Browsing the blog archives for March, 2015.
Buy My Book!
March 2015
Select Month
October 2017
September 2017
August 2017
April 2017
March 2017
February 2017
January 2017
December 2016
November 2016
October 2016
September 2016
August 2016
April 2016
March 2016
February 2016
January 2016
December 2015
November 2015
October 2015
September 2015
August 2015
April 2015
March 2015
February 2015
January 2015
December 2014
November 2014
October 2014
September 2014
August 2014
April 2014
March 2014
February 2014
January 2014
December 2013
November 2013
October 2013
September 2013
August 2013
April 2013
March 2013
February 2013
January 2013
December 2012
November 2012
October 2012
September 2012
August 2012
April 2012
March 2012
February 2012
January 2012
December 2011
November 2011
October 2011
September 2011
August 2011
April 2011
March 2011
February 2011
January 2011
December 2010
November 2010
October 2010
September 2010
August 2010
April 2010
March 2010
February 2010
January 2010
December 2009
November 2009
October 2009
September 2009
August 2009
April 2009
March 2009
February 2009
January 2009
December 2008
November 2008
October 2008
September 2008
August 2008
April 2008
March 2008
February 2008
January 2008
December 2007
November 2007
October 2007
September 2007
August 2007
April 2007
March 2007
February 2007
January 2007
December 2006
November 2006
October 2006
September 2006
August 2006
April 2006
March 2006
February 2006
January 2006
December 2005
November 2005
October 2005
Categories
Categories
Select Category
Afghanistan
American History
Armistice Day
big picture stuff
Bush Administration
California
Capitalism run amok
Civil Rights
Condi Rice
conservatism
Cordoba House
corruption
criminal justice
Democratic Party
Demon Sheep
Dick Cheney
disasters, natural and unnatural
DMIsotu2007
Donald Rumsfeld
entertainment and popular culture
environment
Family Issues
Financial Crisis
Health Care
Hillary Clinton
Hurricanes
Immigration
Latin America
liberalism and progressivism
liberalism and progressivism
Libertarians
McCain-Palin
Middle East
multiculturalism
National Security
New York New York
News Media
North Korea
Obama Administration
Obama-Biden
Plutocrat in Chief
Republican Party
Sanders and Clinton
self-destruction
September 11
Social Issues
Social Security
stem cells
Stupid Violent Things
Supreme Court
The Constitution
The darkest 24 hours
The Homans Articl
The Smarter Brother
Trayvon Martin
Trump Maladministration
U.S. Attorneys
Uncategorized
Valerie Plame
War on Terror
Weapons of Mass Destruction
Wingnuts Being Wingnuts
Wisdom of Doubt
Women’s Issues
B. Hot Shots
D. Great Dames
E. Great Snark
F. Group Effort
G. Beyond Blogs
I can’t help but think of Mike Huckabee’s recent tour for his book God, Guns, Grits and Gravy, in which he
that the coastal cities like New York, Los Angeles and Washington were “bubble-ville” while the real Americans lived elsewhere, in “Bubba-ville.”
But the Real World doesn’t sort itself into the neat enclaves that Huckabee imagines. And the reaction to Indiana’s “religious freedom restoration” law ought to be making the Right question just who lives in a bubble.
However, many of them — see
— are telling themselves that the opposition is all coming from “the left.” Note that this afternoon
issued a statement expressing disappointment with the law, although it won’t be boycotting Indiana.
“We will not embrace nor participate in exclusion or intolerance,” said NASCAR, which is based in Florida and North Carolina. “We are committed to diversity and inclusion within our sport and therefore will continue to welcome all competitors and fans at our events in the state of Indiana and anywhere else we race.”
NASCAR, Eli Lilly, Angie’s List, plus the NBA, WNBA, Indiana Pacers and Indiana Fever
— some “left.” Plus Starbucks and Apple and some other groups.
Domenech whines,
… this goal is motivated not just by the political aims of the left, but by
It was all well and good when tolerance was about conservatives and religious types swallowing their objections and going along with things – but now that the left is being asked to do the same thing? Forget about it.
I’m not sure what “things” we were asked to go along with, other than homophobia, and that one had a long enough run, I think.
As I’ve been writing in recent years about the renewal of the culture wars, I’ve received some steady pushback from many readers on both sides of the marriage issue who believe that such talk is overblown. The lesson of Indiana’s RFRA controversy is that if anything, we have underestimated the commitment of the secular left to enforce fealty within a naked public square, where tolerance is no longer a virtue and the power of government must be used to stamp out dissent. For all their complaints over the years about social conservatives’ use of government to enforce morality, the secular left is more eager than ever to engineer the society they seek, no matter the cost.
To which I say — NASCAR, Eli Lilly, Angie’s List, plus the NBA, WNBA, Indiana Pacers and Indiana Fever … Sweetums, it ain’t the “secular left” that is lighting your fuse.
The other howler is that this controversy is about “religion” versus “secularism.” The
believes the law, not the opposition to it, is anti-Christian.
That this is terrible for business is already being made exquisitely plain. That it is an embarrassment to ‘Hoosier Hospitality’ is undeniable. It is also an affront to faithful people across the religious landscape. Provision of a legal way for some among us to choose to treat others with disdain and contempt is the worst possible use of the rule of law.
For Episcopalians, whose lives are ordered in the Gospel of Christ and the promises of our Baptismal Covenant, it is unthinkable. We are enjoined to love God with heart, mind, soul and strength, and to love others as Christ loves us. We promise, every time we reaffirm our baptismal vows, to “seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbors as ourselves.” We promise to “strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being.”
See also Julian Bond, .
I believe all of the likely GOP presidential candidates have come out in support of the law, which may be a lovely example of a once-reliable wedge issue coming back to bite them. ,
If there’s one takeaway from Indiana Gov. Mike Pence’s “religious freedom restoration” debacle, it’s that Republicans ignore today’s cultural environment at their peril.
Conservatives can continue to live in a bubble if they want to, but they should expect blowback, because outside that bubble is a far different reality.
Right-wing reactionary movements can seem very compelling when their message resonates with popular culture, but when it doesn’t they just look ridiculous.
The newest excuse for Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act is that other states and even the federal government have the same law, so why is everyone picking on Indiana? ,
…even my old employer, The Washington Post, seems to believe that if a law has a similar title as another law, they must be identical. “Indiana is actually soon to be just one of 20 states with a version of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, or RFRA,” the Post’s Hunter Schwarz , linking
created by the National Conference of State Legislatures.
The problem with this statement is that, well, it’s false. That becomes clear when you read and compare those tedious state statutes.
If you do that, you will find that the Indiana statute has two features the federal RFRA—and most state RFRAs—do not. First, the Indiana law explicitly allows any for-profit business to assert a right to “the free exercise of religion.” The federal RFRA doesn’t contain such language, and neither does any of the state RFRAs except South Carolina’s; in fact, Louisiana and Pennsylvania, explicitly exclude for-profit businesses from the protection of their RFRAs.
The new Indiana statute also contains this odd language: “A person whose exercise of religion has been substantially burdened, or is likely to be substantially burdened, by a violation of this chapter may assert the violation or impending violation as a claim or defense in a judicial or administrative proceeding, regardless of whether the state or any other governmental entity is a party to the proceeding.” (My italics.) Neither the federal RFRA, nor 18 of the 19 state statutes cited by the Post, say only the Texas RFRA, passed in 1999, contains similar language.
What these words mean is, first, that the Indiana statute explicitly recognizes that a for-profit corporation has “free exercise” rights matching those of individuals or churches. A lot of legal thinkers thought that idea was outlandish until last year’s decision in , in which the Court’s five conservatives interpreted the federal RFRA to give some corporate employers a religious veto over their employees’ statutory right to contraceptive coverage.
Second, the Indiana statute explicitly makes a business’s “free exercise” right a defense against a private lawsuit by another person, rather than simply against actions brought by government. Why does this matter? Well, there’s a lot of evidence that the new wave of “religious freedom” legislation was impelled, at least in part, by a panic over a New Mexico state-court decision, . In that case, a same-sex couple sued a professional photography studio that refused to photograph the couple’s wedding. New Mexico law bars discrimination in “public accommodations” on the basis of sexual orientation. The studio said that New Mexico’s RFRA nonethe but the state’s Supreme Court held that the RFRA did not apply “because the government is not a party.”
Remarkably enough, soon after, language found its way into the Indiana statute to make sure that no Indiana court could ever make a similar decision.
Democrats also offered the Republican legislative majority a chance to amend the new act to say that it did not permit busine they voted that amendment down.
And it seems to me that a lot of people are awfully frantic to defend the Indiana law if it doesn’t actually do anything or allow anything that isn’t already allowed.
See also .
Indiana has been slammed with quite a backlash — much of it from the business community — because of the “Religious Freedom Restoration Act.” Apparently poor Mike Pence had to go on This Week with George Stephanopoulos and try to pretend the RFRA is not really about LGBT discrimination. Instead it’s about , or something. See also .
seems sincerely surprised that so many people think he’s a terrible person for signing the Religious Freedom Restoration Act into law. At the same time, he appears to be kind of lost at sea because he thought acting like
would be popular. This is probably partly because Governor Pence is a genuine jerk, but it’s also because he runs in almost exclusively right-wing circles and consumes almost exclusively right-wing media.
So, he’s kind of an asshole and he surrounds himself with assholes and he gets all his information and most of his feedback from assholes. It’s like he’s living in a giant colon.
That kind of describes the entire American Right. I’ve said many times that one of the fundamental attributes of righties is that no matter how radical and fringe-y their ideas get, they believe deep in their bones that they represent mainstream America and majority opinion. And in those rare moments when reality slaps them hard enough for them to notice that maybe that’s not so, it always comes as a shock.
Sorry I’ve been busy with Zen stuff and end-of-the-month deadlines to write much, but do also note Eric Foner’s . Foner is the leading scholar of the Reconstruction era and argues that much of today’s turmoil can be traced back to the failure of Reconstruction to actually reconstruct. Instead, by a few years after the Civil War the white plantation class was back on top in the southern states, and the people freed from slavery still worked for them under oppressive conditions. Today in many schools Reconstruction is still being taught as a time when southern whites were “punished” for the Civil War, or the Lincoln Assassination, or some such, but the reality is that southern whites weren’t punished. After a very brief and failed attempt to enforce some measures of racial equality, southern whites were pretty much allowed to put the South back the way it was before, except that instead of slaves there were sharecroppers.
The Dumbest Man on the Internet reports that Andreas Lubitz — the man accused of flying a Germanwing plane into a mountain, killing himself and 149 other people — was a recent Muslim convert. He got this from a “German news website,” he says. The sit is a right-wing blog with the name “news” in its title, but hey, whatever works. Pam Geller and the rest of the Usual Shriekers are repeating this revelation uncritically.
Meantime, it’s slowly coming to light that Lubitz suffered a yet-unspecified illness. Reports that he suffered “depression” or “mental illness” appear to be unsupported. Something was wrong with him, however, and he had been advised by a doctor to .
The fact is, we don’t really know that Lubitz deliberately crashed the plane.
A French prosecutor concluded that’s what Lubitz did, based on the cockpit voice recorder.
says that the same evidence is consistent with Lubitz’s being unconscious, however. Maybe his unspecified illness made him pass out, and the pilot was unable to re-enter the cockpit because of “safety” devises that required a response from Lubitz. See also
by Jeff Wise.
Elsewhere — yes, I saw that Harry Reid is retiring. I am of mixed feelings about that. Your thoughts?
Indiana governor Mike Pence signed a “Religious Freedom Restoration Act” into law that allows “any individual or corporation to
as a defense when sued by a private party.” It’s understood that the purpose of this is to give homophobe business owners license to discriminate against LGBT customers.
The Indianapolis-based Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) had already told Pence that if he signed the bill, the Disciples would cancel their next convention in Indianapolis and .
“Our perspective is that hate and bigotry wrapped in religious freedom is still hate and bigotry,” Todd Adams, the associate general minister and vice president of the Indianapolis-based denomination, told The Indianapolis Star.
Adams said the Disciples of Christ would instead seek a host city that is “hospitable and welcome to all of our attendees.”
The law’s passing comes as the , the Indianapolis-based governing body of college sports, prepares to hold one of the most visible events on the college sports calendar, the Final Four, next week in the Colts’ Lucas Oil Stadium.
Gov. Mike Pence, a Republican, signed the bill Thursday. Soon after, N.C.A.A. President Mark Emmert said in a that the association was “deeply committed to providing an inclusive environment for all our events. We are especially concerned about how this legislation could affect our student-athletes and employees.”
Emmert also hinted at the possibility of refusing to stage competitions in the state going forward, saying that the N.C.A.A. will “closely examine the implications of this bill and how it might affect future events as well as our work force.”
Ouch, that’s gotta hurt. College sports are a big deal in Indiana. , Eli Lilly (headquarters in Indianapolis), and the Indianapolis Chamber of Commerce also have .
This week Gov. Pence also declared a
because of an outbreak of HIV among intravenous drug users in Scott County, presumably mostly heterosexual users. One hopes the outbreak is contained. But it does seem almost poetic.
The GOP establishment has settled on Jeb Bush as the “electable” candidate to carry the Republican banner in 2016. The problem with this theory is that it’s hard to find people who want to vote for him.
Josh Kraushaar of National Journal
that the Republican elite and the Republican base are not exactly on the same page.
But there are signs that a worst-case, crash-and-burn scenario for Bush is more realistic than even his skeptics recognize. He’s underperforming in
and is receiving a frosty reception from Republican focus groups. His entitled biography is at odds with the Republican Party’s increasing energy from working-class voters, who relate best with candidates who have struggled to make ends meet. The Bush name is a reminder of the past at a time when GOP voters are desperate for new faces. And after losing two straight presidential elections, Republican voters are thinking much more strategically—and aren’t nearly as convinced as the political press that Bush is the strongest contender against Hillary Clinton.
It would be foolish to over-read the results of focus groups, but it’s equally egregious to ignore their findings—especially given that they’re paired with polls that show Bush’s candidacy a tough sell among voters. Last week, Bloomberg and Purple Strategies cosponsored a New Hampshire panel of 10 Republicans, most of whom were
to a Bush presidential bid. “I know enough to know I don’t need to keep voting for a Bush over and over again,” one participant said. Several laughed at the notion that he’s the front-runner. Not a single one said they’d support him for president.
The article goes on in this vein for a while. The Bush campaign people have decided that the public just doesn’t know enough about their boy yet. Somehow I don’t think that’s their problem.
Jeb’s entire sales pitch is that he’s the most electable candidate in a general election. ,
The line about voters not buying Bush’s electability argument is especially important, and one I’m not sure anybody’s adequately made before Kraushaar’s column. Electability is supposed to be the Republican Establishment’s ace-in-the-hole, the argument carefully conveyed over time that wears down “the base’s” natural desire for a True Conservative fire-breather. In your head you know he’s right is the not-so-subtle message. But Jeb’s electability credentials are as baffling to regular GOP voters as they are obvious and unimpeachable to elites. …
… Looking at it more generally, the jury is out as to whether the appropriate precedent for Jeb is somebody like Mitt Romney, who gradually won over intraparty skeptics by dint of money, opportunism, and a ruthless ability to exploit rivals’ vulnerability, or somebody like Rudy Giuliani, a guy who looked great until actual voters weighed in. And even that contrast may not capture Jeb’s problem: Rudy did well in early polls.
Fearing that Republicans will ultimately nominate an establishment presidential candidate like , leaders of the nation’s Christian right have mounted an ambitious effort to coalesce their support behind a single social-conservative contender months before the first primary votes are cast.
In secret straw polls and exclusive meetings from Iowa to California, the leaders are weighing the relative appeal and liabilities of potential standard-bearers like Senator
of Texas, Gov.
of Louisiana and the former governors Rick Perry, of Texas, and , of Arkansas.
“There’s a shared desire to come behind a candidate,” said Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council, a national lobbying group that opposes abortion and equal rights for gays.
There was a time that the Christian right would dutifully support whatever the Republicans told them to support, including Jeb’s little brother. I take it those days are gone.
And Jeb can’t even count on his brother’s friends, .
Aren’t GOP presidential politics just great? You wake up one morning and suddenly Jeb Bush is the
in the Republican presidential primary field.
And this is because Jeb occasionally talks to James Baker, and . And of course it’s blasphemy on the Right these days to declare anything less than total unquestioning loyalty to Benjamin Netanyahu.
This is not to say Jeb can’t pull it off. His competition doesn’t even rise to they’re more like punch lines in a lame stand-up act. A lot of insiders will still back him. He will have an endless pool of money. The media will treat him very kindly.
And then there’s this — while declaring that he is “his own man” he’s already holding .
Oh, wait …
I’m ignoring Ted Cruz’s presidential bid announcement and instead will focus on something actually important.
analyzes how the press might cover candidates who are climate change denialists (like Cruz). Some news media (such as the New York Times) now have stated policies saying that climate change denial cannot be taken seriously and are brushing aside their usual position of not taking sides on an issue.
However, that’s not necessarily going to mean they will publicly declare that politicians like Cruz are being ridiculous. In real-world political reporting, much of the press is still falling back on treating climate change denial as a normal campaign position. Others, more cynically, treat it as a strategy — will it help or hurt them on election day? Never mind if it’s true or false.
The earth itself may have something to say here. , you know. It’s groundwater supply is shrinking. To a large extent California feeds th we depend on that one state for a whopping . If California becomes the next dust bowl, what will we eat? How will that affect the rest of the economy? And how quickly will Republicans blame Obama?
got me thinking —
Everyone in the Republican Party knows that Reagan presided over an economy that has never been equaled, before or since. When I was , he confidently declared
When is the last time in our country we created millions of jobs? It was under Ronald Reagan …
Of course, it’s not true …
Krugman goes on to say there was better job growth during the Clinton years, and President Obama hasn’t done that badly, either. But it isn’t just Republicans who somehow think only Republicans understand the economy.
going way back show that The Average Voter thinks that Republicans are better on the economy (and defense, and taxes) than Democrats.
And why do so many people think that, when it demonstrably isn’t true (and it isn’t)? IMO because Republicans declare it to be so, loudly and often, and Dems don’t stand up to them about it.
Last year some Princeton economists came out with a study that showed a rather startling gap between Dem and GOP administrations in how the economy performed, .
“The U.S. economy not only grows faster, according to real GDP and other measures, during Democratic versus Republican presidencies, it also produces more jobs, lowers the unemployment rate, generates higher corporate profits and investment, and turns in higher stock market returns. Indeed, it outperforms under almost all standard macroeconomic metrics.”
As I said, this came out last year, and I don’t recall seeing it at the time. But the differences are not minor. There’s a bar graph at the link above showing substantial differences in economic growth between D and R administrations. But the two articles I found about this, one by Chris Matthews (the one linked above) and the other by , both go to great lengths to not give Dems credit for being better on the economy. Samuelson is particularly brilliant —
If Republican presidents were saddled with most recessions, their growth and job creation records would naturally be worse. And that’s what the Blinder-Watson study shows. Since the late 1940s, the economy has spent about 12 years in recession. But 10 of those 12 years occurred under R only two occurred under Democrats. On average, the economy spent slightly more than a year in recession for each Republican term and only three months for each Democratic term.
If only Republicans hadn’t been saddled with those damn recessions!
To be fair, Samuelson explains that Dems focus on job growth while Republicans focus on reducing inflation. But inflation hasn’t been a problem since the 1980s. What’s their excuse since?
Economic policies pleasurable in the present can be disastrous for the future — for example, the inflationary policies of the 1960s. Similarly, the policies that fed the economic booms of the 1990s and the early 2000s spawned overconfidence that fostered the financial crisis.
The financial crisis was caused by the Clinton boom, in other words. It’s always the Dems’ fault.
reports that public opinion of the Affordable Care Act is still divided, but nearly equally so. In other words, the numbers say that roughly equal numbers of people approve and disapprove of the ACA, and the numbers who report the ACA helped them personally is roughly equal to those who say it hurt them personally.
Kaiser also reported that a majority of Americans have no clue about the King v. Burwell case and are unaware that the Supreme Court could take away exchange subsidies in 34 states.
However, when the situation is explained to them, a “majority of the public, including majorities of Democrats, Republicans, and independents, says that if the Supreme Court rules in favor of the plaintiffs, the result would have a negative impact on the country (62 percent) and the uninsured (57 percent).”
This suggests to me that a considerable slice of people who disapprove of the ACA think that ending the exchange subsidies would hurt the country.
When asked if Congress should pass a law “correcting” the ambiguous language in the ACA upon which King v. Burwell is based, so that all states could offer subsidies, 64 percent said yes. When it was explained to these same people that if Congress passed such a law it would be harder for Congress to make other major changes to the law, 54 percent still wanted Congress to pass a law to allow all states to get subsidies. And then when it was explained that without congressional action millions would lose insurance, plus the cost of private plans would go up for everybody, up to 77 percent said Congress should act to pass the law.
This tells me that much of the American public still hasn’t figured out exactly what “Obamacare” is and doesn’t know what it wants to do about it. This also tells me that if Republicans succeed in sabotaging the law the American public will be pissed, including a big chunk of those who say they want the law sabotaged. Because they have no freaking idea what’s going on.
Right now House Republicans are. The defense h the budget hawks are on the other side. But the budget — which calls for slashing Medicare and Medicaid spending, of course — is .
Without relying on tax increases, budget writers were forced into contortions to bring the budget into balance while placating defense hawks clamoring for increased military spending. They added nearly $40 billion in “emergency” war funding to the defense budget for next year, raising military spending without technically breaking strict caps imposed by the 2011 Budget Control Act.
The plan contains more than $1 trillion in savings from unspecified cuts to programs like food stamps and welfare. To make matters more complicated, the budget demands the full repeal of the Affordable Care Act, including the tax increases that finance the health care law. But the plan assumes the same level of federal revenue over the next 10 years that the Congressional Budget Office foresees with those tax increases in place — essentially counting $1 trillion of taxes that the same budget swears to forgo.
And still, it achieves balance only by counting $147 billion in “dynamic” economic growth spurred by the policies of the budget itself. In 2024, the budget would produce a $13 billion surplus, thanks in part to $53 billion in a projected “macroeconomic impact” generated by Republican policies. That surplus would grow to $33 billion in 2025, and so would the macroeconomic impact, to $83 billion.
Plus rainbows and ponies.
Meanwhile, House Republicans have unveiled another . This is something they do every 20 days or so in order to generate headlines that they have a plan for replacing Obamacare. But their replacement plans are the stuff of rainbows and ponies also, so much so .
In fact, the Republicans do have a health-care plan: It is to repeal Obamacare and replace it with what we had before Obamacare. They don’t want to admit that’s their plan, but it is. It’s right there, in the new budget released by House Republicans this week. …
… It’s true — Representative Tom Price has a health-care plan. Of sorts. It’s a really sketchy plan that Price scored by the Congressional Budget Office, which allows it to serve the purpose of letting Republicans cite it to refute the charge that they have no plan without being held accountable for its effects. …
… The House budget illustrates the second obstacle to the adoption of a Republican health-care alternative. If Republicans wanted to replace Obamacare with Tom price’s health-care “plan,” they would include it in their budget. Tom Price probably has the clout to get his health-care plan onto the desk of the person in charge of writing the House Republican budget, who also happens to be Tom Price.
But the Price-authored budget ignores the Price health-care plan for the same reason the old Ryan budget ignored the Ryan poverty plan. It’s a thing Republicans want to say they’re for, but don’t want to make the sacrifices necessary to do it. The place where a party reconciles its competing priorities is its budget.
See above about the budget. It doesn’t rise to the level of smoke and mirrors. Your average second-grade elementary school class could write a better budget.
If SCOTUS kills the subsidies in 34 states, the one tangible thing Republicans might do is vote to continue subsidies until after the November 2016 elections, before the bulk of the American public realizes what happened. Because they have no freaking idea what’s going on.
Just a quick note to observe that there was a
with one fatality in Arizona today. This is making barely a ripple among the blogs, however. Granted, there was a much worse mass shooting in
today. But we seem to be getting awfully blasé about shootings.
Elsewhere, I see Bibi got re-elected. Damn.
Blog:Topics:, , &
Syndication
Works Best in Firefox: