Day: 2/9/2012

Nancy Pelosi Launches Campaign To Stop Stephen Colbert And Super PACs

Posted by on February 9, 2012 at 3:49 pm. 6 Comments :

The Democratic Leader of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, has just launched a campaign to “Stop Colbert,” as in Stephen Colbert, the acerbic incarnation of right-wing blowhardism. The first shot in this battle, for which a brutal retaliation from Colbert can be expected after he gets back from vacation, is this video that Pelosi posted yesterday:

The issue is one that has become an integral part of this election year that has seen income inequality, corporate abuse of power, and fair elections, take precedence over almost every issue other than jobs. Pelosi sums up her position saying that…

“…House Democrats are reintroducing the DISCLOSE Act today to get unlimited, secret donations out of politics. The Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United opened the floodgates to unrestricted special interest campaign donations in American elections—permitting corporations to spend unlimited funds, directly or through third parties and Political Action Committees organized for those purposes, to influence Federal elections and opened the door for the emergence of Super PACs.”

It is Colbert who has succeeded in making Super PACs one of the most reviled political devices ever conceived. And he did it by starting his own (Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow) and demonstrating how easy it is to collect huge sums of money from secret sources and spending it on self-serving activities without any unaccountability whatsoever.

The issue made headlines this week when President Obama announced that he would not oppose the formation of Super PACs to support his reelection. Republicans immediately pounced on the announcement, portraying it as a flip-flop of his previously expressed position against Super PACs. Of course, Obama did not flip-flop at all. He is still against Super PACS, he has just resigned himself to the fact that they are a part of the electoral process as it currently exists and that abstaining from using them would amount to a unilateral disarmament that would permit Republicans to vastly outspend Democrats this year.

Obama and other Democrats still intend to pursue an agenda to bring an end to the practice as quickly as they can get support from enough members of the GOP to pass legislation like the DISCLOSE Act which Pelosi is addressing in the video above. It is only by the obstructionism of the GOP that the bill has not already become law.

Pelosi is firing both barrels at Colbert in the video. She hammers him for “taking secret money from special interests” and for being “out of control.” And she nails him for his hatred of kittens. As an aside, she zings Newt Gingrich with what could be a fatal blow by referring to him as her friend. If Gingrich’s campaign weren’t already dead, this would surely kill it.

Still, this campaign aimed at Colbert is a big step for Pelosi and company. It was not that long ago that one of Pelosi’s top lieutenants in the House was advising Democratic members to refrain from appearing on The Colbert Report. Rahm Emanuel was the Democratic Caucus chairman before leaving to become Obama’s Chief of Staff, and then mayor of Chicago. But back in March of 2007. while still a member of Congress, Emanuel told his colleagues to “steer clear of Stephen Colbert.” That advice was widely ignored, to the dismay of many congressmen with deficient senses of humor.

The DISCLOSE Act is an important first step in restoring the power of people over corporations and wealthy special interests. Pelosi’s efforts on behalf of this bill are welcome. But in this topsy-turvy world it may turn out that Colbert will wield more influence over the matter in the long run. His brilliant comedic sensibility and fearlessness in injecting his satire into the real world is having an impact that could never have been anticipated. And as Pelosi says, He.Must.Be.Stopped!

Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Obama Downgrade Threat

Posted by on February 9, 2012 at 10:59 am. 1 Comments :

Once again Fox News has twisted the facts of a breaking story beyond all recognition. The headline on their Fox Nation blog reads: S&P Threatens Obama With Another Downgrade.

Fox Nation

The Fox Nationalists link to an article on Zero Hedge where the original headline says: S&P Threatens US With Another Downgrade. That is an obviously more accurate representation of the opinion expressed by S&P’s John Chambers, who was not threatening Obama at all. The prospect of another credit rating downgrade was directed at the United States, not the White House. Furthermore, its impact will be felt by the nation as a whole, not by the President as an individual.

If anything, the threat was aimed more at Congress, because that is where the budget is drafted, and it is where S&P has previously laid the blame for the downgrade. In their decision last August to drop the U.S. from AAA to AA+, S&P hammered at the disfunctionality of the Tea Party purists in the House who seemed to hunger for an American default:

[T]he downgrade reflects our view that the effectiveness, stability, and predictability of American policymaking and political institutions have weakened at a time of ongoing fiscal and economic challenges […] The political brinksmanship of recent months highlights what we see as America’s governance and policymaking becoming less stable, less effective, and less predictable than what we previously believed. The statutory debt ceiling and the threat of default have become political bargaining chips in the debate over fiscal policy.

Tea Party DowngradeChambers noted in his latest comments that the “political brinkmanship hasn’t gone away. That simply doesn’t happen in other AAA economies.” Indeed, the same intransigent Tea Party extremists are presently attempting to welch on prior agreements on payroll tax cuts and budget reductions stipulated by the failure of the so-called Super Committee to arrive at a compromise spending bill.

The absurdity of Fox Nation trying to suggest that S&P is threatening Obama makes more sense when you recognize that the mission of Fox News is to disparage the President at every conceivable opportunity. They don’t care whether or not the criticism is factual. The only thing they are concerned with is their obsession with personalizing every negative event as being solely attributable to Obama in particular and Democrats in general. That agenda is not only dishonest, but it is also harmful in that it distracts from the real concerns presented by potential occurrences that will affect the entire nation and every citizen in it.

Fox News doesn’t care about the harm it produces. It only cares about harming Obama and running him out of Washington. Never mind that even if they were successful it wouldn’t change the S&P analysis one bit since it is Congress who is responsible for the budget. The determination of Fox News to harm the country is evident everyday. It is evident in their lamenting of lower unemployment rates, which they dismiss as contrived. And it is evident in their disdain for improvements in American manufacturing in auto and other industries. If there is one thing that is clear about Fox News it is that they revel in bad news for America and they are willing to hurt the country in order to achieve their rightist political goals.

James O’Keefe Reaches New Heights Of Stupidity – And Irrelevance

Posted by on February 9, 2012 at 2:56 am. 2 Comments :

James O'KeefeThe biggest joke in the modern era of pseudo-reality television has struck again. Crockumentary videographer James O’Keefe posted a new video purporting to reveal the potential for voter fraud in Minnesota.

I’m not going to waste much space refuting the inane premise of his video. That has already been done quite well by Brad Friedman at the Brad Blog and Tommy Christopher at Mediaite. Suffice to say that O’Keefe’s escapade proved absolutely nothing.

The short story is that he entered a few Minnesota county offices and misrepresented himself as a “third party” who was interested in helping other citizens to register who were unable to do so themselves. All that this amounted to was collecting an application for an absentee ballot, which anybody can do. However, filling out and submitting the application must be done by the actual voter and requires identification or a verified witness. And voters who register this way must present ID when voting for the first time at a polling place. But, O’Keefe never went that far, nor mentioned those facts. He simply implied that picking up the application form was evidence of potential for fraud.

The only crime that may have occurred here is the videotaping that O’Keefe did without the permission of the subjects. O’Keefe, a convicted criminal himself, is already under investigation for that crime in other states. He is also being sued for having slandered people through the dishonest and deceptive editing of his video stings.

The whole gambit, like most of O’Keefe’s charades, was a pointless exercise that proved nothing. His intent was to validate the manufactured right-wing hysteria over voter fraud that is being used to promote the passage of voter ID laws that make it more difficult for seniors, students, the poor, and the disabled to vote. It is part of a coordinated campaign to suppress the vote of predominantly Democratic constituencies. It should also be noted that none of these voter ID laws would have prevented what O’Keefe is attempting to do in his video.

So it isn’t news that O’Keefe is distributing yet another fraudulent video that serves no purpose other than maligning the innocent and alleging non-existent atrocities. What’s news is that even fewer people actually care about any of the fakery he is spewing. His first phony (and thoroughly debunked) videos about ACORN were featured on Andrew Breitbarts’s BigJournalism blog and Fox News. More recently O’Keefe was only able to interest Tucker Carlson’s Daily Caller. But this new video is going nowhere fast. The usual right-wing propagandists are steering clear. Perhaps even they are finally too embarrassed to be associated with this hoaxter.