What happens when the deficit deal gets done? How much of Social Security will be left?

Simpson-Bowles policy for seniors: Let them eat catfood!
I've come across several good items warning that we need to watch out for the next budget deals that Obama actually strikes with the Republicans, the one that is probably coming over raising the debt ceiling next month.

The notion that Obama has to negotiate budget deals with the Republicans over the debt ceiling is bogus. It's pure political theater. As Digby has been saying for months, if he negotiates over that it's because he wants to, not because he has to. Republican leaders know there's no choice but to raise the debt ceiling. Lots of the wealthiest Americans, the only constituency they truly care about, would lose serious money if the debt ceiling isn't extended on time. Obama does not have to deal with them over it.

But he's almost certainly going to. Gene Lyons uses sports analogies to discuss the debt limit fight in It's Time to Play Ball Cagle Post 04/14/2011. Gene thinks that Obama's budget deal from last week was a reasonable one for him to make, "the tactical equivalent of an intentional walk in baseball." In his reading, Obama preferred to stage a political confrontation with the Republicans' Ryan plan, proposed by "the Wisconsin Republican with the funeral director's demeanor and the zeal of an Ayn Rand enthusiast." He gives a great short summary of the Ryan proposal: "Reduced to a slogan, Ryan's ballyhooed plan is 'Back to the 19th Century': $4.5 trillion in tax cuts for millionaires and corporations, huge cuts in Social Security, Medicaid and food stamps, while privatizing Medicare."

But Gene is worried about what kind of ugly deals Obama will strike with the Ryan Republicans. He describes it on the explicit assumption that Obama is committed to the Democrats' own platform and campaign themes:

To the degree that it endorses Ryan's schemes, in a sane political climate the GOP would be risking political obsolescence. This was the same party that only a year ago pitched a fit over Sarah Palin’s imaginary "death panels." Now its leading thinker wants to control costs by asking grandma to bargain for cheaper heart surgery?

Standards, however, are anything but rational. The president faces a defining challenge. I often wonder whether Obama has mistaken the U.S. government for the Harvard Law Review, where the emollient balm of his personality persuaded rival factions to reason together.

Ivy League intellectual that he is, I’m afraid he definitely underestimates public ignorance on everything relating to the budget: where the money comes from, where it goes, and what’s at stake in the coming showdown over the U.S. government debt limit. It’s hard for somebody as obsessed with public policy as Obama to grasp how little his countrymen know.

Noting that trying to put the federal government into default is a non-starter even for the Teapartyized Republicans, he worries about Obama's willingness to act on that understanding:

Congress can repeal Medicare and Social Security, but it can't renounce their lawful debts. Ordinarily, an establishment Republican like John Boehner would refrain from even bluffing about the idea, which he dare not follow through.

Obama's seeming passivity, however, has made the GOP reckless.

Batter up. [my emphasis]

Robert Borosage of the Institute for America's Future observes in Obama's Deficits: Progressive Priorities, Conservative Context Huffington Post 04/13/2011 that Obama's Wednesday speech included some excellent statements of Democratic principles and vision of government. But he articulated them in a context in which he accepts the Republican framing and the economically destructive idea that cutting public spending is a good idea when the economy is in a weak recovery and is also in what economists call a "liquidity trap" - big corporate savings but domestic demand to weak to induce them to invest:

But it is worth understanding just how conservative this debate has become -- and how far the president has retreated. The most progressive president since Johnson has now embraced a center-right agenda -- even before entering negotiations with the Republicans.

The president effectively announced the demise of a reborn Keynesian era that has expired before the economy revived. 25 million Americans are in need of full-time work. Home values are still sinking; gas prices are at $4 a gallon and rising. Consumer confidence is plummeting. Europe's growth is slowing. But the federal government will join the states and cities in immediately cutting spending and laying off workers.

With this premature embrace of austerity, mass unemployment may become the new normal. Wages will remain stagnant. The concentration of wealth will grow and the middle class will continue to decline.

The president allowed that he was "sympathetic" to the view that we shouldn't cut spending until the economy is fully recovered. But he embraced the conservative argument that "doing nothing on the deficit is just not an option," because we could do "real damage to the economy" if we don't "begin a process now."

But mass unemployment and stagnant wages represent "real damage to the economy" that is here and now, not speculative. There's no sign of the potential harm that might be caused by deficits in the sometime future. Interest rates are low; America has no trouble financing its debt. The president started down this path prematurely in 2009; now he has forced the pace. [my emphasis]

Focusing on cutting deficits now is just Herbert Hoover economics. No better result can reasonably be expected from it in 2011 than in 1932.

And, from the Center on Budget and Priorities, Robert Greenstein on President Obama's Deficit-Reduction Plan 04/13/2011, another warning on the likely results of Obama-style budget negotiations:

Another significant concern stems from the President’s proposal to limit the annual growth in Medicare costs per beneficiary to the per capita rate of growth in the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) plus only 0.5 percentage points and to require automatic cuts in Medicare if this target would otherwise be exceeded. This goal is laudable. But it may be unrealistic. Historically, Medicare costs per beneficiary have risen about 2 percentage points per year faster than GDP growth per capita. The health reform law will launch a series of demonstrations, pilots, and research projects to find effective ways to slow health care cost growth without reducing the quality of care or access to care. But we don’t know yet how much or how quickly we can lower health care cost growth, especially since the principal driver in cost growth is medical advances that improve health and save and prolong lives but add significant costs.

Finally, the President’s plan calls for a mechanism to trigger automatic reductions in programs and tax expenditures if the debt would exceed certain benchmarks (measured as a share of GDP). The goal of stabilizing the debt as a share of GDP is precisely the right one. But all triggers like this that have been designed in the past have suffered from a fatal flaw — they required the deepest budget cuts when the economy was weakest and the smallest cuts when it was strongest — the opposite of what sound economic policy entails. The President’s plan calls for the trigger to "include a mechanism to ensure that it does not exacerbate an economic downturn." No one has succeeded until now in producing a mechanism that meets this test, and it remains unclear whether it can be done. This new proposal bears some similarities to the trigger in the 1985 Gramm-Rudman-Hollings law, which was not successful and which Congress ultimately repealed.

To be sure, the President's plan represents an important step forward in the debate. But it should be recognized that this plan is a rather conservative one, significantly to the right of the Rivlin-Domenici plan. While we worry about some particular elements of the President’s plan, we worry much more that the deficit-reduction process that’s now starting could produce an outcome that is well to the right of the already centrist-to-moderately-conservative Obama proposal, by reducing its relatively modest revenue increases and cutting more deeply into effective programs that are vital to millions of Americans. [my emphasis]

Then there's this: Alexander Bolton, Some Senate Dems willing to consider Social Security reforms The Hill 04/13/11:

Sens. Tom Carper (D-Del.) and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Sen.Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), who caucuses with the Democrats, are all openly calling for reform, and making it plain that the party is disunited on the issue when a titanic debate over debt is gathering momentum.

The good news is that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid continues to be a hardliner on the issue, at least in public:

But Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) refuses to give an inch on benefit cuts, arguing that the program has not contributed “one penny” to the debt.

There is currently a "Gang of Six" Senators working on a bipartisan budget proposal: Democrats Dick Durbin, Kent Conrad and Mark Warner, along with Republicans Saxby Chambliss, Tom Coburn and Mike Crapo. According to this report by Richard Wolf, 'Gang of Six' hopes to spur bipartisan action on deficit USA Today 04/11/2011.

The Gang of Six approach is based on Obama's commission, which called for a mix of spending cuts and tax increases. Obama never endorsed the plan, and his proposed 2012 budget called for only $1.1 trillion in deficit reduction over 10 years. But White House press secretary Jay Carney said the president knows much more is required.

That would be the Simpson-Bowles Catfood Commission, whose main focus was how to start the phaseout of Social Security. Wolf follows the now-standard journalistic convention of referring to the "plan" of the Catfood Commission, the actions which it "called for," etc. The Catfood Commission never issued a formal report, because not enough of the members could agree that old people should have to live on catfood. But apparently, since Obama appointed it stacked with Social Security opponents to provide those recommendations, our press corps has just decided to play along and pretend they did. Co-chairs and social Security opponents Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles did issue a plan, which is typically what is referred to by the Commission's plan or report. I guess this just illustrates how phony the whole bipartisan Kabuki with the Catfood Commission really was. It's purpose was to recommend Social Security Phaseout, so it's now Beltway consensus that they recommended that. Even though formally, the Commission didn't recommend anything at all.

Joan McCarter writes in disgust (Durbin, Lieberman, willing to 'take action' on Social Security Daily Kos 04/13/2011):

It's hard to imagine why any Democrat ... finds they are in agreement with Joe Lieberman, whose sole purpose in political life is now to piss on anything remotely progressive or important to the Democratic base, particularly on something as important as Social Security.

She relates "Gang of Six" member Dick Durbin's expressed willingness to include discussions on Social Security in deficit-reduction consideration, even though Social Security doesn't contribute to the federal deficit. In Harry Reid 2010 Netroots Nation convention appearance in Las Vegas, he said that he got Dick Durbin appointed to the Catfood Commission to defend Social Security! But Democratic activists have been particularly skeptical of Durbin since he made this statement, as reported by Obama Tells Debt Commission 'Everything Has to Be on the Table' New York Times 04/27/2010:

Representative Dave Camp of Michigan took pre-emptive aim at a value-added tax, saying, "Washington has borrowed enough from the American people."

But Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the second-ranking Senate Democratic leader, denounced suggestions of an administration VAT plan as the "musings of right-wing cable shows."

He also admonished "bleeding heart liberals" to be open to program reductions to restore fiscal balance. An hour after the commission’s meeting, however, several liberal activists held a conference call with reporters to press for additional spending to create jobs, lower military spending, higher taxes for the wealthy and no cuts in Medicare or Social Security. [my emphasis]

That was Obama a year ago this month, when he still had a solid majority of Democrats in the House. That article is a good reminder of how the Obama White House has always seen the deficit issue and the work of the Catfood Commission. It even contained a hint that if the Commission didn't agree on a report, the White House would pretend they had anyway. In ObamaSpeak, "everything has to be on the table" means Social Security Phaseout:

President Obama told his bipartisan debt commission on Tuesday that "everything has to be on the table," while the Federal Reserve chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, suggested overhauling the nation’s tax code to raise more revenue. ...

Former Senator Alan K. Simpson of Wyoming, the panel's Republican co-chairman, warned the panel, "The extreme right and the extreme left will savage our final product."

That assumes, however, that the commission will agree to one before its Dec. 1 deadline. Expectations are low given the party polarization, especially in an election year.

Still, administration officials have suggested that should the commission reach a deadlock, Mr. Obama could adopt proposals left on the table.

While Fed chairmen typically stick to monetary policy and shy away from advising elected officials about budget policy, Mr. Bernanke's remarks were the latest in his recent string of calls for elected officials to make "hard choices" soon, before debt threatens the economy’s recovery and growth.

"Choices regarding Medicare, Social Security and other spending programs cannot be made in a vacuum but must be combined with decisions about how much revenue the government will raise and how it will raise it," he said. [my emphasis]

Dean Baker's analysis of the Simpson's and Bowles' recommendations remains relevant, unfortunately: The Deficit Commission’s Parallel Universe Boston Review 11/11/2010:

The country in which most people live is experiencing an economic disaster. More than 25 million people are unemployed, underemployed, or have given up looking for work altogether. Tens of millions are now underwater on their mortgages, with millions facing the imminent loss of their homes. Furthermore, there is little prospect that the situation will improve anytime soon.

Many fewer live in the other America, the world of Wall Street and Washington lobbyists. This is where you’ll find former Wyoming Republican Senator Alan Simpson and investment banker-turned-Clinton Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles, the co-chairs of President Obama’s deficit commission, which on Wednesday outlined its plans for what it calls “fiscal responsibility.” In their world the key fact is that, today, corporate profits are back to their pre-recession peaks. As long as the bonuses on Wall Street are again hitting record highs, the economy must be just fine, so what else is there to do but worry about deficits?

Tags: catfood commission, dean baker, dick durbin, gene lyons, robert borosage, robert greenstein, social security

"I cannot explain it."

Why do our infallible generals have a credibility gap with the public? A disgraceful example named Gen. Thomas Hartmann illustrates why in his testimony defending the military's conduct in the Guantánamo station of the Bush Gulag ("Bush Gulag" is Al Gore's term). TPM Veracifier has the video:



I'm glad to see Sen. Dick Durbin continuing to pursue his own concern about the torture policy. But he also provided a sad and dramatic example of why the Democrats haven't been as effective as they should have been as the opposition party back in June of 2005 when he foolishly and unnecessarily backed down from criticizing torture in the face of ridiculous attacks that he should have simply brushed off. See my posts, Dick Durbin's apology 06/22/05 and It's public self-criticism for heretics now 06/23/05.

Tags: bush gulag, dick durbin, guantánamo, thomas hartmann, torture

Attorney General nominee Mukasey on torture

I just quoted Spencer Ackerman on a different subject. But he's got a post at TPM Muckraker accompanied by the YouTube video below that is well worth noticing: Mukasey Calls Torture 'Antithetical' to American Way 10/17/07. It's about Attorney General nominee Michael Mukasey's testimony to Congress on torture.



I'm very, very skeptical about any claims on the part of Cheney-Bush nominees. We've heard repeated assurances from this administration that they don't torture, only to find out later that they were redefining "torture" in a cult-like way to exclude all forms of torture that they were actually using.

I'm also struck by the fact that Mukasey specifically compared torture to the practices of the Nazis against their victims in the Holocaust. I was reminded of one of the strangest moments among many strange moments in politics in recent years: when Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin compared the torture practices at the Guantanamo gulag in 2005, he was subjected to so much criticism that he acually apologized for saying it. (I posted about that at the time in Dick Durbin's apology 06/22/05 and It's public self-criticism for heretics now 06/23/05.)

Tags: dick durbin, holocaust, michael mukasey, torture

New Congressional antiwar measures

Prowar Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R) with Gen. David Petraeus

A year can make a big difference. Members of Congress are taking a confusing set of positions on the Iraq War. But the good news is that majorities in both Houses are going on record with substantive proposals to require the implementation of an exit strategy. Things were very different a year ago when the Republicans still controlled both Houses of Congress.

A broadly bipartisan opposition would be ideal. But that ain't gonna happen right away with today's authoritarian Republican Party. Still, with Bush's poll ratings now competing with Nixon at his lowest, and Cheney's low rating competing with Satan's, a veto-proof majority for some substantive antiwar measure is no longer unthinkable.

And the Democratic leadership seems to recognize that the way to move in that direction is to make the Republicans vote, over and over and over again, to take a position on Cheney's and Bush's Iraq War. And to give Republicans like Senators Lugar and Dominici who try to distance themselves from the war with meaningless public handwringing numerous opportunities to put their votes where their empty rhetoric is.

And if the Dems can get majority votes for an Iraq Study Group-style withdrawal of "combat" troops, that's fine to vote for it. Getting majority votes for that kind of proposal - which is what the Democratic House did again yesterday - keeps public attention and even our lazy news media focused on the Iraq War, it validates the views of the large antiwar majority and it ratchets up the pressure on Republicans to enact such measures.

But I hope Barbara Lee's Out of Iraq Caucus and the antiwar movement more generally can also keep the reality in public view that a partial pullout is not a sufficient exit strategy. I realize that an argument like that can (and probably will be) used by pseudo-critics of the war like the phonies Lugar and Dominici to say, "I'm against antiwar measure X because it doesn't go far enough". It's an old trick.

But pulling out "combat" troops and leaving residual forces on permanent bases for special missions is a de-escalation strategy, not an exit strategy. Juan Cole calls it right in his Informed Comment blog of 07/13/07:

This plan of keeping troops in Iraq to fight "al-Qaeda" seems to me naive. Who is al-Qaeda? If you mean Iraqi Sunnis who have become Salafi Jihadis, then it seems unlikely that the US military can fight them successfully with a smaller force. It is just wishful thinking. If 160,000 US troops cannot do it, a smaller force cannot do it. And, the smaller you make the force, the more the US military becomes a sitting duck for militias and others. Likewise it is no good saying you'll keep troops in Kurdistan. Kurdistan is landlocked, and depends heavily for investment, trade and a route to the rest of the world on Turkey. No way to provision a US base unless the Turks give in and say they will permit its provisioning.

If you leave small expeditionary forces inside Iraq to fight "al-Qaeda," they will likely get massacred at some point, and then you'll be pulled right back into the maelstrom.

Even on the partial-withdrawal measures, though, the Dems still need to do a better job at countering the war cheerleaders' ever-changing Party line about the war. For several weeks now, a favorite one has been to pretend that everyone we're fighting in Iraq is "Al Qaida". In fact, most of the insurgents and the militias involved in the civil war are Iraqis with no connection and little or no sympathy with Bin Laden's Al Qaida. For Anthony Cordesman's latest update on the Iraqi insurgency, see Success or Failure? Iraq’s Insurgency and Civil Violence and US Strategy: Developments through June 2007 (Center for Strategic and International Studies) 07/09/07; the section on "foreign fighters" is on p. 88 of the paper, p. 95 of the PDF document.

The majority of Iraqis are Shi'a. Bin Laden's Al Qaida is an extreme Sunni Salafist group that considers Shi'a to be infidels, not true Muslims. The group that calls itself "Al Qaida in Iraq" is small, a few thousand at most. And its actual connection to Bin Laden's group is tenuous and doubtful. There are international jihadists, some of which undoubtedly are connected to Bin Laden's group, coming into Iraq to practice jihad against the Americans and maybe some Sunni and Shi'a "infidels", too. That is a real problem. But it's only a tiny part of what US troops are facing in the Iraqi fighting. Plus, if fighting Al Qaida is the real goal in Iraq, the current strategy doesn't fit the mission. As Antoniusblock from the Strategy and National Security blog puts in The Illogic of American Military Strategy in Iraq 07/10/07:

If foreign fighters are the threat, our entire military should be focused on border control, leaving internal pacification to Iraqi security forces (an approach, by the way, that might have been effective in Vietnam).

Think, for a minute, of the basic logic of defense. Take missile defense. Experts tell us that at every stage in the flight of a missle - pre-launch, launch, boost, re-entry, impact - interception becomes more difficult. The earlier in the flight a missle is destroyed, the easier. The same holds for the influx of foreign fighters into Iraq. But, by focusing on securing Iraqi towns, we are attempting defense at its most difficult point - impact. The best strategy would be to staunch the flow of foreign fighters and funds at their source. But given the nature of the benighted suppliers of fighters and funds (Saudi Arabia, Syria, etc) that may be impossible. The next best strategy, then, may be to focus on the "re-entry" stage - border security.

The PBS Newshour on Thursday featured a "he said/she said" segment about the Iraq War, which unfortunately illustrates how hard some Dems still find it to counter Bush's case for indefinite fighting in Iraq (Report Reveals Mixed Progress on Iraq Benchmarks 07/12/07). Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas faithfully recited the party script of the day. But Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois got first crack at it. And he gave a decent opening statement emphasizing that Democrats want a pullout plan and challenging Republican war critics to actually do something to oppose the war. Then Hutchison made her opening salvo:

What enemy would ever fear us? What ally would ever trust us, if we just leave without any regard to the circumstances on the ground, without any regard to al-Qaida? Anyone who has been over there will tell you that we are winning against al-Qaida. If we left al-Qaida to take over Iraq, we would basically be facing what al-Qaida had in Afghanistan before we were able to help Afghanistan get out from under that terrible regime.

So I think we should come together and talk about, what is the right policy for the long-term future of our country? And most of all, what can we do to make sure that our troops who are there don't put a bull's eye on their front, because we signaled to the enemy that we don't really believe that this mission can be accomplished. I think that would be terrible. (my emphasis)

The real core of Hutchison's opening statement was, "al-Qaida ... al-Qaida ... al-Qaida ... al-Qaida". So the antiwar Dem jumped on that deception, right? He called her out for lying? He maybe more politely suggested that she had "distorted the facts"?

Uh, no. He started out in his rejoinder reciting statistics about wounded American soldiers and continued on without mentioning the "Al Qaida" head-fake.

she came back with "al-Qaida ... al-Qaida". This time Durbin responded - and reinforced the "al-Qaida ... al-Qaida" incantation!

They are the best, but it really doesn't honor their memory for us to continue a war and claim more American lives in a civil war that just has no end in sight. The fact is that there was no al-Qaida presence in Iraq when we invaded. Now it's become a great training ground, as the al-Qaida terrorists come in and try to kill American soldiers on a daily basis.

We have lost our sights on the real goal of going after Osama bin Laden and the Taliban. We should have focused our efforts on that. Maybe we would have been more successful. Instead, the president took us off on this invasion of Iraq and, unfortunately, al-Qaida has grown in strength in that period of time. (my emphasis)

What Durbin needed to do was to challenge her phony claim that the Iraq War is all about fighting "Al Qaida" and use that as a way to remind the viewers that Republican war supporters have played fast and loose with the facts about Iraq since Bush's "axis of evil" speech in early 2002.

Instead, the prowar Republican got to tell the viewers that we're staying in the Iraq War to fight Al Qaida. And instead of challenging the bogus claim, the antiwar Democrat reinforced it.

If 70% of the public can turn against the war with this kind of antiwar leadership from Big Dems, imagine what could happen if the Dems in Congress could get a little better message control and actually call the Republicans on it when they make phony claims!

Tags: dick durbin, iraq war, kay bailey hutchison

Dems on the way ... but not there yet

Tonight's PBS Newshour featured a good example of the authoritarian swamp in which the Republican Party has mired itself - and an example of how the Democrats let them get away with it.

It was an interview with Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, who's a good guy, and Republcian Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, who's a Party hack:President's Nominee Acknowledges Need for New Iraq Solution 01/30/07.

They were talking about the Iraq War. Cornyn basically did nothing but recite the Party talking points of the day like a zombie: Democrats are hypocrites, Democrats don't have alternatives, yadda, yadda. But one of the Reps' talking points of the day is this, in Cornyn's robotic version:

SEN. JOHN CORNYN (R), Texas: Well, I've been here in Congress in the Senate the last four years, and we've had a lot of debate about Iraq. But clearly, as we all know, what we have been doing has not been working, particularly with the rise of insurgent violence, but I don't think these resolutions, nonbinding resolutions are going to accomplish anything.

As a matter of fact, I think the only thing they are going to accomplish has already been accomplished, and that is to send a negative message to the folks who are out there on the front line, on the mission that we've asked them to do, in Iraq and in Afghanistan. And I think it's demoralizing.

Now, the ordinary TV viewer will hear this for what it is, a sleazy slur that critics of Dear Leader Bush's war policies are traitors. This has been amazingly common the last couple of weeks - it's the Party line of the moment - and some Democrats, and even Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel, have done a decent job of tossing that back in their faces.

Just to be clear - it's not just "rightwing" Republicans who have been floating this. Even "moderates" like Sen. Richard Lugar have gone along with this sleaze. That's assuming there's any meaningful distinction left between "rightwing" and "moderate" Republicans, which I seriously doubt.

Cornyn kept it up:

GWEN IFILL: Would you go as far as Secretary Gates did last week, when he said that this kind of debate is emboldening the enemy?

SEN. JOHN CORNYN: Well, that's what General Petraeus, of course, the new commander who was confirmed unanimously on Friday, has said during his confirmation hearing, as well. And it's ironic, Gwen, to say we're going to confirm the commander who's the architect of this plan, and we're going to send him over there, you know, but we're going to undercut them, in terms of their ability to accomplish the mission.

I just think it's a mixed message, a bad message. And I wish we'd reconsider.

Now, Durbin seems to be a decent guy and even a nice guy, from what I can tell. Here was his response immediately following:

SEN. DICK DURBIN: Not at all. First, let's make it clear: We stand behind these troops. They've done everything we've asked them to do. They've risked their lives and continue to do it, while we debate this in the safety of the Capitol.

But the simple fact of the matter is that the policy of this country needs to be decided. That decision is made by the government, by the Congress and by the president.

This kind of deliberation and debate is what America and democracy are all about. And those who want to quiet this debate and want us all to march in silent lock-step don't understand the noise of democracy as something that we shouldn't either ignore or criticize. For our troops in the field, we'll stand by them.

Now, this was a decent response. The problem is, Cornyn's slur wasn't decent, it was sleazy as all hell. He was bullying Durbin. And I'm guessing to most viewers it came across like it came across to me, that Durbin was letting Cornyn verbally push him around with the cheapest sort of sleaze.

But when a sleazy Republican practically calls you a traitor in front of a nationwide TV audience while sitting there right beside you, that's an in-you-face comment. And it deserves and in-your-face response. It's not enough to say what any normal citizen knows, "This kind of deliberation and debate is what America and democracy are all about."

Dick, the problem isn't that Cornyn doesn't understand "the noise of democracy". The problem is he's calling you a traitor to your face!

Durbin should have at least called him specifically on "slinging sleaze" or "using poisonous language" or something. Even better, he could have waved his finger in his face and said something along the lines of, "I'm pretty damned tired of the President's supporters trying to intimidate the people's elected representatives into not criticizing his failed policies when three-quarters of the American public are fed up with them!"

The Democrats are off to a good start in their new Congressional majority. Hey, I hear that Barack Obama has offered a plan for Congress to require all American troops to be out of Iraq in a year or so. I haven't heard the details, but it sounds like he's on the right track.

But they still have to constantly point out how low the Republicans have sunk in their accusations and sleaze-slinging. They won't stop until our side makes them stop.

Tags: democrats, dick durbin, iraq war, john cornyn, republicans

It's public self-criticism for heretics now

I'm having a hard time assimilating what I've been seeing in the news the last few days. Like the Dick Durbin flap.

Here's a US Senator, who made a straightforward statement in the Senate last week, denouncing torture in American facilities abroad. Sick, sadistic criminal acts of torture, flat-out illegal under American law. In doing so, he used references to three familiar dictatorships to make the point that such acts were not only criminal, but should be alien to a democracy and to America.

Again, we're talking about acts illegal under American law.

Then the Mighty Wurlitzer that is the Republican slime machine went after him, as summarized well here: Durbin Apologizes for Remarks on Abuse by Shailagh Murray Washington Post 06/22/05. "Abuse," otherwise known as sick, sadistic torture, criminal acts under American law.

After his previous mild non-apology apology, the Reps just revved up the wailing, denouncing Durbin for daring to question the practice of torture in the Bush Gulag. So on Wednesday, he recanted, as Murray describes:

Durbin, the Democratic whip, acknowledged that "more than most people, a senator lives by his words" but that "occasionally words will fail us and occasionally we will fail words." Choking up, he said: "Some may believe that my remarks crossed the line. To them, I extend my heartfelt apologies."

He singled out the victims of the Holocaust, which Durbin called "the greatest moral tragedy of our time," as well as U.S. troops.

Has it really come to this? A Senator stands on the Senate floor and denounces Sick, sadistic criminal acts of brutal, sadistic torture, illegal acts under American law, many of which read like something straight out of the Marquis de Sade's The 120 Days of Sodom.

And a few days later, he's blasted with such criticism from not only the Republicans, but many members of his own party. Attacked to the point he feels compelled to stand on the Senate floor again to tearfully apologize. To tearfully apologize for having denouncing criminal acts of torture.

This ain't good.

I realize the Anti-Defamation League joined in the criticism of Durbin's remark, and he made special mention of Holocaust victims Wednesday as he confessed his sin of having criticized acts of sick, sadistic torture.

But I would ask along with Bob Somerby (Daily Howler 06/22/05):

As Durbin frog-marched his way through his forced confession, he made the
following comment: "I'm sorry if anything that I said caused any offense or pain
to those who have such bitter memories of the Holocaust, the greatest moral
tragedy of our time.” Peculiar, isn’t it? Why would a Holocaust survivor be
offended when someone objects to that conduct?

Good question. Somerby also talks about the comment by today's Richard Daley. It reminded me of the time when his father, Richard Daley the Elder, was at the 1968 Democratic convention. His cops were beating the crap out of antiwar protesters in the streets of Chicago. When Senator Abraham Ribicoff said at the podium during his nominating speech for George McGovern - well, gosh darn, in objecting to the police misconduct outside, he said, "With George McGovern, we wouldn't have Gestapo tactics in the streets of Chicago."

Gestapo tactics? Did he make a reference to the Nazis? The elder Mayor Daley was shown on TV shouting angrily at Ribicoff, saying what seemed to be, "[Cheney] you! [Cheney] you!"

I guess the apple didn't fall too far from the tree in this case. Mayor Daley the Younger said in rebuking Dick Durbin, "I think it's a disgrace to say that any man or woman in the military would act like that." Somerby makes the painfully obvious observation:

But Dick! Some “man or woman in the military” (or in some affiliated force) did act like that in the matters in question. To Daley, it isn’t disgraceful to act that way. It’s only disgraceful to discuss it.

And anyone who seriously thinks that criticizing such criminal acts is any way attacking all soldiers is seriously deranged. That doesn't stop the Republican noise machine from repeating it endlessly, though. Somerby might have added that Bush officials have been recently bragging about the number of servicepeople who have been prosecuted, convicted and (mildly) punished having been found guilty of such acts in military court proceedings. At Abu Ghuraib, some of them were famously photographed in the act.

Things like this make me nostalgic, just like Molly Ivins is, for an earlier time when we could feel that democracy and the rule of law were far more secure in America. A time when it was easier to be confident that good sense would prevail over any attempt to impose an authoritarian government on the United States. Times like, say, the worst days of the Nixon administration. Speaking with particular reference to the British memos from the prewar days, she wrote:

I don't know if these memos represent an impeachable offense - although I must say, I don't want to bring up the Clinton comparison again. But they strike me as a hell of lot worse than anything Richard Nixon ever contemplated. He used the government for petty political vindictiveness. Heck, I'd settle for that again, over what we're looking at now. (Molly Ivins, Dismissing Downing Street WorkingforChange.com 06/21/05)

And that seems to be the state to which we have come.

Tags: bob somerby, dick durbin, holocaust, molly ivins, torture

Dick Durbin's apology

I'm with Steve Gillard on this one: Don't ask for my help again 06/22/05:

It is that kind of continued gutllessness in the face of rank GOP corruption which enrages many Democrats. We are tired of leaders who will not fight, especially when 15 or so of your collegues can take a pro-lynching stand and have nothing to pay for. Hey, it was just dead black people, so what if 15 Senators didn't have the decency to say lynching was wrong. I bet you'll all have a good chuckle over some Navy Bean Soup in the Senate Dining Room. The GOP can take the most outrageous stands, be totally protected by the media, and you people refuse to actially call them on their antics.

We both know the defense of torture at Guantánamo is reprehenshible, the report you read from came from an FBI agent. Yet because you lost your nerve, you became the issue and not the report. We know most service members are not torturers. But there are those that are and who shame this country and we need to acknowledge that.

People were ready to stand up for you, it's a shame you wouldn't stand up for yourself.

Tags: bush gulag, dick durbin, torture, guantánamo