Hey Texas, Seceding Take Ron Paul With You

When Archie and Edith sang “mister, we could use a man like Herbert Hoover again” at the start of every episode of All in the Family, it was supposed to be a joke: no one but a reactionary old coot would feel actual nostalgia for the president who turned a stock market crash into the Great Depression.



But these days, there are a lot of politicians who are singing that same old song, though thankfully not literally — Edith’s voice was bad enough. In the wake of the biggest financial mess since the Depression, John McCain and other Republicans on the Hill are calling for a spending freeze; a new coalition of conservative Democrats are talking balanced budgets, and South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford says he want to use stimulus money not to stimulate, but to pay down debt, thus defeating the whole point of the stimulus in the first place.

So what rationale do these neo-Hooverians give for rejecting the stimulus? They claim that the New Deal “didn’t work” back then, and that it won’t work now, and (showing considerable imagination, if nothing else) they argue that Hoover failed not because he stood pat but because he was a secret New Dealer before the New Deal was even a gleam in Roosevelt’s eye. Behind these odd notions lies an odd book: Amity Shlaes “The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression.

Bad ideas like these deserve a good debunker, and we’ve got one in the form of The New Republic’s Jonathan Chait. In a long but rewarding review essay, Chait takes apart the curious arguments of the neo-Hooverians-who-won’t-even-admit-they’re-Hooverians-in-the-first-place.

At the most basic level, he points out, they confuse what’s good for an individual’s budget with what’s good for society: “When people worry about losing their jobs, they sensibly cut back on their spending. But that decision, in turn, reduces demand for goods and services, which results in reduced income or lost jobs for other workers. Keynes called this phenomenon ‘the paradox of thrift’: what makes sense for individuals turns into a disaster for society as a whole.”

In such a situation — the situation we were in back in 1932, and the situation we’re in now — with everyone from big corporations to bankers to journalists sitting on their wallets, the only entity that can spend enough to bring back demand is the government. The main problem with the New Deal wasn’t that it went too far; it was that it didn’t go far enough. While the New Deal did stimulate the economy, it was war spending that finally pulled the country out of the Depression for good. As for Hoover’s alleged New Dealishness, please: while Hoover launched a few programs that superficially resembled Roosevelt’s later ventures, they were poorly funded and in reality did very little.

Those who misremember history are condemned to repeat it.

He Supported Women's Dignity

By Lynn M. Paltrow Huffington Post
Posted: June 2, 2009 10:54 AM

On May 31, 2009, Dr. George Tiller was murdered. When I think of Dr. Tiller and his clinic I think of compassion. What Dr. Tiller and his staff did each and every day was to give women their dignity.

Barely two weeks ago, when President Obama gave the commencement address at Notre Dame he said, "As citizens of a vibrant and varied democracy, how do we engage in vigorous debate? How does each of us remain firm in our principles, and fight for what we consider right, without demonizing those with just as strongly held convictions on the other side?"

Upon Dr. Tiller's death, Randall Terry, the founder of the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue who led protests against Tiller's clinic in 1991, issued a statement saying in part, "I am more concerned that the Obama Administration will use Tiller's killing to intimidate pro-lifers into surrendering our most effective rhetoric and actions." This rhetoric includes describing Dr. Tiller as "a mass-murderer" and abortion as a kind of "slaughter." It also includes describing Dr. Tiller, as Bill O'Reilly has, as "guilty of Nazi stuff."

This rhetoric of "mass murder" and "slaughter," killing and genocide, all commonly used by a variety of religious and political organizations that oppose abortion, is language that is demonizing and dangerous. Is this really how we think of women who have abortions, some lucky enough to do so with the support of caring doctors? Do we really believe that pregnant women who end their pregnancies and the health care providers who help them are no different from Hitler or Pol Pot? Do we really think that the individual decisions of pregnant women are the same as, or as claimed by some groups, worse than, government-sponsored genocide?

This rhetoric, largely unchecked over the last 30 years, distracts attention from key facts about the women who have abortions. Sixty-one percent of women who have abortions are already mothers. By the age of 44, 84 percent of all women have become pregnant and given birth. American women, many of whom have had or will have abortions, do 80 percent of the child care and two-thirds of the housework. They do this work without any form of formal compensation, without any guaranteed pensions, and without any form of insurance or healthcare should they need it.

One of the amazing things about Dr. Tiller, in addition to his determination and his extraordinary courage, was the fact that he knew and appreciated who his patients were. He knew them as loving women, daughters, and mothers who are the backbone of their families and, to a large extent, our country.

Many of the women who traveled to Dr. Tiller's clinic were not women who wanted to have abortions, or who even support the right to choose to have an abortion. Many were women with wanted pregnancies who learned that their baby had no brain, or kidneys growing on the outside of their bodies or things their doctors described to them as "severe fetal cardiac malformations." They were women who could not face two or three more months of pregnancy with people patting their bellies and saying, "Oh honey you must be excited. When are you due?" Some women deal with such crises by continuing to term even knowing the baby cannot survive. Others find that their dignity depends on being able to end the pregnancy.

Some women who went to his clinic were extremely young. Some who went struggled with health problems and disabilities that they felt would be exacerbated by a pregnancy they did not recognize until late. All together they represented women with the least desired and rarest abortions -- ones late in pregnancy.

Dr. Tiller was extraordinary. When I met him he talked about why women have abortions and how they understand them in terms of their religious faith and spirituality. He described his efforts to serve them with respect, making possible rituals that would allow them to say goodbye to fetal life that they in fact valued.

Some women who returned from his clinic actually felt that they had been treated better through an abortion they wished they had not needed, than through a birth that they had anticipated with joy.

Today and the days that follow there will be some who will explicitly or subtly endorse Dr. Tiller's murder as a matter of necessity, justified to stop what they will claim is worse killing.

I am tired of a public debate that treats seriously the claim that pregnant women, mothers, and the people who support them are killers. I am tired of a debate that trivializes genocide by saying that what women do to deal with their reproductive lives is worse.

What I want instead is to honor George Tiller, a man who honored women. And I want instead to honor those who value fetal life, but who do not lose sight of the women who give that life, and who would never dream of murdering a doctor who was among the few to give those women the services, respect, and dignity they deserved.

Air Supply - Lost In Love

Sure, it’s one of the worst songs ever written. But perhaps President Obama and First Lady Michelle are closet Air Supply fans and are simply “Keeping the Love Alive” by enjoying a date-night in New York City tonight.
The Obamas are spending a presumably romantic evening together with dinner and a Broadway show this evening in the Big Apple.
If the RNC are fans of Air Supply as well, perhaps they believe the Obamas are “Lost in Love” because flying off to New York while the economy is tanking is just not right they say.

“As President Obama prepares to wing into Manhattan’s theater district on Air Force One to take in a Broadway show, GM is preparing to file bankruptcy and families across America continue to struggle to pay their bills,” RNC spokeswoman Gail Gitcho said in an email this afternoon.
That’s not all from Gitcho. She then added a snitty, “Have a great Saturday evening — even if you’re not jetting off somewhere at taxpayer expense.”

Fung Wah
Well, you can say the Obamas are at least trying to keep the costs down. They downsized the transportation opting not to take the normal Air Force One 747.
It’s not like they took the $10 Fung Wah Bus either though. They just hopped on a smaller plane. Although it is still called Air Force One, it’s just part of the fleet.
The plane they took this afternoon is an Air Force Gulfstream V (C-37A) — a 12 passenger aircraft. (H/T Mark Knoller). And there are no plans to circle the Statue of Liberty.

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A final statement about torture

A former top interrogator is responding forcefully to the case Dick Cheney made on Thursday in favor of torture (what the former VP and his allies refer to as "enhanced interrogation methods.")

Brave New Films released a short video Tuesday of Matthew Alexander taking apart Cheney's argument piece by piece. Alexander, who uses a pseudonym for security reasons, was a 14-year military interrogator who oversaw more than a thousand interrogations and conducted more than 300 in Iraq himself. He led the interrogation team that scored one of the United States' most high-profile captures, that of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and he did it using traditional methods.

Alexander easily takes down Cheney's arguments. The most immediate blow Alexander strikes is, of course, his obvious success, which undercuts Cheney's case for more brutal techniques. Alexander also engages on the level of principle. For Cheney, the suggestion that torture is a poor strategy because it aids terrorist recruitment is nothing more than old-fashioned blame-America-first cowardice.

"After a familiar fashion, it excuses the violent and blames America for the evil that others do," said Cheney.

The president and others who have condemned torture don't say that it "excuses the violent." Rather, they say it makes a violent reaction more likely -- and Alexander backed them up.

"At the prison where I conducted interrogations," responded Alexander, "we heard day in and day out, foreign fighters who had been captured state that the number one reason that they had come to fight in Iraq was because of torture and abuse, what had happened at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib."

Alexander put the number making this claim at 90 percent.

Alexander, however, made a broader point at the end of his interview, one that would certainly evade Cheney's grasp, convinced as he is that Al Qaeda recruits "hate us for our freedoms."

Sotomayor to Begin Visits With Senators Tuesday

Source Legal Times

Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor will head to Capitol Hill on Tuesday to start meeting with senators, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said today.

Sotomayor is scheduled to meet with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), and Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), Gibbs said. Staffers were also trying to schedule a meeting with Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

"We are hopeful that other visits can be scheduled for that Tuesday and for the rest of the week," Gibbs said at his daily briefing.

The meetings are a chance for senators to ask Sotomayor questions behind closed doors, and for the nominee to sell herself to those who will vote on confirmation.

In addition, Sotomayor's Judiciary Committee questionnaire is likely to be finished some time next week, Gibbs said. The questionnaire asks for personal and financial information, as well as descriptions of what she considers her most important rulings.

The Judiciary Committee is preparing for the influx of information and work by requesting additional funding from the Senate. A spokeswoman said today that it was unclear whether the funding had been approved yet, but it could be used to hire temporary staff, buy equipment, and pay for other miscellaneous expenses.

Republicans on the committee have hired a former assistant attorney general to be chief counsel of their Supreme Court team. Elisebeth Cook, who had worked in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Policy since 2005, led the office for the last eight months of the Bush administration. She previously was an associate at the boutique litigation firm Cooper & Kirk.

Karl Rove's dreaming another reality

On the May 26 edition of Fox News' On the Record, Rove said:

We know from her record on the 2nd Court of Appeals that she's not a particularly effective colleague. I first got wind of this when Sam Alito, who was her colleague on the court while we were reviewing his record, it -- you know, people who were familiar with the workings of the court said that she was combative, opinionated, argumentative, and as a result, was not able to sort of help create a consensus opinion on important issues.

Later in the interview, host Greta Van Susteren asked, "What did Justice Alito say about working with her?" Rove replied:

Well, I'm not going to comment on what he said about her, because I didn't hear him say anything specifically about her, but when I was talking to people about the 2nd Court of Appeals -- for example, look, as you know, justices circulate opinions and -- to their colleagues to get their feedback and to act as, you know, sort of a prompt for discussions when they meet in chambers.

Well -- in conference, excuse me -- what she would do is she would mark them up like she was your English school teacher and -- with your typos and misspellings and other words that she wanted to have changed, and send them back to her colleagues -- not exactly the best way to ingratiate yourself with your colleagues.

Rove's anonymously sourced allegations follow a pattern in which media figures repeat anonymous smears about Sotomayor's temperament and intellect.

From the May 26 edition of Fox News' On the Record with Greta Van Susteren:

VAN SUSTEREN: Not to take away from her accomplishments and not to sort of poison the process, but to what extent the fact that she is Hispanic does this become -- you know, is this a partial political decision or a total political decision?

ROVE: Well, they clearly said that they were sensitive to the criticism that they've received from Hispanic groups for the failure of the Obama administration to make more Latino appointments. So they not only get to put -- appoint a woman, but a Latino woman, and this is obviously a political advantage to them. They've gone out of their way to emphasize that.

What's interesting to me, though, is the question of how effective she's going to be on the Supreme Court. We know that David Souter was a cipher. We know from her record on the 2nd Court of Appeals that she's not a particularly effective colleague. I first got wind of this when Sam Alito, who was her colleague on the court while we were reviewing his record, it -- you know, people who were familiar with the workings of the court said that she was combative, opinionated, argumentative, and as a result, was not able to sort of help create a consensus opinion on important issues.

VAN SUSTEREN: Is it consensus opinion we're looking for or do we want some independent thought? Do we also, I mean, in an ideal situation, do we want -- also want someone who's, you know, strong in his own or his own convictions as how the law should be properly applied?

[...]

VAN SUSTEREN: What did Justice Alito say about working with her?

ROVE: Well, I'm not going to comment on what he said about her, because I didn't hear him say anything specifically about her, but when I was talking to people about the 2nd Court of Appeals -- for example, look, as you know, justices circulate opinions and -- to their colleagues to get their feedback and to act as, you know, sort of a prompt for discussions when they meet in chambers.

Well -- in conference, excuse me -- what she would do is she would mark them up like she was your English school teacher and -- with your typos and misspellings and other words that she wanted to have changed, and send them back to her colleagues -- not exactly the best way to ingratiate yourself with your colleagues. Rather than saying, "Oh, well, I thought you had an interesting legal argument here, and I'd like to talk to you more about this here." She was acting like sort of the schoolmarm.

We've gotten a taste of this in the clips that we've seen, for example, at the Duke Law Conference where she says, we write policy; we're not supposed to say it but we do write law, you know, which is not exactly how the American people view what judges ought to be about. But you get a sense of this sort of brashness that, sometimes, in the close quarters of a conference, can rub other justices the wrong way.

VAN SUSTEREN: You make me nervous about the times I correct people for grammatical errors. I'm not going to do it anymore.

ROVE: Well, you should.

VAN SUSTEREN: I'm going to take that as a --

ROVE: No, no, no, you should. But if they're colleagues, if they're equals, I mean, you've got to be very careful about [unintelligible] getting out your red pen and marking it up like you're their English teacher.

Karl Rove claimed that while reviewing Samuel Alito's record for a possible Supreme Court nomination, he "got wind of" allegations that 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Sonia Sotomayor -- who Rove claimed was Alito's "colleague" on the 2nd Circuit -- "was combative, opinionated, argumentative, and as a result, was not able to sort of help create a consensus opinion on important issues." In fact, contrary to Rove's claim that Alito was Sotomayor's "colleague on the [2nd Circuit] court," Alito served on the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals -- a fact that seriously undermines Rove's anonymously sourced allegations about Sotomayor's temperament.
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Spin on Sotomayor

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