Visual source: Newseum
The Republican attempt to hold disaster relief hostage isn't playing well in Peoria:
PEORIA — Rest assured, East Coast, Uncle Sam will be there for you in cleaning up. You may have to swap some other government services down the road for the immediate help, but hey, the most critical thing now is that your political leaders have arrived to do the math.
Earlier this week, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said on Fox News Channel that Congress would "find the money if there is a need" to assist ravaged local communities in the wake of the twin wallop of an earthquake and a hurricane, but that it would mean offsetting the price tag dollar for dollar "with appropriate savings or cost-cutting elsewhere."
You know, it goes without saying - which is why it should have been left unsaid - that the federal government has unprecedented budget challenges, that this is one more its leaders hadn't reckoned on, that "monies are not unlimited" and that it's probably going to require moving some dollars around. But with 41 people dead in 11 states as a result of Hurricane Irene as of this writing, $7 billion and counting in estimated property damage, nearly 3 million people still without power, homes and roads and businesses under water or swept away, don't you want a firefighter coming to your rescue right now rather than a bean counter to remind you the meter is running? Don't you want to hear from a sympathizer-in-chief rather than a scold-in-chief lecturing you about the foolishness of borrowing to buy that car when you should have been planning in advance for a loved one to get sick?
Yes, there is a class war going on, and The New York Times looks at how the GOP is leading the charge against the poor:
In a decade of frenzied tax-cutting for the rich, the Republican Party just happened to lower tax rates for the poor, as well. Now several of the party’s most prominent presidential candidates and lawmakers want to correct that oversight and raise taxes on the poor and the working class, while protecting the rich, of course.
These Republican leaders, who think nothing of widening tax loopholes for corporations and multimillion-dollar estates, are offended by the idea that people making less than $40,000 might benefit from the progressive tax code. They are infuriated by the earned income tax credit (the pride of Ronald Reagan), which has become the biggest and most effective antipoverty program by giving working families thousands of dollars a year in tax refunds. They scoff at continuing President Obama’s payroll tax cut, which is tilted toward low- and middle-income workers and expires in December.
Click through and read this editorial from the Detroit Free Press in its entirety:
To understand why the income gap separating the nation's wealthiest citizens from everyone else is growing, and why it will likely continue to do so, it's instructive to examine the dramatic changes underway in presidential campaign financing.[...]
The notion that [super] PACs operate independently of the candidates they seek to promote is a fiction founded on legal distinctions that would be laughable if they were not so cynically fraudulent.
The only practical difference between the candidates' campaign committees and the new dedicated super PACs is the lack of fund-raising limitations on the latter.
The net impact of such chicanery is to assure that the nation's elected representatives, like its financial assets, are in the pockets of an ever more exclusive minority of 21st Century plutocrats.
Michael Shear on the negative tone of the GOP presidential field:
As they reach for the sharpest contrast they can find with President Obama, the Republican presidential hopefuls are sounding anything but hopeful. On the trail, they are painting an increasingly gloomy picture of the nation they want to lead. [...]
In just about every speech they give, the Republican candidates are pushing a depressing message in the hopes that voters who agree will blame Mr. Obama and elect Republicans. [...]
But the strategy requires the presidential contenders to walk a fine line. Too much talk about gloom and doom could turn off voters who are tired of feeling worried. And some voters are already beginning to worry that the Republican candidates are “talking down” the economy even more.
Chris Cillizza adds:
The best (or worst) example of how malaise-as-strategy can backfire is President Jimmy Carter who delivered a famous/infamous speech in the summer of 1979 in which he acknowledged a “crisis of confidence” in America.
Ronald Reagan seized on that malaise message — worth noting that the word “malaise” never appeared in Carter’s speech — and cast himself as an optimist who believed the best times were still ahead for the country.
The trick then for Romney is to convince people he understands how hard it is out there for them and then pivot to a message that he is the person who can turn things around.
Dana Milbank argues that Rick Perry isn't a libertarian, he's a theocrat:
Yes, Perry is passionately anti-government, or at least anti-this-government. But the man who suddenly tops the Republican presidential polls is no libertarian. Rick Perry is a theocrat. [...]
The governor forecasts divine punishment for those who hold different political views. “Shall they stand before God and brag that they fought to scrub His glorious name from the nation’s pledge?” he asks. “Shall they seek His approval for attacking private organizations merely because these organizations proclaim His existence?” [...] Though it claims to be libertarian, it is remixing the religious right’s greatest hits.
Dick Polman analyzes the GOP reaction to the administration killing al Qaeda's second in command:
Perhaps you didn't hear about this. On Saturday, counter-terrorism officials announced that a drone attack had wasted the group's number two, the chief of international operations. Experts are saying that, on the significance scale, this new hit arguably ranks with the hit on Osama bin Laden - because number two man Atiyah abd al-Rahman was in charge of coordinating attacks on the U.S. and Europe, ferrying messages to the rank and file, and keeping all the far-flung affiliates in line. In short, al-Rahman was running al Qaeda. From his base in Pakistan, al-Rahman was, in the reported words of one American official, al Qaeda's "human Rolodex."
So how nice it would be, at least as a nonpartisan patriotic gesture, if the Republican presidential candidates would see fit to hail this news, to acknowledge that the strategy known as "leadership decapitation" is indeed succeeding as planned, to applaud the fact that the senior ranks of al Qaeda are being systematically shredded. But no. Instead, from the Republicans, we hear the sounds of silence. And it's hardly a mystery why this is so.
Basically, if Republicans can't tag Obama as a terrorist appeaser, or caricature him as a wuss committed to a "pre-9/11 mindset," or joke that he'd rather read terrorists their Miranda rights, they aren't programmed to say anything at all. Confronted with the factual truth that Obama's counter-terrorism strategy is demonstrably superior to the Bush-Cheney strategy (the latter featured an invasion of the wrong country under false pretenses, far from the al Qaeda epicenter, at a cost approaching $1 trillion), the Republicans are rendered mute.
That's a lot of TV time and consultant fees: Reuters reports that 2012 spending is estimated to reach $6 billion or more. In a must-read piece, Michael Becker and Brad Hooker at OpenSecrets.org break down the 2012 money:
A new Center for Responsive Politics analysis shows that former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has raised more than 25 percent of his funds this year from the finance, insurance and real estate sector. That's $4.65 million from the financial sector out of $18 million in overall receipts. Romney has also raised nearly 10 percent of his money from sources in the general business sector, according to the Center's research: $1.69 million. Furthermore, lawyers and lobbyists account for about $1 out of every $20 Romney has raised, coming in at $952,100 in donations through June 30, according to the Center's research. [...]
For his part, Obama has raised about $2.2 million from the finance, insurance and real estate sector, according to the Center's research. That's just 4.4 percent of the overall $48 million Obama has reported raising through June 30.
Eve Weinbaum and Rachel Roth examine the state of gender equality:
Last week marked the anniversary of female suffrage, a victory that took more than 70 years of political struggle to achieve. After women won the right to vote in 1920, socialist feminist Crystal Eastman observed that suffrage was an important first step but that what women really wanted was freedom. In an essay titled "Now We Can Begin," she laid out a plan toward this goal that is still relevant today.
Eastman outlined a four-point program: economic independence for women (including freedom to choose an occupation and equal pay), gender equality at home (raising "feminist sons" to share the responsibilities of family life), "voluntary motherhood" (reproductive freedom) and "motherhood endowment," or financial support for child-rearing and homemaking.
Since the 1920s, women have won many rights and opportunities in areas as diverse as higher education, professional sports and, in six states, same-sex marriage. But on the core priorities that Eastman identified, how far have we come?
In contrast to the above piece, file this under "apparently, there are never enough angles to write about in a presidential campaign":
Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann has made headlines in the media for lots of reasons — her victory in the Iowa straw poll, her joke that Hurricane Irene was God’s warning to Washington about federal spending, to name a few – but now it’s her hairstyle that’s causing a buzz.
The Cristophe salon in downtown Washington, D.C. — made famous for cutting the Clintons’ hair when they were in the White House — says some of its customers are requesting the Bachmann ‘do.
