'We are not a deadbeat nation': Obama on debt limit (via AFP)
President Obama is expected to nominateChuck Hagel, a former Republican senator and Vietnam veteran, to be Defense secretary, officials said, setting up a confirmation battle with lawmakers and interest groups critical of Hagel's views on Israel and Iran.And yes the character assassination has start already resumed and who better to start it out than little Billy Kristol. So what is Bill's complaint? Hagel tells the truth.
White House officials said Friday that the president hadn't formally offered the job to Hagel, but others familiar with the process said that the announcement could come as soon as Monday.
Hagel, who was elected to the Senate from Nebraska in 1996 and retired in 2008, was awarded two Purple Hearts for wounds he received as a soldier in Vietnam. His experience serving in that war made him wary about using force unless other options had been tried, he said in a recent interview with the history magazine Vietnam.
"I'm not a pacifist. I believe in using force but only after a very careful decision-making process. … I will do everything I can to avoid needless, senseless war," he said.
In a post yesterday waxing enthusiastic about Chuck Hagel as defense secretary, Michael Moore called attention to a statement of Hagel that I don't believe had been previously much noted. Here it is, from September 2007:
"People say we're not fighting for oil. Of course we are," said the Republican Senator from Nebraska Chuck Hagel to law students of Catholic University last September. "They talk about America's national interest. What the hell do you think they're talking about? We're not there for figs."
This rounds out a Hagelian worldview—but I also wonder if it could be the straw that breaks the back of Hagel's chances. It's true that senators have been notified in the last few days that Hagel is the likely choice. But the latest AP story has the Obama administration keeping the door open for the president to go in a different direction: "White House aides said the president has not made a final decision on either post and won't until he returns from Hawaii, where he is vacationing with his family. Obama is due back in Washington Sunday morning." Now, when Obama returns, he'll have to come to grips with the Hagel war-for-oil statement.Of course it was about oil. Cheney himself was meeting with the major oil companies before 911 to divide up the Iraqi oil fields. Another problem is that Obama has not been inclined to let the Israeli tail wag the US dog and Hagel is not likely to change that.
Yes, McCain and the usual hard-liners will grandstand during the hearings, but they likely would have done that anyway, and I doubt that there most Senate Republicans want to be seen blocking Hagel. Not only would that be an extraordinary thing to do in response to any Cabinet nomination, but it would be unheard of to do it to a former colleague and a member of their own party. Republican hard-liners will do what they can to make the hearings a tiresome and drawn-out process, but in so doing they will simply be reconfirming why the public doesn’t trust them and why Hagel was the right choice.
President Barack Obama’s administration has backed down from one major Senate confirmation fight — and may be running headlong into another one.While Hagel is certainly no dove he is not one that approves of the Israeli tail wagging the US dog. This has the Israeli lobby and the neo-cons up in arms. Daniel Larison has a couple of posts here and here on the attacks on Hagel.
Some in the Jewish community and other Israel backers are reacting with alarm to reports that Obama is preparing to nominate former Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) as secretary of defense. A senior administration official told POLITICO Friday that Hagel is the leading contender to replace Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who’s expected to step down early next year.
As we go to press on Friday, December 14, former Republican senator Chuck Hagel appears to be the leading candidate to become the next secretary of defense. Anti-Israel propagandists are thrilled. Stephen Walt, junior partner of the better-known Israel-hater John Mearsheimer, writes that if President Obama nominates Hagel, it will be “a smart move.” Why? Because, “unlike almost all of his former colleagues on Capitol Hill, he hasn’t been a complete doormat for the Israel lobby.” Indeed, a Hagel pick would “pay back Benjamin Netanyahu for all the ‘cooperation’ Obama received from him during the first term.” Furthermore, Walt writes approvingly, Hagel is “generally thought to be skeptical about the use of military force against Iran.”So Chuck Hagel is sane - he realizes that a military attack on Iran would be insanely foolish and he refuses to kiss the boots of the AIPIC lobby. A real plus in my book.
Hagel certainly does have anti-Israel, pro-appeasement-of-Iran bona fides. While still a senator, Hagel said that “a military strike against Iran, a military option, is not a viable, feasible, responsible option.” Hagel, one of only two senators who voted in 2001 against renewing the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act, also voted in 2007 against designating the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps a terrorist organization and opposed the Iran Counter-Proliferation Act.
Hagel also has a record of consistent hostility to Israel over the last decade. He boasted in 2008 that, unlike his peers, he wasn’t intimidated by “the Jewish lobby.” The next year, he signed a letter urging President Obama to open direct negotiations with Hamas. Later in 2009, he revisited another of his longstanding foreign policy fixations—his belief in the good intentions of the Assad regime—and told a J Street conference, “I believe there is a real possibility of a shift in Syria’s strategic thinking and policies.
I don't agree with much of Obama's foreign policy but if he can successfully stop the tail from wagging the dog good for him.Can anyone doubt that Obama falls within the substantial circle of politicans that bitterly resents the Israel lobby? This is the man who spiritually followed the rabidly anti-Israel Rev. Wright; who gave a tribute to former PLO operative Rashid Khalidi so explosive that it hasnever seen the light of day; who has never visited Israel during his time in office, despite having been as close as thirty minutes away in Egypt, and managing to go to Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Iraq; who told Jewish leaders in July 2009 that he was deliberately adopting a policy of putting daylight between America and Israel; and who snubbed Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington DC and complained to Nicolas Sarkozy about having to deal with the Israeli prime minister.
Here’s something that happened in this election that has been largely overlooked but I think is a very big deal indeed. Trickle-down economics died last Tuesday. The post-election chatter has been dominated by demographics, Latinos, women, and the culture war. But economics played a strong and even pivotal role in this election too, and Reaganomics came out a huge loser, while the Democrats have started to wrap their arms around a simple, winning alternative: the idea that government must invest in the middle class and not the rich. It’s middle-out economics instead of trickle-down, and it won last week and will keep on winning.My only question is why did it take so long? It always defied logic and many of not most of the people pushing it knew it was absurd but also knew it was a great scam for taking from the middle and giving it to the rich. Business does not hire people because they get tax breaks the hire people when there is demand for their goods and services. A healthy economy depends on a healthy middle class - it's not trickle-down but middle-out economics.
Supply side was rejected. And in its place, voters went for an economic vision that says: don’t invest in the wealthy in the hope that they’ll decide to spread the wealth around; invest in the middle class, because it’s demand from a prosperous middle class that ultimately creates more jobs, and because doing that makes for a healthier society all the way around. Obama embraced this message late last year in his speech in Kansas, and even though I wouldn’t say he pressed it consistently for a whole year, he certainly emphasized it in the second debate and spoke regularly about it toward the end. “I believe you grow the economy from the middle out,” he said in a key October ad.Obama in his second term has the opportunity to kill trickle-down once and for all but it won't be an easy fight. But it is the only way to save this economy.
He did not originate the phrase. Writing in The New York Times in July, Nick Hanauer and Eric Liu, authors of The Gardens of Democracy, wrote: “Lasting growth doesn’t trickle down; it emerges from the middle out.”
A whole cohort of progressive economists and activists has been at work on middle-class economics since 2009. Robert Reich has been there, as have Hanauer and Liu and the Center for American Progress, especially Heather Boushey and David Madland. I’m proud to add that the journal I edit, Democracy, has been in on this crusade too. Hanauer and Liu are advisers to the journal, and in our Spring 2011 issue Madland wrote the first long piece to appear on middle-class economics.
Israel concerned about US support post-election (via GlobalPost)
Courts provide Obama a chance to leave his mark (via AFP)
Israel braces for Obama 'payback' after re-election (via AFP)
Obama trumps 'The Donald' with Kenya gag (via AFP)
Obama in eight state campaign blitz (via AFP)
1) Your administration has presided over an intensified sanctions policy against Iran. This policy has imposed onerous economic burdens on the Iranian people without causing any apparent change in Iranian regime behavior regarding its nuclear program. Isn’t your Iran sanctions policy ineffective on its own terms as well as needlessly cruel and harmful to the civilian population?All good questions that won't be asked. I'm not too fond of Obama's foreign policy but I have every reason to believe that Romney would be much worse.
2) The Libyan war was justified primarily on humanitarian grounds and has been held up as an example of the “responsibility to protect” in action, but its effects have contributed directly to serious security and humanitarian crises in the Sahel, especially in Mali. If you knew then what you know now about the consequences of the Libyan war, would you still have ordered military action? If so, why?
3) You have ruled out the possibility of containing a nuclear-armed Iran. Is there any reason to believe that the U.S. does not have the ability to contain a nuclear-armed regional power? Doesn’t the decision to rule out containment make war with Iran much more likely than it has to be?
4) Weapons supplied to Syrian opposition forces with U.S. help have reportedly ended up in the hands of jihadist groups. Wasn’t it a mistake to agree to assist Saudi Arabia and Qatar in providing arms to the opposition?
5) One of the results of the Libyan war has been that Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb is now able to operate freely in northern Mali. When are the costs of humanitarian intervention to international security too high to make it worthwhile?
Mitt Romney pitches smaller government: Is his target realistic? (via The Christian Science Monitor)
If a viewer didn’t trust Romney coming into the debate, he said nothing to change that, but he didn’t make any major errors that can be used against him later. He is an unlikable candidate, and more people will still view him that way, but he didn’t make things any worse for himself.
Barack Obama's timid approach to debating—I saw a lot of analogies to a prevent defense in football, but I think it was more like the four corners basketball offense that's so deadly boring it's now against the rules—was the most striking element of tonight's debate, but the most important one is probably that Mitt Romney finally shook the etch-a-sketch tonight and moved to the center.He could have done this is July but it's a little late now. He basically repudiated nearly everything he has been saying all summer so Larison is right - " If a viewer didn’t trust Romney coming into the debate, he said nothing to change that." He will get a bump in the polls but not enough to change the picture. Yeglesias again:
With the spotlight on and the pressure in place to define his tax plan, Romney angrily denied the existence of any agenda to reduce federal revenue and conceded that political realities mean he may not be able to cut rates by very much consistent with that agenda. Romney swore to defend single-payer health care for everyone born in 1957 or earlier, touted the universal health care initiative he signed in Massachusetts, promised not to cut federal education spending, defended the role of regulation in building an effective market economy, defended the current structure of Social Security, and charged Obama with failure to crack down adequately on big banks.This will not change the minds of anyone who had already decided and there are few undecideds left. Any bump will be temporary and will fade as they realize exactly what he said. And you can bet that Obama will be prepared for the next debate which is a week subject for Romney, foreign policy.
The problem with all of this is exactly what you'd expect the problem to be with an etch-a-sketch move—it's inconsistent with things he's committed himself to previously.
"The person that I saw yesterday was not the person that I met 20 years ago," he said. "His comments were not only divisive and destructive, but I believe that they end up giving comfort to those who prey on hate, and I believe that they do not portray accurately the perspective of the black church."Will it be enough to halt the feeding frenzy? Probably not but Clinton may become part of the feed not the feeder if she becomes tied to this.
"They certainly don’t portray accurately my values and beliefs," he said.
"If Reverend Wright thinks that’s political posturing, as he put it, then he doesn’t know me very well and based on his remarks yesterday, I may not know him as well as I thought either."
Hour One - Who arranged for for Rev Wright's appearance at the Press Club? Photo from the National Press Club's website and outed in a story by Errol Louis in today's NY Daily News, captioned: "Rev. Wright gets the inside story from Rev. Barbara A. Reynolds, the Speakers Committee member who organized the Wright breakfast. (Photo by John Metelsky)" According to Louis' article, Reynolds' website, which is now vacant of all text, had until today said that: "'My vote for Hillary in the Maryland primary was my way of saying thank you' to Clinton and her husband for the successes of Bill Clinton's presidency."This from Errol Louis:
The Rev. Jeremiah Wright couldn't have done more damage to Barack Obama's campaign if he had tried. And you have to wonder if that's just what one friend of Wright wanted.Is this just another example of dirty Rovian politics on the part of the Clinton campaign?
Shortly before he rose to deliver his rambling, angry, sarcastic remarks at the National Press Club Monday, Wright sat next to, and chatted with, Barbara Reynolds.
A former editorial board member at USA Today, she runs something called Reynolds News Services and teaches ministry at the Howard University School of Divinity. (She is an ordained minister).
It also turns out that Reynolds - introduced Monday as a member of the National Press Club "who organized" the event - is an enthusiastic Hillary Clinton supporter.
On a blog linked to her Web site- www.reynoldsnews.com- Reynolds said in a February post: "My vote for Hillary in the Maryland primary was my way of saying thank you" to Clinton and her husband for the successes of Bill Clinton's presidency.
The same post criticized Obama's "Audacity of Hope" theme: "Hope by definition is not based on facts," wrote Reynolds. It is an emotional expectation. Things hoped for may or may not come. But help based on experience trumps hope every time."
I'm not going to predict any individuals but I will predict that the election will be decided by at least two strong third party candidates. I'm not saying one of them will win but they will decide the election. Of course it won't be the first time, Ross Perot's race gave Bill Clinton the win in 92 and Ralph Nader gave the election to George W. Bush in 2000.I was wrong - no strong third party candidates have materialized. So who will decide? Those who simply decide not to participate. McCain's best chance is against Hillary. Many Republicans who might not vote will to keep Hillary Clinton out of the white. Hillary has managed to offend the black voters and the urban white voters. Obama will not inspire the Republicans as much and may pick up some Libertarian and even Republican votes. The only thing that Hillary's campaign has accomplished is to make her the least electable of the three.
This time it will be different there will be two strong third party candidates, one on the left and one on the right. If Hillary gets the nomination there will be a large chunk of the Democratic base will be looking for an alternative.
April 27, 2008 -- It's electability, stupid.As I said above Hillary is the least electable of the three candidates. She has alienated large portions of her own party, Independents will not vote for her and she can anticipate virtually no cross over votes. And Joe Gandelman talks about the very thing that made me go from Clinton to Obama.
That's what Hillary Clinton and her surrogates have been spinning to super-delegates and anyone else who will listen since she lost her grip on once-inevitable nomination.
There's just one problem – when it comes to independent voters, those crucial swing votes in swing states, Hillary doesn't hold the electability edge: Barack Obama does.
Independent voters favor Obama by a 2 to 1 margin over Hillary – 49% to 24% – according to a NBC/WSJ poll taken after the Jeremiah Wright scandal in late March. His approval rating among Republicans is almost twice Hillary's as well – 19% to 10%.
Crossover appeal is the key indicator of electability – especially for Democrats. Despite Democratic dominance of Congress during most of the 20th Century, no Democratic president managed to win more than 51% of the popular vote, with the exceptions of FDR and LBJ. What's the lesson? Democrats especially depend on Independent voters and even some centrist Republicans to win the White House.
That's true now more than ever: Independent voters are the fastest growing and largest segment of the American electorate, as detailed in former Clinton and Bloomberg pollster Doug Schoen's new book "Declaring Independence: The Beginning of the End of the Two-Party System."
Obama's Independent edge has already had an impact in key 2008 swing states like Virginia, where independents made up 22% of the February 12th open primary. Obama won their support by a 2 to 1 margin, on his way to a 64-35 blowout victory.
And — also something we have noted repeatedly in our posts here — Clinton generates another reaction among many independent voters who detest the Rovian-style negative campaigning politics of division, seeming use of code words, and personal destruction (now widely covered in news reports as the Clinton campaign seeks to drive up Obama’s negatives more than make the case for her strengths against McCain):
BAGHDAD - Muqtada al-Sadr is considering setting aside his political ambitions and restarting a full-scale fight against U.S.-led forces — a worrisome shift that may reflect Iranian influence on the young cleric and could open the way for a shadow state protected by his powerful Mahdi Army.Even the US Army has conceded that the success of the surge was due to al-Sadr's "cease fire". The right, including Condi Rice, have been quick to label Sadr and JAM cowards. Sometimes what appear to be cowardice is wisdom - why get annihilated by superior power when you can live to fight the war on your terms another day. The "cowards" of the Mahdi army are capable of taking Iraq back to pre-surge violence in short order.
A possible breakaway path — described to The Associated Press by Shiite lawmakers and politicians — would represent the ultimate backlash to the Iraqi government's pressure on al-Sadr to renounce and disband his Shiite militia.
By snubbing the give-and-take of politics, al-Sadr would have a freer hand to carve out a kind of parallel state with its own militia and social services along the lines of Hezbollah in Lebanon, a Shiite group founded with Iran's help in the 1980s.
It also would carry potentially disastrous security implications as the Pentagon trims its troops strength and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki finally shows progress on national reconciliation.
First, a negative attack has to ring true to the people you are attempting to persuade. Initial polls seem to indicate that most of the people who are receptive to the "Obama-is-a-condescending-'elitist'-argument" already supported Hillary in the primary before the attacks began. Clinton's attacks may rally some of her troops, but the argument doesn't seem to be that persuasive to actual undecided voters.If the Democrats don't win the White House in November it will be the fault of Hillary Clinton and her campaign. I supported her until January and would have voted for her in November until about a week ago. Now - my old nemesis Bob Barr is looking better all the time. We have to stop the attack on the constitution and the hegemonic neocon foreign policy before any of the other issues will really matter.
Of course one reason may have to do with the credibility of the messenger. It's tough to attack someone else for "elitism" if you've spent the last 16 years in Washington as First Lady and Senator, and your family brought in $107 million over the last seven years. Assuming an eight-hour workday, that means that Bill and Hillary made as much every two hours as Barack Obama made each full year that he organized out-of-work steelworkers for a coalition of church groups.
Second, the fact of a negative attack itself can backwash on the candidate who makes it. Making negative attacks makes people look mean and unlikable. That is a particular problem when the audience for your attacks includes Democratic primary voters and Super Delegates who really want to win the White House in November.
Clinton's negative attacks on Obama have especially begun to backfire with Super Delegates. I've talked to a number of undecided Super Delegate Members of Congress who are furious at her willingness to attack the candidate who they consider almost certain to be the Democratic nominee.
Most think that Clinton has no more than a 10% chance of winning the nomination, so the odds are great that she is doing nothing now but legitimating the Republican narrative for the general election. The story line that Democrats are "elitists" who look down on middle class people is taken right out of Karl Rove's playbook. It's been used for decades to convince everyday Americans to re-elect Republicans that outsource their jobs, destroy their unions and lower their wages. Many Democratic Super Delegates are apoplectic that Clinton would give credibility to that Republican line of attack on their likely standard-bearer.
We've already seen examples of high profile Super Delegates (like Bill Richardson) who have gone with Obama partially because of Clinton's negativism. We'll likely see many more.
Finally, her attacks have allowed the Obama campaign - and the media - to parody her desperate attempts to appear "working class." When Obama conjured up images of Hillary Clinton sitting in a duck blind it called to mind those unforgettable pictures of Michael Dukakis in a tank.
With three crucial Democratic primaries looming, Hillary Rodham Clinton may not be headed toward the blockbuster victories she needs to jump-start her presidential bid -- even in Pennsylvania, the state that was supposed to be her ace in the hole, a new Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll has found.A good performance in tommorows debate could all but sew it up for Obama.
The survey found the New York senator leading Barack Obama by just 5 percentage points in Pennsylvania, which votes next Tuesday. Such a margin would not give her much of a boost in the battle for the party's nomination.
What is more, the poll found Clinton trails Obama by 5 points in Indiana, another Rust Belt state that should play to her strengths among blue-collar voters.
In North Carolina, an Obama stronghold, he is running 13 points ahead.
As a native-born, small-town Pennsylvanian, a son of native-born, small-town Pennsylvania parents - one from the coal region, one from Lancaster County - let me assure you that the so-called offensive, condescending things Barack Obama said about the people I come from are basically right on target.Yes, Obama's remarks may have been unwise because he should have known that the Rovian campaigns being run by both John McCain and Hillary Clinton would jump all over it and be aided by the corporate media and their infotainment that pretends to be news. But the reality is the politicians and the pundits reacted the way they did because it was on the money and hit a little too close to home. Baer concludes with this:
[.....]
So, despite carping from Hillary Clinton and annoying yapping from her surrogates (really, it's like turning on the lights at night in a puppy farm), I take no offense.
What's offensive to me is suggesting that small-town, working-class, gun-toting and/or religious Pennsylvanians are somehow injured by a politician's words.
[......]
They've been injured from decades of neglect by political cultures in Washington and Harrisburg driven by special interests.
They're injured by a system of isolated, insulated political leadership that protects itself and the status quo above all else.
They've been harmed by a lack of political guts to fix a health-care system that works against the poor and forces middle-class families to pay more for less, while at the same time giving politicians the best coverage taxpayer money can buy.
They've been taken for granted by political parties and candidates who stay in power by - and this was the apparent gist of Obama's remarks - forcing attention and debate on issues tied to guns, religion and race (precisely because such issues resonate) rather than real problems such as health care and the economy.
So the question is whether Obama effectively defuses this, as he did the controversy surrounding his former minister. And that remains to be seen.
Just don't tell me that he insulted a state or, given his background, that he's an out-of-touch elitist.
And I especially don't want to hear such arguments from a candidate who spent decades in the bubble of a governor's mansion, the White House and the U.S. Senate, and under the blanket of $109 million income during the last eight years.
Pennsylvanians might cling to religion and guns. I hope they don't cling to stupidity.