P.M. Carpenter

Rat 1, formerly of the USS Christie, splashes overboard

Well that was fast.

The NY Times reports that David Wildstein, in a letter released by his lawyer, "contests the accuracy of various statements that [Gov. Christie] made about him and he can prove the inaccuracy of some," and asserts that "evidence exists as well tying Mr. Christie to having knowledge of the lane closures ... contrary to what the governor stated publicly in a two-hour press conference."

To me, it's also anticlimactic. Exciting, but anticlimactic nonetheless.

Christie's been a dead-wannabe-walking since Bridget Kelly's mysterious instructions and Wildstein's seemingly miraculous comprehension of them came to light. I have since followed major pundits' deep and profound speculations about Christie's political future with no little amusement, in that the number of believable outcomes had already been narrowed to one. His future was toast.

The man was swimming in a veritable ocean of seaminess, corruption and petty spite. To entertain anything but his direct participation in it seemed the folly of the decade, akin to wondering if Nixon was perhaps innocent. Indeed I ceased writing or even thinking about Christie, his guilt being so impressively obvious. 

As noted, to me he was but a dead-wannabe-walking. Such political corpses don't hold my interest.  

 

GOP ignorance. It's an old tradition.

I recently mentioned having just read Ken Galbraith's memoirs, A Life in Our Times (my reading list is a bit backed up; he wrote them 33 years ago), and today's news of Republicans' all too familiar punting on immigration reform reminded me of his thoughts on the general topic:

The practical evidence on its effect is overwhelming: West Germany, Israel, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Miami and the Punjab of India have all had a large inflow of migrants since World War II. These areas are the economic success stories of this era. That such migrants, extensively selected by themselves for their initiative and by disaster for their strength, resource and ability to survive, should make a powerful contribution to economic development is hardly surprising. Many are made strong by the very act of migration intself. Had they remained at home in peace, they would have lived out their lives in the comfortable mental and physical lassitude that is praised as happiness and contentment.

Galbraith's was not a "liberal" view; it was merely a sober appreciation of non-ideological socioeconomics supported by empirical facts. Many conservatives of Galbraith's era still adhered to such quaintness of thought, yet conservatism's Southern surge was even then in the making--a surge which is, by now, complete. And that regional sweep explains much about Republicans' anti-immigration obsession. It's Old South.

Increasingly throughout the 19th century and well into the 20th, white Southerners were model citizens of rank xenophobia. They first possessed their "peculiar institution" of slavery, which they traded in for Jim Crow--and neither, in their retro-opinion, which they believed was sanctioned by God, was ever meant to be contaminated by naysaying, external opinion. This conceit Southerners cultivated by culturally isolating themselves; even, in the antebellum era, to the radical extent of censoring the U.S. mails. Abolitionist opinion was threatening to the South's white way, hence Southern authorities simply cut it off.

In time, fear of the new became tradition. Outsiders in general were viewed with suspicion and dread, reactionary government became embedded, economic and especially industrial development was something only the North foolishly prized, socioeconomic desolation and widespread disease were the norm for blacks and whites, and thus the South wrapped itself in the "comfortable mental and physical lassitude that [it insisted on praising] as happiness and contentment." Foreigners and, it hardly requires adding, foreigners of color needed not apply.

There have over the decades emerged many New Souths: a move from the agrarian alone, non-unionized industrialization, improved racial cooperation, centers of actual higher learning and the like. Yet some of the old ways persist. And those ways, and their backward voices, are represented in Congress by today's utterly backward Republican Party--which still thinks the oppressive Old South was a white man's paradise.

No surprise the party resents empirical facts, on immigration and anything else.

 

Only David Brooks could write this

The inimitable David Brooks, on the whys of political dysfunction and government's crushing stagnation:

We now have one liberal tradition that believes in using government to enhance equality. We have another conservative tradition that believes in limiting government to enhance freedom. These two traditions have fought to a standstill and prevented Obama from passing much domestic legislation of late.

And here I thought unilateral obstructionism accounted for the paucity of legislation of late ... which is a delicate way of saying: since January 2011, when the House Republican majority began obstructing all legislation in concert with Senate Republicans' minority obstructions.

Turns out, it was instead the clash of ideological traditions. Even more briefly: the "both sides" alibi.

From there Brooks proceeds to a bizarre discussion of Obama's need to revive Whiggery, which was modern liberalism's 19th-century activist-government precursor in the pursuit of equality enhancement, which Brooks just got through telling us is at least half responsible for bringing this government to a ghastly standstill.

It's all very confusing, or, rather, confused. But it's also a quite nifty argument ready to be embraced, if one is indifferent to historical integrity, contemporary reality, and logic.  

 

A GOP "retreat"--for this?

Oh how the flighty have fallen. Those once-rowdy House Republicans, backed by seething mobs of real Americans eager to battle the nation's socialist titans, have settled, it seems, on the safety of institutional inertia and group invisibility. 

Today's their third cloistered day at a Maryland resort, where they're engaged in that most problematic of all intellectual exercises: mindless circumspection. What should they do, what should they do, whatever should they do in 2014? The answers are emerging. Duck, and nothing.

The most pressing issue is immigration reform. Damn, on this, they'd sure like to do something. And they would do something, they say, if it weren't for the difficulties imposed on their authoritarian personalities by a bicameral legislature and separate chief executive. "Members took turns expressing their distrust of President Obama and Senate Democrats as negotiating partners," reports the NY Times. This mentality in part reflects conservatives' belief that negotiations should be held only with those who agree with them entirely; mostly, though, it's an excuse to do nothing.

Want proof? Five paragraphs later in the Times story, there's this: On the matter of the debt ceiling, "House Republicans urged the president and the Senate"--the intolerable, distrusted ones--"to move first."

On Obamacare, House Republicans have been sworn to our salvation for five years now. Well, you can make that six, for once again they've decided to pass on proposing any alternative, since that, they fear, would only "open a line of Democratic attack that would deflect from what they see as the failings of the president’s health care law." Yet that passage's predicate deflects from Republicans' underlying concern: they simply lack an attackable alternative. Constructive legislation ain't their department. Fuck it.

And then there's tax reform, something else they demagogically hail but ponderously evade. "House leaders [are] worried about the political cost of taking on popular tax breaks." You do recall, I presume, when the stouthearted class of 2010 laughed in the face of political costs.

You know what? I liked them better when they were unhinged anarchists--and dying to prove it, double entendre intended.  

 

A kinder, gentler reign of terror

From the most God-loving state in the union comes this report: "Up to 40 kids at Uintah Elementary in Salt Lake City picked up their lunches Tuesday, then watched as the meals were taken and thrown away because of outstanding balances on their accounts."

Tough love, I guess.

But not to worry. The school district's massively overpaid administrators issued a Facebook notice that "This situation could have and should have been handled in a different manner."

Better yet, they're investigating "this situation"--rather than summarily sacking the fascist twit who was capable of trashing children's school lunches.

What, might their investigation show that in this situation, child brutality was justified?

 

The most idiotic quote ever

I found it. The most idiotic quote ever.

"I think that with Occupy Wall Street there was a sense of the heat getting turned up and a feeling of vilification and potential danger," said Jamie Traeger-Muney, a psychologist whose Wealth Legacy Group focuses on counseling the affluent. "There is a worry among our clients that they are being judged and people are making assumptions about who they are based on their wealth."

 

Sullivan's excellent secretarial idea

Sullivan muses that "If"--I believe he means when--"Hillary wins, Bill should be secretary of state. A formal role on the world stage is far preferable to an informal role on the inside fucking everything up."

I quite agree. And she probably would, were it not for the Federal Anti-Nepotism statute of 1967, which bans such eminently sensible acts as a chief executive appointing whomever he or she deems best suited for the executive's trust and convenience.

Jack Kennedy's selection of his brother as U.S. attorney general was initially met with derision by what was then the loyal opposition--as well as amusement by Jack; it would be good legal training for inexperienced Bobby, he joked--yet among all of Kennedy's cabinet appointments, this was probably the wisest. The president could have total confidence in his brother's advice as selfless; he never had to worry about Bobby's jockeying incompatibly for power either in the next administration or as the next administration. The two were one, as Hillary and Bill would be.

Such wisdom is now forbidden. Congress has sterilized presidential cabinets to the point of virtuous banality and tortured the confirmation process to a point that, by rights, should arouse Geneva's suspicions.

So, another Secretary of State Clinton? Excellent idea. Which is why it won't work.

 

My Grimm prospect

In what, in all probability, is a sign of my moral bankruptcy, I must say I'm bewildered by all the outrage over Rep. Michael Grimm's threat to de-balconize, so to speak, a young reporter (who lacked the acute awareness to sensibly counter: "Hey, motherfucker, you want a piece of me?").

That's how guys talk--well, most guys, anyway--and in political operations such talk is pretty much synonymous with a morning hello. In those environs, I might add, verbal overkill, manly bravado and monstrous machismo are scarcely exclusive to my gender. Sounding tough is an indispensable element of operational competence. It gets to be habit-forming.

At any rate Grimm issued the obligatory standing-strong who cares? followed by the obligatory on-second-thought I do. So next up, a beer-lunch summit and good cheer by all.

Meanwhile, Grimm's male-insensitivity ratings are now surely sky high, which means his bully-loving base will love and admire him more than ever. One can find outrage in all that, but I tend to see just another day.

 

Please, God, beg the GOP to "unify"

It's nearly that most wonderful time of the year, that now customary annual event, that vastly anticipated occasion when congressional Republicans threaten pull the pin on the economic grenade in their pocket, thereby decimating only the public-opinion gains they had made in the preceding months.

Yes, it's almost debt-ceiling time--February's end, says Treasury--thus it's once again time for the GOP to heave what they regard as the witless ballast of political prudence over the side and commence with yet another imbecile act of self-injurious, economic extortion.

And God bless 'em, it is that which they plot, as I write:  

House Republicans are meeting Thursday ... to map out their legislative strategy for the year, but they face a near-term decision that could dictate everything else that follows--what to do with the debt ceiling....

[A] number of Republicans, including House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, have said there will have to be some conditions placed on any increase in the debt ceiling in order to win enough votes to pass the House.

The Wall Street Journal is egging them on.

[I]f the GOP can unify behind a proposal that raises or suspends the debt ceiling and makes some sort of budget or policy change that voters think is reasonable, then Democrats will quickly find themselves on the hot seat with little time to spare.

The Journal's seating arrangement seems to be a trifle confused. But of course that observation assumes that Democrats first make it clear to voters that any extortion of apocalyptic proportions is, in a sendup to understatement, unreasonable.

And there's the rub--the only rub, yet always the rub. Effective Democratic clarity would lead those voters to the ineluctable and singular conclusion that House Republicans are unshakably mad--and should, with a thundering permanence in November, be put out of our misery. Such clarity, however, delivered with a necessarily savage repetition, eludes the moderates.     

 

Politico giveth and taketh away

Politico's top headline this morning is as striking as it is unsettling: "Democrats: Cede the House to save the Senate."

The story's lede confirms this jarring state of affairs:

With Democrats’ grasp on the Senate increasingly tenuous--and the House all but beyond reach--some top party donors and strategists are moving to do something in the midterm election as painful as it is coldblooded: Admit the House can’t be won and go all in to save the Senate.

Much of the following text then mitigates the boldness of both headline and lede, and the story eventually ends with:

Many Democratic donors ... have no intention of doing that.

So there you have it. Democratic donors are ceding the House, except for the many Democratic donors who are not. Got it?

 

Obama's tragedy of conventional political wisdom

I don't wish to pick on Jonathan Chait, whose writing I always admire and whose analysis I usually find flawless. But his post-SOTU piece picks up in casual error where his pre-SOTU piece left off, and I can't let it silently pass. Here's Chait's gist:  

President Obama devoted his State of the Union address to the economy for a simple reason: Americans think he needs to spend more time talking about the economy. They think that because they lack a detailed understanding of the situation in Washington. Obama’s speech was an extended attempt to humor their naivete.

A completely honest Obama speech about the economy would concede that he is nearly helpless to spur economic growth given the need to obtain consent from a Congressional party whose political interest lies in thwarting it. But he would be an idiot to say that. Americans tend to hold Obama accountable even for the actions of Congressional Republicans that lie beyond his control....

Obama’s greatest political puzzle, for the entire duration of his presidency, has been the ability of conservatives in Congress to block recovery proposals while foisting the blame for the consequences onto him. He’s tried to crack this many times, with little success. The main solution available to him is for the economy to recover without much help from Washington. In the meantime, his best course of action is simply to talk about plans to help the economy as much as he can.

Where to start. How about with Americans' "lack [of] a detailed understanding of the situation in Washington"? They don't need one. For the situation is witheringly simple, straightforward and unidimensional: Republicans are screwing Obama and everyone else but themselves.

That's the kind of "complete honesty" from the president that is most needed. Yes, some progress was made in economic recovery via the early stimulus package, which was monolithically opposed by Republicans, and some progress persists due to the natural upswings of a post-recessionary recovery. But drags on that recovery (and Chait reviews all of this) have been maliciously imposed by Republican pols feathering their little red nests, and they don't give a damn how many Americans it hurts. In fact, others' pain makes their day. Just an honest observation.   

I note with interest that "Obama's greatest political puzzle" is the one Republicans long ago solved for themselves. There's no magic involved here; they have rather simply pounded away at Obama's weak recovery. Franklin Roosevelt was confronted with the selfsame malicious negativity and hypocritical hogwash, yet he more or less sustained public approval by never letting the electorate forget just who the problem-solvers were--and who the problem-creators were. FDR delighted in such reminders, as did the populace.

Old-fashioned, old-school politics. That's what FDR practiced. And it worked. In any sport, one must remember the fundamentals.

Yet the only fundamental now fashionable among many of Obama's more ardent defenders is that the most powerful man on earth--a man with the world's largest megaphone and a stable of speechwriters and a veritable army of political hitmen at his disposal--is somehow helpless against a scattering of ... Louie Gohmerts. 

I happen to be one of Obama's more ardent defenders myself. But I don't buy into the above sort of victimhood. Obama has nine months to scrap and fight and be "completely honest" with every potential voter who doesn't yet comprehend "the situation in Washington." It's that, or the end of his presidency.

This is his call, not the GOP's. 

 

Cathy McMorris Rodgers' transcendental Republican response

I was expecting bad, but not that bad.

 

I also rarely tweet, but Cathy McMorris Rodgers' really bad Republican response to the SOTU address last night compelled me, in medias res, to shriek in pain: "Rodgers is running a tight race with Rubio and Jindal for most insipid Republican Response ever. This is pathetic."

 

And you can't argue with that. Aside from Rodgers' peculiar compulsion to relate to 300 million hurting Americans her touching life story, comforted by a nearly $200,000 annual income via taxpayers, plus benies, the congresswoman launched into an even more peculiar string of abject enigmas, such as: 

 

Every day, we’re working to expand our economy, one manufacturing job, nursing degree and small business at a time. We have plans to improve our education and training systems so you have the choice to determine where your kids go to school.

 

Which means anywhere but a public one, I guess, although Rodgers left that hanging. Other than that, what Republican plans--either exactly or even nebulously--for an expanded economy and more jobs have been proposed by, you know, Republicans? What we have heard is their Hayekian-Paulian solution to economic slumps and unemployment, which is that the magical free market will sort things out. In time. Which, one supposes, is what Rodgers meant by one job "at a time," although a little clarity would have been nice. 

 

Nonetheless, Rodgers was undaunted:

 

As Republicans, we advance these plans every day because we believe in a government that trusts people and doesn’t limit where you finish because of where you started.

 

In fact you can be even prouder of where you finish, assuming it ain't the poorhouse, having overcome every dunderheaded obstacle thrown in your way, by Cathy McMorris Rodgers (et al).

 

Who, naturally, just had to revisit the evils of Obamacare: 

 

No, we shouldn’t go back to the way things were, but this law is not working. Republicans believe health care choices should be yours, not the government’s. And that whether you’re a boy with Down syndrome or a woman with breast cancer … you can find coverage and a doctor who will treat you.

 

Presto. Just like that. No need for fussing about any legislative guarantees that you'll "find coverage and a doctor who will treat you." You instead may either take Ms. Rodgers' word for it, or you can simply recall those pre-Obamacare days when coverage and care dropped gently on all, like the undiscriminating rain. 

 

 

The Icemen Cometh

... the title being a pluralization of the Eugene O'Neill play, whose Wikipedic plot summary, mutatis mutandis, reads: "The characters are are all GOP men, except for a handful of female crackpots, who are dead-end nihilists and who spend every possible moment seeking oblivion in each other's company and who drift without purpose from day to day, coming fully to life only during President Obama's annual visit to deliver the State of the Union."

A morality play it decidedly is not. There's no triumphant dénouement, no heartbroken revelations, no flashes of spiritual insight on any road to political recovery. These are undisguised dead-enders, whose epilogue, while still being written, is easily imagined.     

"We’re going to watch very closely, because there’s a Constitution that we all take an oath to, including him, and following the Constitution is the basis for House Republicans," said Speaker Boehner yesterday--presumably in search of some existentialist basis--about the president's amplified use of executive orders. "There are options that are available to us," he added.

One of them being, one supposes, an Article II, Section 4 remedy?

Granted, Boehner's ominous ambiguity was a far cry from calling for impeachment hearings. However the only identifiable "basis" of House Republicans' constitutionalism has been to ice this president in any way they can. Having altogether neutralized him on the legislative front, they've nothing left to stir the diseased passions of their radical base. Except ...

Assisting this cause yesterday was the utterly self-unaware chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, Xavier Becerra, who blurted: "[Obama is] working with Congress. He has said, 'Let’s pass the legislation that’s been introduced in the Senate and the House to pass the minimum wage.' But should he have to wait because of the intransigents?"

The short answer to that is, of course, an incontrovertible Yes. No doubt Becerra was contextually speaking of a pay boost for the federally contracted only, but he failed to frame his comment that way. Hence those who applauded the autocratic tendencies of a "unified executive" six years ago, but who have since converted to a dedicated Whiggism, will be quoting this seemingly monarchically inclined congressman for months to come. Thanks, Xavier.

Still, House Republicans require little but their own passionate delusions to strike up fresh rounds of deranged rabble-rousing. Proximate government shutdowns are now out, and ceiling collapses seem to have lost their nihilistic appeal. So ... impeachment, anyone? 

I wouldn't put it past them.

 

SOTU 2014

It was interesting, and telling, that among President Obama's long list of congressional actions he'd like to see this year--better job training, improved infrastructure, extended unemployment benefits, expanded pre-k education, immigration reform, equal pay for women, a decent minimum wage--his loudest and most sustained applause came in the House chamber (and doubtless throughout the country) when he barked at Republican members: Enough already with your ceaselessly cretinous votes to repeal Obamacare.

That is what American voters are hungriest for: this exceptionally intelligent president telling GOP morons to just knock it the fuck off; we've had it up to here with you clowns, so either grow up or get out of the way. The nation deeply desires to move on, to get serious, to get to work--yet you obstructionist baboons are crimping Americans' style.

This is not a complicated message. Briefly, Obama delivered it tonight. He should keep delivering it. It's a winner.

 

Attn: RedState. I think you forgot something.

From RedState.com, this is just a wonderful piece of condemnatory journalism. The writer is livid, livid I tell you, that Gov. John Kasich has justified Ohio's participation in the ACA's Medicaid expansion by arguing that it's merely a state effort "to get our money back here and [therefore] to be in a position to be able to help folks who live in the shadows."

Foul! cries the writer. Kasich is lying! And on this point, the writer does not shy away. To wit, 

* Kasich keeps misrepresenting ... the Obamacare Medicaid expansion.

* Kasich’s false talking points are far from garden-variety political spin.

* Kasich included the ... expansion in his budget plan last February, and has been lying about it ever since.

* [T]he Ohio Republican Party has worked to blacklist anyone who tries to hold Kasich accountable.

* Kasich has misled Ohioans about billions per year in taxpayer money.

* It’s impossible to argue that Gov. Kasich’s Obamacare deception has been inconsequential or unintentional.

* [T]he governor essentially has a pass to say whatever he chooses in service of a bigger welfare state.

* [H]is claims are ... easily refuted.

Well that's nice. But there's a problem, a bit of an oversight, here. The writer never refutes them. Not once. In any place. He just insists that Kasich is a lying dirtbag in league with ungodly socialists and the "left-leaning media." End of story.