QOTD

Zandar:

Making the GOP look foolish is easy.  Getting voters to show up and punish the fools in the GOP is the hard part.

QOTD: The SOTU We Deserve

Charlie Pierce:

"Mr. Speaker, Mr. Majority Leader, thank you for inviting me here tonight to discuss the state of our union. The state of our union is strong, and it's all because of me, motherfkers, and no thanks to your sorry, wrinkled white asses. I did everything I could do to pull the economy out of the shallow grave your deregulatory frenzy and the two-term nitwit who preceded me dug for it. You stood there like squeaking eunuchs and blocked everything you could, and a narrow slice of the electorate gave you virtually unprecedented control over the entire national legislature. I don't care. Your party has sold its soul and lost its mind. I'm not going anywhere. So I'm'a gonna do what I goddamn well please, because the state of our union is strong, motherfkers, and it's all because of me. Nice to see you all again, though."

Unless the speech begins that way, I really don't care about it.

QOTD: Rude Pundit

On the President failing to call out the repugs in the SOTU:

It needs to be said again and again: We never got to see what an Obama presidency would be like because Republicans decided that there wouldn't be an Obama presidency.

SNIP 

Republicans changed the rules of the game on Obama. If they had been playing baseball, they'd have said, "Okay, we demand four outs, five strikes, and no foul balls, just for us." And Obama would have said, "Sure. Now can we play?" And they would have said, "And you have to play without shoes and gloves." And Obama would have said, "Sure. Can we start the game?" And they would have said, "And each of us gets to fuck your wife in the ass on the pitcher's mound while you watch." And when Obama said, "No, that's bullshit," they'd've said, "Why don't you want to play baseball?"

Choke on This, Mitch: Steve Beshear is President's SOTU Guest

Yeah, yeah, Kentuckians hate Barack Obama. But we know an honor when we receive one, and we also know opportunities for positive national exposure of the Commonwealth are scarce as hen's teeth.

So whether outwardly or inwardly while pretending otherwise, today we're all shouting  "Kentucky, Fuck Yeah!"

From the Herald:

Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear and his wife, Jane, will sit with first lady Michelle Obama on Tuesday night as President Barack Obama addresses a joint session of Congress and the nation in his State of the Union speech.

Beshear told the Herald-Leader on Monday that he and his wife were "honored" to receive the invitation in a call last week from Obama senior adviser Valerie Jarrett.

Obama repeatedly has hailed Beshear's work in implementing Kentucky's health-care exchange as part of the federal Affordable Care Act, and if tradition holds, he probably will do so again during the televised address. (The speech is set to start at 9 p.m. and will air on major broadcast and cable networks.)

"I appreciate his hard work in getting the Affordable Care Act passed to give me the opportunity to change the course of Kentucky's history when it comes to health care," Beshear said of Obama.

Hey, Alison: come out of that repug-lite closet you're cowering in and acknowledge this honor and the reason for it.  There are tens of thousands of disappointed Democratic voters in Kentucky just waiting for a reason to start voting again.

The State of the Union is Raped By the Rich

In tomorrow night's State of the Union address, President Obama will certainly not call for the immediate, public execution of the obscenely wealthy.

That's a damn shame, because it's what the majority of Americans want right now. Why? Because this, from Digby:

It seems almost superfluous to point out the obvious, but there are some very good reasons that animosity toward the top tenth of one percent of incomes is so high. They're simple enough that they can easily be expressed without comment in chart form.

Reasons like this one:



Or this one:

And it wasn't by accident, or because "captialism" or "invisible sky wizard likes me better." It's because the one percent steal the rest of us blind.

Digby:

Responding to the depressing news that the administration has succumbed to elite pressure to "tone down" the rhetoric about wealth inequality, Damon Silvers, special counsel for the AFL-CIO, points out the uncomfortable truth:

[T]he president faces a choice of rhetoric on Tuesday night—but that choice is not just about political gamesmanship. It will have serious policy implications. But there is also an issue of simple credibility. The American people are watching, and they are furious about inequality. Large majorities in poll after poll want a more progressive tax system, accountability for bankers, less power in public life for corporations and the rich and, most of all, higher wages.

The public’s anger shouldn’t be a surprise—anyone whose eyes are open who lives in today’s America knows that inequality doesn’t just happen. The 1% make it happen.

Just look around.

This week, as the president drafted his speech, Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase got a 74% raise, taking his salary from $11 million to $20 million. Since much of his compensation is in the form of stock and stock options, he will pay 20% taxes on those gains, less than the marginal tax rate for many middle-income Americans.

Jamie Dimon runs a bank that just paid the largest civil penalty in American history for a single company, for misconduct in the mortgage markets. Nonetheless, Dimon and his colleagues at JPMorgan Chase appear as of now to have avoided all criminal penalties and all personal responsibility for their actions.

And meanwhile since 2008, 10 million families have been thrown out of their homes and more than 3 million Americans have been incarcerated, the majority for non-violent offenses involving sums and social consequences a bit smaller than what went on at Chase.

Then there is Walmart. Walmart is the largest employer in the country—1.4 million people work for Walmart. Last summer, Walmart associates went on strike, demanding that Walmart pay a minimum of $25,000 a year. Walmart is majority owned by the Walton family, the richest family in the world. Walmart has responded to its employees’ exercising their legal right to ask for a wage barely enough to keep a family of four out of poverty by firing people brave enough to stand up to them. The National Labor Relations Board has issued formal complaints against Walmart, but our labor laws are so weak the Walton family is much less worried than Dimon that making money by breaking the law might actually come back to haunt them.

Finally, there is the actual policy agenda of America’s elites—measures that will put more downward pressure on wages. Every trade agreement we have done since The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has been based on the same template, and the cumulative effect has been a huge trade deficit that saps our economy, loses millions of jobs and continues the relentless downward pressure on wages. Yet the Obama administration is using that same template again in drafting the Trans Pacific Partnership, the biggest trade deal the United States has ever done, and the implementing the same process, Fast Track, that gave us NAFTA with no questions asked.

SNIP

As Silver adroitly points out:

Grotesque inequality kills the American Dream because the American Dream is not the fantasy that we can all be rich, or the fact that a few of us will be rich. It’s about what happens for the vast majority of people who work hard, who contribute to the life of our country, who will never get rich but who deserve lives of economic security and dignity, who should get their share of the vast wealth they produce. Our economy used to do just that, and now it doesn’t, but it can again if we choose to make it so.

Elites believe that all that matters is that the possibility exists for someone to get rich. After all, that's their highest value, so it must be that for everyone. But acquiring great wealth isn't the holy grail for most people --- the vast majority just want to live a decent, fulfilling life and provide well for their children. That was the American Dream as I understood it many years ago, anyway. Sure, some people have the drive and ambition to make a lot of money. But that's not the be all and end all of human experience and if you build a Darwinian system based solely on those values I think it's fairly obvious what kind of society you end up with. It isn't pretty.

SOTU Analogy of the Day

h/t Steve Benen:

"Cutting the deficit by gutting our investments in innovation and education is like lightening an overloaded airplane by removing its engine. It may feel like you're flying high at first, but it won't take long before you'll feel the impact."

--President Obama, 1/25/11

Obama Announces Emergency Confiscation of All Wealth Above $1 Million

No, of course he didn't. But he could have. He should have.

Blue Texan reminds us that rethuglicans use the SOTU to double-down on reich-wing insanity, even in the face of huge midterm losses.

Smirky's 2007 SOTU was a giant Fuck You to the nation that had just voted to reject his entire administration.

The least Obama could have given a nation that let dems keep the Senate was a reason to keep believing.

Instead, we got pabalum and pandering to the teabaggers.

Medical malpractice reform? Veto earmarks? Are you fucking kidding me?

This isn't bipartisanship; this is unconditional surrender.

From now on, every time somebody mentions Obama and "the center" in the same sentence, hit back hard with this:

"The only way Obama can move closer to the center is if he takes a giant leap to the left."



Full text here.

The Standard to Meet

I'd say this list is the absolute bare minimum that any politician seeking democratic votes should swear he will strive to achieve.

gordonskene at Crooks and Liars has the video of FDR's State of the Union address in January 1944.

This address has also been known as FDR's "Second Bill Of Rights Speech", since he outlines the aims of the Roosevelt administration for a post-war era.

President Roosevelt: "As our Nation has grown in size and stature, however—as our industrial economy expanded—these political rights proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness.

We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. "Necessitous men are not free men." People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.

In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all regardless of station, race, or creed.

Among these are:

The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the Nation;

The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;

The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;

The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;

The right of every family to a decent home;

The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;

The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;

The right to a good education.

All of these rights spell security. And after this war is won we must be prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these rights, to new goals of human happiness and well-being."

In these particular times, it's good to remember as our basic needs haven't changed.

Print out this list. Every time you meet an elected official, ask her what she is doing to make these basic security rights a reality.

Ugly Actions May Follow Comforting Words in SOTU

Don't count on what President Obama says in his State of the Union address tonight. Pay attention to what he does after the applause dies down and people relax, thinking that because Obama didn't say he would kill social security that means he won't do it anyway.

Digby explains:

The rumors keep on rolling:

The White House and a bipartisan group of senators are focusing on restructuring the tax code and entitlement programs such as Social Security, which could have more dramatic impacts on the deficit in the long run but would do little in the short term. White House officials say Republican calls for $100 billion in spending cuts this year would choke off the economic recovery while doing little in the long run to tame the deficit. "The American people say, don't touch Social Security, don't touch Medicare, don't cut defense. That's 84% of the federal budget," Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D., N.D.). who is retiring when his term ends in 2012, said Sunday on ABC's "This Week." "If you can't touch 84% of the federal budget...you're down to 16% of the budget at a time we're borrowing 40 cents of every dollar we spend."

If this is true --- which is unknown at this point --- in order to appease teabagging nihilists who want to end all programs (that help people)and petulant Masters of the Universe who want to abolish taxes (for rich people), the White house and small bipartisan group of millionaire politicians are seeking ways to destroy the Democratic Party and dismantle vital pieces of the safety net. Sounds awesome.

Then there's this, about the SOTU:

The president will try to keep the deficit conversation in broad terms, fearing that detailed proposals would put Republicans, Democrats and Washington interest groups into a defensive crouch before real negotiations can take place, according to those officials. White House officials, for instance, have assured Democratic lawmakers that the president will not explicitly call for cuts in Social Security benefits, though he will say changes are needed to put the program on a solid fiscal footing.

At the same time, Mr. Obama will call on both parties to be prepared to put everything on the table. That means Democrats have to be ready to look at changes to Social Security, and Republicans to consider tax-code changes to increase revenue.

Good to know. Why they leaked their real intentions is unknown, but whatever.

If you're still not sure who's side Wall Street's BFF is on, Digby again:

Obama's version of this is to take the ideas of the opposition but couch it in the language of pragmatism. But it really doesn't matter because whether he's just sounding like he's adopting the right's ideas or actually doing it, the truth is as Kuttner says; the political playing field is all on the right at this point. It's just a matter of degree. And by playing to the "center" of that right field it moves the play that much further.

However, it's not some shocking betrayal on Obama's part. It's the thoroughly predictable move for any president who's been accused of being a socialist for two years and suffered a bad mid-term. They always "run to the center" in the second half in order to get re-elected. And if the economy cooperates, it might just work. But it is at the expense of liberalism and the Party whether or not it's a conscious strategic decision to distance themselves from the left or not. At the end of the cycle, Obama will have run on a set of issues and solutions marginally to the right of those which he ran on in 2008. And those were marginally to the right of those which Kerry ran on in 2004 or Gore ran on in 2000. This is how we find ourselves looking back at Richard Nixon's agenda and thinking that even Dennis Kucinich wouldn't be so bold as to propose much of it.

Much of this is about money and power, of course. The vast sums required to run for office require politicians, particularly presidential candidates who have to run billion dollar campaigns now, to be subservient to those who have it. And as policies become more and more tilted to the wealthy, the more power they have to shape them and bend politicians to their will.

SNIP

In these circumstances, the political incentives in a democratic society becomes how to package the policies in a way that appeals to the people but benefits the wealthy. The Republicans know how to do that. The Democrats not so much, although on the presidential level, they may have found a formula. But again, it's at the expense of liberalism in general which, if the president decides to engage on "entitlements", may also end any serious rationale for the Democratic party at all.

Kuttner is right that there is a huge debate to be had. But I'm not sure it's between the two political parties. I guess the question is, if an American political argument happens outside the two party system, does it happen at all?

Have you talked to your Democratic neighbors today?

Always Concede on Principle

(Tom B. has an excellent rant on the inexcusable evil of a spending freeze. He's right, but I think there is one unlikely though possible alternative:)

In one pathetic defeat to the repugs after another, President Obama has certainly blown apart the myth of the Vulcan champion of 12-dimensional chess.

Nevertheless, I am hopeful that in his call for a "spending freeze" in tomorrow night's next week's state of the union speech, he may finally have learned that straightforward attempts at cooperation don't work.

I think President Obama may be playing "Always Concede on Principle." Back in 1988, a pre-Tweety Chris Matthews published the first edition of his book Hardball: How to succeed at politics, by one who knows the game. In the original version, a pre-broadcast-career Matthews sanely and modestly related the political lessons he had learned as a Congressional aide to such Democratic giants as Tip O'Neill.

One of those lessons was "Always Concede on Principle." I don't remember the details of the example Matthews used, but the upshot was this: by first admitting that your opponents are right on principle, you can persuade them to support you on the trivial details.

So on health care reform, Democratic tactics should have sounded something like this: "You Republicans are absolutely right that government-run health care is socialism, naziism, terrorism, and the worst abomination faced by American democracy since unions. Government-run health care is so bad, in fact, that we are going to dismantle Medicare and the VA. But first, we'd like your help on this one bill to stop companies from refusing insurance to people with pre-existing conditions. After all, it really makes the companies look bad. Once that's done, we'll come up with some kind of mandatory purchase plan to cover the cost."

Yes, I was one of the ones screaming from the beginning that we should just cover single payer with giant, poisoned barbs and shove it up the repugs' ass, but that was before we realized Barack Obama really was not the vicious, drug-dealing, baby-raping terrorist Caribou Barbie said he was.

If you've read some of the descriptions of this "freeze," or saw Rachel Maddow rip the concept to shreds last night, you might suspect that the spending freeze the administration is proposing is not exactly the kind of not-another-dime freeze the repugs have in mind.

As Steve Benen wrote:

Now, talk of spending freezes is not new. During the 2008 presidential campaign, it was one of the centerpieces of John McCain's campaign. A year later, it was the official Republican plan to deal with the financial crisis. Now, at least rhetorically, it's President Obama -- you know, the "radical socialist" -- who's waving the banner.

Though, in fairness, it's not quite the same thing. GOP freezes were across-the-board hatchet jobs, while administration officials are insisting the White House is eyeing a "surgical" freeze. Indeed, as part of the proposed freeze, the administration intends to increase some budgets while cutting others, which raises the question of whether this is really a "freeze" at all.

It's a cliche, but "the devil is in the details" certainly applies here. We've been told that the freeze would not only exclude defense and national security, but also economic recovery investment and health care reform (should it happen). The new jobs bill is still moving forward, too.

Indeed, while we wait for additional details -- an administration official said the cuts would target "duplicative," "ineffective," and "inefficient" spending -- I'm tempted to call the freeze idea symbolic, at best. In President Obama's first budget proposed cutting $11.5 billion in spending, and most of the cuts were approved by Congress. This next budget, including the freeze, is eyeing reductions between $10 billion to $15 billion.

Yep, sounds to me like classic conceding on principle while making sure you get what you want in the details.

Benen continues:

So, if the proposal isn't really going to change much, why is this disappointing? Because it fully embraces the conservative narrative, instead of using the power of the bully pulpit to explain why conservatives have it wrong.

It may be even worse as a policy matter -- we just don't have enough details to say -- but that's distressing enough.

Yes, we'd all be much happier if President Obama combined actual liberal policy accomplishment with full-throated, un-apologetic liberal rhetoric.

But since we can only have one of those two, I'm perfectly fine with letting the repugs cavort hysterically with their new nude-centerfold buddy Scott Brown in rhetorical victory while Democrats work behind the scenes to actually improve economic prospects for struggling Americans.

Cross-posted at They Gave Us A Republic.