’s what a speaker said at the apparently ongoing NRA convention in Nashville.

Dearborn, Michigan is completely lost, of course.

The street signs suddenly went from English to Arabic. There wasn’t a single English word on any shop or any street sign. And in fact, these little yellow signs were posted all along the edges. Jeremy said to me, “this is it. We don’t go past this line.” And I said to Jeremy, “what do you mean? You guys are Detroit Metro. You’re the SWAT team. You can go anywhere you want. What if you get a call over there?” He said “this is it, it’s hazardous for our team if we go past this line.”

I have seen it with my own eyes, witnessed it in the backseat of a car and it is for real. No-go zones exist in the United States.

Dearborn, Michigan is not the only place that these settlements exist. They are spread out over the country in various cities. There’s an estimate of over 5,000 known terrorist cells in the United States.

There’s an estimate of over 5,000 known terrorist cells? If they are “known,” why do they have to be estimated? Or is this a government secret? Reminds me of —

“I have here in my hand a list of 205 [State Department employees] that were known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping the policy of the State Department.”

— and sixty-five years later, no one have ever seen that list. That’s how devious the government is. Then the NRA speaker continued,

However our most persistent and significant threat, right now, to us here today this morning, is the homegrown violent extremists.

… including the speaker himself, I take it, and probably several members of the audience. But it turns out he wasn’t talking about those homegrown violent extremists.

Tarani also warned that the country’s “porous borders” are letting extremists and terrorists into the United States. “It’s possible that at least 20 percent of what comes over that border — that’s a big number, guys — is Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Ethiopian al shabaab, known gang members and supports of the cartel,” he said, warning people to arm themselves to respond to threats before law enforcement can.

Yeah, just what we need, mobs of armed yahoos shooting at everybody who crosses the border. What could go wrong?

(The Zen Center is right next to an actual Muslim neighborhood here in Brooklyn, btw. There are Islamic libraries and schools and prayer rooms. I know this because I walk past them on the way to the Target.)

You may laugh, but Serious People have learned there’s an ISIS training camp west of Ciudad Juarez, a few miles from El Paso. This is “according to Judicial Watch sources that include a Mexican Army field grade officer and a Mexican Federal Police Inspector.” Because Mexicans have no sense of humor and wouldn’t make up stories like that to ridicule some gringo whackjobs. Would they?

The Mexican Army field grade officer and Mexican Federal Police Inspector were later reported as “Mexican officials” who “confirmed” there’s an ISIS training camp across the border from Texas.

During the course of a joint operation last week, Mexican Army and federal law enforcement officials discovered documents in Arabic and Urdu, as well as “plans” of Fort Bliss — the sprawling military installation that houses the US Army’s 1st Armored Division. Muslim prayer rugs were recovered with the documents during the operation.

Oh, those naughty prayer rugs! They aren’t even bothering to disguise themselves as soccer jerseys this time.

Mexican intelligence sources report that ISIS intends to exploit the railways and airport facilities in the vicinity of Santa Teresa, NM (a US port-of-entry). The sources also say that ISIS has “spotters” located in the East Potrillo Mountains of New Mexico (largely managed by the Bureau of Land Management) to assist with terrorist border crossing operations. ISIS is conducting reconnaissance of regional universities; the White Sands Missile Range; government facilities in Alamogordo, NM; Ft. Bliss; and the electrical power facilities near Anapra and Chaparral, NM.

“Mexican intelligence sources” meaning some guy named Jesus who knows another guy named Jorge who swears his cousin heard it from some other guy, no doubt, all of whom were struggling to report these things with a straight face.

I wondered if Charles Pierce knew anything about this, and apparently not. However, it turns out that Sharia Law is threatening Idaho.

In brief, the state legislature there killed a measure that would have brought Idaho into compliance with federal law regarding federal support for child care, and for the enforcement of child-support agreements, and you are not going to believe why they did it.

The conflict started last week after a House committee narrowly rejected a bill that had sailed through the Senate. The vote came after state Sen. Sheryl Nuxoll, a Cottonwood Republican, testified that federal regulations incorporated an international agreement regarding child support payments that would subject the state to Sharia law. None of the nearly 80 countries involved in the treaty — the Hague Convention on International Recovery of Child Support and Family Maintenance, which the U.S. entered in 2007 — is under Sharia law. But Nuxoll and other skeptics said some involved nations informally recognize Sharia courts. They added that Idaho wouldn’t have the authority to challenge another nation’s judgment.

I think you have to pass a stupid test to be a legislator at any level any more. Candidates are put out in the rain, and the ones who come in are disqualified.

The Road to Enlightenment Is Paved With Glitches

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The monastery internet conked out yesterday noonish, leaving me cut off from EVERYTHING. Seriously, I went into withdrawal. Talk about attachment. Fortunately I have a 4G phone and could check emails, but couldn’t get into the admin page here, for some reason.

So now I’m “working” in the Reinaissance Java Cafe on Schermerhorn Street in Brooklyn. Anybody in the neighborhood, come on down. I may be here most of tomorrow. Fortunately they serve food.

Appomattox Plus 150

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Today is the 150th anniversary of Lee’s surrender to Grant at Appomattox. It’s important to remember these things.

It’s also important to remember them correctly. Here are Grant’s recollections as recorded in his memoirs.  Grant had a remarkable capacity for not hating people, and it would be like him to feel sympathy for Lee at the surrender. Later that day, according to other accounts, he encountered the Confederate General James “Pete” Longstreet. The pair had been close friends for much of their adults lives. It’s said that upon seeing Longstreet Grant immediately suggested they get together a game of cards, as they used to. Longstreet burst into tears.

Grant forbade loud celebrations along the Union lines and arranged for a dignified ceremony for the surrender of flags, with (by then) Major General Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain in charge. Grant’s sensitivity and generosity of spirit had a lot to do with why armed rebellion more or less stopped, at least against the Union. It is a slander of Grant to suggest he did these things because he recognized Lee to be the better general or that he knew the Union victory was somehow illegitimate; he thought no such thing. He was the better general, and he knew it. So have said a lot of military historians, including some British military historians who could look at the Late Unpleasantness with more objectivity.

It’s said that the victor writes the history books, but that’s not what happened in the U.S. Historian Elizabeth Varon explains how southerners twisted the events around in history books to soothe their own egos. So much about how the Civil War and Reconstruction are remembered in popular history is a load of crap.

I’d like to write more on this later, but I need to go do some Zen stuff.

Who’s Got an Identity Problem?

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Republicans still assume that the only reason Barack Obama became POTUS is that he is black, because all those non-Republican voters are into “identity politics” and are attracted only by gimmicky candidates, i.e. racial minorities and women. A non-gimmicky candidate would, of course, be a white man.

Along these lines, Josh Kraushaar writes that Democrats have an “identity problem.”

The question of the moment–as the competitive GOP field grows larger by the day–is why Hillary Clinton is barely being challenged for the Democratic nomination. And the answer lies within the changing nature of her party. …

…  the main reason why Clinton is a near-lock for the nomination is that Democrats have become the party of identity. They’re now dependent on a coalition that relies on exciting less-reliable voters with nontraditional candidates. President Obama proved he could turn out African-American, Hispanic, and young voters to his side in 2012 even as they faced particularly rough economic hardships during a weak recovery. As the first female major-party nominee for president, Clinton hopes to win decisive margins with women voters and is planning to run on that historic message–in sharp contrast to her campaign’s argument playing down that uniqueness in 2008.

Do you remember that HRC “played down” her gender in 2008? I sure don’t.

It’s part of why freshman Sen. Elizabeth Warren inspires excitement from the party’s grassroots, but former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, whose progressive record in office set liberal benchmarks, isn’t even polling at 1 percent nationally. It’s why Sherrod Brown, a populist white male senator from a must-win battleground state is an afterthought in the presidential sweepstakes. It’s why Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, a runner-up to be Obama’s running mate in 2008, quickly jumped on the Clinton bandwagon instead of pursuing any national ambitions. On Bernstein’s list of 16 possible challengers, 15 are white and nine are white males. That makes many of them untenable standard-bearers in the modern Democratic Party.

Of course, being a white male is an “identity” also. As it says here, people who vote Republican tend to be older, whiter, wealthier, and much more conservative than the public at large. See also this new research from Pew, showing that the demographic groups that strongly identify with the Republican Party are Mormons; white evangelical Protestants; white southerners; white men; whites; and people aged 69-86. I’d call that an identity problem.

But old white wingnuts are dedicated voters, which everyone else (alas) is not. Does “everyone else” need a gimmick to be inspired to vote?

It isn’t that simple. The real reason Hillary Clinton has been crowned Miss Inevitable is that, for whatever reason, Democratic Party insiders have decided she’s going to win, and news media go along with this. I don’t think her support in the base is as strong as polls might show. Polls this early are all about party loyalty and name recognition; Hillary Clinton has name recognition running over, but Martin O’Malley has no name recognition outside of Maryland. And there is no leftie media/think tank infrastructure supporting a backbench of wannabee candidates as there is on the Right; O’Malley is on his own to get attention.

I like O’Malley, and I like Sherrod Brown, too, and would happily support either one over HRC for the Democratic nomination. And I think a lot of other potential Democratic voters would feel the same way if they ever learn who O’Malley and Brown even are. Tim Kaine, on the other hand, has a history of going squishy at inopportune times; I’m not sure if I would favor him over HRC. I’d have to think about that.

I do run into people on the Web who say they support Clinton because they think it’s time we got a woman president, but I seriously don’t think HRC’s gender will help her much in the general. Likewise race by itself doesn’t get anyone elected; there have been other African-Americans running for President before Barack Obama. A candidate needs more than a gimmick.

Progressives fell in love with Elizabeth Warren because she gives voice to a genuinely progressive perspective, not because she’s female. Notice we don’t exactly genuflect to Diane Feinstein. I honestly believe a white man who said the same things as well as Warren does would be considered a champion of progressivism also. It may be that, all other things being equal, not being a white male might be a small advantage to the Democratic base, but it’s not the primary factor in choosing a candidate. I doubt there’d be many crossover African-American votes for Dr. Ben Carson, for example, right-wing expectations to the contrary.

Kraushaar continues,

Consider: When President Obama was elected in 2008, the Pew Research Center found that 44 percent of whites defined themselves more closely with Democrats, while 42 percent did so with Republicans. In 2014, that two-point deficit for Republicans has transformed into a nine-point advantage. According to Pew, 49 percent of whites now consider themselves Republicans, while just 40 percent view themselves as Democrats.

Yet among minorities, the Democratic advantage has mostly held or increased–even from the high-water mark of 2008 for Democrats. Pew found 81 percent of blacks identified as Democrats in 2008; that proportion is now 80 percent. Democrats have lost some support from Hispanics since Obama’s landslide in 2008, but it’s at higher levels than before Obama’s presidency. In 2014, 56 percent of Latinos identified as Democrats–a larger share than when Democrats swept Congress in 2006 (51 percent). And the fast-growing bloc of Asian-American voters now consider themselves more Democratic than when Obama first took office–in 2008, 57 percent identified with the Democrats, while 65 percent now do. To get these voters to show up, Democrats need to recruit candidates who reflect their newfound diversity. …

…

But while nominating a diverse slate of candidates is a laudable goal, there’s great risk when a party becomes obsessed with identity over issues. It fuels racial polarization, where one’s party label or positions on issues becomes synonymous with race or ethnicity. There’s less coherent connection among their constituents’ interests–beyond gender or the color of one’s skin. If Clinton runs a biography-focused campaign, it will require her to be more open and authentic–traits she has never demonstrated in her long career in public life.

For all the GOP’s recent internal struggles, the dividing lines within the party have primarily been over policy: tea-partiers against the establishment, Chamber of Commerce rank-and-file versus social conservatives, hawks against Paulites. Among Democrats, the dividing lines are much more personal. If Clinton wins a third straight Democratic presidential term, it will reaffirm the power of identity in American politics. But if she loses, Democrats will find themselves in a messy identity crisis, without many leaders left to turn to.

In other words, Kraushaar assumes that the only reason women and nonwhites are moving away from the Republican Party is that Those People are into “identity” and don’t care about policy, whereas the party whose voting base gets whiter and more XY-chromosome oriented by the second attracts people who are interested in policy.

Let us pause to let the deeper assumption behind that assumption soak in.

Now that we’ve all caught our breath, let’s go on …

I don’t need to repeat to all of you the many kinds of government policy that impact women more than men, the poor more than the wealthy, and nonwhites more than whites. You know this stuff as well as I do. Republicans remain oblivious to these issues, however, no matter how many times they are pointed out to them. It’s like they’re blinded by the white.

Likewise, I think the reasons the Dem base doesn’t reliably turn out to vote, especially in Midterms, has more to do with falling expectations that government will become responsive to their needs, and of course with white male wingnuts are allowed to run everything that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. But it’s complicated.

Let’s Just Get Along

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The Washington Free Beacon is reporting that Iran appears to be trying to back out of the nuke deal already by denying that the White House version of the framework is what they agreed to. However, as of this writing no other media source is saying any such thing.

I was struck by this passage in the New York Times:

The streets of Tehran, a city of 12 million, crowded on any regular evening, were largely empty late Thursday night, save for some gatherings at a central square where people honked their car horns in approval.

But that may have been partly because many Iranians were glued to state television, watching President Obama in Washington talking about the details of a framework nuclear accord with Iran. It appeared to be the first time in Iran’s revolutionary history that the official news media broadcast the speech of an American president live and in full.

“This is unbelievable,” said Mohammad Javad Mehreghan, a financial expert. “Soon we will have direct flights between Tehran and New York.”

According to reports in the MSM, Iranians were happy with President Obama’s speech and the deal as he described it is being welcomed. This causes me to suspect the Free Beacon scoop was pulled out of Matthew Continetti’s ass.

Anyway, the quote — it struck me that it would be a really good thing for Americans and Iranians to get to know each other as people, because when people know that those Others really are just people too it’s harder to get them whipped up into a war frenzy. We should have direct flights between Tehran and New York. We should have access to each other’s teevee shows. We should bump into each other at Disney World or shopping in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar. This is my idea of a better world.

Blowing Up the Deal

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I haven’t had time to look into specifics, but Iran and several world powers have agreed on a framework for a nuclear deal. Greg Sargent writes,

The preliminary deal would limit continued operation of centrifuges to one site, while converting a second one — which had been the subject of controversy — to a research facility. The Arak nuclear reactor could no longer be used to produce weapons-grade plutonium.

In exchange, sanctions against Iran will be lifted by the U.S. and European countries, after the International Atomic Energy Agency verifies Iran has taken those steps.

Naturally, congressional Republicans already are against it, because Obama. Blowing up any deal the President makes, no matter what it is, is a key litmus test among the 2016 presidential hopefuls. Because Obama.

Scott Walker told an interviewer that if he is elected POTUS he would not only blow up any deal with Iran on his first day as president, he would do so even if all of our allies want the deal to continue.

I asked Peter Juul, a Mideast analyst for the Center for American Progress, to explain what the consequences of that might be. He told me:

“The big questions would be, How would Europeans and Iranians react? It’s hard to believe that the Iranians would stick to their end of the deal. That would leave Iran open to take their nuclear program as far as they want.

“The Europeans would probably try to keep their portion of the deal in place and try to salvage it. This would place the burden of having blown up the deal on us. This would be particularly ironic, considering that a major Republican and conservative talking point is that the Obama administration is breaking faith with our allies. We would be alienating and breaking faith with our European allies right out of the gate. You’d be irreparably damaging our transatlantic relationships for however long Scott Walker were in office.

“Putin is not going to leave power anytime soon, unless he keels over. For all the talk about the Russian threat, it would be odd to throw our European allies under the bus on Iran at the same time they are facing down a Russia that is not particularly friendly.

“There would be a lot of ripple effects around wherever the U.S. and Europe have security cooperation. This is a reckless, irresponsible, shoot first, don’t-ask-questions-ever approach. It’s just not a viable strategy if your goal is to keep Iran from getting a nuclear bomb.”

But for the idiot children like Walker who hope to be on the GOP ticket, the goal is not to keep Iran from getting a nuclear bomb. The goal is to stick it to Obama.  It’s a bit like what the incoming Bush Administration did in 2001 when it assumed Clinton people like Richard Clarke, who were yammering about that dangerous al Qaeda thing, were just being hysterical.

All of this should theoretically lead to at least some kind of pressure on members of Congress who are looking to kill a deal — not to mention the 2016 GOP hopefuls — to say what they support doing instead beyond thwarting Obama. “The bottom line is that it’s unclear what Walker and others who think like him want out of this process,” Juul says. “If no deal could possibly satisfy them, they should say so.”

It’s a bit like Obamacare. Republicans keep saying they have a better way, but the better way really is to just go back to the way things were before.  And then make that even worse.

Salon has a roundup of reactions to the proposed Iran deal. The Right thinks the proposed deal with either bring back the Third Reich or usher the Apocalypse.

Paul Waldman:

I can make that prediction with certainty as well, because we’ve already heard plenty of them. But as I discuss at the Plum Line today, we should be absolutely clear what those who talk about Munich are saying:

Many of us roll our eyes and poke fun at endless Hitler analogies, but in this case their use is extremely revealing. If you believe that the negotiations with Iran are the equivalent of those in Munich in 1938, what you’re basically saying is that war with Iran is inevitable, so we might as well get started on it right away. After all, it isn’t as though, had Chamberlain left Munich without an agreement, Hitler would have retired and gone back to painting. The whole point of the “appeasement” argument is that the enemy cannot be appeased from his expansionist aims, and the only choice is to wage war.

That’s what Iran hawks are arguing: We shouldn’t pussyfoot around trying to find a diplomatic solution to this problem when there’s going to be a war no matter what.

You can call this clear-eyed realism, or you can call it terrifying lunacy. But it would be nice if they would admit that war is indeed what they’re advocating. Up until now, only a few conservatives have been willing to say so. I’d like to hear their argument, and not a bunch of “all options should be on the table” hedging, but a real case for why launching a war on Iran really is the best of the available options.

The idiot children really must be pushed hard to be explicit about what they actually intend. Over and over and over. I’m really certain the American people just want the Middle East to simmer down and stay out of the headlines, not more war.

Stuff to Read

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Ah, life in a Zen center. I spent much of the morning cleaning incense bowls. And yesterday I failed to note the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Five Forks, but Professor Krugman remembered.

A small family-owned pizzeria in Walkerton, Indiana, gained national attention when its owners announced they would not be delivering pizzas to gay weddings. This led to a blizzard of tweets and other commentary wondering what self-respecting gay couple would serve pizza at a wedding. See also Religious Freedom and Political Lies in Indiana and Want Some Cheese With That Whine, Conservatives?

For something a little meatier, see Thomas Edsall, Has American Business Lost Its Mojo? Since the financial disaster of 2008 more businesses have closed in the U.S. than have opened. Before 2008, there had consistently been far more start-ups than closures. The gap is closing but has not closed all the way. Edsall explores several reasons why this has been so.

Update: Here’s another one —  “Kansas continues to bleed revenue”: News keeps getting worse in conservatives’ anti-tax utopia

Two weeks after the utterly delusional Gov. Sam Brownback proclaimed in a radio interview that Kansas’ experiment in supply-side economics was “working,” the latest batch of numbers from the Sunflower State further put the lie to the utterly delusional governor’s assertion.

State figures released Tuesday showed that tax revenue came in $11.2 million below expectations in March, the latest in a string of lower-than-expected tax receipts.

Lawmakers must fill a $344 million revenue shortfall by June, and Brownback has moved to plug Kansas’ fiscal hole by slashing education funding, gutting the state’s pension fund, and cutting infrastructure. Additionally, the governor has proposed new sales taxes, which disproportionately impact the poor, in order to proceed full steam ahead with his income tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy.