Skip to content

Proof positive, Trump’s a real Republican

Friday, February 26, 2016

There have been a lot of charges against Donald Trump. Many on the right have accused him of not being a real Republican (after all, he had good words to say about Planned Parenthood!!). Some on the left even harbor some hope that, if elected, Trump will do an about face and revert to some of his long ago “beliefs”, such as single payer (assuming he even knows what that means).

Well, Marco Rubio put all these questions to rest last night, when he convincingly argued that Trump is, indeed, a real Republican:

Rubio, the leading aggressor during the debate, picked up where he left off Friday morning. In several television interviews, he questioned Trump’s business background, his ability to lead the nation, and repeatedly called the billionaire businessman a “con artist” who has spent decades “sticking it to the little guy.”

via Daily Kos

Trump couldn’t be more Republican. The Republicans have been spending decades sticking it to the little guy too! Trump fits right in. The fact that the little guy doesn’t know who’s sticking it to him doesn’t change the facts. The Republican Establishment can relax now. Trump is just another mainstream Republican, and if he can get elected by speaking directly, rather than in code, they can hardly take offense at that. In fact, my guess is that soon we’ll see other Republicans putting aside the dog whistle and being loud and proud about their various bigotries. After all, the point has always been to mislead the rubes into voting against their own interests, and if Trump’s method is effective, and it appears to be, there’s no reason to think he won’t have imitators.

But Rubio made a few other points, all of which prove that Trump is a good Republican. True, not every Republican has a business background, but those that do are usually in the Trump tradition. And so far as ability to lead the nation, no matter how badly Trump performs, he’d have a tough time doing any worse than any Republican president since 1980, and that includes the sainted Reagan, who specialized in sticking it to the little guy (massive inequality began on his watch), running the economy into the ground, and selling weapons to Iran. Turns out poor leadership is also a Republican strong point! 

And as for con-artists: Rick Santorum, Ben Carson, Sarah Palin, and Mike Huckabee, to name just the most recent. 

So, is Trump a real Republican? Sure looks like it. Oh, by the way by no means am I implying that Rubio and Cruz aren’t Republicans. For instance, they measure up to Trump, except, being younger, they haven’t spent as many decades sticking it to the little guy. 

Filed in Republicans | | Comments (0)

Rubio, the moderate 

Wednesday, February 24, 2016

Paul Krugman noted recently that Rubio, the establishment choice and media darling, is hardly the moderate they are so desperately trying to make him out to be. He’s all they’ve got left, and he’s only hanging on by a thread. They still can’t bring themselves to cast Cruz in the “moderate” mold, and Kasich is too laughable to hang their hopes on. Should Rubio flame out, we might very well be told that Cruz is, in fact, the moderate choice. It is essential for their narrative that at least one Republican fill that role, because we all know that both parties are being pulled apart at the extremes; the Democrats by a guy indistinguishable from FDR, the Republicans by a guy indistinguishable from Adolph Hitler.

But I digress. Back to Rubio. Krugman highlights his extremism well, but I think there’s a good way to highlight the ever rightward drift of the political center as perceived by our betters. Ask yourself this: In what substantive way does Rubio differ from Rick Santorum? Santorum, in years past, never made it into the ranks of the moderates, but, had he managed to grift his way into the front of the pack this year, he might very well have. He hasn’t changed. But the laws of partisan equivalency demands that there be moderates in both parties, so the definition of that term becomes ever more fluid and the goalposts keep moving.

The probability is that the punditocracy, in converting Rubio to a moderate, is only getting in shape for the heavy lifting they’ll need to do once Trump gets the nomination. Once that happens, they will desperately search his record and utterances for signs of moderation. We’ll see newspaper stories about things he said 20 or 30 years ago that prove that he’s not the extremist he’s painting himself to be. Oh, and PS, should Bernie overcome the superdelegate fix, there will be no such coverage of him. He will always remain a wide eyed radical. That’s the asymmetry that has driven this nation ever rightward.

Filed in Presidential Politics | | Comments (0)

White male beats the odds

Monday, February 22, 2016

Times are tough for white males these days. They just don’t get no respect.

Take serial murders, which unlike sports such as basketball, is totally dominated by white males. Time was that so long as you took two or three people down, you could count on front page headlines and a moment of fame far longer than the standard 15 minutes.

Not any more. Unless you play your cards right, a mass killing that would have been front page news years ago, might not even make it into the national papers and might struggle to garner headlines in local rags that no one even reads.

So congrats to Jason Dalton for beating the odds. Dalton, who is not a terrorist, by the way, seeing that he’s (apparently) not Muslim, made it to the front page of the New York Times. He realized that stories about gunmen killing people in theaters or in a workplace that left them disgruntled are old hat. Sure, you can still make the front page with those kinds of shootings, but it takes extra effort and an extra high body count. Dalton realized that just picking people totally at random was something new, guaranteed to get him his 15 minutes and more, so long as he got a reasonable body count.

Of course, he could never have done it if the victims hadn’t been so cooperative. If they’d all been packing heat, as the NRA-if it feels the need to respond at all- will tell us, they could have defended themselves. What could be easier than shooting first when someone picks you out at random? The streets would be a lot safer if each of us carried a gun and shot first at anyone who might possibly be thinking of causing us harm. “Us” meaning white people of course. There’s no need to get carried away, after all.

UPDATE: Looks like Dalton’s 15 minutes are up. 

Filed in Crazies | | Comments (0)

Trump, the sometime soothsayer

Monday, February 15, 2016

A case can be made that of all the Republican candidates, Trump is the lesser liar of them all.

Hear me out.

There are certain lies that have become so ingrained in the Republican psyche that they have become articles of faith. There is objective truth, and there is Republican truth. No one, not even the “moderate” John Kasich, challenges these articles of faith. Trump takes many of them on directly and forcefully.

All the world knows that George Bush and his administration lied us into a disastrous war in Iraq. All the world, that is, except for Republicans. All the world knows that the World Trade Center was destroyed on George Bush’s watch, and most of the world also knows that he and his administration ignored warnings from their predecessors about Al Qaeda. All the world, except Republicans and compromised Beltway insiders.

Trump isn’t just telling Republicans what all the rest of the world knows, he’s rubbing their noses in it.

And it’s not just Iraq. Trump is also closer to the truth on other foreign policy issues, and despite the bombast, he’s the least inclined to get us into a war in the Mideast. At least words are coming out of his mouth to that effect. Meanwhile, the other candidates cling to the lies (and I would guess that a certain HRC would cling to the one about not knowing Saddam didn’t have WMDs). It’s not just Republicans, it’s also official Beltway dogma: sure, there were no WMDs, but Bush, Cheney and the rest of the criminals truly believed there were, and there was no one who felt otherwise. Witness Joe Klein at Time telling us:

And then he [Trump] launched himself into cloud-cuckooland by asserting that Bush had knowingly lied about Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction. He “lied us into war…” was, I think, the Trumpian term of art. This is a position that only the left of the left has entertained. The truth is, the U.S. intelligence community was absolutely convinced Saddam had chemical and biological weapons, but not so certain about nuclear capability. The Bush Administration—especially the Cheney-Rumsfeld phalanx—did many questionable and some outright sordid things, but they went to war actually thinking there were WMD in Iraq. It was still one of the two or three worst decisions ever made by an American president, but the casus belli wasn’t faked.

via Time

Klein was a pro-war liberal, who ignored the many voices who were saying at the time that the evidence was fabricated, or at best weak, and he’s heavily invested in covering up his own complicity in legitimizing the war. Here’s someone who knows better:

The actual history is that Iraq had disarmed and the Bush-43 administration did everything it could to prevent the UN from verifying that disarmament so that the draconian sanctions would continue on Iraq indefinitely and could lead to a “regime change” war. [See my time line: accuracy.org/iraq.]

But many Republican candidates and neoconservative ideologues don’t want to give up the false history. The worthies at the Weekly Standard now write: “Interviewers should press Trump on this: What evidence does Trump have that George W. Bush and his top advisers knowingly lied about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? How many other government officials does Trump believe were in on the deception? What does Trump believe would have been the point of such a lie, since the truth would soon come out?”

In fact, it’s quite provable that the Bush administration lied about Iraqi WMDs before the invasion. I know, I helped document such lies at the Institute for Public Accuracy, where I work, before the 2003 invasion:

In October, 2002, John R. MacArthur, author of Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the 1991 Gulf War, noted: “Recently, Bush cited an IAEA report that Iraq was ‘six months away from developing a weapon. I don’t know what more evidence we need.’ The IAEA responded that not only was there no new report, ‘there’s never been a report’ asserting that Iraq was six months away from constructing a nuclear weapon.”

That’s just the tip of the iceberg of what was knowable at the time. See other such news releases from before the invasion: “White House Claims: A Pattern of Deceit” and “Bush’s War Case: Fiction vs. Facts at Accuracy.org/bush” and “U.S. Credibility Problems” and “Tough Questions for Bush on Iraq Tonight.”

via Sam Husseini at Consortium News

I remember those days all too clearly. It wasn’t hard to find people with credentials who said that Bush was cooking the books. So, oddly enough, on Iraq and a host of other issues, Trump is the sole truth teller in a cadre of liars. This is not to say he always tells the truth. Far from it. But compared to the competition, he is George Washington himself. Well, not really, but he still sometimes tells the truth, which is unusual for a Republican. I have no idea what he would do as president, but this one fact gives some (extremely) meager grounds for hope that he wouldn’t be the disaster everyone expects.

Filed in Republicans | | Comments (0)

Ding Dong, Scalia’s dead

Saturday, February 13, 2016

My wife tells me I’m not the first person to hark back to the Wizard of Oz today, but since I thought of it before she told me that I can still say it was original with me. Sort of.

Anyway, predicting what is going to happen going forward is far too easy. I would bet my much reduced 401k on Scalia’s seat still being empty on January 20, 2017. The situation reminds me a bit of LBJ’s attempt to replace a retiring Earl Warren in 1968, as his own term drew to a close. History would have been far different had he been successful.

Political junkies have been painfully aware over the last several elections that the Supreme Court is the most important, though rarely mentioned, issue. Now it will be front and center, and hopefully it will, on our side, assure that the rabid Bernie and Hillary supporters will come together when the insiders hand the nomination to Hillary. It’s wrong. Obama should get the next choice. But he won’t. It will be either Hillary, Bernie, or one of the insane folks in the clown car. It’s a republic, or it’s a plutocracy, and this nomination could be the decider.

Filed in Politics | | Comments (0)

Rubio: 300.01 on the DSM

Tuesday, February 9, 2016

If this is true, I have a question:

Millions of people watched Marco Rubio’s televised tailspin in the opening minutes of last weekend’s Republican presidential debate — but what, exactly, they saw depended on the viewer.

To rivals, Rubio’s reflexive retreat to the same snippet of well-rehearsed rhetoric — over and over, and over, and over again — was proof of the freshman senator’s status as a lightweight. To supporters, the wobbly display was a forgivable fluke, one bad moment blown wildly out of proportion by a bloodthirsty press corps.

But to those who have known him longest, Rubio’s flustered performance Saturday night fit perfectly with an all-too-familiar strain of his personality, one that his handlers and image-makers have labored for years to keep out of public view. Though generally seen as cool-headed and quick on his feet, Rubio is known to friends, allies, and advisers for a kind of incurable anxiousness — and an occasional propensity to panic in moments of crisis, both real and imagined.

via Buzzfeed

Now, I represent a lot of disabled people, many of them with anxiety disorders of one form or another. I wish them only the best. But I would respectfully decline to support them should they seek my support in a run for the presidency. Isn’t it a bit unpatriotic to stay silent while someone you know to have “an occasional propensity to panic in moments of crisis, both real and imagined” edges ever closer to getting his finger near that button? We can all dispel the notion that Obama would panic in a crisis. He would know exactly what he was doing. I don’t always agree with him, but he’s a cool customer and pretty unflappable. And remember, unless I miss my bet, Rubio is still the guy to whom the media will turn as the sane alternative to the Donald.

Filed in Presidential Politics, Uncategorized | | Comments (0)

Something happening here, what it is…

Tuesday, February 9, 2016

Well, you know the rest of the song, provided you’re over 60.

Anyway, while the media is focused on which little Hitler will get the Republican nomination, the banks (remember them) appear to be headed for another crash. Here’s Krugman:

While we obsess over domestic politics — not that there’s anything wrong with that, since a lot depends on whether the next leader of the world’s most powerful nation is a racist xenophobe, a sinister theocrat, an empty suit, or all of the above — something scary is going on in financial markets, where bond prices in particular are indicating near-panic.

via Paul Krugman’s blog

And here, in more depth, from Pam and Russ Martens (although they’re wrong in implying that the Fed should have been raising rates; it should have been breaking up the banks, as they note elsewhere in the article):

… Now, Wall Street bank stocks are plunging and the potential for a mega Wall Street bank to implode has risen dramatically from the shrinkage in the buffer of equity capital. Trillions of dollars more in derivatives exist today on bank balance sheets than were there in 2008 and the public has no clarity on whom the counterparties to this risk are. Investors are voting with their feet and stampeding out of all mega banks.

The Fed has hamstrung itself in terms of options to meet a financial threat by stalling to get off its zero-bound interest rate range until December 16 with its first minor rate hike. Slashing rates periodically in a crisis is no longer a weapon in its monetary arsenal. More quantitative easing hardly seems like an option either since the Fed’s balance sheet has already ballooned from $800 billion prior to the crisis to $4.5 trillion today and has produced only anemic GDP growth.

via Wall Street on Parade

So there is something happening here, and it’s not exactly clear to me what to do about it on a personal level, though the optimal political solution actually seems clearer, if unlikely. As Krugman points out, if a Republican gets elected, he’s bound to do exactly the opposite of what he ought, with, in my opinion, the odd exception of Trump, who, as Jimmy Carter pointed out, is not truly wedded to any principle, and so might actually do the right thing. What Krugman doesn’t point out is that if the crash happens on Obama’s watch, the likelihood of an electoral disaster and final slide into plutocracy goes from somewhat unlikely to probable, especially if Obama responds, as he would, with yet another bailout.

Meanwhile, I’m still sort of afraid to download last month’s 401k statement. Where’s my bailout?

Filed in Economics, Uncategorized | | Comments (0)

Rubio to world: Why’s everybody always pickin’ on me?

Monday, February 8, 2016

There are a lot of asymmetries in American politics. There are many things Republicans can do that Democrats can’t. Here’s a fairly graphic example:

  
That’s Donald Trump, along with Rubio, Carson and Cruz, standing while they play the Star Spangled banner, or pledge to the flag, or some such thing. Notice where Donald’s hand isn’t? Imagine if Obama did the same thing. We’d never hear the end of it, and Trump would be among the loudest complainers. (Full disclosure: I’m with Trump on this one, but I’m not running for president.)

Another things Republicans get to do is whine about the way they are treated by the press. For instance, here’s Marco Rubio blaming the press for covering the fact that he’s an empty suit:

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) sent a fundraising email Monday that passed off New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s ® attacks on the freshman senator’s canned talking points as a controversy ginned up by the media.

The email said the media pounced on the Rubio campaign’s “building momentum” by making hay out of the fact that the senator “pointed out a few times” during Saturday’s Republican presidential debate “that President Obama has been very deliberate about achieving his bad policies.”

“This isn’t the first time the media has tried to distract people,” the email read. “We can’t afford to let the media get away with this.”

via Talking Points Memo

If Hillary whined every time the media treated her unfairly, she’d never have time for anything else, and her complaints would be well founded. See, e.g., the idiotic email “scandal”. The irony here is that Rubio forced them into it by his disastrous performance in the debate. They didn’t want to do it. He was their golden boy, the guy who was going to wrest the nomination from Cruz and Trump and keep it safe in the hands of the “moderates”, the word that is now used to describe any Republican who is not quite as crazy as the craziest Republican on offer. After all, they did their best to paint his third place showing in Iowa as a victory.

Rubio should relax. The press will come around. If Rubio doesn’t flame out in New Hampshire, he’ll still be their last best hope, so they’ll start pumping him up again. After all, who’s the alternative? Jeb!?

Filed in Republicans, Uncategorized | | Comments (0)

Yet another post on social security

Thursday, February 4, 2016

Dean Baker once again takes on the folks who are calling for means testing Social Security:

Eduardo Porter had a piece this morning about how a group of academics on the left and right came together around a common agenda. It is worth briefly commenting on two of the items on which the “left” made concessions.

The first is agreeing that Social Security benefits for “affluent Americans” should be reduced. There are three major problems with this policy. The first is that “affluent Americans” don’t get very much Social Security. While it is possible to raise lots of money by increasing taxes on the richest 1–2 percent of the population, the rich don’t get much more in Social Security than anyone else. This means that if we want to get any significant amount of money from reducing the benefits for the affluent we would have to reduce benefits for people that almost no one would consider affluent. Even if we went as low as $40,000 as the income cutoff for lowering benefits, we would still only save a very limited amount of money.

The second problem is that reducing benefits based on income is equivalent to a large tax increase. To get any substantial amount of money through this route we would need to reduce benefits at a rate of something like 20 cents per dollar of additional income. This is equivalent to increasing the marginal tax rate by 20 percentage points. As conservatives like to point out, this gives people a strong incentive to evade the tax by hiding income and discourages them from working.

Finally, people have worked for these benefits. We could also reduce the interest payments that the wealthy receive on government bonds they hold. After all, they don’t need as much interest as middle-income people. However no one would suggest going this route since the government contracted to pay a given interest rate.

via Beat the Press

Dean has made this case before, and I’m sure he’s absolutely correct so far as his figures go. But I think he gives away too much by failing to note that, at bottom, the push for means testing Social Security (whether it involves cutting off the “affluent” altogether, or merely cutting their benefits to the bone) has nothing to do with saving money. Anyone from the “left” who believes that is what the right wing advocates are trying to do is, to put it simply, a dupe. The right plays the long game, and this is yet another instance. The point is to destroy the program, and this is part of the plan.

Social Security is a universal program. Everyone benefits from it, and except for the Pete Petersons (“It is not enough that they succeed, everyone else must fail”) of the world, everyone likes it, and is perfectly willing to let other people get benefits as long as they get theirs. Roosevelt understood this at the very beginning. Means testing is about driving a wedge between the politically more (relatively) powerful and those with no power at all. Once you means test it, it becomes a welfare system, and will be subjected to attack on that ground by the very people who advocated means testing in the first place. Imagine the field day they’d have pointing out to those they cut off the rolls that there’s money taken out of their paychecks every week that they will never see again, because it all goes to “those people”.

It’s good that Baker makes the case in pure dollar and cents terms, but it’s vitally important to call the right out on the actual motivation. That should really be front and center. This is not about saving social security, it is about destroying it, and it’s incumbent upon those of us on the left to make that argument forcibly and continuously. Now, you may argue that the actual motivation is so obvious it hardly needs mentioning. But remember, this is America, where someone named Cruz, Trump or Rubio may be the next president. We have a surplus of stupid in this country. The only way many people in this country “learn” anything is by hearing it repeated so often that they accept it as true.

Filed in Social Security | | Comments (0)

McKesson running for Baltimore mayor

Thursday, February 4, 2016

Bowdoin alum DeRay McKesson (of whom we left thinking Bowdoinites are very proud) is running for mayor of Baltimore. It’s a job I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy, but he apparently wants it. You can donate here.

Filed in Politics, Uncategorized | | Comments (0)