As so often, Krugman has it right. Our job as citizens in a democracy is to recognize irresponsibility in our elected leaders and reject it. To allow these people to continue to hold office is to participate in the destruction of our society. Remember that in November when you see Judy Biggert's name on the ballot. As a member of the GOP House majority and very reliable vote for the party's line, she is as responsible as any of them for the madness.
1. Republicans are getting ready to hold American hostage again, refusing to raise the debt ceiling unless spending is cut drastically; basically, never mind the old-fashioned idea of actually passing legislation, they’ll just blow up the country unless their demands are met.
2. Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein, two highly respected Congressional analysts with a reputation for being nonpartisan, have a book documenting the fact that our political dysfunction is very one-sided — it’s Republican extremism, not “both sides do it”, that’s at fault. Sales of their book have been very good, and there’s a lot of public interest. But guess what? They can’t get on TV to promote their book.
When future historians write about the fall of the American Republic, they will of course lay primary blame on the extremists of the right, who set out deliberately to destroy it. But they will also lay heavy blame on all the “centrists” and Serious People who not only refused to admit what was happening, but ostracized and silenced anyone who tried to point it out.
Last week brought us more evidence of the extremism, intolerance and irresponsibility that have come to represent the very essence of the GOP.
In place of veteran GOP Senator Richard Lugar, Indiana's GOP electorate, encouraged by millions in funding from right-wing groups, chose Tea Party favorite Richard Mourdock, who, among other attacks, went after Lugar for the heresy of working with Democrats on nuclearnon-proliferation. Imagine! Putting the future of the planet ahead of the chance to feud with Democrats!
In North Carolina, "traditionalist" voters took another gratuitous swipe at gay folks, upping the ante from "state law" (which already forbade gay marriage) to "state constitutional amendment." Digby at Hullabaloo is right to remind us of the last time bigotry was codified into the state constitution this way. Nobody's proudest moment (except maybe Mr Rove, who is in his glory). (But I was proud of our president, who put himself and our party firmly on the right side of history on this subject.)
And the GOP's candidate for President of the United States is running a campaign based entirely on repeating falsehoods about President Obama. The latest example: Romney's Amnesia Strategy, "...premised on the hope that voters either will forget about the severity and depth of the crisis Obama inherited, or won’t factor it into their decision this fall, and will instead hold Obama responsible for the sluggish pace of the recovery." (And you have to give credit to Fox News for using the memory hole in both directions on this one, trying to make us forget and remember, when it suits them.)
...worth 7 minutes of your time (link from Daily Kos):
At a bit over seven minutes, the newest Obama campaign video is longer than the typical political ad, but it accomplishes a great deal in those seven minutes, presenting the narrative of Barack Obama's first term, from the depths of the crisis he inherited to the ongoing recovery—in a word, 'Forward.'
The video doesn't claim "Mission Accomplished"—it concludes with President Obama saying "I believe America is on the way up." But it makes clear that Obama's reelection campaign won't be shy about reminding voters just how bad the economic crisis was when he got to office—and just how fiercely Republicans fought him every step of the way as he put in place the policies that are helping America recover. Republicans will of course scream about that, and you can't blame them: if you had to deal with the legacy of Bush hanging around your neck, wouldn't you want to erase it too?
But the real power of the video is that it outlines the positive case for President Obama's reelection, recapping the key accomplishments of his administration—saving the auto industry, bringing Osama bin Laden to Justice, equal pay for women, ending don't ask don't tell, reforming student loans, and, yes, ObamaCare—including the birth control coverage mandate. And, of course, the most important accomplishment of all: turning America around and moving us forward.
In this piece, Chris Mooney describes some recent findings from psychology: "There’s now a large body of evidence showing that those who opt for the political left and those who opt for the political right tend to process information in divergent ways and to differ on any number of psychological traits."
Among those traits: "Openness" versus "Conscientiousness."
[L]iberals consistently score higher on a personality measure called “openness to experience,” ... That means liberals tend to be the kind of people who want to try new things, including new music, books, restaurants and vacation spots — and new ideas.
...
Conservatives, in contrast, tend to be less open — less exploratory, less in need of change — and more “conscientious,” a trait that indicates they appreciate order and structure in their lives.
...and the “need for cognitive closure.”
This describes discomfort with uncertainty and a desire to resolve it into a firm belief. Someone with a high need for closure tends to seize on a piece of information that dispels doubt or ambiguity, and then freeze, refusing to consider new information. Those who have this trait can also be expected to spend less time processing information than those who are driven by different motivations, such as achieving accuracy.
A number of studies show that conservatives tend to have a greater need for closure than do liberals...
Here's Dean Baker making the comment that I was thinking to make, about this very significant article from last weekend's Washington Post. It's significant because the authors are long-time, non-partisan, centrist political scientists. For them to make this call is a real departure:
The most talked-about op-ed over the weekend was "Let's Just Say It: The Republicans Are the Problem," a piece in The Washington Post by DC eminence grises Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein. They're both not only deeply respected but known as non-partisan Congress-watchers (Ornstein even works at the conservative American Enterprise Institute), which is why the piece will get more attention. But should that matter? Either they're right or they're wrong, and the fact that they are who they are ought not make any difference. And if you look at their argument, it's nothing that you couldn't have found in magazines like The Prospect and a hundred other places many times over the past two years. I feel like I've written versions of Mann and Ornstein's piece a dozen times myself (see here, or here, or here). Mann and Ornstein's reputations do make it harder for Republicans to dismiss them as just liberal partisans, but that doesn't mean they're going to have some kind of seriously difficult time spinning their way out of questions raised in response to the op-ed. In any case, here's the core of their argument:
We have been studying Washington politics and Congress for more than 40 years, and never have we seen them this dysfunctional. In our past writings, we have criticized both parties when we believed it was warranted. Today, however, we have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party.
The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.
When one party moves this far from the mainstream, it makes it nearly impossible for the political system to deal constructively with the country's challenges.
You noticed, did you?
When Republicans started down this course in earnest upon Barack Obama's inauguration, they made a number of simultaneous calculations. They calculated whether a strategy of rock-solid opposition to just about everything Obama wanted to do was likely to achieve their policy goals, and their political goals. And they also calculated that the price they'd pay for being obstinate and obstructionist was relatively small. The average American would think that "Washington" was screwed up and put most of the blame on the guy at the top, which is what usually happens. And to a large degree, they were right.
Mann and Ornstein end with a plea to the media to start reporting more honestly on what's going on in Washington in general and in Congress in particular—to dispense with the false equivalence that treats both parties as equally guilty of whatever bad behavior anyone is demonstrating, to stop treating the abuse of filibusters an anonymous holds in the Senate as if that's just how the system works, and so on. Good advice, without question. And I'm quite sure that many if not most journalists in Washington have understood all the points Mann and Ornstein make for some time. Maybe they'll start to feel like they have permission to say it, and let their reporting better reflect reality.
Submitted by SteveKier on April 30, 2012 - 1:41pm.
I hope you enjoy Dianne's narrative of the lovely time we all had last Thursday night(...I've included a few photos below. Here's the full album. Steve).
Following introductions by Naperville resident, Nancy Chen, who once managed her Senator Simon’s office in Chicago and Dianne McGuire, Chairwoman of the Naperville Township Democratic Organization, Sheila Simon, the first woman to ever hold the office of Lieutenant Governor in the State of Illinois, inspired, enlightened, and entertained one hundred plus attendees at the NTDO annual fundraiser held on April 26th at the Black Finn American Saloon in downtown Naperville.
In her remarks, Ms. Simon highlighted several of the more noteworthy accomplishments of the current administration.
Mentioned first was the passage of the civil union legislation in January of 2011, making Illinois the 7th state, along with the District of Columbia, to give same sex couples significant legal rights. In addition to civil union legislation, this administration joined fifteen other states in abolishing the death penalty in Illinois. Governor Quinn spent two months listening to the voices on both sides of this issue before signing the legislation in March of 2011. The Lieutenant Governor, a former southern Illinois prosecutor, encouraged the Governor to sign the legislation. The last accomplishment she mentioned centered on the passage of Senate Bill 7 which addressed education reform measures. She highlighted the collaborative nature of the process undertaken to address areas of concern.
Ms. Simon, a professor at SIU-Carbondale, is the Governor’s “point person” for education issues and has recently completed visits to all forty-eight community colleges across the state. She has worked with legislators to introduce legislation which will help more students complete their college work on time and with less debt. She also serves as Chair of the P-20 Joint Education Leadership Council for the State of Illinois whose purpose is to make sure there is a seamless transition from pre-school to grad school to the workforce.
As with all of the constitutional officers, Ms. Simon has an office in Springfield at the Capitol, another office at the Thompson Center in Chicago, and one in Carbondale, her home city. She described the beauty of her office at the Capitol, the sleek styling of the offices in Chicago, and the two rooms in an IDOT building in Carbondale…with the sign on the entrance to the building encouraging visitors to scrape the mud off their shoes before entering!
Sheila, a very accomplished musician, concluded her presentation with a bit of entertainment as she good naturedly played the banjo brought to the event by a supporter, inviting the audience to join her in singing three verses of This Land is My Land! Selections from her CD, Loose Gravel, were played frequently during the evening.
Submitted by SteveKier on April 30, 2012 - 1:30pm.
Judy Biggert and the House GOP Friday presented Democrats - and America - with a Sophie's Choice. As Jonathan Cohn put it, "No help for student loans unless Dems agree w/cuts to immunization, cancer screenings, HIV prevention/treatment." (BTW, here's what the Prevention Fund, which the GOP bill would eliminate, is being spent on.)
WASHINGTON — Moments after an unusual fiery appeal from Speaker John A. Boehner, the House ignored a veto threat from President Obama and voted 215 to 195 on Friday to prevent a doubling of student loan rates.
The bill, which would strip $5.9 billion from a program within the health care law to pay to keep rates on subsidized undergraduate loans at 3.4 percent, is all but certain to fail in the Senate, where lawmakers have put together their own measure to keep the rate from reverting to 6.8 percent by closing tax loopholes for some wealthy business owners.
While the House legislation has little chance of becoming law in its current form, the bill — the last piece of legislation considered before a one-week recess — was an instructive metaphor for the current state of Congressional politics.
As with other measures designed to appeal to middle-class voters, the fight between Democrats and Republicans was less over the substance of the bill than how to pay for it, with Republicans, as they have all year, looking to cut government spending and Democrats, as has been their approach, looking to extract more money from high earners.
Republicans, continuing their yearlong assault on the health care law, proposed it as a source for the money while Democrats, persisting with their accusation that the other party has been waging a “war on women,” pushed that meme further, arguing that the money would reduce spending on preventive health programs.
Submitted by SteveKier on April 27, 2012 - 12:36pm.
The GOP never considered trying to work with President Obama for the good of the nation. From the very start, on Inauguration Day 2009, they were plotting their 100% obstruction campaign, and throwing Americans' well-being, financial and otherwise, under the bus.
WASHINGTON -- As President Barack Obama was celebrating his inauguration at various balls, top Republican lawmakers and strategists were conjuring up ways to submarine his presidency at a private dinner in Washington.
The event -- which provides a telling revelation for how quickly the post-election climate soured -- serves as the prologue of Robert Draper's much-discussed and heavily-reported new book, "Do Not Ask What Good We Do: Inside the U.S. House of Representatives."
According to Draper, the guest list that night (which was just over 15 people in total) included Republican Reps. Eric Cantor (Va.), Kevin McCarthy (Calif.), Paul Ryan (Wis.), Pete Sessions (Texas), Jeb Hensarling (Texas), Pete Hoekstra (Mich.) and Dan Lungren (Calif.), along with Republican Sens. Jim DeMint (S.C.), Jon Kyl (Ariz.), Tom Coburn (Okla.), John Ensign (Nev.) and Bob Corker (Tenn.). The non-lawmakers present included Newt Gingrich, several years removed from his presidential campaign, and Frank Luntz, the long-time Republican wordsmith. Notably absent were Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) -- who, Draper writes, had an acrimonious relationship with Luntz.
For several hours in the Caucus Room (a high-end D.C. establishment), the book says they plotted out ways to not just win back political power, but to also put the brakes on Obama's legislative platform.
"If you act like you're the minority, you're going to stay in the minority," Draper quotes McCarthy as saying. "We've gotta challenge them on every single bill and challenge them on every single campaign."
The conversation got only more specific from there, Draper reports.
Submitted by SteveKier on April 26, 2012 - 1:28pm.
...from the Bill Foster campaign (BTW, the deadline is tonight, Thursday) (Oh, photos added. Steve):
From: Bill Foster Subject: John Boehner’s Bailout To: Patrick Brown
Dear Friend,
Just this weekend, the Aurora Beacon News reported that our campaign received more than 85% of our contributions from grassroots donors like you – and we have out-raised Judy Biggert for four straight quarters. Thanks to you, our grassroots campaign has John Boehner scared.
So tomorrow night, Speaker Boehner is bailing out Congresswoman Biggert the only way he knows how - by hosting a DC fundraiser for PACs and lobbyists. He knows that if our grassroots effort is successful, he will lose a party stalwart who votes with him and GOP leadership more than ninety percent of the time.
We need to show John Boehner and Congresswoman Biggert that their Washington fundraisers won’t stop us. We need to raise another $5,000 by tomorrow night to keep our momentum going.
We can’t let John Boehner’s bailout hold us back. He is rewarding Congresswoman Biggert for her party-line votes to end Medicare, ramp up military spending, slash funding for Fermilab and Argonne, and for tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy at the expense of middle class families.
Our grassroots campaign has them on their heels and we can’t stop here. With your continued help, I know that we will win.
In a reprise of the winter fight over the payroll tax cut, Republicans are now reluctantly agreeing to support something that just weeks ago they strongly opposed: preventing student loan interest rates from doubling later this year.
It’s an issue Republicans fear will fire up the youth vote — a key Democratic constituency — and in an effort to keep that bloc from flocking back to President Obama in November they’re attempting to bigfoot Democrats on their own issue.
But the Republicans’ strategy threatens to tear at existing divisions within the party, and exposes them once again to political repercussions over their unwillingness to finance any popular policies by raising taxes on wealthy people.
Democrats want to close a loophole that allows certain wealthy professionals to protect big chunks of their income from the Medicare payroll tax. Payroll taxes are typically used as revenue streams for funding existing entitlement programs. Democrats want, essentially, to create a new stream and then repurpose the revenue to cover the cost of keeping student loan interest rates low.
Just as in payroll tax cut debacle, though, Republicans have moved the fight to the familiar grounds of how to pay for extending the current low rates, and are accusing Democrats of raiding a popular entitlement program to pay for new spending.
When you have a choice, how about giving your business to one of the local businesses in our 
The most talked-about op-ed over the weekend was "
Following introductions by Naperville resident, Nancy Chen, who once managed her Senator Simon’s office in Chicago and Dianne McGuire, Chairwoman of the Naperville Township Democratic Organization, Sheila Simon, the first woman to ever hold the office of Lieutenant Governor in the State of Illinois, inspired, enlightened, and entertained one hundred plus attendees at the NTDO annual fundraiser held on April 26th at the Black Finn American Saloon in downtown Naperville.
WASHINGTON -- As President Barack Obama was celebrating his inauguration at various balls, top Republican lawmakers and strategists were conjuring up ways to submarine his presidency at a private dinner in Washington.
Dear Friend,
We need to show John Boehner and Congresswoman Biggert that their Washington fundraisers won’t stop us. We need to raise another $5,000 by tomorrow night to keep our momentum going.
In a reprise of the winter fight over the payroll tax cut, Republicans are now reluctantly agreeing to support something that just weeks ago they strongly opposed: preventing student loan interest rates from doubling later this year.