Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I desperately hope that, yet again, i am wrong.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

If you voted for Trump, you don’t get to speak about ethics, morals, or rule of law.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

Someone should tell Republicans that violence is the last refuge of the incompetent, or possibly the first.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

You’re just a puppy masquerading as an old coot.

Giving up is unforgivable.

They were going to turn on one another at some point. It was inevitable.

Not rolling over. fuck you, make me.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

Every reporter and pundit should have to declare if they ever vacationed with a billionaire.

GOP baffled that ‘we don’t care if you die’ is not a winning slogan.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

“I was told there would be no fact checking.”

Dear elected officials: Trump is temporary, dishonor is forever.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

There is no right way to do the wrong thing.

If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

You are here: Home / Archives for Steve M.

Steve M. cross-posted on Balloon Juice from 2011-13, from his own blog No More Mister Nice Blog.

Twitter: @nomoremister

Steve M.

But Saint Reagan Was the Nicest Man! Not Like That Vicious Thug Obama!

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It won’t surprise you that I agree with Greg Sargent on the mildness of President Obama’s supposedly “unsettling” and “thug”like attack on the Supreme Court. I’m just trying to imagine how Obama’s critics would have reacted if he’d said what a certain presidential candidate said in February 1980:

Ronald Reagan … campaigning in Birmingham, Ala., Thursday, blasted the court’s most recent abortion ruling as “an abuse of power as bad as the transgression of Watergate and the bribery on Capitol Hill.” …

Equating the justices to felons? Anyone feeling unsettled?

And I’m wondering how long it would have been before impeachment articles were drafted if Eric Holder ever delivered a speech like the one described in this article from the first year of Reagan’s presidency:

Attorney General William French Smith accused the federal courts of “constitutionally dubious and unwise intrusions upon the legislative domain,” and vowed to oppose such “subjective judicial policymaking.”

He outlined the [Reagan] administration’s plan for urging greater judicial restraint in areas including abortion rights, desegregation, the constitutional rights of aliens and prisoners, and environmental protection….

Smith said the department was working “to identify those key areas in which the courts might be convinced to desist from actual policymaking,” so that “errors of the past might be corrected” and “past trends might at least be halted.” …

Smith criticized the federal courts particularly for:

* Assuming “greater power of review of government action” concerning environmental protection and other issues, by deciding cases that they could avoid altogether under judicial doctrines such as “standing, ripeness, mootness, and presence of a political question” …

“Convinced to desist”? Sounds thuggish to me!

Oh, and then there was this, from 1982:

Atty. Gen. William French Smith declared yesterday that a bill sharply limiting the power of federal courts to order school busing is constitutional….

Smith also said he would defend the constitutionality of a bill denying the high court authority to rule on state regulation of voluntary prayer in public schools and buildings….

You think today’s fainting-couch crowd could handle that? You think their heads would explode if the Obama administration started talking about court-stripping? The Republicans would just bypass impeachment and go straight to a military coup.

And I say that even though court-stripping is frequently proposed by right-wingers, most recently by presidential candidates Michele Bachmann and Newt Gingrich, and even though one of the principal proponents of court-stripping in the Reagan era was a young government lawyer named John Roberts, now the chief justice of the Supreme Court:

Over two decades ago, a young government lawyer named John Roberts tried — and failed — to convince the Reagan Justice Department to endorse a number of radical legislative proposals that would strip the federal courts of jurisdiction to hear cases concerning such issues as school prayer, school busing, and abortion.

Yes, the Reagan administration refrained from endorsing such bills. But it wanted to make sure everyone knew that it would declare them constitutional if someone else put them forward.

Nope, nothing thuggish about that kind of shot across the federal courts’ bow.

(X-posted at No More Mister Nice Blog.)

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The GOP Front-Runner for 2016: Is It Palin?

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It’s been argued that a Mitt Romney loss in November would leave Rick Santorum as the GOP presidential front-runner for 2016. But Geov Parrish flags this from a Public Policy Polling national survey of Republicans:

The talk of a brokered convention never seems to die down and one interesting finding on this poll was that Sarah Palin is far more popular than any of the actual Republican candidates in the race. Her net favorability is +48, with 68% of voters rating her favorably to only 20% with a negative opinion. That compares favorably to +29 for Santorum, +19 for Romney, and -26 for Paul.

Palin is someone GOP delegates might be able to unify around in the case of a hopelessly deadlocked convention. She is seen positively by Gingrich voters (85/7), Santorum supporters (80/10), and Romney ones (57/27) alike. That’s a contrast to Romney who is disliked by both Santorum (38/48) and Gingrich (32/54) voters and Santorum who is disliked by Romney (38/48) voters and only seen narrowly favorably by Gingrich (46/42) backers.

This is a change from, say, last August, when a Fox News poll reported that Palin was so unpopular that 58% of Republicans and 64% of conservatives thought she wouldn’t make a good president, agreeing with the vast majority of non-conservative America.

The difference, I think, is that back then she was spending a lot of time trying to get herself into the broader national spotlight. Since then, she’s retreated to the right’s bubble. She’s saying things right-wingers want to hear, but the rest of us are ignoring her — which means we’re not laughing at her. (When righties finally noticed how hard we were laughing at her, a year or so ago, their fantasies of Palin as conquering Queen Esther became harder to sustain.)

You know what’s hilarious? People who correctly predicted that she wouldn’t run this time said she was avoiding a run because she’d have to answer serious questions at debates. That’s probably true — yet look who shined at the debates. Herman Cain chanting “9-9-9.” Then Newt blathering about God-knows-what while accusing some debate moderator or other of treason. With interludes of Ron Paul getting cheers for talking about leaving people to die in ditches, because the Austrian economics demand it. Palin missed her opportunity! She was made for this clown show!

So will she realize her error and give it a go four years from now? I sincerely hope so.

(X-posted at No More Mister Nice Blog.)

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Ah, but Did He Watch This with His Pipefitter Buds While Drinking a Domestic Brew from a Can?

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Actual tweet from Charles Murray:

IMDb’s description of the documentary:

The collar awarded to the winners of the Meilleur Ouvrier de France (Best Craftsman in France) is more than the ultimate recognition for every pastry chef — it is a dream and an obsession. The 3-day competition includes everything from delicate chocolates to precarious six foot sugar sculptures and requires that the chefs have extraordinary skill, nerves of steel and luck. The film follows Jacquy Pfeiffer, founder of The French Pastry School in Chicago, as he returns to France to compete against 15 of France’s leading pastry chefs. The filmmakers were given first time/exclusive access to this high-stakes drama of passion, sacrifice, disappointment and joy in the quest to have President Sarkozy declare them one of the best in France.

Really? Now that his new book about reminding the proles of the moral benefits of manual labor is slipping off the bestseller list, the heroes of Murray’s moral universe are guys who make chocolate swans (or whatever the hell this is)?

I confess I actually like this kind of thing — I’m a regular Chopped and Top Chef viewer, and foodie food is an occasional splurge. But I thought that made me evil in Murray’s eyes. I thought he’d regard the very existence of foodie culture as an abomination. Guess not.

(X-posted at No More Mister Nice Blog.)

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Omigod!!!!! They Found the Whitey Tape!!!!!

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No, not that whitey tape. This is another whitey tape! (Or maybe it’s even worse than a whitey tape!) And it hasn’t been located, exactly — but, as Ben Shapiro tells us over at World O’ Breitbart, or whatever it is they’re calling the site these days, the tape has been identified….

Sources inform Breitbart.com today that Pam Dickler, director of the 1998 production of The Love Song of Saul Alinsky in Chicago that included a panel discussion featuring then-State Sen. Barack Obama, has a video tape of the play.

And she won’t release it.

“There is only one archive tape of the play and I have it,” Dickler informed our source. “It is not in Chicago.”

Dickler told our source that she doesn’t believe she’s ever watched the tape, and she doesn’t know if it “can be viewed.” But she added: “No one is going to see the tape.”

She said she felt “very protective over it … due to all of the interest from conservatives recently.”…

Oh, this is going to keep a large crew of wingnut-welfare cases occupied for months — years, maybe. But really, who knows — does the damn thing even exist? Or is Dickler just messing with Young Ben’s head? And if it does exist, is it just of the play or of the discussion as well?

If the discussion was taped, it’s really hard to imagine that Obama said much — according to the previous story about this, the discussion panel included nineteeen different boldface names, most of whom, unlike the then-little-known “Sen. Baraka Obama,” were locally prominent enough to have their names spelled correctly on the theater’s press release. And those nineteen promised play-discussers were “among many others.” (Click to enlarge:)

Have you ever been to a discussion like this? I know Ben Shapiro and the other Breitbartniks would never have had such an experience, because it’s too commie-liberal for them, but really, if you’ve got that many participants, a lot of them aren’t going to say very much. I’m sure Shapiro thinks this would have been like some Party Congress that went on for hours and hours after the play, with everyone smoking Russian cigarettes, but people get bored after a while, especially if they just sat through a play, so my guess is that it broke up after an hour or so at most, and Obama’s contribution mostly consisted of nodding in agreement. (Though if the tape is ever found, that’s going to be the source of another Breitbart EXCLUSIVE! — “Look! Studs Terkel says, ‘It’s a class issue,’ and Obama nods in agreement! IT’S NOD-GATE!” Or some brief remark by Obama, barely audible over the inevitable feedback whine-note and lost in the theater’s echo, will be misinterpreted: he’ll have said, “How can we raise their standard of living?” and the Breitbartettes will say, “ARGH! ARGH! HE SAID, ‘HONKY, RAISE THEIR STANDARD OF LIVING’!”)

If the tape exists, will it ever be found? My guess is that it fell into the hands of some member of the troupe who subsequently unloaded it after a move to Vancouver or Brooklyn, and now it’s gathering dust in some junk shop, cryptically labeled and wedged in between an Alf lunchbox and a stack of Gino Vannelli LPs. But that’s not going to stop some right-wing plutocrat from doling out several million dollars in expense money to a bunch of pasty-faced College Republicans to try to find it. Wow, that will be money and time well spent.

(X-posted at No More Mister Nice Blog.)

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(Mild) Fear of Santorum

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What’s got me a little worried about Santorum is that we’re assuming he’s eminently beatable because he got shellacked in 2006. But he seemed like part of the Republican power structure in 2006, and we — moderates as well as liberals — were thoroughly sick of that power structure by then, on everything from the Iraq War to the attempt to keep Terri Schiavo alive.

Now I worry that Santorum seems to some voters like the plucky underdog, even within his own party. Back when he was in office, his culture-war meanness seemed to have real clout, because he was part of a right-wing gang that didn’t like to take prisoners; at this moment, even to me, he comes off as almost harmless, although I’m fully aware of the fact that he’d be an awful, dangerous president.

Could he possibly do well against Obama if he wins the nomination (which I’m starting to think will happen)? Could he surprise us because voters might see him not as the nasty culture warrior he was when he had power, but as a gee-whiz aw-shucks Boy Scout, and figure he won’t really turn the clock back on abortion and contraception and gay rights (except for the old white cultural conservatives, who may think he really can turn the clock back, and who may be Democrats and independents like the ones supporting him in Michigan)?

And before you shout “Man on dog!” and point to poll results showing increasing support for gay marriage and persistent support for legal abortion, let me remind you that right-wing culture warriors are a hell of a lot more likely to vote their social-issue convictions than the rest of us are. Otherwise, how did Republicans win so many recent election cycles?

Public Policy Polling goes through the history of the not-Romneys and finds that Santorum is the first one to do better than Romney against Obama:

PPP’s newest national poll finds Romney trailing Obama by 7 points at 49-42, while Santorum trails by only 5 points at 49-44.

… Over the previous 6 months when Romney first trailed Michele Bachmann, then Rick Perry, then Herman Cain, then Newt Gingrich in our national polling he still did on average 6 points better than them in our general election tests. Santorum’s the first insurgent to challenge Romney on that front as well….

Santorum’s net favorability is 21 points better than Romney’s. Santorum’s at -7 (39/46), while Romney is at -28 (29/57). That’s mostly because Republicans like Santorum a lot better (+40 at 62/22 to Romney’s +2 at 43/41). But Santorum also does a good deal better with independents, coming in at -6 (40/46) to Romney’s -23 (32/55). In the head to heads Obama leads Romney by 9 with independents, but has only a 4 point advantage on Santorum with that group.

(Emphasis added.)

How is this possible? Well, I hate the scolding tone of this Jonathan Chait post, but I essentially agree with what he’s saying:

Santorum has attracted a terrible reputation among the overclass. He is defined by his crude, bigoted social conservatism, which colors the broader perception of him as an extremist. This in turn leeches out into a sense, often reflected in news coverage, which likewise reflects the social biases of the overclass, that Santorum is a fringe candidate who would repel swing voters.

To put that in a somewhat more charitable way, I think a lot of committed liberals and urban sophisticates (I place myself in both categories) really do care more than the rest of the public about zealously protecting the right to have gay sex, non-marital sex, non-procreative sex, and only wanted children after any sex. Since these issues matter a lot to us, and Rick Santorum is not only on the wrong side on all of them but is so proudly and defiantly, he seems ickier to us than he does, perhaps, than he does to the rest of the public.

Now, I think plenty of swing voters and heartlanders will stand with us on some or all of these things when push comes to shove; even at the Applebee’s salad bar they hated Dan Quayle’s attempt to slut-shame single mothers a generation ago, and more and more heartlanders are cool with the fact that Ellen DeGeneres is gay. But if these aren’t make-or-break issues for moderate Middle Americans, which I think is the case, then they’re unlikely to have paid as much attention to Santorum over the years as we have, so right now he doesn’t look so bad to them. I don’t know if that will continue to be true if he’s the nominee and they learn more about him, but for now we shouldn’t assume that our view of him is shared by everyone who’s not a rightist.

(Adapted from a couple of posts at No More Mister Nice Blog.)

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Romney Releases Tax Information, Does Better with Florida GOP Voters

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I know, I know: it’s wrong to assume that correlation implies causation. But look at what’s going on with Florida GOP voters. Nate Silver:

Polls Suggest Gingrich’s Support May Have Peaked

Polling released within the past 24 hours suggests that Mitt Romney may have stopped and possibly reversed Newt Gingrich’s momentum before the Florida primary on Tuesday.

… In fact, I suspect … that there is enough evidence — when you look carefully at the day-to-day results — to conclude that Mr. Romney has re-emerged as the slight favorite in Florida instead….

The poll chart at Talking Points Memo shows Romney’s Florida lead over Gingrich getting bigger and bigger over the past couple of days — it’s now at 7.7% The latest survey to be added to TPM’s poll mix is a Monmouth University survey (PDF) showing Mitt up by 7. It was conducted on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Gee, what happened Monday night and Tuesday morning? Well, among other things, Romney released the tax information that was supposed to hurt him tremendously. Guess what? It hasn’t — not with Republican voters in Florida it hasn’t. You can draw the same conclusion from a Rasmussen poll conducted yesterday (Romney up by 8, after trailing Gingrich by 9 four days earlier) and an Insider Advantage poll (PDF) also conducted yesterday (Romney up by 8 in this one as well, with a similar reversal of fortune).

Now, there are a couple of obvious explanations for Romney’s mini-surge in Florida: he has a much heavier TV presence in the state, and Gingrich delivered a tepid performance in the last debate. (Oh, and many media wingnuts are attacking Gingrich.)

But shouldn’t that be offset by Romney’s tax stuff, if (as mainstream pundits keep telling us) Republicans as well as Democrats think the plutocrats have gone too far in this country?

Florida Republicans clearly don’t believe that. At the very least, they’re giving Romney a pass on his wealth, his business practices, and his tax rate. Maybe it’s too much to say that being a fat cat is helping Romney with these Republicans, but it sure isn’t hurting him.

(X-posted at No More Mister Nice Blog.)

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Wingers Hate Evil Fat Cats? The Zombie Lie That Just Won’t Die

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If Nate Silver is right about the New Hampshire outcome — he’s saying Romney 38.5%, Paul 18.6%, Huntsman 17.0%, Santorum 12.3%, Gingrich 11.5%, Perry 1.2% — then it will turn out that capitalism-bashing did absolutely no harm to Mitt Romney, and that the two guys who sound most like Democrats in attacking Romney’s business record will have finished fourth and fifth, in a state that’s seen as having a moderate GOP voter base.

So won’t that end all the talk about how even Republicans hate the rapacious rich?

Nawww. Pundits and bloggers will just say we need to wait for all that Sheldon Adelson money to work its magic for Gingrich in South Carolina; maybe they’ll say that Jon Huntsman still has a chance, or that he could have a chance if his billionaire daddy would just give millions to his super PAC.

People, please: just stop. Wingnut base voters don’t want Gingrich and Perry to bash Romney as a businessman. Wingnut base voters don’t want Huntsman to bash Romney as someone who wouldn’t serve his country under Obama. Wingnut base voters love businessmen, and they hate Obama vastly more than they love their country.

Stop trying to pretend that Republicans are rational, decent, sane, patriotic people. They’re not. They’re sociopaths and crackpots. They would burn this country to the ground just to rid it of their political opponents. They would openly embrace negative tax rates for billionaires and big business if Fox and Limbaugh started pushing the notion. And every time you portray them as sane, or seemingly sane, or potentially sane, you make it less likely that the rest of America will address the menace in its midst.

(X-posted at No More Mister Nice Blog.)

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