If you lie to Congress, it is a crime.  It’s called perjury.  You may remember that when Roger Clemens did it, he barely escaped two counts of it.  And you should remember that the official reason President Bill Clinton was impeached was because of perjury (you know, it had nothing to do with the rabid hatred the GOP had of him, then Congressman Bob Barr, R-GA, asked aloud, If we can’t get rid of him with impeachment what else can we do?  Uh, win an election.)

So if it is illegal for citizens to lie TO Congress, why is is legal for them to lie to us?

First case of lying: Congressman Darrell Issa (R-CA)

Issa has made some wild claims about Benghazi.  One that he has repeated is that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton personally signed a cable about Benghazi.  This has been refuted by all of the whistleblowers and a Washington Post fact checker called that assertion “a whopper” (from Congressman Elijah Cummings’, D-MD testimony at the hearing on the subject on May 8, 2013 — you can watch it online).  All State Department cables have the Secretary’s name.

Yet, Issa repeats this claim over and over and over.  The goal, of course, is to weaken Secretary Clinton because she is the front runner for the Democratic Party and is popular among Republicans.  The only thing they can find to hurt her is this.  Truthfully, that we had people in such a dangerous place left so far away from military support seems really upsetting.  I am torn from thinking this is Libya, this was September 11th, how could we leave our ambassador so unprotected? The Accountability Review Board (ARB) investigated and released this report.   They found that mistakes were made and offered suggestions to prevent this from happening ever again.  They were not wimpy as they have been called by some on the right. They were thorough and pretty scathing.  There is no question that this should not have happened.

What we know is that when the idea of increasing funding for diplomatic security came up, many of these Republicans who are so unhappy with what happened now, said “no.”

(Disclaimer: I worked for the Clinton Administration on and off for most of it.  I also worked for Secretary Clinton’s presidential campaign and support the idea of her running in 2016.)

Liar number 2: Senator Kelly Ayotte (R-NH)

Senator Ayotte has been questioned about her vote against the recent gun control bill.  Her response has been — more than once — that she opposed it because she doesn’t want there to be a national registry of gun owners.  I support gun control and I don’t want that either.  I voted against former DC Mayor Adrian Fenty because, at least partially, he almost went through with a policy to send DC police door-to-door to request residents turn over any guns they didn’t want in their home.  If said guns could be tied to a crime, the people who turned them over could be charged with that crime.  That is ridiculous.

The bill Senator Ayotte voted against had no such provision.  Senators Pat Toomey (R-PA) and Joe Manchin (D-WV) put a provision in the bill making it a felony to keep information on people who had bought a gun past a certain amount of time.  No one wants to see such a registry.

I don’t know what her real reason was and would like to hear it because I feel like every other five minutes I hear someone on the right whining that “No one read the bill!”  Read the damn bill.  And if you have a real reason for going against this common sense bill, please share it.  I might even agree with the real reason, if I knew what it was.

And the liars that love them.

Could the right be happier about anything than Benghazi?  Were they this upset with President Bush for letting 9/11 happened? (Didn’t he get a report entitled Bin laden determined to attack the US within the US?  Did he not have intelligence that al Qaeda was looking at using airplanes?  Yes on both.  You may remember how I was jumping up and down begging for hearings?  Oh, you don’t?  This isn’t just because I am not a major TV network but because I am not a truther nor do I see politics in every event on earth).

Second problem I have with the right’s response is their comparison to Watergate.  They say “when Obama lied, people died.”  I have two problems with that statement.  The first issue I have is substantive.  President Obama has not lied.  This is not a cover-up.  This is a tragedy and shows some real holes in the way we do business that need to be fixed.  Secondly, it implies that these lies caused deaths.  Even if this was true, they happened after the event in question so any attempts at finding a causality are just ridiculous.

On the gun control thing, the National Rifle Association and American Future Fund have some to Senator Ayotte’s defense.  The latter has sponsored ads that compound her lie with one of their own.  They claim she has voted for increased background checks when she did the opposite.  Read that here (and see the ad).

One thing that gets under my skin more than many things is when people put up with politicians who lie because that’s just how it’s done.  We get the government we settle for, we need to expect better.

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The House of Representatives voted this morning on Congressman Paul Ryan‘s budget proposal.  It passed by a vote of 221 to 207.  The 221 yeahs were all Republican, 197 Democrats and 10 Republicans voted no.   You can read the official vote count here.  You can read the official vote count here.  Read more about the actual legislation here.

This is how the House Budget Committee describes the Republican budget plan:

Washington owes the American people a responsible, balanced budget. This is a plan to balance the budget in ten years. It invites President Obama and Senate Democrats to commit to the same common-sense goal. This budget will achieve the following:

1. Stop spending money we don’t have by cutting wasteful spending.
2. Fix our broken tax code to create jobs and increase wages.
3. Protect and strengthen important priorities like Medicare and national security.
4. Reform welfare programs like Medicaid so they can deliver on their promise.

You can read the summary here and the full plan here.

Before I give my critique of Ryan’s budget, I would like to be very clear about something.  I do not have anything against him.  I just disagree with the approach he has taken to the overall budget and Medicare.

So, I do have problems with Ryan’s budget.  They are:

1. It doesn’t go anywhere near defense spending.  Not only that, despite claiming to be supporters of “fiscal responsibility” the GOP controlled House voted to give the Defense Department more money than it requested.  From the Associated Press, “The House Armed Services Committee on Thursday overwhelmingly backed a $642 billion defense bill that calls for construction of a missile defense site on the East Coast, restores aircraft and ships slated for early retirement and ignores the Pentagon’s cost-saving request for another round of domestic base closings.”  
2. Since the Defense Department budget is off the table, major cuts will be made to other discretionary spending.  It should be noted that this part of the budget is really small and cuts to these programs will not do a lot to impact the deficit or debt.
3. The Obamacare “repeal” isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.  Sure, it gets rid of a lot of it but “Ryan’s budget doesn’t actually assume the repeal of all of Obamacare. It keeps the tax increases and Medicare cuts so that it can balance in 10 years, as top Republicans in the House promised conservatives.”  Link here.
4. It does nothing to address the sequester.  According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) the sequester’s impact on the economy is very real.  They looked into this and found, “In the absence of sequestration, CBO estimates, GDP growth would be about 0.6 percentage points faster during this calendar year, and the equivalent of about 750,000 more full-time jobs would be created or retained by the fourth quarter.” More on that can be found here.
5. It fails to address economic growth.  In 1992, one Clinton/Gore campaign slogan was “It’s the economy, stupid.”  That idea applies today.  A better rate of economic growth would solve a lot of our deficit and debt problems.  Louis Woodhill writes this in Forbes: ”The FY2014 Budget Resolution makes a few vague statements about economic growth, but it doesn’t promise that following Ryan’s plan will deliver a growth rate above the woefully inadequate CBO baseline, which peters out to a pathetic 2.19% rate by FY2023. This is what makes the whole exercise a suicide mission for House Republicans.”
6. Yes, we have a divided government but all the reports I have read indicate House Democrats received more votes than House Republicans and the only reason the GOP has a majority is gerrymandering (see my post on the Reform We Need for more on my view on this — and no, both sides try to do it so I don’t put all the blame for gerrymandering on the right side of the aisle).  The bigger issue, is that voters rejected the GOP budgetary priorities when they rejected the Romney/Ryan ticket.  Read more here.

While those are my basic problems with the plan, the specifics of which programs will be cut bother me a lot.  I watched Ryan this morning on the House floor talk about the differences between how Republicans and Democrats view government and I am going to address some of that now.

Ryan said, “This budget debate was constructive. It revealed each side’s priorities. We want to balance the budget. They don’t. We want to restrain spending. They want to spend more. We think taxpayers give enough to Washington. They want to raise taxes by $1 trillion—just take more to spend more. We want to strengthen programs like Medicare. They seem complicit in their demise. We see Obamacare as a roadblock to patient-centered reform. They see it as a sacred cow. We think national security is a top priority. They want to hollow out our military. We offer modernization and reform, growth and opportunity. They cling to the status quo.”

You can watch that below.

My belief is that government exists to do for us collectively what we cannot do individually.  While I do not share Ryan’s view that a balanced budget is the end all, be all of everything (to me that is a GOP “sacred cow”), I am not opposed to it.  The last time we had a balanced budget was not under a GOP administration but during President Clinton’s tenure.  Moreover, the Republicans spent a lot like drunken sailors when they had control so I am not sure what he is talking about there.  I also do not want to “hollow out our military.”  I want to make it more efficient.  I suspect if I were to talk to Ryan, he would have a similar answer to questions about Medicare — he says he doesn’t want to destroy it, he wants to save it by making it more efficient.

I do not think we should cut:

1. Education spending:  our workers compete against workers all over the globe. I would like our people to be as (or more) qualified as anyone else.   I saw an interview with Apple where they said they would love to manufacture more products in the US but we don’t have the numbers of qualified people they need to do it all.  We need more engineers, scientists, etc.  We face shortages in healthcare (nurses, techs and a variety of physician specialties such as primary care doctors and surgeons).  This is not the time to cut education spending.
2. Transportation & infrastructure spending:  Our infrastructure is crumbling.  Our highways, bridges and rail lines are so far behind other countries, it is crazy.  Repairing these systems would be a way to get large numbers of people jobs that cannot be exported anywhere.
3. Clean energy research and development.  I know, I know there have been some bad companies but the more energy sources we have, the lower the costs will be and the less dependent we will be on unstable and unfriendly regimes.
4. Programs to help the poor.  With unemployment where it is, too many people depend on food stamps, unemployment insurance and other programs to cut them off.  One of my mom’s friends (and no, Ryan has never said anything like this — as far as I know), she said “when the little squirrel cannot find a nut, he dies.”  I don’t want that to be our country’s approach to the poor.
5. Medicare — it should not be a voucher system.  You can read about my thoughts on Ryan’s plan for that here.

Watch Congressman Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) talk about the GOP budget plan.  He is also the Ranking Member of the House Budget Committee.

Originally this post was going to be solely about the Republican budget plan in the context of Ryan’s religious views. The US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) opposed Ryan’s budget last year and have expressed similar concerns with this year’s proposals.  Their opposition stems from cuts to programs such as food stamps, child tax credits and others that help the poor.  Their letters to Congress last year were in response to comments the Budget Committee chairman made:

“A person’s faith is central to how they conduct themselves in public and in private,” Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, said in the interview. “So to me, using my Catholic faith, we call it the social magisterium, which is how do you apply the doctrine of your teaching into your everyday life as a lay person?

“Those principles are very, very important,” Ryan said. “And the preferential option for the poor, which is one of the primary tenets of Catholic social teaching, means don’t keep people poor, don’t make people dependent on government so that they stay stuck at their station in life, help people get out of poverty, out into a life of independence.”  Source: the Hill.

A statement by the USCCB released yesterday laid out their case for including provisions to help the poor in any budget:

“We support the goal of reducing future unsustainable deficits, but insist that this worthy goal be pursued in ways that protect poor and vulnerable people at home and abroad,” said Bishop Stephen E. Blaire of Stockton, chairman of the USCCB Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development, and Bishop Richard E. Pates of Des Moines, chairman of the USCCB Committee on International Justice and Peace.

“The moral measure of this budget debate is not which party wins or which powerful interests prevail, but rather how those who are jobless, hungry, homeless or poor are treated. Their voices are too often missing, but they have the most compelling moral claim on our consciences and our common resources. The bishops stand ready to work with leaders of both parties for a budget that reduces future deficits, protects poor and vulnerable people, advances the common good, and promotes human life and dignity,”

The bishops also suggested the following three principles guide lawmakers:

• Every budget decision should be assessed by whether it protects or threatens human life and dignity.
• Every budget proposal should be measured by how it affects “the least of these” (Matthew 25). The needs of those who are hungry and homeless, without work or in poverty should come first.
• Government and other institutions have a shared responsibility to promote the common good of all, especially ordinary workers and families who struggle to live in dignity in difficult economic times.

Ryan responded to the Bishops’ concerns and argued that his budget proposals neither hurt the poor nor do they violate his Catholic faith.  From Town Hall Magazine.

“Our budget incorporates solidarity by recognizing a critical role for government in providing a strong safety net for those in need. And it restores the balance between solidarity and subsidiarity by returning a lot of power to individuals, to families and to communities. We are a nation that prides itself on looking out for one another—and government has an important role to play in that. But relying on distant government bureaucracies to lead this effort just hasn’t worked.

Some Catholics seem to mistake the preferential option for the poor for a preferential option for Big Government. When you look at the results of that approach—one out of every six Americans in poverty today, many of them mired in programs whose outdated structures often act as a trap that hinders upward mobility—that’s just not consistent with how I understand my Catholic faith. We need to break down the barriers to opportunity and attack the root causes of poverty. Informed by constitutional oath and my Catholic faith, this is a moral obligation I take very seriously.”

Ryan also defended the morality of his budget in The World Over with Raymond Arroyo, EWTN:

“These programs aren’t working the way they should. One in six Americans are in poverty today. We have the highest poverty rates in a generation. What House Republicans proposed in our budget was sensible reforms  want to do is put the kind of reforms in these programs – using subsidiarity, solidarity, local control, ideas that worked when we tried them in some other areas in the 1990’s. We want to reform these programs with the idea of getting people out of poverty onto lives of self sufficiency. Right! And there isn’t a monopoly. That’s my point. I can no more claim exclusive justification for my economic and political views than a liberal can for theirs within the Church’s social teaching. This is a matter for prudential judgment left to the laity to exercise their discretion. People of good will can disagree on these things. You have these hits come at you — like that letter — but we should raise the tone of the debate. We shouldn’t just try to shoot the messenger and try to nullify the notion that there are other ways in which to implement Church teaching. That just does a disservice to the kind of debate we need to have.”

Now, I do not doubt Ryan’s sincerity in this area.  I think he does believe that his plans will help the poor and I don’t think he cares more about the rich.  I cannot say the same thing about Mitt Romney — I do believe he thinks his wealth has more to do with how great he is and not so much to do with the incredible opportunities he has had that others have not.  Yes, I am aware of and appreciate the work he has done in his communities to help others, I don’t think he is a fundamentally evil or awful person, I just think he doesn’t get it.  I have read reports that Ryan had suggested the Romney/Ryan 2012 campaign spend some time in lower income neighborhoods in the cities they visited to educate people on how their policies would be more helpful to poor Americans than Obama’s.  These ideas were allegedly shot down because the campaign did not see the value as they did not expect to get any votes in those areas.

(Side note: if these reports are true, Ryan’s idea was a great one and should have been followed.  It may not have gotten a huge number of votes in those areas, though I am sure it would have gotten some, but it would have made the ticket more appealing to a number of people who may have been on the fence.)

The bottom line, however, is that Ryan’s budgets and Medicare plans violate what I think of when I think of Jesus’ teachings.  I am all for the idea that “if you give a man a fish, you feed him for one day but if you teach him to fish, you feed him for a lifetime” but cutting off assistance to people in real need, won’t accomplish that goal.

And if you want to read more about Ryan’s views on how to help the poor and his religious ideology:

1. Op-ed “Government Must Refocus its Safety Net to Those in Need”.
2. Interview with National Catholic Register’s Charlotte Hays – Ryan: ‘We have pursued solidarity but abused Subsidiarity’.
3. National Catholic Register Op-ed:  Applying Our Enduring Truths to our Defining Challenges.
4.  Ryan’s Opening Statement at House Budget Committee hearing on reforming the safety net.

Thank you to everyone who helped with this by sending supporting materials and documents.  Also I was impressed that Congressman Ryan went out of his way to praise his staff (that’s the former Hill staffer in me talking) and with Congressman Chris Van Hollen for thanking Ryan for his professionalism.  I may disagree with him but we should be able to disagree with people while remaining civil and it seems these two men have.  Good for you.

I promise to do an analysis of the Senate Democrats’ budget proposal.

And now for something completely different… (and hopefully fun)

I write political satire as Alyson Durden for Pardon the Pundit.  I have written a number of pieces where I call Ryan a vampire.  Now, I know Ryan is not a vampire and truly hope his staff, who were most helpful when I was researching his response to Catholic opposition to his budget plans, will not be totally offended because I meant it all in good fun.

Some are:

1. Paul Ryan Denies Allegations He Is a Vampire.
2. Ryan Claims “Twilight” Success Means He Does Have a Mandate, Admits He Is a Vampire.
3. Revealed! The Real Reason Romney Picked Ryan Was to Woo the All Important “Twilight” Voters.
4. As the Markets Worry about the Fiscal Cliff, Washington Works to Reassure America it is Working to Save “Twilight”.

And here is a goofy, fake add I put together making fun of a Democratic commercial bashing Ryan for his Medicare plans.  I did send it to his staff and it has received at least one thumbs down so I do hope it wasn’t from them because I was actually trying to point out the absurdity of the idea that his goal is to kill old people.

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The Republicans have the upper hand in dealing with the sequester. If 2012 had not happened and their ability to be as incompetent as Democrats not been so clear (or if I were a fan of conspiracy theories, which I am NOT), I might think they planned this.  They lost the first few rounds of this tit for tat with the White House on the budget to win when they wanted to.  And their laissez faire attitude towards the whole thing reminds me of Tom Cruise in A Few Good Men when he instructed his team to never look upset or surprised — jut act is if everything was going just as they planned.  They have become the cat who ate the canary.

President Obama, however, seems to have lost his coating of cool.  At least his Administration has.  This is why I think you can tell the GOP is winning.  One could make the same argument about what happens when you call someone Hitler; it means you are losing the argument.  The same can be said of fear mongering.

If you believed some from the Obama Administration, you might expect to wake up tomorrow morning to hoards of locusts.  Education Secretary Arne Duncan, for instance has told multiple news outlets that approximately 40,000 teachers will lose their jobs and that the pink slips are already going out.  Some of that may be true but it doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with the sequester.

If this was just based on who looks calmer, the GOP currently holds the lead.  The cause of their upper hand is another story.  Most Americans just aren’t paying attention.  Several polls indicate they aren’t worried about the cuts because they don’t know about them.  My feeling is that this is a lot like a bad sequel to a bad movie.  This is Police Academy 4.  We’ve been to the brink, we’ve even gone over it and survived.  How is this any different?

And then we come to how they are winning.  First, they are getting spending cuts that they claim they want (they have done nothing to make me think they are more interested in cutting spending than the Democrats).  Secondly, John Boehner said that if we want to prevent the sequester, “the Senate needs to get off of their asses.”  Ouch.  Could that be a dig at Mitch McConnell?

See the Budget Control Act of 2011 http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R41965.pdf

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Elections have consequences, Chuck Hagel deserves an up or down vote on his nomination.

Republicans in the Senate have never been thrilled by President Obama’s decision to nominate former Senator Chuck Hagel as his new Secretary of Defense.  Their reasons have varied from his finances, to wanting information on the September 11th attack in Benghazi – when he had no role in the government, to just not liking him.  At least Senator John McCain (R-AZ), a former good friend to Hagel, had the integrity (or should it be called audacity) to admit that he won’t vote for Hagel because he was “disagreeable.”  Since when is being friendly a prerequisite for anything in Washington, DC?  All accounts I have heard make “disagreeable” sound like a compliment compared to what people really think of McCain himself (word around the Hill is that is just pissy and angry but that hasn’t made him step down from him Senate seat).

Senator Lindsay Graham’s (R-SC) insistence that the Administration produce more information on something completely unrelated to the Hagel nomination is curious, especially given statements he has made in the past when it came to other nominations.  During Elena Kagen’s confirmation hearings, he seemed to believe that presidents have the right to have their picks for high offices go through — and I can think of few positions higher than that of Supreme Court Justice, a position held for life and whose influence goes much further than that of a cabinet official.

Here are some excerpts from Senator Graham’s opening statement at this confirmation hearing:

“And as all of our colleagues remember, just a few years ago, we had a real — real conflict in the Senate about filibustering judicial nominees. And it was Senator Byrd and a few other senators who came up with the “extraordinary circumstances” test that would say that filibusters should only be used in extraordinary circumstances because elections have consequences. And Senator Byrd was one of the chief authors of the language defining what an “extraordinary circumstance” was…

“Ken Starr and Ted Olson have suggested to the committee that you are a qualified nominee. There’s no to doubt in my mind that you are a liberal person. That applies to most of the people on the other side, and I respect them and I respect you. I’m a conservative person. And you would expect a conservative president to nominate a conservative person who did not work in the Clinton administration.

“So the fact that you’ve embraced liberal causes and you have grown up in a liberal household is something we need to talk about, but that’s just America. It’s OK to be liberal. It’s OK to be conservative. But when it comes time to be a judge, you’ve got to make sure you understand the limits that that position places on any agenda, liberal or conservative…

“At the end of the day, I think the qualification test will met.  Whether or nor activism can be parked is up to you.  And I look at this confirmation process as a way to recognize that elections have consequences and the Senate has an independent obligation on behalf of  the people of this country to put you under scrutiny, firm and fair, respectful and sometimes contentious.

“Good luck.  Be as candid as possible.  And it’s OK to disagree with us up here.  Thank you.”(bold emphasis was mine)

Now, Senator Graham did vote for her conformation but did not vote either way on Kagen’s nomination to be the US Solicitor General.  His explanation for that was:

“I am not convinced that Solicitor General Kagan will be able to shed her deeply held personal ideological beliefs, political views and experiences, and check those biases at the door of the Supreme Court. Therefore, I must vote against her nomination.”    Source here.   Keep in mind, he felt this way about Kagen when she was up for Solicitor General and still voted to confirm her to the Supreme Court.

Mr. Graham’s position is clearly different now.  Of the Hagel nomination — and other national security posts such as John Brennan’s nomination to be the new CIA Director, he has said, “”I’m gonna hit you and keep hittin’ you. Absolutely,” Graham said when asked by a reporter why he planned to continue his efforts against Hagel and Brennan. “You better believe that I’m not going to let this go.””  

Senator Graham is well within his rights to oppose a nomination and vote against it — his allegations that somehow Hagel is friendly with Iran, whose government supposedly endorsed this nomination, are just absurd and holding up a Defense Secretary nomination while we are at war seems amazingly short sighted and just plan stupid.

PS.  To be fair to Senator Graham, and I do try to be fair, I emailed his press secretary for clarification on the change in his position on using the filibuster in cases like this.  Should I receive a response, I will post it — unedited — here.

Bring Back the Draft

Congressman Charles Rangel (D-NY) was on Morning Joe this week advocating for a return of the draft.  The official reason we don’t have one has been that a volunteer military works best — we want people who want to be there.  And we do.  If we weren’t sending our troops all over the globe to police the world, as we seem to be doing right now, I would agree but we are.  We expect more from our military and their families than we have ever asked before.  That is not to say the “greatest generation” didn’t sacrifice for the country; they did.  The main difference is the sacrifice was spread out over the entire country.  Currently, despite being in the hopefully end stages of our longest war (Afghanistan) only one percent of the population actively feels the impact of the war.  Multiple deployments combined with extended tours are taking a toll.

To put this in perspective, in 2012, more soldiers died at their own hands than in combat.   Read more here.  Yes, more soldiers killed themselves.  Having witnessed the impact suicide has on the person’s family and friends up close, I can tell you it is one of the most horrible things to go through (not that I really need to say that, I just feel the need to).

First we ask our military to go above and beyond the call of duty — and their families and loved ones go through the same thing.  As an aside, Bank of America was fined for illegally foreclosing on the homes of soldiers fighting in wars (one service member told me, the foreclosure process was more stressful than his time in war — not kidding).

When talking about things like Medicare, Republicans (I am looking at you Paul Ryan) will say “we need people to feel they have skin in the game.”  If that is true for Medicare, why is not true of war?  I agree with Rangel.  If more of us knew that starting new wars would mean people we love would be sent to fight for us, maybe we would think a little bit more about doing it.

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Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s recent decision to lift the ban on women in combat has sparked some heated debate, it seems mostly on Twitter.  My personal account has been besieged by people who don’t object to the new policy because women cannot handle the role but who think it is horrible that we are going to subject women to “capture, torture and rape.”  My answer was that no one — male or female — should be subjected to these things but that was met with; “that’s how it has always been.”

Earth to these people — so have women, even when not in combat positions. This really is an issue of fairness.  Men who serve in combat are eligible for promotions and accommodations that their female counterparts are not.

Why should we allow women to serve in combat?

1. Women are already serving in combat positions.  Shocking but true.  While they have been barred from certain positions such as artillery, armor, infantry and others (1994 rule), American women are already serving in many combat position.  Most European countries have no such restrictions.  More than 20,000 women have served in Afghanistan and Iraq, 800 have been injured and at least 130 killed.  This was all BEFORE the restriction on this was lifted.
2. Objection: women are not physically able to serve in combat. Another message from reality; not all men are physically fit enough to serve in combat.  No one wants to see people who are not able to serve be put in that position.  The stanard should be fitness, not gender.
3. Fairness is important.  By allowing women to serve in positions — and no one is forcing anyone to do so, we give them access to hundreds of thousands of jobs.  We also make them eligible for the same accommodations and awards their male counterparts can get now.

But that’s not why my Twitter account was a magnet for all the vitriol this week.  How  horrible a person I must be to want to subject women to such horrible things as capture, torture and rape.

I am not even going to go into the huge, global problems of human trafficking of women and girls or the need for laws such as the Violence Against Women Act in the US – proof that being female is enough to make those things threats.

Rape is already a weapon on war and women do not have to be in the military to be victims.  Don’t believe me?  Check this out.  If you really think keeping women out of combat positions will keep them safe from rape (and if you think they can be raped without being captured and tortured, you clearly are unaware of what rape is), you are at best wrong and at worst delusional.

How about you do some research into the recent conflict in Rwanda?  The current conflict in Congo (will write more about that next Monday).  And want to go further back?  Check out the book, The Rape of Nanking.  These are just a few examples.

Yeah, keeping women out of combat roles is the way to protect women from rape in war.  And if you really want to read my personal experience with this (not in war) you can read this.

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If you are interested in politics, you know that former senator from Nebraska, Chuck Hagel, was pretty much cannibalized by Congress. This is the problem with absolutism. You might agree with Barry Goldwater when he said, “I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!”

Perhaps not.  Perhaps we need to remember that our electeds represent us — in theory — the opposite of what is said is equally as valid.  Modernization is no vice and strict adherence to an ideology is no virtue.  I have grown up a lot since moving to Washington.

So we are this random space in time, to me — as a Democrat, I am not used to seeing such discord on the the other side. Republicans oppose Chuck Hagel”s nomination to be the next Secretary of Defense.  They have some real issues, some personal (looking at you, John McCain) and some policy oriented (hello there, Lindsay Graham).

I talk about this all the time.  Politics SHOULD end at our borders.  It doesn’t.  And as a liberal Democrat, my views on this may be meaningless.  And then my partisanship will leap out at you – Sarah Palin had no business talking smack about the country she claims to love. (For the record, I do believe she loves America.)

But really? We cannot even acknowledge good ideas if they come from a party to which we do not belong?

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By now you probably have heard that President Obama signed 23 executive orders on gun safety. You might also have heard Senator Rand Paul’s (R-KY) comments that by signing them, President Obama morphed himself into King Obama and that he plans to introduce legislation to nullify any that “smack of legislation,” because he believes some do.  I reached out to the Senator’s office to see if I could get more information on his proposal or which orders he finds problematic but have yet to receive a response.  I want to be fair to the Senator, I don’t disagree with him on everything so I hope I someone from there will get back to me.

Executive orders are not legislation nor are they directed at the general public.  They are directives for the federal government.  You can read the Congressional Research Service report on executive orders here. After reading through the orders themselves, I saw none that A, look like legislation or B, would impact any current or future/prospective gun owners.  I am not alone in that assessment.  Rich Ungar from Forbes wrote the very same thing here.  He published all 23 of them and concluded:

“It does not appear that any of the executive orders would have any impact on the guns people currently own-or would like to purchase- and that all proposals regarding limiting the availability of assault weapons or large ammunition magazines will be proposed for Congressional action. As such, any potential effort to create a constitutional crisis—or the leveling of charges that the White House has overstepped its executive authority—would hold no validity.”

Now, despite what gun advocates have been saying, no one thinks any one new law will prevent all gun violence any more than current laws prevent all crime but that does not mean enacting provisions such as universal background checks or reinstating the assault weapons ban will do nothing. When one person can walk into a school or movie theatre or place of worship and kill or injure more than 50 people (Aurora), that’s a problem.

But this conversation needs to be bigger — and one reason I am so upset with the National Rifle Association (NRA) is that I agree with some of what they said but their statements advocating addressing violence in movies/video games and dealing with mental health issues were lost in the outrage over how stupid a “press conference” Wayne LaPierre gave.  Yes, we need to deal with mental health parity (one of the much maligned executive orders calls for this) and we should talk about violence in movies and video games — as much as I love the First Amendment, it is no more absolute than the Second but making sure dangerous people do not have access to weapons is a good idea.  We need to start somewhere and closing loopholes that let people with mental health issues or criminal/terrorist background seems like as good a place as any to start.

Note to Senator Rand Paul:  If you want to respond to my questions about your objections to the gun safety executive orders, I will be more than happy to put it up unedited.  Just let me know.

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In what was ostensibly the launch of ‘Republicanism 2.0′ young guns Paul Ryan and Marco Rubio both gave ‘vision’ speeches at the Jack Kemp Foundation dinner last week, spelling out their revamped conservatism they hope to sell the American public. Michael Tomasky was not impressed, noting neither man made any meaningful shift on policy – a necessity if Republicans want to get elected any time in the next 10 years:

Republicans aren’t anywhere near to exposing themselves to the kind of self-examination and intra-party debate the Democrats undertook after Reagan’s second win. Despite upholstering their speeches with ample liberal rhetoric, and in Rubio’s case those aforementioned quasi-proposals, Rubio and Ryan both stuck hard to current-day GOP gospel. Raising tax rates isn’t an option. Relying on government isn’t the answer, and all the rest. When I read the Ryan remarks I quoted above, as I first started reading those words, I thought to myself, “Ah, might I encounter here an actual nugget of self-criticism?” It came. But it was only about messaging. The substance of their positions, to them, is fine and dandy….

If Ryan or Rubio had been ready to spoon out some bitter medicine, they’d have been catcalled off the stage. Republicans, based on what we’re seeing on Capitol Hill right now, aren’t close to being ready for that. A few conservative intellectuals talk this talk, but never in the history of the relationship between intellectuals and politicians has an intellectual class been so removed from and powerless to influence its political class.

The platform given to Rubio and Ryan in the wake of their defeat is similar to the attention the GOP shone on Bobby Jindal and Michael Steele back in 2008 after McCain and Palin took a beating at the polls. Jindal, probably the least charismatic politician in America was given the weighty task of responding to Obama’s State of the Union speech, and gave perhaps the most uncomfortable rebuttal in US history.  Richard Steele was inexplicably given the position of Republican Chairman of the National Committee despite having nothing in his track record to suggest he would be up to the role (and he most definitely wasn’t). The GOP obviously calculated that running minorities for office was the cool thing to do, so they found a couple they believed wouldn’t say anything too risky and thrust them into the limelight. They hadn’t of course realized that Barack Obama had won the election despite the fact he was a minority, and discounted his enormous talent and ability to articulate the frustrations of a generation sick of Republican policies.

As Tomasky points out, “Neither they nor the people they’re talking to are ready to accept that they’ve been wrong about anything except messaging, and until they are, this [Ryan and Rubios speech] is just gaseous rhetoric.”

So we’ve seen the new Republican vision, and it’s no vision at all. Just new messengers delivering the same garbage the public has rejected in two national election, and will reject a third time if it doesn’t change.

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Dick Morris: Never right

If anyone could legitimately tell me what purpose Dick Morris serves, I’d gladly turn The Daily Banter into a propaganda wing of the Republican Party and join Dick in the fight against evil socialism in America. Apparently, Morris is a political pollster, consultant, and media pundit, but given he has been spectacularly wrong about, well, everything related to politics, it’s hard to see why anyone would hire him. But no matter how badly Dick screws up, he’s always there reeling off predictions and giving his analysis on the latest political issue of the day. In Dick’s world, Republicans will always win and Democrats will always lose, and Barack Obama is always moments away from resigning from his Presidency.

It seems there are limits to how wrong you can be, and Morris, having pushed them to the very end has finally felt the consequences of not getting anything right. Fox News got tired of his limitless wrongness and took him off the air along with his partner in crime, fellow propagandist Karl Rove.

The last straw was probably Morris’s prediction that Mitt Romney would ‘Win by a landslide’ in the general election, a prediction that was not only incorrect, but completely the opposite of what happened. Morris explained in a blog post that he was a ‘pollster, not a meteorologist!’, and he was wrong because Hurricane Sandy saved the President from the previously inevitable Dick Morris backed proposition that ‘there is no chance Obama will get re-elected’. Wrote Morris:

There was no good national polling after Sandy struck. Gallup, for example, suspended its polling. At the last minute, it put together a national sample — with lots of disclaimers about the dangers of inaccuracies due to the difficulty of sampling storm-hit areas — and it showed a slight Romney lead.

Romney was, in fact, leading before Sandy and that his chances blew away in the storm with its famous bipartisan photo of Governor Chris Christie with Obama. And there was no way to measure the impact of Sandy since there could not logistically be any polling. Why was I wrong? I’m a pollster, not a meteorologist!

Never mind the fact that the Obama team had long sewn up the electoral college by running one of the most sophisticated campaigns in history, and unleashed an incredibly powerful ‘get out the vote’ ground game on election day that made Romney’s campaign look like a Communist run shopping mall.

But none of that bothers Dick, and he is still hammering away on his blog, no doubt analyzing the political landscape and envisioning dream match ups he could write books about (Morris brilliantly predicted Hillary Clinton would face off against Condoleeza Rice in 2008, and even wrote a book about it).

It is with a heavy heart though, that I write this, as covering Dick’s failed predictions in the mainstream media has been great fun, and I won’t be checking in on his blog all that much (running this one takes up most of my time anyway), so I thought I’d compile a list of Dick’s best work.

Here are the 5 dumbest predictions Dick Morris has made in recent times, most of them pertaining to the Republican’s chances of knocking Obama off his perch – a fact Dick was absolutely certain about.

1. Donald Trump will run for President and could beat Obama. Said Morris on The Mike Gallagher Show:

“Oh I am. I am. I take him very seriously. I think he’s going to run, I think he’s got a good shot at the nomination, and I think if he were nominated, he could beat Obama”.

Reality: Trump didn’t run for President.

2. Michele Bachmann will wing Iowa. Said Morris on Fox News:

 ”Bachmann Is Probably Going To Win”

Reality: Michele Bachmann came 6th in Iowa.

3. Obama won’t run for re-election. Wrote Morris on The Hill:

The kind of enthusiasm Obama kindled in 2008 cannot be ignited easily by negative appeals. Particularly if the Republicans nominate a more moderate candidate such as Mitt Romney, Obama will not be able to rely on partisan animosity to succeed where job approval has failed. And, given all that, he might not even run.

Reality: President Obama did run for re-election.

4. Obama has no chance of getting re-elected. Said Morris to Sean Hannity:

“There Is No Chance That Obama Will Get Re-elected…..Zilch, none, zip, nada”

Reality: President Obama was re-elected.

5. Romney will beat Obama by a landslide. Said Morris on Fox News Sunday:

“Romney will win by a very large margin – a landslide if you will.”

Reality: President Obama beat Romney by a very large margin, particularly in the electoral college. A landslide if you will.

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Glenn Greenwald: Always right. At least in his mind

By Ben Cohen: I’ve received quite a few emails and comments about my piece on Glenn Greenwald’s rant on the progressive media last week. Some readers took exception to my position that Greenwald’s rhetoric is unhelpful and counter productive, claiming my attack on him was pointless and without substance. The most concise criticism came reader Steve Rice who wrote:

The progressive blogosphere is already bursting at the seams with people who do nothing but rant about Republicans all day. Greenwald has different priorities. Yes, his focus is somewhat narrow, but that’s always been the case. If you read him, you know what you’re getting into. Given that, I fail to see the point of this article, aside from getting easy page-views from the anti-Greenwald brigade. It’s the same vague pseudo-criticism you’ve leveled at him before and you admit yourself that it has little to do with the substance of his work. So why write about Glenn Greenwald?

I’m unsure how my piece on Monday consists of ‘vague pseudo-criticism’ given I was quite explicit about what I was attacking Greenwald on. As the reader says, I don’t have a problem with the substance of Greenwald’s work, I have a problem with the tone of it and his relentless attacks on other media outlets and writers who do not follow Greenwald’s specific editorial agenda. Perhaps Bob Cesca does a better job of what I was trying to articulate. He wrote about Greenwald’s attack on MSNBC and other progressive outlets:

This new Greenwald rant is a continuation of his ongoing crusade to badger progressives who don’t make it part of their daily routine to screech at the president regarding Greenwald’s preordained three or four pet issues. Greenwald operates under the mandate that because drones are his primary concern and the prism through which he evaluates the president, so it should be with everyone else. The slightest deviation from that narrative in lieu of delivering news of a presidential success is a punishment-worthy trespass.

Greenwald has a long and storied history of extreme pettiness when it comes to dealing with other progressives, going as far as claiming Obama supporters would stand by him if he raped a nun on live television. When a blogger named “DrDawg” tweeted about Imani Gandy: “Obama could rape a nun live on NBC and you’d say we weren’t seeing what we were seeing,” Greenwald felt the need to add: “No – she’d say it was justified and noble – that he only did it to teach us about the evils of rape.” (pic of the exchange below):

Greenwald was probably being sarcastic (and trying to be funny), but the exchange was spiteful and unnecessary – particularly given it was directed towards a woman. Rape isn’t exactly a topic you make jokes about. And instead of apologize when lambasted by much of the blogosphere, Greenwald tweeted that Obama supporters would defend him in the face of “ANY evil: assassinations, child-killings: EVEN rape violent crime like rape.” Of course in Greenwald’s world, he can never be wrong, so an apology was completely out of the question.

This type of rhetoric is extremely counterproductive for a number of reasons. Firstly, you can be a supporter of any political figure, Republican or Democrat, without explicitly endorsing everything they do. I have many Republican friends who voted for both George Bush and Mitt Romney and I would never level that type of hostility towards them. Yes, I think Bush and Romney are backwards thinking dinosaurs who have spent their entire careers lining the pockets of the wealthy and cheer leading wars in the Middle East, but I don’t hold my friends accountable for their actions. Going after political leaders is one thing, but relentlessly attacking their supporters is something completely different. You can have a civilized debate with those who disagree with you without insinuating they support rape and child murder.

Secondly, Greenwald’s vindictiveness and tone detracts from the often excellent points he makes. I wrote about this in my article on Monday, but it’s worth repeating: Greenwald is a very good journalist and he does important work. He’s just limiting himself by behaving like a smug spelling bee champion.

I wrote a story on Greenwald’s excessive smugness and pettiness a few months back on these pages, and I’m guessing as a result, I have been blocked from following Glenn on Twitter (and I’m sure if he reads this, he’ll respond with something even smugger like “I don’t know who Ben Cohen is….”). My twitter account is open for anyone to follow, and as long as they are not abusive towards me, I don’t mind debating them. Greenwald apparently sees the twittersphere as a playground where he gets to pick on people he doesn’t like and block those who politely disagree with him.

Going after Glenn Greenwald isn’t an ‘easy-page views’ endeavor either. As the reader rightly points out, ranting about Republicans is quite the rage these days and people do tend to tune into scathing pieces about the latest Republican insanity more than debates between left wing political commentators. I’m going after Greenwald because he’s behaving like a spoiled child and should stop hurling bombs at people who don’t believe he is the be all and end all of progressive politics.

And just to show you this is nothing personal, I’m going to end this piece with a link to Greenwald’s excellent piece on massive US and Israeli hypocrisy in the Middle East. It’s well worth a read, regardless of what you might think of him.

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