Framing the Issue

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The President’s press conference today was mostly about security issues, but it also included this:

…Now, I think the really interesting question is why it is that my friends in the other party have made the idea of preventing these people from getting health care their holy grail. Their number-one priority. The one unifying principle in the Republican Party at the moment is making sure that 30 million people don’t have health care; and presumably, repealing all those benefits I just mentioned — kids staying on their parents’ plan, seniors getting discounts on their prescription drugs, I guess a return to lifetime limits on insurance, people with pre-existing conditions continuing to be blocked from being able to get health insurance.

That’s hard to understand as a — an agenda that is going to strengthen our middle class. At least they used to say, well, we’re going to replace it with something better. There’s not even a pretense now that they’re going to replace it with something better.

Q: (Off mic) —

PRESIDENT OBAMA: The — the — the notion is simply that those 30 million people, or the 150 million who are benefiting from the other aspects of affordable care, will be better off without it. That’s their assertion, not backed by fact, not backed by any evidence.

It’s just become an ideological fixation.

Well, I’ll tell you what — they’re wrong about that. There is no doubt that in implementing the Affordable Care Act — a program of this significance — there are going to be some glitches. No doubt about it. There are going to be things where we say, you know what? We should have thought of that earlier, or this would work a little bit better or this needs an adjustment. That was true of Social Security. That was true of Medicare. That was true of the children’s health insurance program. That was true of the prescription drug program part D that was rolled out by a Republican president and supported by Republicans who are still in the House of Representatives.

That’s true, by the way, of a car company rolling out a new car. It’s true of Apple rolling out the new iPad. So, you know, you will be able to, whenever you want, during the course of the next six months and probably the next year, find occasions where you say, aha, you know what? That could have been done a little bit better, or that thing — they’re kind of making an administrative change. That’s not how it was originally thought this thing was going to work.

Yes, exactly, because our goal is to actually deliver high- quality, affordable health care for people and to reform the system so costs start going down and people start getting a better bang for the buck. And I make no apologies for that.

And let me just make one last point about this. The idea that you would shut down the government unless you prevent 30 million people from getting health care is a bad idea. What you should be thinking about is, how can we advance and improve ways for middle class families to have some security so that if they work hard they can get ahead and their kids can get ahead.

Nice framing of the issue, I’d say.

Eyes of the Beholder

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This headline made me laugh — “Why isn’t Rick Santorum the GOP 2016 frontrunner?”

Because he’s a dork, perhaps? Just guessing. But then I saw Brian Beutler call Santorum Conservatives’ Great White Hope — emphasis on the “white” — and I’m thinking, even if you agree with his crazy-ass ideas, he’s a dork. He’s the embodiment of dorkiness. American voters would elect a German shepherd before they’d elect a dork.

Now, I agree with Hunter that Frothy can be amusing as hell. Recently he said that abortion rights advocates cause boys to be uncomfortable showering in a gym. Which was a pretty awesome thing to say, in its way. Hunter reacts —

I … I don’t understand. I’m not sure I want to, mind you, but I’m just trying to parse out how this situation came up and why Rick Santorum was thinking about it. So the premise is that abortion rights advocates are wandering into YMCA showers and lecturing people? Did someone have this experience, where they were randomly accosted in the “mixed company” of a YMCA gym shower by a group of radical abortion rights advocates, and it made them sad and they said, “I know what I must do now. I must go tell Rick Santorum about this.” It’s no seven-foot-tall doctor, but roving public shower lectures on abortion rights certainly sounds like it could be the next big thing.

Seriously, you could do six months’ worth of comedy riffs on this. Still, Santorum is not just a dork, but a creepy dork. And when his Day of Judgment comes he’ll find the Pearly Gates blocked by Saint Margaret Sanger. And then he’ll be reborn as the poor and unwed mother of six disabled children. Mark my words.

But Don’t Call Them Racists …

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Obama Protesters Sing ‘Bye Bye Black Sheep,’ Rail Against ‘Half-White Muslim’ In Arizona. Seriously, these are the same people who take great umbrage if you accuse them of racism, aren’t they?

… a prevailing theme among many in the protest appeared to be issues of race. Some even suggested that Obama himself was to blame for racial tensions.

“We have gone back so many years,” Judy Burris told the Republic, arguing Obama had taken the nation back to pre-Civil Rights era levels of racism. “He’s divided all the races. I hate him for that.”

Stupidity alone can’t account for this. The amount of social-psychological pathology these people are buried under is just staggering.

This Is Not What Freedom Looks Like

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Via Charles Pierce — A small town Pennsylvania police chief made a video threatening “libtards” that went viral. The video got him a 30-day suspension from his job, but many people in the community wanted him gone permanently.

However, Kessler became a hero to gun rights activists. At a public hearing a week ago, gun guys from several states showed up in force to support the sheriff. Things got a bit hairy.

Many in the gun-toting crowd, which seemed to out-number the considerable media and the sparse towns folk, seemed to agree. Some bearing arms said they were there to protect Kessler, who has claimed to have received multiple death threats in wake of the Internet firestorm. Some said they were providing “security” for the meeting.

When it came time to open the small borough building for the public meeting, these armed men blocked the doors and prevented people from going inside. The mayor hand-selected members of the media who were granted access. Gilberton residents were admitted first.

It’s a pro-gun crowd that goes on about United Nations code No. 7277, which Zangaro said declares international law intended to restrict and register weapons.

Signs in the flag-waving crowd read, “Impeach Obama, Mark Kessler for President” and “Legalize the Constitution.”

No police were present at the meeting.

And while Kessler enjoyed his share of support from those who hail his Second Amendment leadership and vigorous video defense, the chief had detractors among some residents brave enough to speak out.

“He was way across the line,” said Wade Greg Necker, who lives just outside the 700-resident borough. “He’s a nut. I do not feel safe with him around at all.”

“He should have been fired,” added life-long Gilberton resident Pete Kostingo, addressing the borough council. “He used the position, and he abused the position.

Another citizen, speaking at the meeting, called for the county district attorney to investigate Kessler and his actions.

Another, Gregory Grove, said his wife lives in fear of the chief. “She’s afraid of him,” he told council. “Kessler is a detriment to this borough.”

Michael Morrill, with Keystone Progress, delivered a petition bearing 20,000 signatures calling for Kessler’s firing….

But Morrill said the group purposefully declined to mobilize its own set of protesters, fearing an altercation with the gun-carrying crowd. As it was, Morrill was shouted down, including by someone with a bullhorn.

This is not what freedom looks like. Charles Pierce wrote,

The Republican party, a number of timid Democrats, and the conservative “movement” have played footsie with dangerous woodland characters for far too long. This stuff can be used, but it cannot be fully controlled. This is not political debate. This is empowered, enabled paranoia, with firearms. This is not an exercise in democracy. This is a little touch of Munich, 1923 come to the forested exurbs. This stuff can be used, but it cannot be fully controlled, and something very bad is going to happen.

And Pierce is not the sort to evoke Godwin’s Law lightly. Anyway, it was at this hearing that Kessler got his 30-day suspension, and later he complained he’d been the victim of a “kangaroo court.”

But dude — sounds like the kangaroos were on your side. And they were armed.

The most recent wrinkle is that residents of the community have started a “We the People” White House petition to send National Guard to protect them from Kessler and his “fans.” I believe it would be more correct to petition the governor of Pennsylvania, who commands the Guard within his state. But the governor is a Republican, so he won’t respond.

Also, a solicitor for the town wants Kessler to account for all the weapons his department has bought and sold over the years. Apparently the rifles he fired in his videos belonged to the town, not to him. Officials may suspect Kessler has been using department firearms as his own personal arsenal. Kessler responded through his lawyer that if the town fires him, he will sue.

Media Madness

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I don’t know why Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post, and I don’t much care. In theory, I suppose, WaPo could suck worse than it already does, but there’s more room for improvement than not.

Somebody’s going to buy the New York Times eventually. It must be running on fumes. But let us go on to other amusing things in the news today.

Per Steve Benen, the ever-amusing PolitiFact finds truth in a lie, somehow. In an interview, Eric Cantor spoke of the “growing” federal deficit, but the federal deficit is shrinking. So PolitiFact says =-

Cantor said that the federal deficit is “growing.” Annual federal deficits are not growing right now, and they are not projected to grow through 2015, a point at which the deficit will have shrunk by three-quarters since 2009. By this standard, Cantor is wrong. However, unless policies are changed, deficits are projected to grow again in 2016 and beyond, according to the CBO. On balance, we rate his claim Half True.

All together now — oh, good grief …

Elsewhere, Ted Cruz reveals that he is confused by this newfangled Internets thing.

The first paragraph of this Kevin Williamson NRO piece is hysterically funny, in a completely unintentional way. It begins, “Conservatives have for years attempted to put our finger upon precisely why Barack Obama strikes us as queer in precisely the way he does.” And then it goes on and on about how there’s something about the President that makes them uncomfortable. (Too blah, perhaps?)

I’ve decided that one of the feature pathologies of that complex of twitchiness that makes wingnuts what they are is a complete inability to perceive projections as projections. There are individual lefties with the same problem of course, but I think most of us over the age of 30 or so can appreciate that the way we perceive a thing has at least as much to do with us as with the thing. But righties are nearly always completely unconscious about this. This has a lot to do with why they think the rest of the world should adjust to gratify their predilections rather than the other way around.

Resistant to Reality

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Following up the last post, today’s Krugman column is Republicans Against Reality.

What’s happening now is that the G.O.P. is trying to convert Mr. Ryan’s big talk into actual legislation — and is finding, unsurprisingly, that it can’t be done. Yet Republicans aren’t willing to face up to that reality. Instead, they’re just running away.

When it comes to fiscal policy, then, Republicans have fallen victim to their own con game. And I would argue that something similar explains how the party lost its way, not just on fiscal policy, but on everything.

Think of it this way: For a long time the Republican establishment got its way by playing a con game with the party’s base. Voters would be mobilized as soldiers in an ideological crusade, fired up by warnings that liberals were going to turn the country over to gay married terrorists, not to mention taking your hard-earned dollars and giving them to Those People. Then, once the election was over, the establishment would get on with its real priorities — deregulation and lower taxes on the wealthy.

At this point, however, the establishment has lost control. Meanwhile, base voters actually believe the stories they were told — for example, that the government is spending vast sums on things that are a complete waste or at any rate don’t do anything for people like them. (Don’t let the government get its hands on Medicare!) And the party establishment can’t get the base to accept fiscal or political reality without, in effect, admitting to those base voters that they were lied to.

The result is what we see now in the House: a party that, as I said, seems unable to participate in even the most basic processes of governing.

(See also Krugman’s correction to what he wrote in the column about the food stamp program.)

I think also what’s happening is that elections are being won by people too stupid or deluded to see the lies as lies. They are true believers, in other words. They don’t understand they’re supposed to be just pretending.

See also Stan Collender.

Also, too, see House GOP plans anti-Washington push in August. House Republicans have left Washington and are telling the home folks how awful Washington is. However, as Stan Collender (link above) says, right now it’s not so bad. The House is in recess, after all.

The Devil in the Details

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This week House Republicans choked on Paul Ryan’s budget plan. Yes, the plan Republicans and baggers have long praised as a work of genius and exquisite wonkiness suddenly didn’t look so hot. That’s because they finally had to deal with the details.

Krugman:

The big if hard-to-report story in DC last week was the ongoing collapse in governance, as Republicans proved themselves unable to reconcile their ideological commitment to drastically lower government spending with the reality that they and their constituents actually benefit from said spending. They’re willing to impose savage cuts on the poor — but even that gets them nothing like the spending cuts they claim they’ll make. Yet rather than acknowledge this reality, they’re basically sticking their heads in the sand.

Times Editorial Board:

A $44 billion measure based on the tooth-and-claw Ryan blueprint approved by the same House just three months ago had to be yanked from the floor when not enough Republicans showed up to vote yes. An embarrassed leadership was forced to concede that the size of the proposal’s cuts to transportation, housing and urban development had become intolerable even to the fiscal zealots among the rank and file, who no longer had the stomach to walk the austerity talk.

Part of the problem, as I understand it, is that the famous policy wonky Ryan Budget that House Republicans have passed at least twice that I can remember was actually long on promise but short on detail. It was more wishful than wonky, to be honest. And when it finally came time for the congress critters to get specific about exactly what programs had to be cut, and how much, they choked. They realized that the cuts would hurt actual flesh-and-blood voting constituents, plus their political careers, and not just the generic welfare queens and other fabled archetypes of parasitism rattling around in their heads. The Times continues,

… the House’s skittishness at the decidedly unpopular costs of some of the party’s budget strictures presented a revealing tableau of both hypocrisy and weakness: Republicans could not pass their own cramped vision of the future.

The Ryan Budget never added up, or subtracted down, or whatever, the way Ryan claimed it would. Ezra Klein explained back in March 2012,

CBO hasn’t looked at whether Ryan’s budget will achieve the results Ryan says it will. Rather, it looked at what will happen assuming Ryan’s budget achieves the results that Ryan says it will.

On the third page, CBO writes, “Chairman Ryan and his staff specified rules by which revenues and spending would evolve.” They then detail what those rules were:

Ryan tells CBO to assume his tax plan will raise revenues to 19 percent of GDP and then hold them there. He tells them to assume his Medicare plan will hold cost growth in Medicare to GDP+0.5 percentage points. He tells them to assume that spending on Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program won’t grow any faster than inflation. He tells them to assume that all federal spending aside from Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security will fall from 12.5 percent of GDP in 2011 to 3.75 percent of GDP in 2050.

He tells them to assume that if we all wish real, real hard, the budget will balance.

Back to Krugman:

There’s a long history here — Republicans have been for lower spending in the abstract, but unable to find things they actually want to cut, for a long time. But the more immediate source of their present difficulties is the Ryan budget. Remember how that budget was initially greeted with cheers and adulation? But the CBO wasn’t fooled; in fact, its report came as close as I’ve ever seen to being openly sarcastic, especially with regard to the kinds of spending that now have Congress paralyzed:

The path for all other federal spending excluding interest—that is, for discretionary spending and mandatory spending apart from that for Social Security and the major mandatory health care programs—was specified by Chairman Ryan’s staff. The remaining part of mandatory spending includes such programs as federal civilian and military retirement, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, unemployment compensation, Supplemental Security Income, the refundable portion of the earned income and child tax credits, and most veterans’ programs. Discretionary spending includes both defense spending and nondefense spending—in roughly equal amounts currently. That combination of other mandatory and discretionary spending was specified to decline from 12 percent of GDP in 2010 to about 6 percent in 2021 and then move in line with the GDP price deflator beginning in 2022, which would generate a further decline relative to GDP. No proposals were specified that would generate that path.

By budget office standards, that last sentence is uproarious.

A lot of right-wing governing ideas are like this. As long as they’re just talk bouncing around the echo chamber, being preached by fanatical gasbags long of wind but short of facts, the troglodytes can think themselves brilliant and congratulate themselves on their great ideas. But when dragged into the cold light of day and put to work actually doing something, the ideas are revealed to be the broken, twisted, ill-conceived things that they are.

Virginia Is for Liars

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Lewis Black needs to do a New York vs. Virginia video. Virginia — don’t bleep with New York.

This week Mayor Bloomberg blasted Virginia for being the biggest supplier of guns used in crimes in New York.

Bloomberg railed that 90% of all guns used in city crimes in 2011 came from other states — and that more of them came from Virginia than anywhere else, including the weapon that killed NYPD officer Peter Figoski in December of that year.

“We’re getting killed, and we’re getting killed with guns … from elsewhere,” Bloomberg charged.

This has been a problem for years in New York. It’s just way too easy for gun runners to buy a trunk full of firearms in the South and drive them up to New York. But then …

The office of Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell tried to turn the tables, arguing that Virginia’s “homicide and robbery (rates) are significantly lower than New York City’s.”

McDonnell spokeswoman Taylor Keeney then took a patronizing swipe at the Big Apple.

“We wish the mayor well as he attempts to address these issues within his home state and we hope he won’t hesitate to call on us if our law enforcement agencies can be of assistance in ensuring public safety in New York City,” she sniffed.

I doubt the NYPD needs any assistance from any candy-ass Virginia law enforcement agencies. However …

But the Daily News checked the numbers — and McDonnell isn’t facing facts.

New York State, with 3.5 murders per 100,000 people, had a lower murder rate than Virginia, which had 3.9 killings for every 100,000 people.

And, McDonnell, who is busy with a scandal over accepting loans and gifts from a businessman, overlooked the mayhem in his own backyard. Virginia’s capital, Richmond, where McDonnell lives, had 20.2 murders per 100,000 residents last year — four times the murder rate of New York City.

Maybe Richmond could use some help from the NYPD.

A spokesperson for the lying, weaseling state of Virginia tried to slither out of this little oopsie by arguing that Virginia has about the same population as New York City, and if you compare New York City to all of Virginia, NYC has higher crime rates.

Criminologists trashed Virginia’s argument.

“You don’t compare cities with states. They are different entities,” said criminologist James Fox of Northeastern University.

“Urban areas have higher crimes rates. States have lots of rural areas and small towns that have lower crime rates. It’s like comparing apples to fruit salad,” he said.

This may be a stretch:

And Bloomberg spokesman Kamran Mumtaz noted that strong gun laws in the city have helped to make New York “the safest big city in the country.”

It’s certainly true that New York City is among the safest big cities in the country, but if you call it “the safest” you have to qualify what you mean by “big” and what you mean by “safe.” Manhattan has Wall Street, after all. But if you just look at homicide rates of cities with at least 2 million people, yeah, New York wins, beating Chicago, Houston, and Los Angeles. If you look at overall violent crime in cities of at least 250,000, New York City still looks pretty good, with below average violent crime rates.

And it would be even safer if Virginia weren’t supplying criminals with guns.

Geezers in Space

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Remember a few days ago I mentioned the FreedomWorks plan to get young people to burn their Obamacare cards? And I said this sounded like a plan only a bunch of hopeless geezers would come up with? Well, if you want to see the damnfool thing, here it is.

Note the part on the page where it says, “If 3 million Americans refuse to obey this unconstitutional mandate, ObamaCare falls apart for good.” Um, didn’t the SCOTUS say the mandate is constitutional last year, fellas?

As Stephen Colbert notes in the clip below, there is actually no such thing as an Obamacard card, so you’ll have to print it, trim it, and laminate it yourself. But the design is based on Vietnam-era draft cards. Really.

While the military has draft cards, the Affordable Care Act does not. Instead, FreedomWorks took an image of the Vietnam draft cards and grafted the word “Obamacare” to the top. The hope is that students will film themselves burning these cards and upload the videos online.

Would today’s students really do that? Really?

As Joan McCarter says, “nothing says Freedom! like spending hours in the emergency room waiting to see a doctor for the burn you got from torching a fake Obamacare card.”

Not to be outdone by FreedomWorks, the Heritage Foudation is putting “clever” GIFs on Buzzfeed to appeal to the young folks. Judging by the reactions left on the page, this effort is what is called a “fail.”

The plan amounts to persuading younger and healthier people to deny themselves medical coverage so that everyone else’s health insurance is more expensive. Jonathan Cohn explains why this is not likely to work.

See also Timothy Egan, “Saboteurs in the Potato Salad“:

Just now, a cell of several hundred people has been dispatched into the American summer, to picnics, town halls, radio stations, hospitals and Little League playing fields, with a mission to derail the economic recovery and drum up support for sabotaging federal law. They’re not terrorists, nor are they agents of a foreign government. This is your United States Congress, the Republican House, on recess for the next five weeks.

They even have a master plan, a 31-page kit put together by the House Republican Conference, for every member to follow while back home with the folks. It’s called “Fighting Washington for all Americans,” and includes a prototype op-ed piece, with a political version of the line usually reserved for dumping lovers: “This isn’t about me. It’s about you.”

Here’s a sample suggestion, from Page 28, of how to stage a phony public meeting with business owners:

“Confirm the theme(s) prior to the event and make sure the participants will be 100 percent on message. (Note: while they do not have to be Republicans, they need to be able to discuss the negative effects of Obamacare on their employees.)”

And what if I have a child with cancer, and the insurance company plans to dump him if Republicans stop Obamacare in its tracks? Can I attend? Or what if I’m counting on buying into the new health care exchanges in my state, saving hundreds of dollars on my insurance bill?

The kit has an answer: planting supporters, with prescreened softball questions, will ensure that such things never get asked. More important, this tactic will assure that any meeting with the dreaded public will go “in the direction that is most beneficial to the member,” as the blueprint states.

I thought this wasn’t about you.

The last word goes to Professor Krugman:

In the short run the point is that Republican leaders are about to reap the whirlwind, because they haven’t had the courage to tell the base that Obamacare is here to stay, that the sequester is in fact intolerable, and that in general they have at least for now lost the war over the shape of American society. As a result, we’re looking at many drama-filled months, with a high probability of government shutdowns and even debt defaults.

Over the longer run the point is that one of America’s two major political parties has basically gone off the deep end; policy content aside, a sane party doesn’t hold dozens of votes declaring its intention to repeal a law that everyone knows will stay on the books regardless. And since that party continues to hold substantial blocking power, we are looking at a country that’s increasingly ungovernable.

The trouble is that it’s hard to give this issue anything like the amount of coverage it deserves on substantive grounds without repeating oneself. So I do try to mix it up. But neither you nor I should forget that the madness of the GOP is the central issue of our time.

Madness and chronic geezertude.

Book Recommendations

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By now you may have heard about possibly the Most Ignorant Interview in the History of Television, in which Fox News’s Laureen Green grilled religious scholar Reza Aslan about why a Muslim would want to write a book about Jesus. Yesterday Fox doubled down and hosted Brent Bozell, who declared that if Aslan really is “just a scholar” and not a propagandist/polemicist he can’t be a good Muslim. Seriously.

Aslan is no fool. After the interview his book Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth shot up to the top of the Amazon best seller list, and it’s still there as of this morning. I downloaded the book to my Kindle a couple of days ago, and wow, this guy is a good writer. I haven’t gotten to any parts talking about Jesus yet, but Aslan’s account of all the political/social nonsense going on in the Roman Empire at the time is genuinely engrossing, and some of it is new to me.

Another book I downloaded a few days ago is Beautifully Unique Sparkleponies: On Myths, Morons, Free Speech, Football, and Assorted Absurdities by Chris Kluwe. I couldn’t resist a book written by a football jock titled Beautifully Unique Sparkleponies. This may be a girl thing. But it’s really a fun little read, along the lines of good blog writing.

Another recommendation, briefly reviewed at the other site, is a novel, Ruth Ozeki’s A Tale for the Time Being I hardly ever find a novel I actually like, and I actually liked this one.

This last book might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but I got a kick out of it — There Is No God and He Is Always With You, by Brad Warner, also reviewed and blogged about at the other site.

Oh, and if you buy any books from the evil Amazon — and yeah, it’s Amazon — if you get to Amazon by clicking on the Amazon ad in the right-hand column here, I get a small cut of the profits.