Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

Conservatism: there are people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

This country desperately needs a functioning Fourth Estate.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

Spilling the end game before they can coat it in frankl luntz-approved dogwhistles.

Narcissists are always shocked to discover other people have agency.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

Let’s show the world that autocracy can be defeated.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

At some point, the ability to learn is a factor of character, not IQ.

These days, even the boring Republicans are nuts.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

Democrats have delivered the Square Deal, the New Deal, the Fair Deal, and now… the Big Joe Biden Deal.

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

The arc of the moral universe doesn’t bend itself. it’s up to us.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

People are complicated. Love is not.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

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Bernard Final wrote at Balloon Juice for a year from 2012-13.

Bernard Finel

Confronting the Reality of their Choices

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From the NYT:

Officials said the killing spree began early on Friday at the house where Mr. Lanza had lived with his mother. There, he shot her in the face, making her his first victim, the authorities said. Then, leaving her dead after taking three guns that apparently belonged to her, he climbed into her car for the short drive to the school. Two of the guns were semiautomatic pistols; the other was a semiautomatic rifle.

There you go, gun nuts. Ms. Lanza was a gun owner, exercising her 2nd Amendment rights. As is often the case, the guns she presumably had for her own protection were used to kill her. That would be a sad irony usually, but in this case is a brutal tragedy because the guns were then used to murder an additional 26 innocent people.

So, how about this proposal: You know how “pro-life” people always want women to “confront the reality of their choices” by showing them ultrasounds and pictures of fetuses? Well, maybe we could make it a requirement that people buying guns be forced to watch a slideshow of the crime scene pictures from Newtown (or Aurora or any of the thousands of other gun murders per year). Maybe that would drive home the reality of the choice gun owners are making by indulging their gunfighter fantasies.

 

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Noodling Through the Bismarck Option

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Over at TPM, Josh Marshall has been stressing about the possibility of the “Mother of all Government Shutdowns.” His view is, essentially, that since the GOP will have to fold over taxes and the fiscal cliff — given that doing nothing at all raises taxes even more — they will come back with a vengeance over the debt ceiling fight in February. This strikes me as a plausible concern, but isn’t really even close to the “Mother of all Government Shutdowns.”

The debt ceiling is a complete artifact, and if push really comes to shove, there are all sorts of creative option for waging a debt ceiling fight, including platinum coins, declaring it unconstitutional, and of course, the ability to target the shutdown in ways to that generate maximum political pressure on the GOP. What infuriates most of us about the debt ceiling issue is that while the GOP likes to pitch it as preventing Obama from unilaterally borrowing and spending, it is really about funding already authorized government spending and operations. But there is the rub.

“Already authorized government spending and operations.” That’s where the real power lies, the classic power of the purse. And I wonder if we’re not heading for a situation where having exhausted  other forms of hostage taking, we may not rapidly get to the point where the GOP simply refuses to pass appropriations. Indeed, I can’t quite understand why this isn’t actually the where the fight occurs since (a) it is unquestionably a Constitutional approach, and (b) is a chance to actually shape, on GOP terms, the outlines of a shutdown. In a debt ceiling fight, the President gets to prioritize spending with available cash. In a budget fight, the GOP can pass or hold certain parts of the appropriations process and essentially choose which parts of the government it wants to shut down. So, my suspicion is that, ultimately, regardless of the fiscal cliff and debt ceiling, the crisis will ultimately revolve around the appropriations bills at some point down the road.

Anyway, all of this is a long intro for my real thought, which is that at some point the GOP is going to graduate from hostage taking to premeditated murder. Grover Norquist has famously claimed he would like to shrink the government down to the size where he could “drown it in a bathtub.” Well, the GOP can largely already do that, if that wanted. By simply refusing to fund government operations, they can, essentially, kill the federal government. Now, they’ve never wanted to do that in the past. They’ve just wanted to tinker at the margins. But the GOP is increasingly becoming a rump party — not in the sense of being a bunch of asses, though that is also true — but in terms of a shrinking electoral base.

They are only going to get more desperate, more extreme. And sooner or later, they are going to shutdown the federal government not as part of a negotiation, but as an end in itself. It isn’t as dramatic as shooting up Fort Sumter, but the effect would be the same.

Personally, I like the Bismarck option. Facing a budget crisis in Prussia, “He contended that, since the Constitution did not provide for cases in which legislators failed to approve a budget, he could merely apply the previous year’s budget. Thus, on the basis of the budget of 1861, tax collection continued for four years.”

Basically, the argument is that the American Constitution was not meant to allow for 50 percent + 1 of a single chamber of Congress to effectively dissolve the union by simply refusing to appropriate funds.

I don’t actually know that we’ll get to a crisis this severe, but then again, it never occurred to me that we’d face periodic crises over the authority to borrow money for already approved spending. We’re in uncharted territory here already, so I, at least, refuse to allow myself to be surprised by even the most outlandish scenarios.

Also, too… This is a good place to note the importance of filibuster reform, since the filibuster makes this an option for 40 percent +1 of the Senate to attempt.

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A Few (More Coherent) Thoughts

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What prompted my post from last night was thinking about the “fiscal cliff.” I admit, it is fun to see the Obama putting the screws to Boehner. It is also fun to see all the frantic efforts to parse the meaning of the Norquist pledge. And yet, I think there is a historic opportunity here that I wonder if we’re missing.

From my perspective, the “cliff” is really more of a speed bump. If we go over it and do literally nothing, the economy will slow for a quarter or two, but ultimately it would put us on a much better road. According to CBO, if we do nothing and tax rates go back to the 2000 levels, revenues will gradually increase to about 21-22% of GDP. This is precisely where they need to be in order to make current social programs sustainable. That does not ensure budget surpluses, but it would leave deficits small and manageable. That’s the bitch about the current debate. The only reason people talk about the “need” for entitlement reform is because we’ve cut taxes so much over the past decade that the we’ve created a crisis (or at least the appearance of one).

Obama’s proposal, which ultimately keeps in place the vast majority of the tax cuts, does promise to reduce the deficit, but I fear not enough to take away its political teeth. It means that right wingers will be able to continue to fearmonger on deficits as a excuse to attack safety net programs and health care. It means that “serious centrists” will give cover to attacks on Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid. And, by the way, it also means that when interest rates do rise, that there will be a genuine squeeze on the federal budget due to interest payments. This is not “concern trolling,” it is merely noting real political dynamics.

Changing the debate requires higher taxes than even what Obama is proposing. He has all the leverage. He’s going to get what he wants here, and we’ll all enjoy seeing Boehner and the other nutters have to surrender, but we’ll have won a battle and not the war, and worse by winning the battle on problematic terms we’ll make the war harder to win.

TL;DR version: I’m calling my representatives and telling them I’d like them to do nothing at all about the fiscal cliff. Not now, not at after January 1. Going back to the 2000 rates across the board would be the best thing for our country, even though the short-term pain would genuinely be painful. But you can’t undo a decade of terrible GOP initiatives without pain unfortunately.

 

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Fuck the Snark

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Really peeps? We’re gonna wallow in shallow pleasure of making fun of Mittens and Orange Julius?

The Republicans are clowns. Destructive, dangerous, mendacious clowns. But, clowns nonetheless. And while it is easy to see them as the problem, they really aren’t. They are just deluded and scared, greedy and ignorant.

Here’s the reality: Our country is being torn apart by income inequality. We’re one of the richest countries in the world, and yet we can’t afford to provide health care to our citizens because our health care system is twice as expensive as anyone else’s. We’re an unparalleled force for good in the world, and yet our engagement in the world in fraught due to bad choices and ill-considered commitments. We spend huge amounts on education and yet our educational system is problematic at best.

We have, in office, just an amazing, inspiring president. We have four years more  to make a difference. The first four have been pretty damn good, and the next four can be historic. But victory isn’t about kicking the GOP in the teeth — as fun as that might be — but in making a real difference in the lives of our fellow citizens.

I know you all know all of this. I am preaching to the choir. But, I guess, I want to encourage all of us to aim higher now — myself included. It is so easy, so tempting to just focus on tactical victories against the Republicans. And yet, I think we live in a historic moment. Let’s not squander it.

When I think of this, I can’t help but go back to 2008… to Obama concession speech in New Hampshire. It is is a speech that, I think, deserves to be remembered with the great political addresses in our history. A speech that is moving and realistic, intelligent and inspiring.

Anyway, can you guess, I’ve had a few… but that said… consider this a Friday night music thread:

Yes. We. Can.

The speech:

The video:

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Through the Looking Glass

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From the WaPo:

“Bottom line, I’m more disturbed now than I was before,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), one of the critics, said after the meeting.

….

The Republican senators have repeatedly said they are concerned with how Rice explained what caused the Benghazi attack during a series of Sept. 16 appearances on Sunday political talk shows. At the time, Rice said that a spontaneous demonstration led to the violence, a claim later debunked by intelligence officials and reports from the ground.

Huh?

I could understand them having questions about security arrangements on the ground. And I could understand them expressing disagreement with the U.S. response. But making this all about what Rice said on the talk shows or what the President said in the Rose Garden is just bizarre.

It really speaks to the magical thinking that drives Republican foreign policy views. For them it is all about saying the proper incantation in the right order. As if some saying some combination of the words “terrorism, Islamist, freedom, resolve, and missile defense” somehow fixes everything.

Remember this is nothing new. All through the Bush years, the dominant perspective on the right wasn’t that Bush was screwing things up all over the place. The dominant perspective was that people just didn’t understand what we were up to, and that you know, if we could just explain ourselves, everything would work out great. So, Iraq wasn’t a problem of an idiotic strategy and incoherent goals, but rather of public communication.

The rest of us noted this was a “lipstick on a pig” problem. Well, that’s the GOP response to Benghazi in a nutshell. The situation was a disaster. An ambassador died. There are legitimate issues that serious people might want to address, but instead, the GOP is arguing that the lipstick was the wrong shade of pink.

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Giving Thanks

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So, I am going to put up my Thanksgiving post early because tomorrow I’ll be too busy running a Turkey Trot and cooking (and drinking) to get online.

I know it is easy to be cynical about things. We live in weird times. American politics are genuinely screwed up in a lot of important ways, and it is painful to see how income inequality hurting the American dream. And yet…

In recent years, we elected a black man to be President of the United States. And we re-elected him despite difficult economic times.

We expanded access to health care dramatically.

Three of our last four Secretaries of State have been women, as will likely be our next one, and not just a woman but another woman of color.

In my lifetime, the number of women Supreme Court justices went from zero over the first 194 years of our republic to a situation where three women now serve on the Court.

There is a lot of work to do on women’s rights. But man, that is some progress.

Gay rights. I don’t think it is an over-statement to note that there has been a veritable revolution on this front. Gays and lesbians can now serve openly in the military, can be credible (and successful) candidate for public office, and can marry in increasingly many states.

For all the lunacy on the American right, I have to say that I believe in America. We’ve made tremendous progress over the past few decades. I am genuinely thankful that I can look forward to my kids (8 and 10) living in an increasingly open, tolerant, and decent country.

We have a long way to go on big issues like race, gender, and sexual orientation. On things like income inequality and voting rights. On access to education, health care, and opportunity.

And yet, I feel positive about the future and I’m thankful to be living in a time where progress seems real and tangible.

Happy Thanksgiving to you all.

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BREAKING: Romney is still an out of touch douche

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Via TPM:

According to reports in the Los Angeles Times and New York Times, the former Republican nominee said during a call with donors on Wednesday that Obama had been “very generous” in doling out “big gifts” to “the African American community, the Hispanic community and young people” as well as to women throughout his first term. Benefits such as access to “free health care,” guaranteed contraceptive coverage, more affordable student loans, and “amnesty for children of illegals,” all combined to give the president a decisive edge in popularity.

There you have it. For Romney it is still and always will be about the “moochers.”

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