Author: mhasegawa

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A Conservative History Lesson

This is from yesterday’s Shouts and Murmers column by Jack Hitt blogged in the New Yorker Magazine.  I thought about posting the entire thing, but decided on trying to pick some highlights.  The interesting thing is that often Shouts and Murmers is fictionalized or even pure fiction but Hitt has included approprite citations.  Let’s start at the beginning.

1500s: The American Revolutionary War begins: “The reason we fought  the revolution in the sixteenth century was to get away from that kind of  onerous crown.”—Rick Perry

1607: First welfare state collapses: “Jamestown colony, when it was  first founded as a socialist venture, dang near failed with everybody dead and  dying in the snow.”—Dick Armey

1619-1808: Africans set sail for America in search of freedom: “Other  than Native Americans, who were here, all of us have the same story.”—Michele  Bachmann

Bet the folks at Jamestown didn’t know it was socialist venture.  I always thought they were looking for things that would make them rich.

1776: The Founding Synod signs the Declaration of Independence: “…those fifty-six brave people, most of whom, by the way, were clergymen.”—Mike  Huckabee

1787: Slavery is banned in the Constitution: “We also know that the  very founders that wrote those documents worked tirelessly until slavery was no  more in the United States.”—Michele Bachmann

1801: “Thomas Jefferson creates the Marines for the Islamic pirates  that were happening.”—Glenn Beck

And the blog helpfully includes a picture of the “Founding Synod.”

conservative-history.jpg

Illustration courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Moving on to the Civil War, I bet you didn’t know this.

1861:Civil  War breaks out over pitting “individual rights as proclaimed in the  Declaration of Independence against collective rights.”—The Weekly  Standard

More recent history doesn’t fare much better.

1916:Planned  Parenthood opens genocide clinics: “When Margaret Sanger—check my  history—started Planned Parenthood, the objective was to put these centers in  primarily black communities so they could help kill black babies before they  came into the world.”—Herman Cain

1950: Senator Joseph McCarthy saves America from Communism: “Joe  McCarthy was a great American hero.”—Representative Steve King

1963: G.O.P. clergyman delivers his famous “I have a dream” speech: “It should come as no surprise that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was a  Republican.”—Human Events blog

1964: Republicans fight for the Civil Rights Act: “We were the people  who passed the civil-rights bills back in the sixties without very much help  from our colleagues across the aisle.”—Representative Virginia Foxx

1967: Indonesia brainwashes its first Islamic terrorist spybot: “Why  didn’t anybody ever mention that that man right there was raised—spent the first  decade of his life, raised by his Muslim father—as a Muslim and was educated in  a Madrassa?”—Steve Doocy

And to the Clinton years.

1993: Hillary Clinton claims her first kill, Vincent Foster—Jerry  Falwell video

1994: Bill Clinton tops Hillary with twenty-four murders: these people  died “under other than natural circumstances.”— Representative William  Dannemeyer.

1998: Actually, the Clinton murders number forty people: “There was  talk that this would be another body to add to the list of forty bodies or  something that were associated with the Clinton Administration.”—Linda  Tripp.

1998: Update: Clinton murders eighty people: “In recent months, a list  of more than 80 deaths associated directly or indirectly with Clinton has been  the buzz of the new media.”—Joseph Farah

And finally to things I know you didn’t know that President Obama can add to his list of accomplishments.

2011: Arabic is declared America’s second language: “Some of our  state’s educational administrators joined the feds in seeking to mandate Arabic  classes for Texas children.”—Chuck Norris

2011: Obama outlaws fishing: people “can’t go fishing anymore because  of Obama.”—Rush Limbaugh

2011: Obama provides health insurance for dogs: “In the health care  bill, we’re now offering insurance for dogs.”—Glenn Beck

All I can say it is a good thing that the President included health care for dogs because Seamus could have probably used it.

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/shouts/2012/09/a-conservative-history-of-the-united-states.html#ixzz271B7Vxj5

 

 

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Cartoonists look at Mitt and the 47% and his quest for the White House

Some of my favorite cartoonishs came out with their takes on the Mitt Romney remarks about the 47% who are victims and think we are entitled to food and shelter, plus we don’t pay taxes.

Tony Auth depicted some of the people who don’t pay taxes.

Dan Wasserman

<br /><br />

Signe Wilkerson showed Romeny supporters.

Signe Wilkinson's Editorial Cartoons 09/19

Finally Tom Toles with Mitt trying to figure out how to get to the White House.

It is hard to figure out how Mitt Romeny goes from here.  The latest polls in the swing states are not looking good for him.  The President’s approval rating is at or near the magic 50%.  And given his track record, I’m not sure how he wins a debate with Obama.  The Republicans are saying that he needs to be specific.  Well, I think he was plenty specific in the the fundraiser video tape.  He told us what he thinks and what he wants or doesn’t want to do.  I am not calling the race yet, because one never knows what can happen in the the month, but I will say that he has dug himself a hole that I don’t think he has the skills to get out of.

[And I’m sorry that Dan Wasserman’s cartoon isn’t very clear.  His website moved and now I can’t edit the pictures.]

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Why the poor are like Romney: they don’t pay taxes

We don’t really know how much income tax Mitt Romney actually paid over the years because he hasn’t released many tax returns.  We know that Harry Reid thinks he didn’t pay any.  But what we do know is that he pays a pretty low tax rate of around 12 or 13 percent.  In a recently released videotape of remarks made at a fundraiser this spring, Romeny said

There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what…These are people who pay no income tax.”

Neither Romney or his campaign deny his saying this.  Romney only wishes he had put it better.

A lot of the chatter has been about Obama supporters being called dependent victims, but what about the no tases part?  The Tax Policy Center of the Urban Institute and Brookings Instituion has an 11 page document explaining why 47% of us pay little or no income tax.  There are very interesting charts that explain a great deal about our tax policy.  And, last summer, Roberton Williams posted on the Tax Policy Center’s blog in response to controversey about there report.

He explains

The large percentage of people not paying income tax is often blamed on tax breaks that zero out many households’ income tax bills and can even result in net payments from the government. While that’s the case for many households, a new TPC paper shows that about half of people who don’t owe income tax are off the rolls not because they take advantage of tax breaks but rather because they have low incomes. For example, a couple with two children earning less than $26,400 will pay no federal income tax this year because their $11,600 standard deduction and four exemptions of $3,700 each reduce their taxable income to zero. The basic structure of the income tax simply exempts subsistence levels of income from tax.

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The conclusion: Three-fourths of those households pay no income tax because of provisions that benefit senior citizens and low-income working families with children. Those provisions include the exclusion of some Social Security benefits from taxable income, the tax credit and extra standard deduction for the elderly, and the child, earned income, and childcare tax credits that primarily help low-income workers with children (see graph). Extending the example offered above, the couple could earn an additional $19,375 without paying income tax because their pre-credit tax liability of $2,056 would be wiped out by a $2,000 child tax credit and $57 of EITC.

Those provisions matter most for households with income under $50,000, who make up nearly 90 percent of those made nontaxable by tax expenditures. Higher-income households pay no tax because of other provisions. Itemized deductions and credits for children and education are a bigger factor for households with income between $50,000 and $100,000. The relatively few nontaxable households with income over $100,000 benefit most from above-the-line and itemized deductions and reduced tax rates on capital gains and dividends.

So our tax code is structured so those with less income pay less and those with the most income can take advantage of various ways of investing and reporting income to also pay less tax. 

David Brooks writing in today’s  New York Times called Romney “Thurston Howell” Romney after the millionaire guy in Gilligan’s Island.  After citing the Romney quote, Brooks comments

This comment suggests a few things. First, it suggests that he really doesn’t know much about the country he inhabits. Who are these freeloaders? Is it the Iraq war veteran who goes to the V.A.? Is it the student getting a loan to go to college? Is it the retiree on Social Security or Medicare?

It suggests that Romney doesn’t know much about the culture of America. Yes, the entitlement state has expanded, but America remains one of the hardest-working nations on earth. Americans work longer hours than just about anyone else. Americans believe in work more than almost any other people. Ninety-two percent say that hard work is the key to success, according to a 2009 Pew Research Survey.

It says that Romney doesn’t know much about the political culture. Americans haven’t become childlike worshipers of big government. On the contrary, trust in government has declined. The number of people who think government spending promotes social mobility has fallen.

The people who receive the disproportionate share of government spending are not big-government lovers. They are Republicans. They are senior citizens. They are white men with high school degrees. As Bill Galston of the Brookings Institution has noted, the people who have benefited from the entitlements explosion are middle-class workers, more so than the dependent poor.

I don’t often agree with Brooks, but I do agree with 80% – at least- of what he wrote today.

Of course, the voters have a long history of voting against self interest so as an Obama supporter I have to be cautious about the impact of Romney’s statement.  Still, it provides insight into how the man thinks.  I know Romney is trying to pass this off as a discussio of campaign strategy, but that strategy disses almost half of us who Romeny calls victims.

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The Muslim Brotherhood and the riots

I was away for a few days and came home to the breaking news about Egypt and Libya.  This morning there are reports of demonstrations in Sydney, Australia – not exactly the Middle East.  Then you have the Romney statement issued before all the facts and timeline were known.  I’ve listened to the various news reports and have gleaned that most of these are relatively small.  Richard Engle of NBC showed a wide-shot of the demonstrations in Cairo and only a small corner of Tahrir Square was occupied by the demonstrators.  This was not like what happened in the Arab Spring. 

I wish Mitt Romney would read this letter to the New York Times that appeared yesterday.  Then maybe he wouldn’t have advisors like Richard Williamson say that if Romney were President there wouldn’t be an demonstrations in one breath and then that a President Romney would have stepped up security at embassies on September 11.  So which is it?  No demonstrations or preparation for attacks?  Anyway, here is the letter. 

Today’s world is a global village; nations are closer than ever before. In such a world, respect for values and figures — religious or otherwise — that nations hold dear is a necessary requirement to build sustainable, mutually beneficial relationships.

Despite our resentment of the continued appearance of productions like the anti-Muslim film that led to the current violence, we do not hold the American government or its citizens responsible for acts of the few that abuse the laws protecting freedom of expression.

In a new democratic Egypt, Egyptians earned the right to voice their anger over such issues, and they expect their government to uphold and protect their right to do so. However, they should do so peacefully and within the bounds of the law.

The breach of the United States Embassy premises by Egyptian protesters is illegal under international law. The failure of the protecting police force has to be investigated.

We are relieved that no embassy staff in Cairo were harmed. Egypt is going through a state of revolutionary fluidity, and public anger needs to be dealt with responsibly and with caution. Our condolences to the American people for the loss of their ambassador and three members of the embassy staff in Libya.

We hope that the relationships that both Americans and Egyptians worked to build in the past couple of months can sustain the turbulence of this week’s events. Our nations have much to learn from each other as we embark on building the new Egypt.

KHAIRAT EL-SHATER
Deputy President, Muslim Brotherhood
Cairo, Sept. 13, 2012

And then there is the other side in Libya.

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I am going to be away for a few days – no blogs on the Democratic convention – but I wanted to leave you with this in case you missed it.

kstreet607's avatarThe Fifth Column

 

It’s a slow news day, so when I ran across this article by the much respected Juan Cole…it was a no-brainer.  I had to share it.

Juan Cole – Informed Comment

You can’t see me, but I’m talking to Clint Eastwood sitting spectrally in an empty chair, and I am replying to his confused rant.

1. Mr. Eastwood, you called the failure to close the Guantanamo Bay penitentiary a broken promise. President Obama was prevented from closing Guantanamo by the Republicans in Congress, which refused to allocate the funds necessary to end it. Do you remember this this Washington Post headline, “House acts to block closing of Guantanamo”?

2. Mr. Eastwood you called “stupid” the idea of trying terrorists who attacked New York in a civilian courtroom in New York. But what would have better vindicated the strengths of America’s rule of law, the thing about…

View original post 639 more words

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Eastwooding

No, I don’t tweet.  Sometimes I think it might be fun to do, but I don’t think fast enough to be clever.  But to save some time for people, I have complied some of the best tweets about Clint Eastwood’s empty chair rant/ramble last night at the Republican convention.  I was inspired by an article posted this afternoon on the Nation by Ilyse Hogue, Anatomy of a meme

Surprise guest, Eastwood, was reportedly given three minutes to speak, but spent the better part of fifteen minutes of prime time coverage ranting at an empty chair that was supposed to be an invisible President Obama. Pain was visible on the faces of candidate and campaign operative alike as it became clear that these confused ravings of the famous octogenarian were going to be the stand out performance from an otherwise carefully orchestrated week.

And that it is. Within moments of Eastwood’s start, @InvisibleObama had a twitter account with a picture of an empty chair. By the end of the speech, the chair had almost 17,000 followers. It now has 48,000.

…

Even the President got in the fun when his twitter account posted a picture of the back of the President sitting is his chair, with the tag line “This seat’s taken.”

…

In my opinion, the most succinct and spot-on insight came from a Jamelle Bouie tweet, “”This is a perfect representation of the campaign: an old white man arguing with an imaginary Barack Obama.” 

And here are some more taken from Hogue’s article.

Zach Braff:  Now all my chairs want to be interviewed too.

FastLaugh:  Give Clint Eastwood a break… The RNC asked him to speak about ObamaCare and he thought they said ObamaChair…

Bob Newhart:  I heard that Clint Eastwood was channeling me at the RNC. My lawyers and I are drafting our lawsuit…

Josh Rogin

This from Andrew Sullivan’s blog

Screen shot 2012-08-30 at 10.31.30 PM

And Jed Lewison at the Daily Kos comments

Empty chair

Rumor has it that Mitt loved Clint’s empty chair routine so much that now he wants to do it in the Caymans
 
I wonder what surprise the Democrats have in store for us next week.  Looking forward to it.
 
 
 
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The National Debt and the GDP

Being a little behind in reading my email, I just saw this from Ezra Klein.  He suggests you keep this in mind while you watch the Republicans try to push the debt onto the President and the Democrats.

Notice that you can barely see TARP.  It is that dark blue streak that is separating the other two blue parts of the graph.  Even the stimulus is pretty small.

The deficit is pretty easy to understand when you look at it in a graph.  If you reduced the Bush tax cuts for income over &250,000 and worked on the costs of the wars – and didn’t start any new ones – you can really begin to reduce the debt.  Maybe the huge number of people who think the tax breaks for the wealthy should be eliminated understand this better than Mitt and Paul and the rest of their gang.  Certainly they understand this better than Grover Nordquist.

So when you are watching the Republicans in Tampa, remember this chart and thank Ezra Klein.

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The Republican Convention Day 1: Small Stories

I have to admit I had more fun watching Hurricane Issac on the Weather Channel than I did watching the convention.  I always love Jim Cantore getting soaked and pounded.  But I did look at brief glimpses of the convention and once again it struck me how very white the delegates are.  Looking through all the convention coverage this morning I was struck by two little stories both involving the media, race and gender.  This was suppose to be the night of the convention for women.

First is this from the Washington Post and Talking Points Memo,  Kyle Leighton reported for TPM

An attendee at the Republican National Convention in Tampa on Tuesday allegedly threw nuts at a black camerawoman working for CNN and said “This is how we feed animals” before being removed from the convention, a network official confirmed to TPM.

Erik Wemple who writes a blog for the Post on the media predicts

Based on the limited details thus far, the episode will have at least a full day in the news cycle. There’ll be the quest to find both the employee against whom the incident was directed as well as the person who directed the incident. There’ll be a search for other witnesses as well. If those details drip and drip and drip, the event could pose a distraction for the goings-on, though we have no idea who did it and what connection the person may have to the convention.

One thing is now safe to rule out: Criminal charges. A call to the Tampa police department late tonight brought a referral to the Secret Service, which has jurisdiction over the interior of the convention venue. A Secret Service official told me that they’re referring calls on the incident to the Republican National Committee. Not a police matter, in other words.

It is, however, a matter for CNN. It knows all the details of this event. How will the network balance a workplace issue — someone on the job enduring an insulting outburst — with a matter of public interest? Resolving that conflict must start with the preferences of the crew person. But the presumption should fall in favor of doing the story in all of its detail, regardless of whether the details are more or less damaging than what’s been reported.

Juan Williams is shown. | AP Photo

And Juan Williams who is trying hard to be a black commentator for Fox is back in the news.  Politico reported that was involved in a “ribbing” incident during the Fox convention coverage.  His sin?  He called Ann Romney a corporate wife.

Fox News contributor Juan Williams took some ribbing from his colleagues Tuesday night after saying Ann Romney looked “like a corporate wife” who hasn’t struggled in her life.

“Mitt Romney’s wife, Ann Romney, on the other hand looked to me like a corporate wife,” Williams said, speaking on a panel after the Republican National Convention’s speeches wrapped for the night. “And you know the stories she told about struggle, eh, it’s hard for me to believe. She’s a very rich woman and I know that and America knows that.”

Fox News hosts Bret Baier replied, “Wow, OK,” and Megyn Kelly asked Williams, “What does that mean, corporate wife?”

“What does it mean?” Williams replied. “It looks like a woman whose husband takes care of her and she’s been very lucky and blessed in this life. She’s not speaking, I think, for the tremendous number of single women in this country, or married women or separated — actually she did not convince me that you know what, ‘I understand the struggles of American women in general.’”

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Later, the panel reconvened — but without Williams. Wall Street Journal columnist and former presidential speechwriter Peggy Noonan joined to offer commentary in Williams’s place.

“I want to point out that we did not kick Juan off the panel because of the corporate wife comment, we wanted to get a speechwriter’s perspective,” Baier said, to laughter.

“Although we considered it,” Kelly said.

And as Baier and Kelly wrapped the show, Kelly offered a last take on Williams’s remark.

“My final thought is, [Ann Romney] may have improved Mitt Romney’s standing with women,” Kelly said. “You know whose standing did not improve with women tonight?”

“Whose?” Baier asked.

“Juan Williams,” Kelly replied, as the duo laughed.

Juan, I always did wonder if you got a raw deal from NPR but Kelly is wrong.  Your standing improved with this woman.  I do think that both of these little stories illustrate the conservative problem with both race and gender and it seems to extend to the media.