And From the Parallel Universe…

I didn’t want to read Liz Cheney’s op-ed* in the WSJ, but I forced myself to.  Get yourself a piece of chocolate and check out these excerpts:

“President Obama is the most radical man ever to occupy the Oval Office.

“The president has launched a war on Americans’ Second Amendment rights.  He has launched a war on religious freedom  He has launched a war on fossil fuels.

“The president has so effectively diminished American strength abroad that there is no longer a question of whether this was his intent.  He is working to pre-emptively disarm the United States.”

 

* “Republicans, Get Over the 2012 Loss — and Start Fighting Back”

 

 

The Bizarre Link Between Oil and Abortion

North Dakota just passed the most draconian abortion ban in the country — six weeks.

And North Dakota is also the most booming state in the country because of the oil being extracted there.

So what’s the connection?  North Dakota’s state government currently has a $2 billion surplus thanks to oil revenues, so they’re happy to throw away money to defend their clearly unconstitutional abortion ban.

Another reason to hate the oil companies!

GOP Way Out in Right Field with Wrong Policies

A new Pew Survey released today shows that on some issues, support for the Dem position and opposition to the GOP position is very, very lop-sided.  You don’t usually see numbers like these.

For example, 76% want to deal with the deficit by both raising taxes and cutting spending.  Only 19% agree with the GOP policy of no tax increases.

On President Obama’s proposal to raise the minimum wage to $9.00 an hour, 71% agree, with only 26% opposed.

On passing major gun control legislation, 67% agree and 29% oppose.

On toughening emission standards for power plants, 62% agree and 28% oppose.

These numbers aren’t just terrible for the GOP, they’re not healthy for our two-party system.

 

 

 

 

 

He’s Baaaack, But Was It Enough?

The President was certainly back last night, and I hope, but am not sure, that it was enough.

Mitt helped the Prez by not seeming presidential himself.  He seemed more like a very rich, entitled, spoiled, impatient, looking-down-on-us peons CEO.  Appearing like a guy used to being in charge and getting your way doesn’t necessarily translate into looking like a commander in chief.  Mitt reminded me more of Donald Trump than Thomas Jefferson.

The President was extremely well-prepared,  crisp and fluent without being professorial, engaging and engaged.  He consistently did well, as when he called out Mitt on his past rejection of coal plants; when he explained that oil companies were sitting on their leases on public lands waiting for prices to rise; when he twice called out Mitt for his own low tax rate and called his tax plan “sketchy,” inevitably making us think of Mitt himself as “sketchy” and untrustworthy; when he explained that gas prices were so low when he took office because the economy was crashing and demand for oil was low.  The President really had an answer for everything.

The President called Mitt a liar, as on the auto bailout, without hurting himself.  By contrast, Mitt came across as rude to the President.

The President was effective going after Mitt both personally and on policy because Mitt helped him.  Obama sought to portray Mitt as an out-of-touch rich guy, and Mitt helped him by playing that role well.  The shoe definitely fit. Obama sought to portray Mitt as not having any answers other than tax cuts for the rich, and Mitt helped him by being vague and not explaining how he would create jobs, just claiming that he knew how.

The coup de grace obviously was the President’s 47% attack at the very end, which was powerful and effective.  He contrasted “debate Mitt” with Mitt “behind closed doors,” who has contempt for people on Social Security and veterans and active-duty service men and women and students.  There is no explaining away the 47% video.  When Mitt said he cared about 100% of us last night, his voice lacked the passion and conviction it had when he was dissing almost half of us in Boca Raton.  He gives himself away.

To me, Mitt was at his lowest when he claimed that Obama’s description of Mitt’s tax plan was “foreign.”  It was a bizarre word to use when you mean inaccurate, and it was intended to convey that Obama himself is “foreign.”  We’re back to Kenyan Muslim Socialist, we’re in birther, World Net Daily territory, which is beyond the pale of a presidential debate and beneath the dignity of a presidential candidate.  But Mitt really has no dignity, just ambition.

This debate would mean more if the first one hadn’t gone so badly for Obama, if he had been building on a strong first showing.  Mitt wasn’t as bad in this debate as Obama was in the first, he wasn’t a disaster.  I’m not sure he stumbled as much as Obama needed him to.  He certainly came across as more unlikable this time because things weren’t going his way, and he was facing a very different opponent.  It was easy for Mitt to be pleasant in the first debate when the President was doing so poorly.

The President wasn’t on a level field with Mitt last night, he was in a hole.  But he definitely put down his shovel and hopped on his ladder.  He has three weeks to keep climbing.

 

 

Quote of the Day

“[A]t this moment, President Obama’s chances of being re-elected look stronger than they have in months.  The Romney campaign seems to be coming off the tracks with no clear vision for how to get back on.

“Romney’s panicky, premature excoriation of the Obama administration over violence in the Middle East — a response that was factually flawed and widely panned — only served to shake the fragile faith of those who might be holding their noses to support him.  ‘Anybody but Obama’ used to be an effective rallying cry.  Lately, it’s been more like ‘anybody but Mitt.’

“On a side note, it is a poetic twist of fate that a Republican candidate’s crude response to irrational violence resulting from an anti-Muslim video could boost a president who nearly a third of Republicans irrationally claim is Muslim.”

Charles Blow, “Advantage, Obama,” NYT

The Worse Political Advice, Ever

David Brooks argues (“The Elevator Speech,” NYT) that Obama has to “define America’s most pressing challenge” on Thursday, and says he has “three clear options.”

The first option is global warming:

“But if this is really where Obama’s passion lies, he should go for it.

“He should vow to double down on green energy and green technology.  He could revive cap-and-trade legislation that would creat incentives for clean innovation.  He could propose a tax reform package that would substitute gasoline and energy consumption taxes for a piece of our current income taxes.  He could say that his No. 1 international priority will be to get a global warming treaty ratified by all the major nations.”

He could say all these things and then proceed to replicate George McGovern’s 1972 defeat.  Hell, Obama probably wouldn’t even carry Massachusetts.  Mitt could safely spend the rest of the campaign on his boat in New Hampshire while Ryan is off bow- and- arrow hunting.

So here is Brooks’ door number two, broken capitalism:

“Obama could go before the convention and say that there has been a giant failure at the heart of modern capitalism.  Even in good times,the wealth that modern capitalism generates is not being shared equitably.  Workers are not seeing the benefits of their own productivity gains.

“Obama could offer policies broad enough to address this monumental problem.  He could vow to strengthen unions.  He could vow to use federal funds to pay for 500,000 more teachers and two million more infrastructure jobs.  He could cap the mortgage interest deduction, cap social security benefits, raise taxes on the rich, raise taxes on capital gains and embrace other measures to redistribute money from those who are prospering tho those who are not.  He could crack down on out-sourcing and regulate trade.  He could throw himself behind a new industrial policy to create manufacturing jobs.

“This agenda wouldn’t appeal to moderates, or people like me, but it’s huge, it’s serious and it would highlight a real problem.”  Emphasis added.

So Brooks is supposedly giving Obama sincere advice for a speech that’s intended to attract moderates and admitting that his advice would repel moderates.  This speech would feed the socialist, anti-capitalist GOP smear.  Again, he’d lose, maybe not as big as with the global warming speech, but he’d lose.

Brooks’ third option is to embrace Simpson Bowles.  That’s the least suicidal of the three, but you can’t offer honest, real numbers when the other side is committed to lying, imaginary numbers.

Brooks concludes, “If Obama can’t tells us the big policy thing he wants to do, he doesn’t deserve a second term.”

If Obama were to listen to Brooks, deserving or not, he wouldn’t get a second term.  And I can state unequivocally that David Brooks no longer deserves a NYT op-ed column.

 

Ryan’s Urgent Need for Frank Luntz

Give me a break!

From “Ryan Says Requesting Stimulus Funds Was a Mistake,” Trip Gabriel, The Caucus, NYT:

“Representative Paul D. Ryan said on Thursday it was a mistake to have requested funds in 2009 from the federal stimulus bill after voting against it.

“Mr. Ryan earlier denied asking for money from the $787 billion stimulus on behalf of companies in his Wisconsin district, contradicting a report by the Boston Globe on Tuesday that he wrote to the federal Energy Department requesting funds for two companies to develop so-called green jobs.

“’No, I never asked for stimulus,’ Mr. Ryan said in an interview with WCPO-TV in Cincinnati, which was broadcast Thursday. Mr. Ryan, along with Mitt Romney,…have vociferously denounced the stimulus as an example of President Obama’s failure to restore the economy. The Congressional Budget Office said the stimulus increased employment by 1.3 million to 3.3 million people.

“Mr. Ryan said in the television interview that he did not recall writing the letters. Later, his office issued a statement that he had since checked into the letters. ‘They were treated as constituent service requests in the same way matters involving Social Security or Veterans Affairs are handled,’ he said in the statement. ‘This is why I didn’t recall the letters earlier. But they should have been handled differently, and I take responsibility for that. Regardless, it’s clear that the Obama stimulus did nothing to stimulate the economy, and now the President is asking to do it all over again.’’’

The newest pathetic GOP euphemism —  It’s not stimulus money, it’s constituent service.  Yeah, that’ll work.  Paging Frank Luntz…

If Ryan keeps twisting in the wind like this, he’ll be generating some energy, just not for the GOP ticket.

Obama Zings Mitt on Seamus

“Obama Needles Romney on Dog Seamus,” Igor Bobic, Talking Points Memo:

“President Obama dinged Mitt Romney at a campaign stop in Iowa today for the oft-told story about the old Romney family dog, Seamus, and his journey strapped to the roof of a car….

“In his speech, Obama criticized Romney for his opposition to wind energy in which the governor previously said that ‘you can’t drive a car with a windmill on it.’

“‘I don’t know if he’s actually tried that,” Obama said jokingly. ‘I know he’s had other things on his car.'”

Quote of the Day

 

“Gov. Romney and the Republicans who run Congress believe that if you simply take away regulations and cut taxes by trillions of dollars, the market will solve all of our problems on its own — If you agree with that, you should vote for them and I promise you they will take us in that direction. I believe we need a plan for better education and training and for energy independence, rebuilding our infrastructure, for a tax code that creates jobs in America and pays down our debt in a way that’s balanced. I have that plan, they don’t. And if you agree with me, if you believe this economy grows best when everybody gets a fair shot, and everybody does their fair share, and everybody plays by the same set of rules, then I ask you to stand with me for a second term as president.”  President Obama, speaking in Cleveland, Ohio

Finally, a Criminal Charge in the BP Oil Spill

But it’s just an engineer, Kurt Mix, charged with obstruction of justice for deleting text messages about what was really going on.  While BP was publicly estimating the flow rate as 5,000 BOPD (barrels of oil per day), Mix was saying it exceeded 15,000.

But until top executives actually go to prison, nothing will change.  Fines, shmines.