Digby wrote a great article this afternoon, 10 Years On: the Press Reconsiders. In it, she looks at a new article by Villager Extraordinaire Howard Fineman in which he discusses the mistakes the media made in the run up to the Iraq War. To be fair, Fineman calls himself to task. But Digby shows with the help of his own writing at the time that his sins are far worse than he now admits. And then she shows that his current reporting is every bit as partial towards power as it was then.

I hate Howard Fineman. When he took over at the Huffington Post, I knew that website was doomed. And truly, there isn’t nearly as much good content as there once was and there is a hell of a lot more middle-of-the-road Villager coverage. But mostly I hate coming upon him because I know that all I’ll hear is the same old Washington insider bullshit that all Villagers trade in. In fact, Digby wrote something about this that is exactly my own experience:

I remember the early days of 2003. It boggled my mind that pretty much everyone accepted the administration at its word. Digby quotes Fineman saying exactly what I’m talking about, “If he’s a cowboy, he’s the reluctant warrior, the Shane in the movie, strapping on the guns as the last resort because he has to, to protect his family, drawing on the emotions of 9/11, tying them to Saddam Hussein, using the possible or likely rejection vote from the U.N. as a badge of honor.” What?! Are we really to believe that Fineman thought that Bush was reluctantly going to war? As Norman Solomon shows in War Made Easy, presidents always claim that the last thing they want to do is go to war. They’re always doing everything they can to not go to war. And yet, somehow, they are always pulled into war despite all their efforts. How many times can the media be fooled?

This is the problem when a sizable portion of a culture is taken over by a revolutionary group like the current Republican Party. All the installed interests—the opposition party especially—are in shock. Everyone is so vested in the system as it is that they pretend that all is well, even when the most naive among us can see that something is very much wrong.

I was just listening to NPR and James Fallows was talking some nonsense about how great it was that people like Rob Portman are able to have personal experiences that change their political outlook. If this is what we have to wait for, then we will never solve our most pressing problems. Rob Portman does not and never will know anyone from the island nation of Kiribati, which will soon be entirely under water; so Rob Portman will never care about global warming. Rob Portman does not and never will know young men who go to prison for years because an unconstitutional search revealed a small amount of cannabis; so Rob Portman will never care about the drug war. Rob Portman does not and never will know any of the working poor; so Rob Portman will never care about income inequality or raising the minimum wage. But don’t worry, because James Fallows is there to sooth everyone, “See: Republicans are reasonable if you give them enough time!”

And I think this is exactly what went on in the lead up to the Iraq War. It is the same thing that is happening now regarding Obama’s drone war on anyone he decides is an enemy. It’s all okay! We’re the Good Guys! There’s nothing to get riled up about!

Whether it is Howard Fineman or James Fallows or any of thousands of other mainstream journalists, the word is always the same: everything is as it should be and it is only fools who claim that those in power are anything but good leaders wanting to do what is best for everyone involved. There has got to be tenth circle of hell for these enabling sons of bitches!

The American President is a bad film. When I watched it, I was in graduate school researching global warming and I really hated the discussion of the issue in the film; I thought it was trivialized. But that wasn’t the main problem. It is just a stupid film, pretending to be for adults when only Justin Bieber fans could take it seriously.

There was, however, one moment in the film that I liked. It is at the beginning of the third act when Sydney lets loose on the president for abandoning climate change legislation for a crime bill. I’ve done a bit of editing here, because it doesn’t matter what the president says. Here is the speech:

I think of that line every time I hear someone talking in glowing terms about the Democrats finally standing up to the NRA. Sydney is not completely right, of course. It isn’t that these bills won’t do some good. They will! But it is pretty weak tea. And it doesn’t make up for all the other ways that the Democratic Party screws over really important liberal concerns.

There’s another line in the middle of that, which I edited out. The president asks Sydney what she thinks has happened. She responds, “I got screwed.” That is pretty much the response to the question, “What did the Democratic Party do to its liberal base?” It doesn’t matter when you ask that question.

Dear Mr. President:

Thus, now is the perfect time to implement environmental regulations. It will clean up the environment and create jobs. A win-win!

(It would be good for the post office too. And that reminds me: I really don’t like how Congress since 2006 has been abusing one of the very best—and Constitutionally mandated—government functions. I’m just saying.)

Women’s healthcare is a mess in Texas. To get the full picture, I recommend you read Jaeah Lee’s incredible article, This Is What Happens When You Defund Planned Parenthood. But let me give you just a little taste of what it is like deep in the heartlessness of Texas.

For the last two years, Texas has passed up $30 million per year in federal Medicaid funding, all in an effort to destroy Planned Parenthood. Their plan has been pretty successful: 53 clinics have been forced to shut down. But here’s the thing: not one of those clinics performed abortions. So the intent of the Texas legislature to wipe out the “abortion industry” has utterly failed.

But it’s worse than that. In their effort to end abortion (because conservatives just love the unborn even as they hate the born), they have managed to do a lot of damage to women’s access to birth control. The Texas Health Commission estimates that these policies will, in next two years, lead to 24,000 unwanted pregnancies resulting in a cost of up to $273 million.

That’s the thing about allowing ideology to rule policy making: it ends in stupid policy. I suspect even now these legislators would claim that spending an extra billion dollars (over ten years) is a small price to pay for all the fetuses they save. Of course, it isn’t clear that they are even saving fetuses. Abortions are down by about 10%, but it isn’t clear whether this is due to new laws or not. Dan Grossman of Ibis Reproductive Health says that most women are not changing their minds about abortion after seeing their state required ultrasounds.[1]

The following graph from Lee’s article, probably shows what is really going on.

The number of women being served by all resources is plummeting. And that may be the point. As I’ve written before, the anti-choice movement is anti-woman.

[1] The idea that women are children who don’t know what they are doing when they get an abortion is the most repellent aspect of these ultrasound laws. And I think they get to the heart of what anti-choice men (especially) think about the wider issue. This is all about controlling women. It has almost nothing to do with protecting the fetus.

This is a picture of Debra Milke. You can see she’s a pretty woman but there is a lot of pain in that face. She has suffered a lot. Her 4-year-old son was murdered 23 years ago. And for the last 22 years, she’s been on death row of taking part in his murder. She’s innocent, of course. Hopefully, she will be released from prison very soon.

Milke is, of course, yet another example of the evilness of the death penalty. If most proponents of these laws had their way, Milke would be long dead. “I don’t want to pay for them to sit in jail! Just kill the bastards!” Sadly, I’ve heard that time and again over the years—even from liberals. The government has a hard time keeping the roads free of potholes, but somehow it is perfect when it chooses to kill.

What is most appalling about the case of Debra Milke is how she was convicted. There was no physical evidence. There was no eyewitness evidence. There was just the claim by a cop that he “didn’t buy” her reaction to hearing that her son had died. This was apparently enough to not only arrest and convict her; it was enough to sentence her to death.

The cop was Armando Saldate. He had a history of misconduct including multiple cases where he was caught lying under oath. (Note: cops lie under oath all the time; it is fairly rare that their lies are so outrageous that they are caught.) He claimed that the actual murderer told him that Milke hired him to kill her son. He also claimed that Milke confessed to him. None of this was recorded and somehow Saldate “lost” his notes. So basically, Saldate claimed that Milke was guilty because he said so. And the jury and the judge went right along with him.

The death penalty will always be flawed because humans are flawed. Every proponent of the death penalty who I know always brings up cases where a guy walks into a McDonald’s and shoots someone with 50 eyewitnesses while being recording with 29 video cameras. I point out that these kinds of cases are always pleaded and almost never get the death penalty. It is people like Debra Milke who get the death penalty. And they respond that it shouldn’t be that way and that the death penalty is totally great. Meanwhile innocent people continue to be murdered by our “justice” system.

Once Milke is released, these same proponents will say, “See: she was finally exonerated! And now she can sue!” Not really. She was exonerated after 22 years that these same proponents argue against. She had 22 years of false imprisonment. And if she is allowed to sue (and it is very likely she won’t be allowed to), it will hardly make up for the injustice that was done to her.

Rob Portman, who has previously supported employers being able to fire people just because they’re gay, has come out in favor of same sex marriage. But don’t get too excited. He has changed his position because he learned that his son is gay. Is that a Republican all over or what?

This morning, Jonathan Chait asks a good question about this, “[W]hy should any of us come away from his conversion trusting that Portman is thinking on any issue about what’s good for all of us, rather than what’s good for himself and the people he knows?” We shouldn’t because he isn’t. This would be like Richard Mourdock saying, “I just learned that my daughter was raped and now I see that rape is always wrong!” Welcome to the party bud, but you’re still a complete asshole.

Last year, I wrote about the Cheneys as they related to this issue. I think this completely sums up what is going on with Portman:

I’m happy to have yet another ally in the fight against bigotry. But it is very clear that in 20 years, gay rights won’t even be an issue between the parties. This is why it is so important to focus on economic issues. Being for gay rights doesn’t make you a liberal; it just makes you a human being. Unfortunately, as Portman shows: Republicans only join the human race when they are directly impacted by the injustices of the world.

This is a follow-up to my article, Death Throes of the GOP. In that article, I discussed how Republicans have gone out of their way to snub President Obama and what that said about them being a revolutionary group. Well, we had another example of Republicans snubbing the president for no good reason.

Obama offered John Boehner the opportunity to go to Rome with Biden to be part of the official US delegation to the installation of Pope Francis. Boehner is a Catholic. But he had to turn down the president. He had good reasons, though. He has to be around to deal with the budget.

Oh yes! What would Congress do without his leadership? After all, he has to be around to not negotiate with the president. He has to be around to not compromise on new revenue. He has to be around to not prevent a government shutdown. Yes: all of Washington would be completely lost if John Boehner left for a couple of days.

Please someone: make this all stop!

Suddenly, Paul Ryan has lost his Seriousness. What happened?

In an otherwise repellent editorial, the Washington Post (Fox on 15th) notes something interesting about Paul Ryan’s budget. Over half of the cuts in the budget come from Ryan’s proposed half repeal of Obamacare. He gets $1.8 trillion dollars by cutting everything the program does. And then he gets an additional $700 billion dollars from interest savings. That makes $2.5 trillion cut from the budget due to the pseudo-repeal of Obamacare. There is also a bit more than $100 billion in extra taxes, which brings the total to $2.6 trillion. That’s 57% of the savings.

As usual, there is nothing to Paul Ryan’s budget. And that’s to be expected. I assume that in his mind, he is very clear on what he wants to do: he wants to screw the poor, sick, and elderly. But he isn’t willing to lose his seat in the House by letting his constituency know what he really thinks. Thus, he gets his cuts from voucherizing Medicare, block granting Medicaid, and “repealing” Obamacare. He isn’t even brave enough to suggest cutting Social Security.

This new budget seems to be getting a lukewarm reception from the pundit class. Liberals hate it, of course. But Forbes discusses how many conservatives are having a hard time with it. Even Rush Limbaugh is icy towards it. And as noted above, the Washington Post is none too happy about it, even as they spend much time talking about how balancing the budget is just the greatest thing since Wonder invented sliced bread.

It is interesting that Ryan’s budget is now toxic. It is in no way less ridiculous than his two previous budgets, which lead to his receiving awards. Why the change? After all, I don’t hear anyone admitting that they were wrong before. But I think the Washington Post editorial explains it.

The editorial divides Ryan’s budget into three parts: the good, the bad, and the “ain’t gonna happen.” The “good” is just Ryan’s idea of using “fair value” accounting for student loans and housing credits. I don’t know much about accounting, but you can see what this change will do: make life more expensive for the poor and middle classes. And this is where the Post is cheering along Ryan. The “ain’t gonna happen” is just Obamacare.

Where the Post shows its true colors is in the “bad” section.” They are all for turning Medicare into a voucher program. The problem with Ryan’s plan is that it doesn’t do it for ten years. Just think of all the people we could get rid of if he started depriving seniors of medical care right now! They are also upset that Ryan isn’t touching Social Security. The horror!

The reason that centrists loved Ryan before was that his budget was cruel. The reason they hate it now is that it isn’t cruel enough. When Ryan was pitching a balanced budget in 30 years, it was fine to not start inflicting severe punishment on the poor for a decade or so. But now that Ryan is pitching a balanced budget in 10 years, that punishment has to come now. So Paul Ryan is only considered Serious as long as he is able to credibly claim that he really is for hurting the citizenry. This is the same reason that centrists never even consider The People’s Budget; it may balance the budget, but it isn’t Serious because it doesn’t hurt the poor.

I am fond of quoting Matt Yglesias about the Quaker budget hawks. In it, he compares Fix the Debt to a group of Quakers who claim to be for balancing the federal budget but who are against any proposals that don’t involve reducing military spending. You would have to say that the Quakers are just pacifists who are using the budget deficit as a ruse. And so it is with Fix the Debt: they don’t want to balance the budget; they want to cut entitlements and lower taxes.

But it isn’t just Fix the Debt. The entire conservative infrastructure is involved in this game. And no one is a better symbol of it than Paul Ryan with his new “plan” to balance the budget in ten years. Let’s just look at the extreme hypocrisy of his approach to the ACA (Obamacare). Ezra Klein explains, “Ryan’s version of repeal means getting rid of all the parts that spend money to give people health insurance but keeping the tax increases and the Medicare cuts that pays for that health insurance, as without those policies, it is very, very difficult for Ryan to hit his deficit-reduction targets.”

This is a strange kind of conservative thinking. When it is to their advantage, they talk up incentives. We couldn’t, for example, bail out underwater homeowners because that would create a moral hazard. We are told that incentives matter. Yet when it comes to Ryan’s new budget, the assumption is that the people won’t mind if new taxes, which were levied to pay for a new program, stick around while the program itself goes away. If this were true, we could balance the budget by killing Social Security and Medicare but leaving the payroll tax in place. That, my friends, is exactly what Ryan is doing with his new budget.

It is no secret what Paul Ryan and the rest of the conservatives are all about. Eugene Robinson puts it bluntly, “If Rep. Paul Ryan wants people to take his budget manifestos seriously, he should be honest about his ambition: not so much to make the federal government fiscally sustainable as to make it smaller.” Of course, that isn’t the whole story: they want to reduce the size of government when it comes to spending on the poor; when it comes to the rich, they want to spend ever more. Remember: what diferentiates Democrats and Republicans is what they want to spend money on, not how much they want to spend.

In an article this morning, Ezra Klein sums up Ryan’s budget in three sentences:

Is that clear? Basically, it comes down to this: cut programs for the poorer classes, raise taxes on the poorer classes, and lower taxes on the rich. There are many ways to create a budget. Ryan and the conservatives choose to do it in a way that almost everyone would agree is morally upside down.

I still love the pretend deficit hawk Quakers because their hearts are in the right place; they are trying to shrink the war machine. But the pretend deficit hawk conservatives are another thing altogether. They want to take from the poor and give to the rich. And that’s just immoral.