Pufferfish

It Is What It Is

Ta-Nehisi Coates says he doesn't want to be the guy who patrols the net looking for right-wingers who say dumb shit about black people. But then what Byron York said was more than just insulting:

We spend a lot of time attacking people for playing the race-card--I've done my share. But what largely animates this idea that crying racism is an overused tactic (as opposed to say crying antisemitism) is this notion that among polite, thinking people, there are no employers of racism. Racism is the trade of the American savage--the man who flies the Confederate flag,  has an undiscovered dead dog under the porch, and lives in West Virginia. This man doesn't walk among the civilized...

We live in a country that may well be offended by racism, but it's equally offended that anyone might actually charge as much.

This has been the white man's irrational burden for a long time. And a favorite past-time of Andrew Breitbart's pathological condition, which he expressed eloquently a couple weeks ago on Real Time with Bill Maher when he said "the worst thing you can be called in this country is a racist." Oh, the victimization. But as Breitbart undoubtedly knows, whether he'd ever admit it, for something to be "racist" doesn't inherently mean that it must also be plainly vulgar. The most divisive racism is that which can be readily defended and spun to protect the delicate sensibilities of the perpetrator of the offense.

That attitude has been coddled and nurtured by the GOP. If Republicans aren't bombing the crap out of something, cutting a tax or fear-mongering Americans along ethnic, racial and sexual divisions, then they're at a total loss and quickly angle to return the conversation to their turf. York's column is an ugly reminder. And it's a big reason the GOP is in the spot its in. Not only are younger generations progressing past old fault lines  but "black, Hispanic and Asian voters made up nearly 24 percent of the voters, compared with about 12 percent in 1988." And that number is only getting bigger.

So the GOP has two choices: it can continue to fight a losing battle of division or it can start embracing tolerance. The short-term answer is that they're going defiantly, suicidally with Option B. Which now involves a re-branding effort led by the party's recently crushed presidential nominee and failed leader's brother And then there's Ms. California being used as a botoxed wedge. What we have now is a party that operates like a cult:

Most political parties exist to represent some part of public opinion. But today’s GOP drives away any part of the public that doesn’t represent its opinion.

In many ways, IMO, the Republican Party is acting like an apocalyptic cult — a small number of true believers waiting for some Big Cataclysmic Event that’s going to change everything, to their advantage. For that reason, present reality doesn’t interest them, because present reality is just a temporary aberration (which it may be, but not in the way they think). Thus, movement conservatives brush off opinion polls that show their positions to be wildly unpopular. They don’t need to worry about election losses, shrinking party membership, an aging political base, or senior senators who jump ship. They don’t need to change with the times. They’ll be vindicated when the Mother Ship arrives. You’ll see.

And they must truly believe in the Event, because they’re betting everything on it. In 2000 they still were shrewd enough to market Dubya as a moderate — a “compassionate conservative” who liked to be photographed surrounded by smiling black children. Now they aren’t even pretending to make adjustments to political reality.

With the National Council for a New America coming to a state fair near you, let the pretending commence.

It Was The Hedge Funds

The headline coming from President Obama's speech about Chrysler is not what we should be talking about. Yeah, the fact that Chrysler was forced into bankruptcy is big and the announcement that a deal had been cut with Fiat, "that would give one of America's most storied automakers a new lease on life," expected. But bankruptcy proceedings are murky and often lead to unexpected results, including liquidation if things don’t go right. Of more immediate significance was Obama’s broadside of the hedge funds that refused to accept the government's offer on Chrysler's debt. If they had said yes, a deal could have been reached to avoid bankruptcy. But the hedge funds wanted more tax payer money than the administration was willing to give. (There's also rumors that the hedge funds bought insurance on the Chrysler's debt that would pay out more if the company went into bankruptcy than what the government was offering.)

In his speech Obama gave credit to all interested parties including the United Auto Workers, who had agreed to major cuts, Chrysler's management, who was on board with whatever it took and Chrysler's biggest lenders, led by J. P. Morgan, that had agreed to take a loss on up to one-third of the obligations. Then Obama turned and aimed his 65 percent approval rating:

"But while many stakeholders made sacrifices, some did not. In particular, a group of investment firms and hedge fund that hoped to hold out for a taxpayer funded bailout. I don't stand with them. I stand with Chrysler's employees, management, and suppliers. I don't with stand with those who held out when everybody else made sacrifices."

It was time to pick a side. Obama did. And he found an enemy in the hedge funds. Here’s Yves Smith’s reaction:

But the banksters are eagerly, shamelessly, and openly harvesting their pound of flesh from financially stressed average taxpayers, and setting off a chain reaction in the auto industry which has the very real risk of creating even larger scale unemployment than the economy already faces. It's reckless, utterly irresponsible, over-the-top greed.

Obama just made his first hard, public move against bankers. We’ll see how the public reacts. Damn these are interesting times.

-- Update --

Yglesias:

I suppose that, politically, it may have been necessary to go through the motions of showing that it wasn’t possible to get all the concessions needed short of bankruptcy.

That's exactly what I've heard. Obama's folks know what they have to do. They also know they can't look like they're in a rush to do it. Especially when just about everyone needs a bailout. The policits demands a slow play. Without that, there's no play to make.

About Last Night

While I've read many bloggers griping that Obama's presser was boring, I don't share that view. In fact, Obama made some news that should be getting more buzz today:

Obama flatly stated that waterboarding -- which Bush officials acknowledged that they ordered -- constitutes "torture."  That means that Obama is currently and simultaneously advocating these positions:

* Bush officials ordered torture.

* Torture is a crime.

* Nobody is above the law.

Obama also, rather deftly, cited Churchill as part of his rationale against torture, a move aimed at those on the right who idolize the tough talk of a national security hawk. Anyway, the math he laid out is pretty straight forward. And now he has provided ammo and cover to those at DOJ who have to make the call.

Also, check out this exchange Jon Stewart had with torture denier Cliff May. Cliff is trying to say that because the memos were of such fine legal work, the act of torture was never actually torture. Because the memos said they weren't torture:

What ever. I am so sick of these people. My uncle declared the other day that we should not prosecute torture because it would “tear the country apart”, and he was confident that America would never torture again. If prosecuting torture would ‘tear the country apart’, that pretty much takes for granted that a lot of people think that America should use torture.

Making it more likely to happen again.

Who Congress Works For

Earlier this week Senator Dick Durbin committed a classic Kinsley's gaffe; which is to say that he said something blatantly true that people won't like to hear. During a radio interview Durbin muttered that "the banks -- hard to believe in a time when we're facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created -- are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place."  One might think that the blunt acknowledgment that the same banks that caused the financial crisis "own" the U.S. Congress would be a major headline. But it just so happens to have come on the same week of the swine flu mania and Creed's announcement that they were getting back together for a summer tour (God save us).

When looking around the capitol it's actually tough not to find a Democratic congressman intertwined with the banks. Just follow the money. Last month Jane Hamshire pointed out that Senator Evan Bayh's uncomfortable cronyism very likely cost him a shot at the vice presidency:

Bayh's little "lobbyist problem" is considered by many to be what tanked his Vice Presidential aspirations. His wife Susan earns about $837,000 a year serving on seven corporate boards, among them Wellpoint, a health insurance company for which Bayh helped secure a $24.7 million dollar grant. She's on the board of ETrade, even as Bayh is on the Senate Finance Committee.

Bayh wants people to believe he's a "moderate" who sits in the "center."

Center of K Street, maybe.

But the larger point is that this was a conscious decision made by the Democrats during the 90s. They were sick of getting the crap kicked out of them by Wall St. donations flowing directly to GOP coffers. They wanted to even the playing field when it came to fund-raising. And so many played ball. What's so stupifying is the GOP's recent demonization of the Democrats as socialist threats to the status quo. No, over the last 15 years we've seen the exact opposite, with liberals humping the leg of New York bankers. Which is yet another reason why the GOP's foundation is so weak. If the Democratic Party can effectively neutralize the GOP's Wall St. base then all that's left for Republicans are Nascar enthusiasts and civil war reenactors.

Add that to the reason Obama must tip-toe around the banks. Dems on the Hill won't necessarily have his back.

The First Hundo

Because the 100 days metric is a Hallmark Holiday for the media with little purpose other than to give columnists something to write and feel important about while handing out grades (or remind people that Obama's black), I've been resistant to play along. But Time's Joe Klein provides a decent overview that's worth mentioning. Klein aptly describes the first few months as "a radical change of course not just from his predecessor, not just from the 30-year Reagan era but also from the quick-fix, sugar-rush, attention-deficit society of the postmodern age." What's remarkable to this point isn't his legislative accomplishments. Given the margins to work with in both houses, getting some bills passed was a feat even Sarah Palin could have navigated. What's remarkable is that Obama's managed to keep his approval rating exceptionally high despite the legislative accomplishments, which tend to draw enemies and engender buyer's remorse from the public. The law of recent presidential American politics says the more you get done the lower your poll numbers. But Obama's proven the exception to the rule. Much of that credit has to go to Obama's predecessor, who not only greatly damaged the country but also severely dented the reputation of his own party. Above all else, Americans want competence from their president. George W. Bush shredded that facade. That Obama appears to be knowledgeable, engaged and, well, capable, goes a long way after eight years of ignorant malice.

Also, there's his current foes. The GOP is the gift that keeps on giving. Here's a recap of their first 100 days under Obama rule:

Game On

Apparently the political pressure applied to the Spanish judge in the hope of forcing him to drop the case against the Bush Six didn't have the desired effect:

Baltasar Garzón is Spain’s best known judge. He’s also as determined a criminal investigator as can be found anywhere, and not one who cares much for the efforts of politicians to manipulate his work. So those who know him can hardly be surprised by his response to the Zapatero government’s effort to shut down his examination of Bush-era torture policies and the lawyers who brought them about. Today a thunderbolt out of Madrid: the case against the Bush torture lawyers moves into the formal criminal investigative phase, and Garzón is focusing on the documents that the Justice Department just released. A “systematic program for torture,” he calls it.

Indictments next? Well, one would assume. When it comes to the Bush Six there really isn't a lot to prove. Waterboarding is recognized as torture and they're on record as having authorized it. Take out the politics and there isn't a whole lot to litigate. But there's plenty to investigate. We need to know everything that was done illegally in the name of freedom and democracy. And so, for now, it has fallen to the rest of the world to defend and uphold the values Americans have long celebrated themselves for espousing. Hopefully, Obama's Justice Department will take Spain up on its offer:

Spanish lawyers close to the case tell me that under applicable Spanish law, the Obama administration has the power to bring the proceedings in Spain against former Bush administration officials to a standstill. “All it has to do is launch its own criminal investigation through the Justice Department,” said one lawyer working on the case, “that would immediately stop the case in Spain.”

One more thought. This "debate" has managed to make it necessary to argue what should be a given: why we don't torture.

I don't care about the Geneva Conventions or U.S. law.  I don't care about the difference between torture and "harsh treatment."  I don't care about the difference between uniformed combatants and terrorists.  I don't care whether it "works."  I oppose torture regardless of the current state of the law; I oppose even moderate abuse of helpless detainees; I oppose abuse of criminal suspects and religious heretics as much as I oppose it during wartime; and I oppose it even if it produces useful information.

The whole point of civilization is as much moral advancement as it is physical and technological advancement.  But that moral progress comes slowly and very, very tenuously.  In the United States alone, it took centuries to decide that slavery was evil, that children shouldn't be allowed to work 12-hour days on power looms, and that police shouldn't be allowed to beat confessions out of suspects.

On other things there's no consensus yet.  Like it or not, we still make war, and so does the rest of the world.  But at least until recently, there was a consensus that torture is wrong.  Full stop.  It was the practice of tyrants and barbarians.  But like all moral progress, the consensus on torture is tenuous, and the only way to hold on to it — the only way to expand it — is by insisting absolutely and without exception that we not allow ourselves to backslide.  Human nature being what it is — savage, vengeful, and tribal — the temptations are just too great.  Small exceptions will inevitably grow into big ones, big ones into routine ones, and the progress of centuries is undone in an eyeblink.

No torure. No qualifier. It is beneath us.

Nobody Left To Negotiate With

If not for the swine flu, the Republicans would still be delaying. Yglesias reacts to the confirmation of former Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius as Obama's secretary of Health and Human Services:

It seems to me that if you can only get 65 votes for what should be an uncontroversial HHS appointment, then the odds of a broad bipartisan coalition for big picture health care reform are not so good.

....The prevailing spirit within the GOP is clearly that Obama is a very bad president and so they should vote “no” on his initiatives. Which is fine. But it means that if Obama wants to deliver on his campaign pledges, he needs to use every legal means at his disposal to just pass things over the objections of the minority that opposes him.

Sure, demonizing public officials like Sebelius makes for a nice fundraising opportunity, so it's perhaps a bit understandable why the GOP would go out of its way to try and stop what should be a routine appointment. In the end, though, the GOP never actually stood a chance of forcing Obama to nominate a pro-lifer to HHS. Yet almost the entire Republican caucus voted against her, which leads one to figure (especially after the stimulus nonsense) they don't have a desire to work with Obama at even the most basic level. Everyone who would be open to that idea pretty much already resides in the Democratic Party.

The GOP right now serves only one purpose: showing complete loyalty to an unhinged base that is far from the mainstream.Trying to work with the president appears to be a non-starter. Anyone who doesn't think Obama is secretly trying to get Al-Qaeda to strike inside America is open for expulsion. And being a GOPer means residing in the same party as a prominent elected official who would openly question, incorrectly, why the swine flew breaks out only when Democrats are president. There's a pandemic right now and it's within the GOP.

-- Update --

Also:

President Barack Obama's Democratic allies in the House have passed a $3.4 trillion budget outline that will help him pass health care reform later in the year.

Not a single Republican backed the plan, which passed by a 233-193 vote. It predicts deficits peaking at $1.7 trillion this year, dropping to $523 billion after five years.

The Confederate Jesus Party Loses Another

As ever, great stuff from Wolcott:

The iron-girder he-men of the conservative blogosphere have greeted former Republican Senator from Pennsylvania Arlen Specter’s defection to the Democrats with whiskery hoots of “good riddance/get lost/don’t let the door hit your withered buttocks on the way out” and similar pleasantries. Many of them appear defiantly resigned to the Republican Party becoming a regional bastion of true believers, the Branch Davidian compound of the Confederate Jesus. To those, however, who still share the same sky as those in the real world and think that the best escape route out of minority status and possible extinction is to win elections (crazy, I know), the Specter defection is a disaster.

Specter's switch is a bookend. Back in the halcyon Reagan years he joined the GOP in a move to further his political ambitions. The guy is nothing if not predictable. He was a Republican by opportunism and is again a Democrat by opportunism. He's a political hack. And his career arch follows the narrative of the GOP, which has gone from dominant to dormant. From sunrise (or morning in America) to sunset. Politico's Ben Smith writes that "Specter’s departure also brings two species of Republicans that much closer to extinction: He is the last Jewish Republican in the Senate and one of the last of the liberal big-city Republicans, both lines that trace their pedigree to Sen. Jacob Javits of New York."

The message from Specter is clear: The GOP isn't what it used to be. In quick succession Democrats have won the first special election (the NY-20) and now they’ve picked up a party switch. It’s still early, but Obama is building an aura of success. Best of luck to Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich in stopping it.

Department Of Redundancy Department

Duh:

Regulators have told Bank of America Corp. and Citigroup Inc. that the banks may need to raise more capital based on early results of the government's so-called stress tests of lenders, according to people familiar with the situation.

The working assumption from the start has been that these two are in big trouble. The news is that there is no news. After all the pomp and circumstance, we are where we started, with banks that are too big to fail needing lots more tax dollars to survive.

The next step on the Tim Geithner-approved check list is to give these guys six months to try and raise enough capital from private sources before the government is forced to intervene. Given the way the economy continues to shrink that amounts to completing a Hail Mary pass. It's not impossible, but it sure as hell isn't likely. The problem remains that the longer we wait the more damage will be done to the economy. Critics like DeLong and Krugman would like to see an immediate move by the Obama folks with the banks pulled into a government-organized bankruptcy and chopped up into a million little pieces. Easier said than done.

This idea from Charles Hugh Smith caught my eye. Basically if you don't want to think Obama's a Wall St. lacky then it's possible he's cunning enough to give the bankers enough rope to hang themselves:

If you set out to gut the political power of the banker/financial Plutocracy which holds Congress on a tight leash, this is the only way to do so: goadthe public to rise up with such fury that they cannot be denied, lest every politico who seeks to protect the status quo be swept aside in the next election, regardless of party, age, religion or any other bastion of "voter support" they were counting on to save their bacon from an aroused public's righteous wrath.

If Obama had refused to support the bailout, the screams that he was "destroying the foundation of the U.S. economy and our way of life" would have been ceaseless and deafening, for a stunned and stupefied public had failed to process what was actually happening beneath the MSM propaganda about "saving the banking system to save the nation."

Obama can now say, "I did everything you wanted." Is it a carefully craft Secret Plan or merely the fumbling results of a status quo politico? Either way, it's brilliant because it's the only possible pathway to a future not dominated by trickery, fraud, collusion, obscurity, propaganda and the looting of what's left of the U.S. Treasury and economy.

I'm very much open to this argument. Time will tell.

Come On Down!

The going sure does get weird when a party switch is involved. Suddenly knives are sheathed and sworn enemies become proud brothers in arms. Meh. Anyone selling this matters because of the magical 60 vote plateau Democrats are on the cusp of reaching in the senate isn't dealing in reality. Not when you have senators like Ben Nelson and Evan Bayh looking for any opportunity to hold themselves up as "serious" elected officials seeking to maintain a "moderate" posture. In fact, the gravy boat just got a little bigger for those guys (and Specter); they can now hold sway over the Democratic caucus when it comes to ensuring a filibuster proof majority. No doubt corks are popping in Bayh's Hill office. But all that rambling doesn't mean that Specter's switch isn't a good reason to do the Bull Dance. I'll let Chait opine:

Specter is one of the better-known senators in America. If you follow politics even casually, you've seen or heard him on the news before. So it's going to register with you that a major Republican senator has decided his party has become too extreme for him. And if you're a Republican, you might wonder if it's become too extreme for you, as well.

Of course, polls show voters leaving the Republican Party already. And not just in Pennsylvania, as Specter noted. The real significance here may be less about political change to come and more about political change that has already happened.

Since last summer the GOP message has been that Obama, despite his widespread popularity, is some kind of radical Manchurian ideologue, far from the American mainstream. That message just got trumped once again. The poster-child for moderate Republicans has joined Team Socialism. This solidifies the narrative that the GOP is a party in steep decline and that the recent radicalism is serving to regionalize its significance. Specter wasn't going to survive his own primary but now stands a great chance of getting re-elected. If a bitter old conservative dude like Specter can't make it in today's GOP then all bets are off. The long term vitality of the party, as we've known it for decades, is in serious doubt.

-- Update --

The usual suspects are proud of their purity tests. Malkin says "don’t let the door hit you on the way out" and Big Ed bloviates:

I’m in the good-riddance category here.  Normally I argue for a big tent and the need to woo moderates by focusing on core values.  Specter betrayed those values in his Porkulus vote and cloture cave.  He could have forced Obama, Pelosi, and Reid to start negotiating in good faith with his Republican colleagues, but instead allowed them to shove a bad bill down their throats.

Pointing out that Specter thinks he has a better chance to win with another party says less about Specter than it does about his former party. Specter’s a classic moderate in what has traditionally been a swing state. The extent to which the right is happy to be rid of him is indicative of just how far out of the mainstream conservatism now finds itself.