The whitest turkey you've ever seen (other than Mitt Romney)

Gawker’s John Cook on the much discussed lunch between President Obama and Mitt Romney in an article titled ‘Barack Obama Ate Some White Turkey With a White Turkey Today‘:

On the menu was “Southwestern grilled chicken salad,” according to a readout released by the White House Press Office. Missing was “White Bread Sandwich With Mayonnaise” and “Braised Oxtail with Honkey Beans.” According to the White House, the two men “pledged to stay in touch, particularly if opportunities to work together on shared interests arise in the future.” Hit me up on Facebook!

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Michael Cohen in the Guardian makes a persuasive argument that Republicans don’t have much to gain by holding the economy to ransom again during the ‘fiscal cliff’ negotiations:

In the end, neither side has all that much to gain from dragging the fiscal cliff argument out. Now that President Obama has won re-election, and doing short-term damage to the economy is no longer in the political interests of Republicans, the outlines of a budget deal become that much easier to achieve. Moreover, all those House Republicans have to run for re-election in two years – and would prefer to do so in more optimal economic conditions, rather than in an economy undermined by growth-reducing austerity policies.

There were once good political reasons for Republicans to have a dalliance with economic calamity; no longer is that true. And it’s worth remembering that in virtually every single showdown between Obama and the Republican Congress in his first term (from the tax cut showdown of 2010 and the budget battle of early 2011, to the debt limit negotiations in the summer of 2011 and finally the payroll tax confrontation in the beginning of 2012), it has been Republicans who have surrendered, with far less than half a loaf. In its brinkmanship, the GOP likes to dance right up to the edge; they are far less inclined to take the plunge.

I think Cohen is correct in his analysis – Americans believe that President Obama’s economic policies are heading the country in the right direction, and explicitly rejected austerity at the polls in November. GOP strategists know this and will not be keen to shoulder the blame for a break down in the negotiations, making a decent deal for the Democrats a good possibility. It looks like Obama is sticking to his guns on raising taxes for the wealthy, meaning the onus is on Republicans to budge from their previous position on taxation.

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It still makes me uncomfortable to write about politics in terms of ethnic, socio economic and gender based terms, but I guess that’s the reality of how campaigns are planned and executed. Having said that, maybe Obama’s recent bump in the polls from a demographic he has had trouble connecting with in the past is a signal that America, or at least parts of it, are not so easily stereotyped. From the Atlantic:

Across most of the presidential battleground states, particularly in the Midwest, President Obama’s lead rests on a surprisingly strong performance among blue-collar white women who usually tilt toward the GOP.

A National Journal analysis of recent polling results across 11 states considered battlegrounds shows that in most of them, Obama is running considerably better than he is nationally among white women without a college education. Obama’s gains with these so-called “waitress moms” are especially pronounced in Heartland battlegrounds like Ohio, Wisconsin and Iowa.

The Democrats have been actively targeting this demographic, bombarding them with ads focusing on Romney’s wealth and indifference to the concerns of working Americans, so it’s probably nothing to get too excited about. But at least they feel more comfortable with a Black man in the Oval office than an aloof, rich white guy.

Isn’t that progress?

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Romney: Serious problems with the truth

By Bob Cesca: Yesterday I wrote a column with the headline The Biggest Mitt Romney Lie (So Far). I specifically covered my ass with the parenthetical qualifier “so far” knowing that he’d one-up himself with another cynical whopper of a lie very, very soon. I had no idea it would be the same day.

To recap: over the weekend, Romney wrote on The Facebook that President Obama was trying to disenfranchise military voters in Ohio when, in fact, the president was actually trying to extend weekend early voting to all Ohio voters including members of the military. Romney flagrantly lied about the Justice Department’s lawsuit to overturn the Ohio Republican law that ended weekend voting.

No sooner could everyone scramble to debunk this nonsense, but a new Romney commercial was released on Tuesday that contained a grotesquely misleading statement. The video falsely claims the president tried to “gut” President Clinton’s welfare reform legislation from 1996.

Big-time lie. (You can watch the entire video on YouTube, but if you don’t want to torture yourself with the deluge of crackpot Rove-style lies and propaganda then stick with me here.)

The commercial narration, ostensibly approved by Romney himself, says, “On July 12th, President Obama quietly announced a plan to gut welfare reform by dropping work requirements.” Wrong, wrong, wrong. No gutting, no dropping of the work requirement. In fact, a long list of Republican governors wanted to do more than what the president and Health & Human Services has actually allowed. We’ll get back to that presently.

What did the administration do? HHS authorized state governments to experiment with new ways of expediting welfare recipients (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Program) back into the workforce; specifically, as the HHS website reports, to “test alternative and innovative strategies, policies, and procedures that are designed to improve employment outcomes for needy families.”

Full stop. That’s all. Nothing more. Even the most bizarre left-field Orwellian use of the word “gut” wouldn’t apply here.

Furthermore, in 2005, a letter signed by 28 Republican governors requested far more extensive leeway with the program. 28 Republican governors, including conservative sacred cows like Rick Perry, Mark Sanford, Jeb Bush, Haley Barbour, Mitch Daniels and Mike Huckabee, requested “increased waiver authority, allowable work activities, availability of partial work credit and the ability to coordinate state programs are all important aspects of moving recipients from welfare to work.”

And in keeping with everything we know about Mitt Romney and his ongoing strategy of attacking the president for things Romney himself once supported — yes, then-Governor Romney also signed the letter.

So no — the president hasn’t gutted welfare reform, at least if you go by the Republican standard, which was a request for considerably more leeway than anything the administration has done. Another massive Romney lie.

Are you noticing a pattern here? On various occasions, the president has acted like the grown-up in the room and acquiesced to several Republican policy demands and, again and again, the Republicans have attacked him for the policies that they themselves requested and, in some cases, invented. Do the list. The individual mandate for health insurance, cap and trade, all-of-the-above energy policy and now this.

See, the Romney campaign and GOP leadership understand the far-right Republican base. They know the base doesn’t care about (or can’t remember) anything that happened prior to January 20, 2009. They know that fact-checking will come too late. They know that right-wing voters will repeat any and all lies simply because they’re wildly desperate to get rid of the African-American liberal with the exotic non-presidential name in the White House.

Speaking of which, if you think the welfare line of attack is a racial dog-whistle, you’re goddamn right. Republicans only ever bring up perceived Democratic weakness on welfare when they’re trying to motivate the angry, resentful white base. So this particular commercial combines a whopper lie about the president’s record with some bonus Southern Strategy politics as the gravy.

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Romney: Raking it in (Photo credit: Talk Radio News Service)

The Daily Banter headline grab (from Boston.com):

Can President Barack Obama raise the money he needs to hold onto the White House?

Money wasn’t supposed to be a worry for the president’s campaign, which smashed fundraising records in 2008. But Mitt Romney’s team has hauled in more than Obama and his allies for a third straight month, raising the once-unthinkable question.

While the race for voter support is tight, according to polls, Romney’s robust fundraising and a crush of money from Republican-leaning political action committees have forced the president’s campaign to spend heavily through the summer.

Highlighting the challenge for Obama, Romney on Monday reported a July fundraising haul of more than $101 million along with the Republican National Committee, compared to the $75 million that Obama’s campaign said it had brought in along with the Democratic National Committee.

During a fundraiser in Stamford, Conn., Obama said Romney’s tax proposal would benefit the wealthy at the expense of many middle-class families. ‘‘It’s like Robin Hood in reverse,’’ he said. ‘‘It’s Romney Hood.’’ Romney campaign spokesman Ryan Williams countered that Obama was the only ‘‘candidate in this race who’s going to raise taxes on the American people.’’

The president also warned that his campaign faced a deluge of Republican money.

‘‘Over the course of the next three months, the other side is going to spend more money than we have ever seen on ads that basically say the same thing you’ve been hearing for the past three months,’’ Obama said, then summarized their argument as ‘‘the economy is not where it needs to be and it’s Obama’s fault.’’

Before Romney’s summer surge, Obama had not been outraised by an opponent since 2007.

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I know, I know, the people responsible for running Barack Obama’s media campaign are the same people who sell you Pepsi, but the new campaign video is actually pretty good (and accurate):

I’ve been wondering about this whole ‘retro actively’ retired business for a couple of days and have been trying to figure out exactly what it means. And I think the video hits the nail on the head – it means Romney figured out that Bain Capital did a lot of heinous stuff while he was there, so he decided to tell everyone that he left the company before he actually did.  Clever, right? Except it’s hilariously easy to disprove.

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Another big week here at The Daily Banter (our biggest traffic so far!). In case you missed it, here’s what we covered. We looked at what Mitt Romney’s fundraiser at Dick Cheney’s house means for his campaign, and argued that Romney is now adopting the racist ‘Southern Strategy’. We begged CNN to get rid of the despicable Nancy Grace over another suicide provoked by her show, and discussed a scarily inhumane discussion on Obama’s drone policy on MSNBC. Chez Pazienza weighed in on the Tosh rape joke controversy, and ripped into Libertarian ‘reporter’ John Stossel. Finally, we argued that Americans need to adopt some British style anger over the new banking scandal, and Bob asked the nation to stop devouring hamburgers for the sake of the environment.

Have a great weekend!

Ben, Editor

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In case you missed it, here’s what we covered at The Daily Banter this week!: We looked at New York Time’s columnist Thomas Friedman’s fast food intellectualism, and analyzed Obama’s use of Karl Rove’s election tactics for the 2012 Presidential race. Bob Cesca tore into Republicans threatening armed rebellion over the health care ruling, and dismantled the Republican myth that the Affordable Care Act is the biggest tax increase in history. Chez Pazienza weighed in on Anderson Coopers revelation that he’s gay, and then did the weekly mailbag drunk….

Have a great weekend!

Ben (Editor)

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Single-payer rally (Photo credit: Public Citizen)

By Bob Cesca: Throughout the last four years, whenever healthcare reform has reached critical mass — either when it was in danger of failing or close to passing, big dumb Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson (D-In Name Only) has invariably shoved his bulbous skull into the mix and blurted out something unforgivably stupid. Part of the reason is the aforementioned “big dumb” thing I just wrote, and the other part is that Omaha is the insurance capital of America.

Here’s the senator yesterday:

“Many expect an activist Supreme Court will strike down part or all of health reform,” Nelson said in a prepared statement. “If they strike down the mandate, the Supreme Court will be paving the way to a single-payer system, or back to the old broken health care system — neither of which are good for Nebraskans.”

First things first. The House Progressive Caucus is planning to reintroduce a single-payer law if the ACA dies today. That bill will predictably fail because there aren’t enough votes, and the House is controlled by the Republicans who will rapidly poop all over it.

Next, single-payer would be fantastic for Nebraskans. And Iowans and Virginians and Texans and New Yorkers. Why? Because it would be a wildly affordable and accessible form of providing insurance for everyone. It would be more accountable to the people than a corporate insurance provider. Financially, it would have inimal overhead to maintain (Medicare’s overhead is around 3-cents on the dollar), zero profit tacked onto the premiums — essentially Medicare, but without the “over 65″ part. And as near as I can tell, old people love Medicare so much so that they want government to keep its hands off the program. Doctors, prescription drug companies, medical supply companies and hospitals would remain autonomous (though fairly-regulated as they are now).

The only people who would lose in a single-payer system are greedy whores like Ben Nelson. Everyone else would fight to keep it once they discovered how inexpensive and accessible it was.

The other error in Ben Nelson’s quote is less fun. No. Sorry. Single-payer will not become more likely if the Supreme Court strikes down the law today (as I write this at 5AM EDT, there’s obviously still no decision).

History has proved that every time a healthcare reform effort fails, the next version is more conservative. LBJ’s version was more conservative than Truman’s (LBJ tried to reform the whole system, but settled for just the elderly with the creation of Medicare). Carter’s was more conservative than LBJ’s. Clinton’s was more conservative than Carter’s. And President Obama’s law is more conservative than Clinton’s. It’s not because Democrats are becoming more conservative — though some of them are. It’s because repeated failure has naturally shifted the parameters of the reform ideas closer to what might actually pass. Clearly more liberal reform failed, so, the reasoning goes, there must be greener grass to the right.

That’s not to say the new law is conservative by today’s standards. There are liberal things about it (Medicaid expansion and subsidies) and there are conservative things in there, too — ironically, the individual mandate is a conservative idea created by Republicans including Mitt Romney. Either way, the law is a massive achievement and not only includes significant reforms to the system, but it makes insurance more affordable while providing a superstructure upon which additional reforms can be added, such as a public option program which could eventually lead to single-payer.

I sincerely hope I’m wrong, but none of that will exist if the law disappears today. None of it. Single-payer won’t become more likely. It’ll be an even greater pipe dream. It’ll be even more unattainable. The likely scenario is a far more conservative bill, perhaps offered up by the next Republican president or even President Obama in his second term, but probably not.

I hate to be a Debbie Downer about single-payer, but as much as I like the idea of it, there’s just no way it gets past Ben Nelson’s gigantic head — or Joe Lieberman’s gigantic head, and so forth. This is what some progressives (and Ben Nelson) fail to realize. When the ACA was about to become law, Jane Hamsher and others thought that if they managed to kill the bill, another law — perhaps single-payer — would take over. Okay, sure. 50 years from now. But in the meantime, 45,000 Americans will die every year because they can’t afford insurance. That’s a new 9/11 every month. The stakes are too high to play the idealistic long-game. Like the climate crisis, changing the system is urgent and immediate and the smart money is on this “Obamacare” law because it’s opened the door to more reforms and, yes, that coveted path to single-payer.

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In case you missed it, here’s what we covered this week at The Daily Banter (and it was a very big week for us – highest traffic so far!): Mark Ames broke a big story on the Left’s total abandonment of labor rights, Chez Pazienza wrote a heart breaking piece on the merciless bullying of a 68-year-old widow to the point where she cried, and profiled MSNBC’s new vacant conservative host, Bob Cesca drew comparisons between the months leading up to President Clinton’s impeachment and what is happening to Obama, and contrasted the Republican’s treatment of women saying ‘vagina’ and conservatives shouting at the President. We also looked at the poverty epidemic the media refuses to cover, and argued that President Obama is still a major force for progressive politics despite his many flaws.

Have a great weekend!

Ben Cohen, Editor

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