Zandar's Thought Of the Day

I would probably stop thinking of Pat Buchanan as MSNBC's resident racist asshole if he didn't spend his weekends hosting conferences with and hanging out with other racist assholes.

On second thought, he'd still be a racist asshole. The thing is every now and again he makes a good point, and has in fact has been one of the loudest voices on the right against the war in Iraq and has made very valid arguments against it, so I know he's capable of using logic correctly.

Yet he's well aware of the fact that the Republican party is heavily skewed towards older white Christian men in America, and he knows they need to attract people outside that demographic...and his ideas for doing that basically revolve around magically convincing more white people to join him by appealing to their inner racist asshole.

He's incapable of coming up with anything else.

The True Cost Of Cap And Trade

Steve Benen runs the numbers on climate change legislation:

For several months, whenever the issue of cap-and-trade comes up, GOP policymakers and their allies immediately turn to their favorite talking point: a cap-and-trade proposal would impose, on average, a $3,128 energy burden on the typical American home. The figure comes from a bastardization of a study conducted by John Reilly, an M.I.T. scientist who supports the cap-and-trade plan -- and who has tried to explain to Republicans why the claim is wrong.

Told, over and over again, that their talking point has no basis in reality, Republican officials nevertheless keep saying it. When the GOP isn't denying climate change science altogether, it's pushing the $3,128 claim.

OK, so we know the Republicans are lying, but what's the actual cost Americans can expect if a cap-and-trade system becomes law? The Congressional Budget Office, which has produced several reports of late that Republicans just love, reported on the expected costs of Waxman-Markey.

...CBO estimates that the net annual economywide cost of the cap-and-trade program in 2020 would be $22 billion -- or about $175 per household. That figure includes the cost of restructuring the production and use of energy and of payments made to foreign entities under the program, but it does not include the economic benefits and other benefits of the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and the associated slowing of climate change.

Some households would pay a little more, and some of the nation's poorest households would actually get money back, but the average is about $175 per household, the equivalent, Chris Harris noted, of "a postage stamp per day."

Better yet, the costs go down in future years, as carbon permits are sold, and the proceeds are "rebated to taxpayers."

Fifteen bucks a month to save the planet, huh? That's what, a NetFlix subscription?

Seems like a winner to me. But the Republicans will continue to scare America right into demanding more "clean coal technology" right up until the coastlines go underwater, I guess.

Not Something I Wanted To Be Right About

Last week I noted the drop in continuing unemployment claims after months of record increases. I said then that the drop had to have been not from people finding work, but from people exhausting their unemployment benefits.

Barry Ritholz has the numbers that unfortunately corroborate my theory.

Those of you (who can still afford the luxury of) a trusty Bloomberg will note the ‘exhaustion rate’ for jobless benefits - EXHTRATE – reveals that people are not leaving the pool of continuing unemployment claims because they are getting new jobs; Rather, they are leaving because they have exhausted their benefits.

They are now unemployed AND broke. That is hardly a green shoot . . .

And it's going to get worse. We've reached a breaking point. People are still losing jobs at a staggering rate, still 600,000 new unemployment claims plus each week. But more people are falling off the unemployment benefits rolls to boot. They're ending up in the darkest corner of the U-6. It will be hell getting out.

I was in a very similar situation after the dot-com bust/9-11 recession in 2002. I know what it's like, and it was the grimmest time in my life so far. I'd never want to go back to that point. It is hell.

Thousands more are entering this hell every week. Many will make it out, but in a paycheck to paycheck world, many more will not. They will slip beneath the cracks, under the waves, and they will pass silently, ghosts in the realm of the living.

Pray for them. Odds are pretty good you know one of them.

At This Point Bring In The Clowns

John Cole captures the GOP response to the stimulus over the last several months.

Oldest wingnut talking point: The stimulus is just pork designed to reward ACORN and left-wing causes.

Older wingnut talking point: The stimulus bill is not creating or saving any jobs.

Old wingnut talking point: Stimulus bill creating jobs after the recovery already started and should be cancelled.

New wingnut talking point: Stimulus bill hidden sexist attack on America’s testicles by ball-busting abortion-having lesbian feminists.

No really, it's Obama's fault that the jobs lost since 2007 (you know, while Bush was President) were overwhelmingy lost by men. The fact that the financial and manufacturing sectors have fallen apart (you know, bankers and factory workers, careers dominated by men) was on purpose, and somehow it's always Obama's fault.

No Stomach For The Fight Anymore

And speaking of Supreme Court news it looks like the GOP has all but thrown in the towel on opposing Sonia Sotomayor.

The calculus could certainly change when Sotomayor’s confirmation hearings begin July 13. But the Republican senators’ initial review of Sotomayor’s record, together with the meetings they’ve had with her, have left them doubting that she’ll be controversial enough to help them or hurt the Democrats heading into the 2010 elections.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said the opposition to Sotomayor doesn’t have the same intensity he felt in 2005, when the GOP threatened the minority’s right to filibuster judicial nominees.

“Right now, you don’t have the fever pitch you did over the filibuster,” said Graham, a member of the Judiciary Committee. “It depends on how she does [at the hearings]. If she performs well, no. If she performs poorly, potentially, yes.”

“I don’t think she’s the kind of person that invites that kind of reaction,” said Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.) of the possibility of making major political gains over Sotomayor’s nomination. “I don’t think her judicial record warrants the ability to do that with her.”

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) might be counted on to take an aggressive stand against Sotomayor’s nomination. But he’s in an awkward position: As a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, he doesn’t want to be seen as using the nomination for purely political purposes.

“You know, we’re just going to do our job under the Second Amendment: Section 2 of Article 2 of the Constitution, to advise and consent,” Cornyn said. Referring to the NRSC headquarters down the street from the Capitol, Cornyn said, “I really don’t mix my jobs across the street with what we’re doing over here.”

Cornyn said he’s “comfortable” doing both jobs — and that so far, he hasn’t viewed Sotomayor’s nomination as one that would become a major issue in the campaigns.

“I think Republicans have [a] basically different approach to the confirmation process,” Cornyn said. “As I told her, we’re going to treat her with respect and treat her fairly, and that’s the kind of treatment I think every nominee would receive. But it seems to be more the exception than the rule around here.”

Cornyn's sour grapes aside, it's looking like the GOP doesn't really have a play on Sotomayor right now. Most Americans like her and think she would make a fine Justice, and most importantly neither side sees the calculus of the court changing with Sotomayor replacing David Souter in October.

For now anyway, the GOP is looking to let this battle pass. They have their sights set on much bigger contests.

A Question Of Enforcement

In a sweeping and unanimous decision, the Supreme Court has put an end to the practice of preclearance in enforcing the Voter's Rights Act of 1965. Preclearance affected 16 mostly Southern states that had a history of denying blacks the right to vote.

At issue is whether in 2006, Congress properly extended the law -- whose Section 5 mandates that the covered states get advance approval of changes in how their elections are conducted -- or whether the country has made enough progress on racial equality to make continued federal oversight essentially unnecessary.

The case involves a small homeowners association board outside Austin, Texas. In 2003, residents of the Canyon Creek planned community sought to move their polling place to an elementary school that is the neighborhood's polling place for all other elections. Such a move required federal approval under Section 5.

The court's ruling makes the Texas district eligible to "bail out," or become exempt from federal oversight. But it does so without resolving the larger constitutional questions of when race-based solutions can be used to remedy past and present discrimination. Such a narrow ruling upholds the law, for now.

But Roberts noted in his ruling that the preclearance provision raises "serious constitutional questions." And he added that it "represents an intrusion into areas of state and local responsibility that is unfamiliar to our federal system."

Backed by a group of conservative activists, Canyon Creek launched a direct challenge to the law's "preclearance" provision, arguing that it should not be enforced in areas where it can be claimed that racial discrimination no longer exists.

Civil rights groups say Section 5 has proved to be an important tool to protect minority voters from local governments that could set unfair or unconstitutional barriers to the polls. If it is ruled unconstitutional, they warned the justices, the very power and effect of the entire Voting Rights Act would crumble.

The Bush administration had led the legal fight defending the law, but the case was argued in April by a Justice Department attorney named by President Obama.

During those oral arguments, several dozen members of the NAACP rallied outside the court, and members of Congress attended the 70-minute oral arguments, including the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, Patrick Leahy, and longtime civil rights activist Rep. John Lewis.

Since 1982, only 17 jurisdictions have been able to "bail out," or become exempt from federal oversight, out of about 12,000 covered political jurisdictions.

"It is unlikely that Congress intended the provision to have such limited effect," Roberts said, in the face of statistics showing voter turnout and registration rates reaching parity between the races in most areas of the country.

Justice Clarence Thomas, the court's only African-American, supported Monday's decision but said he would have gone farther and declared Section 5 to be unconstitutional.

"The violence, intimidation, and subterfuge that led Congress to pass Section 5 and this court to uphold it it [in part] no longer remains."

A unanimous Supreme Court decision is one of those things that's pretty hard to argue against. Thousands of jurisdictions no longer are assumed guilty of racism before proven innocent. Don't get me wrong, racism still exists...but now at a voting level it has to be proven. I don't agree with Justice Thomas that Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act should be rendered unconstitutional, however.

Lyle Denniston at SCOTUSBlog has more:

With only one Justice voting to strike down Congress’s 25-year extension of the Voting Rights Act’s controversial Section 5, the Supreme Court on Monday interpreted the law in a way that saves it. The Court said that all local units of government must be given the option to bail out of the requirement that they get Washington approval for any changes in their election laws or methods.

So for now, VRA remains intact.

StupidiNews!

• Iranian protests continue as the ruling regime dismisses claims of election fraud and continues to crack down.
• North Korea is accusing President Obama of trying to "ignite a nuclear war".
• Two types of parasite-resistant honeybees will be delivered to the White House garden this week.
• The President will take the health care reform debate directly to the public on Wednesday.
• The EU admits that ICANN works, but wants the internet domain-assigning body changed anyway.

Last Call

Atrios on the Village:

For some reason, the Villagers think it's very important news each and every time a Republican criticizes Obama. Don't get me wrong, I certainly think it's appropriate for the press to present or even somewhat amplify the views of the minority party, provided those views have any merit or substance, but the coverage often treats the fact that they're unhappy with Obama as news in and of itself. It's weird.

Psst, Duncan, the Village has been in on The Plan now for quite some time.

The Village power to manufacture news, the news being that "Republicans are criticizing the President" is in and of itself newsworthy according to the Village only shows A) how much power the Village has, and B) that power is firmly in control of the folks in Washington who are fully vested in seeing Barack Obama fail miserably in his quest to actually change America.

It's the way the Beltway works. Obama is changing the power structure. People don't like that, in fact some of them will not tolerate it. Obama is a threat to these folks. They know he is a threat.

The more the Village as media referee keeps convincing people that the automatic gainsaying of anything the President says is newsworthy, important, and vital, the more power that gainsaying has, and the more people will go "Well, both the media and the Republicans hate X, ergo it must be a bad thing." Not because there's a logical argument there, but simply because they say so.

Palliative Care, Part 2

The Sunday shows were filled with people who did not come to praise the public health care option, but to bury it.

It's doubtful that President Barack Obama can garner enough votes to pass sweeping health care reform through Congress, a leading Senate Democrat says -- this despite a new poll that shows nearly three-quarters of Americans would support some form of government-run health care program.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) told CNN's State of the Union on Sunday that cost was the primary problem with the plan. An initial estimate had pegged the Democrats' health-care reform packages at $1.6 trillion over 10 years; a watered-down version of the proposal, unveiled last week, would run about $1 trillion over 10 years.

Feinstein appears to be following a meme that has broken out among Washington insiders over the weekend. Sen . Lindsey Graham (R-SC) made similar remarks earlier Sunday on ABC's This Week, telling George Stephanopoulos that the cost of the health care package was "a death blow to a government-run health plan."

"The last thing in the world I think Democrats and Republicans are going to do at the end of the day is create a government-run healthcare system where you've got a bureaucrat standing in between the patient and the doctor," Graham said.

The same group of Senators that gave Bush a blank check for trillions over 7 years to fight an endless war of choice in Iraq are the same ones now worried about the cost of providing health insurance to 50 million Americans.

Which is more important, Iraq or covering the uninsured? Which one will save more American lives? We're told that the defense of freedom and democracy in the Middle East is a cost we all must bear...but not for helping the one out of six Americans who lack health insurance.

Those American lives aren't worth the cost.

Understanding The Neocon Position On Iran

There is only one acceptable outcome in Iran to the neocons and their wingnut blogger supporters: regime change. It doesn't matter how bloody it is or how many Iranians die to make it happen, anything that is not an active maneuver to bring down "the mad mullahs" is unacceptable to the neocons. A prime example of this mentality is "Cap'n Ed" Morrissey over at Hot Air.

But let’s say, for argument, that the mullahs suddenly got a hankering for Hope & Change and offered a sit-down between Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Barack Obama. Why would we accept that offer and bolster Ahmadinejad’s prestige? How would that make the US look, sitting down publicly with a regime that bloodily suppressed peaceful demonstrations that demanded accountability for a stolen election? We would be an accessory to Iran’s oppression by giving the mullahcracy more credibility than its own people.

Is this “smart power”?

When neocons say "You can't possibly have a diplomatic relationship with Iran at this juncture" they mean "Why haven't you overthrown the regime yet?"

You see, Obama is an "accessory to Iran's oppression" if he leaves any diplomatic channels open. That kind of binary stupidity is what got us into Iraq and Afghanistan. In the end, the neocons will attack Obama until he gives the green light for a strike on Iran. In that way, the neocons are even more belligerent and predictable than the Iranian regime.

The Will Of The People

Steve Benen checks out Sunday's NYTimes/CBS poll on health care reform.

An NBC/WSJ poll released the other day found that 76% of Americans believe it's either "extremely important" or "quite important" to "give people a choice of both a public plan administered by the federal government and a private plan for their health insurance."

The wording of that question was a little awkward, though. The results from the latest NYT poll are even more encouraging.

Americans overwhelmingly support substantial changes to the health care system and are strongly behind one of the most contentious proposals Congress is considering, a government-run insurance plan to compete with private insurers, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

The poll found that most Americans would be willing to pay higher taxes so everyone could have health insurance and that they said the government could do a better job of holding down health-care costs than the private sector.

Respondents were asked, "Would you favor or oppose the government's offering everyone a government administered health insurance plan like Medicare that would compete with private health insurance plans?" It wasn't even close -- 72% supported the public option. Among Republicans, the ones who are supposed to find the very idea of a public plan so outrageous, 50% favor the same policy idea.

Even half of Republican voters want a public option, not to mention an overwhelming 87% of Democrats and 73% of independent voters. At what point do our elected representatives actually listen to the will of the people instead of the lobbyists who legally bribe them daily?

[UPDATE] Nate Silver crunches the numbers on the various public option support polls and finds that yes, America does want a public health care insurance option.

Dear America:

"How DARE Barack Obama take his daughters out for ice cream when he should be SENDING IN GIANT DR. MANHATTAN TO SAVE DEMOCRACY IN IRAN?!?!?! What kind of President spends Father's Day weekend with his family when PEOPLE ON EARTH ARE DYING?!?!? This is an OUTRAGE, I am SURE OF IT!"
--Patterico, Patterico's Pontifications

Bonus points, check the comments over there for some real, real hate.

Tehran Calling, Day 9

Some pretty disturbing footage here. And I still haven't seen any arguments as to why Obama should interfere, and what that interference should be.

It is out of our hands. Mousavi's camp is reporting he has been silenced by the regime and "is prepared for martyrdom" if necessary.

So why do the Iranian people not want Ahmadinejad as their leader? Because he is nothing but a loudspeaker for Khamenei. Under Ahmadinejad, economic problems have grown worse, despite $280bn of oil revenue. Social and literary freedom is much more restricted than under his predecessor, Mohammad Khatami. The world views us as a terrorist nation on the lookout for war. When Khatami was president of Iran, Bush was president of the US. Now the Americans have Obama and we have our version of Bush. We need an Obama who can find solutions for Iran's problems. Although power would remain in the hands of Khamenei, a president like Mousavi could weaken the supreme leader.

Who is Iran's Obama? Will they find the way to settle this? What if Mousavi is Bush as well? We don't know...and that is why caution is needed.

[UPDATE] As BooMan says: (Caution, pretty graphic):

The Iranian regime is now creating martyrs on film for everyone to watch.



This is the same mistake that the Shah made. The surest way to make sure that the protests continue is to kill people. The opposition will come out in the streets to mourn the dead. And the cycle of violence will continue and escalate.

Looks like it will indeed be Option 3.

[UPDATE 2] The President weighs in on Iran, and continues to play his cards close to his vest.

The Iranian government must understand that the world is watching. We mourn each and every innocent life that is lost. We call on the Iranian government to stop all violent and unjust actions against its own people. The universal rights to assembly and free speech must be respected, and the United States stands with all who seek to exercise those rights.

As I said in Cairo, suppressing ideas never succeeds in making them go away. The Iranian people will ultimately judge the actions of their own government. If the Iranian government seeks the respect of the international community, it must respect the dignity of its own people and govern through consent, not coercion.

Martin Luther King once said - “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” I believe that. The international community believes that. And right now, we are bearing witness to the Iranian peoples’ belief in that truth, and we will continue to bear witness.

At what point does the Islamic world weigh in on this, seeing dozens killed in Allah's name? Egypt, Iraq, Pakistan, Indonesia...they will have to say something and soon.

Monty Neocon's The Argument Clinic

Steve Benen takes on the ridiculous neocon attacks on President Obama's careful approach to Iran.

I'll give the Weekly Standard credit for clarity. The conservative magazine published two very similar pieces today -- one from Stephen Hayes and William Kristol, the other from Fred Barnes -- offering the identical attack with indistinguishable language: they want President Obama to do more to intervene in Iran.

The pieces are almost comical in their belligerence towards the White House. Hayes and Kristol lament Obama's "weakness," and described the U.S. president as "a de facto ally of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei." Barnes insists, "Obama has tilted in favor of the regime. The result is personal shame (for Obama) and policy shame (for the United States)."

What I find interesting about the 2,000 words of the conservatives' angry and righteous denigration is how remarkably narrow it is. For Hayes, Kristol, and Barnes, it's almost as if the argument presented by the president is so self-evidently horrible, they don't feel the need explain why they think it's wrong.

By now, we've all heard the pitch. Obama believes it would be counterproductive for Iranian protestors for the U.S. to intervene on their behalf. The more Americans weigh in to "help" reformers, the more it's likely to help Khamenei and Ahmadinejad -- throwing them a public-relations life preserver when they need it most -- and the easier it is to make dissidents look like American stooges.

Gary Sick, a former National Security Council expert on Iran in the Ford, Carter and Reagan administrations -- not, in other words, a liberal activist or party hack -- explained the other day, "The Obama administration has handled this pretty well. There's nothing we can do in a proactive way that is going to improve things. We could make things a lot worse."

It's a position endorsed by other Republicans such as Dick Lugar and Henry Kissinger. Nick Burns, an Undersecretary of State in the Bush administration, said this week that Ahmadinejad "would like nothing better than to see aggressive statements, a series of statements, from the United States which try to put the U.S. at the center of this."

Why do the neocons believe this is a misguided approach? We don't know; they won't say.

In other words, the attacks on Obama are reduced to this:



It doesn't matter as long at they say the President is wrong wrong wrong...they never mention why their point of view could even possibly be right.

StupidiNews, Weekend Edition!

• Another day of Iranian protests in Tehran, this time met by tear gas and water cannons.
• Nestle has recalled all of its refrigerated Toll House cookie dough due to E. coli issues.
• The U.S. military admits an airstrike in Afghanistan may have killed 86 civilians.
• The Wall Street Journal reports Apple CEO Steve Jobs had a liver transplant in April.
• America has finally made the top 20 in percentage of households with broadband internet.