In E-Mail, Democracy for America Claims Credit for Bernie Sanders Filibuster

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If you were wondering Friday why Sen. Bernie Sanders, Vermont Socialist, now apparently owns C-SPAN2, the answer — at least according to Arshad Hasan, Executive Director of Democracy for America (DFA) — is that he was following orders. This morning, Hasan sent this e-mail to DFA’s list:

It’s weeks like this that I’m reminded why I love working at DFA.
This week started off with a punch in the gut. The President had caved to Republican demands and agreed to extend the Bush tax cuts — not just to the middle class — but specifically to the very rich.
It was pretty awful news, but DFA members didn’t admit defeat. You told us that you were ready to fight — and fight we did.
On Monday, DFA members made over 12,000 calls to Congress demanding “No deal!” and joining thousands more calls made by members of MoveOn, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, CREDO Action, True Majority, and SEIU in a nationwide day of action.
On Tuesday, Senator Bernie Sanders on our DFA Live conference call with 5,000 DFA members committed to “do whatever it takes, including filibuster, to stop this deal.” Then, together with Sen. Sanders, we gathered signatures of over 50,000 Americans demanding Democrats in Congress reject the so-called tax “compromise.”
You know what? It worked.
On Thursday, House Democrats voted to reject the deal and Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she wouldn’t even bring it up for a vote. On Friday, Senator Sanders took to the Senate floor and held his own unconventional filibuster for hour after hour after hour. These bold leaders are showing everyone in Washington what it looks like when progressive Democrats stand up and fight for the middle class.
There’s no denying DFA members stood up, took action and delivered this week. You told us that you expected more from our leaders and together we delivered that message to Congress. You made them listen.
We’re not out of the woods yet. Corporate special interests are putting tremendous pressure on Democrats in Congress to cave and we need to keep fighting to make sure they stand strong.
I couldn’t be more honored to work with you every day. We can’t do the work that we do without you. Democracy for America depends on small contributions from members across the country to get the job done, so please contribute today so we have the resources to finish this tax cuts fight before Congress goes home for the holidays.
Please contribute $10 now and fuel our aggressive campaign to win.
Working together, we’re going to have a lot more weeks like this one.
-Arshad
Arshad Hasan, Executive Director
Democracy for America

Here’s a couple of screen shots from the DFA Web site to show how they’re promoting this “no deal” message:


So Hasan and DFA are taking credit for the Berniethon, the result of which will be . . .?

We don’t know yet. It is entirely possible that Democrats — who just suffered their biggest mid-term debacle since 1938 — will force so many changes to this compromise that Senate Republicans will be justified in saying, “No deal.”

And then everybody will get a tax increase on January 1.

Happy New Year!

What will then happen — as soon as the incoming House GOP majority is sworn in as the 112th Congress — is that Speaker Boehner and friends will pass a straight-up bill renewing the Bush tax cuts and making the old rates retroactive to Jan. 1. The Senate will then be forced to choose between passing this straight-up bill (not a compromise, no union-approved porky “sweeteners” for Democrats) or allowing the continuation of the higher tax rates. And every day the Senate delays passing that bill, more tax money will be drained from American paychecks, helping to prevent economic recovery.

All of which is to say, “Way to go, DFA! Way to ‘stand strong’ for your own political suicide! We’ll call your bluff and see how you like it in the 112th Congress, when John Boehner is ramming the GOP agenda down your throats!”

Remember when Obama said middle-class tax cuts were being held hostage by Republicans? No, it’s Democrats who are doing that, and Arshad Hassan just sent the ransom note.

Some people are too stupid to understand either economics or politics. We call these people “Democrats.”

I repeat: Thank you, Vermont!

President Obama Abandons White House After Bill Clinton Says ‘Please Go’

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Wow. Who knew it would be so easy to get rid of him? Click the image to watch this incredible video:

Classic headline at Hot Air:

Great news: Bill Clinton
apparently now president again

The story from the Washington Post:

Obama introduced Clinton, said that the two had “just had a terrific meeting” and that it might be useful for Clinton to “share some of his thoughts.”
“I’m going to let him speak very briefly and then, I’ve actually got to go over and do some just one more Christmas party,” Obama said.
Clinton feigned deference for a moment.
“I feel awkward being here, and now you’re going to leave me all by myself?” Clinton said, barely suppressing a smile.
Obama, his arms crossed, stood watching Clinton for a few minutes. Then, as promised, he left.
“I’ve been keeping the first lady waiting for about half an hour, so I’m going to take off,” Obama said.
“I don’t want to make her mad,” Clinton said, smiling. “Please go.”
“You’re in good hands,” Obama joked.

Bill Clinton never had a problem with “keeping the first lady waiting for about half an hour.” IYKWIMAITYD.

Michael Goldfarb’s Tweet about this incident:

Thank You, Vermont!

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Dear Vermont Voters:
That’s really great how you elected a self-avowed socialist to the Senate. I mean because otherwise, when we conservatives tried to warn that socialists are attempting to take over the country, people might scoff at this as an implausible menace. But then there’s Sen. Bernie Sanders:

The Vermont senator took aim at Wall Street bankers and the wealthy, who he says will be the beneficiaries of the policy.
“How can I get by on one house?” Sanders said. “I need five houses, ten houses! I need three jet planes to take me all over the world! Sorry, American people. We’ve got the money, we’ve got the power, we’ve got the lobbyists here and on Wall Street. Tough luck. That’s the world, get used to it. Rich get richer. Middle-class shrinks.”

“It’s like ‘Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,’ if Mr. Smith was
(a) a communist and (b) played by Abe Vigoda.”

So to Vermont voters, on behalf of conservatives everywhere, I just wanted to say, “Thanks.”

We’re not laughing with you. We’re laughing at you.

Sincerely,
Robert Stacy McCain

Palin-Hating Columbia Professor, Huffington Post Blogger, Busted for Incest

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Let’s begin with a flashback, shall we? In July 2009, when Sarah Palin resigned as governor of Alaska, Columbia University professor David Epstein wrote at his Huffington Post blog:

Palin has done what weak, self-centered people do when the going gets tough — they quit and blame someone else.

Got that? Sarah Palin is “weak” and “self-centered.” And, Epstein added, “voters can rest a bit easier with . . . the knowledge that they chose wisely” in voting for Obama-Biden, not McCain-Palin.

Now, let’s flash forward to yesterday’s New York Daily News:

A popular Columbia professor was charged Thursday with incest – accused of a sick sex relationship with a female relative, prosecutors said.
Political science Prof. David Epstein, 46, bedded the young woman over a three-year period ending last year, according to court papers.
He was arraigned before a Manhattan judge on a single felony incest count.
Sources said the victim was over 18 when the relationship began in 2006 and that the two often exchanged twisted text messages.
Epstein faces up to four years behind bars if convicted.

This is the guy who called Sarah Palin “weak” and “self-centered.”

Project much, professor?

UPDATE: Oooh, details emerge of Professor Pervo’s (alleged) crime:

He had relations with his daughter, now 24, from 2006 through 2009, the complaint said.

So, according to his own daughter, Professor Pervo was engaged in this twisted behavior the whole time he was blogging at HuffPo.

UPDATE II: “Police say the relationship between Epstein and his daughter was consensual.”

All together now: Eeeeewww! Yuck! Continue reading Palin-Hating Columbia Professor, Huffington Post Blogger, Busted for Incest →

Does Sarah Palin Need a Tutor? Would Richard Wolffe Volunteer for the Job?

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Cubachi has a post about Richard Wolffe on Hardball with Chris Matthews, in which Wolffe ridiculed the British writer C.S. Lewis as a mere “children’s author”:

Lewis was, of course, a master of Christian apologetics and a good friend of J.R.R. Tolkien — they were colleagues at Oxford University — with whom he shared a desire to use literature to as a means of spreading the Christian worldview. Most fans of the Lord of the Rings trilogy are probably unaware that they are absorbing a sort of sermon when they read the tales of Frodo and his comrades, but that’s the point: Tolkien (and Lewis) understood that many people who wouldn’t sit still for a theological lecture would be only too happy to read a well-written adventure tale about elves and dragons and magic.

Why was Wolffe discussing 20th-century British literature on Hardball? Because Sarah Palin had named C.S. Lewis as one of her favorite authors and, in the minds of liberals, whatever Palin does is deserving of ridicule:

Appearing on MSNBC’s “Hardball” with Chris Matthews, Wolffe expressed incredulity, noting that Lewis wrote “a series of kids’ books.”
Matthews interrupted Wolffe: “I wouldn’t put down C.S. Lewis.”
“I’m not putting him down,” Wollfe responded. “But you know divine inspiration? There are things she could’ve said to divine inspiration. Choosing C.S. Lewis is an interesting one.” . . .
The discussion occurred as Matthews, Wolffe and Time’s Jay Newton Small on Thursday discussed a recent interview Palin gave with Barbara Walters about her reading habits.
The prospective candidate for president in 2012 also said she reads the Newsmax magazine, the Wall Street Journal and Alaska newspapers.
Matthews was stunned she admitted to reading Newsmax.
“Explain Newsmax,” he said. “Why should she would say something like that? That’s a digest of conservative right wing conservative thinking. You don’t have to read. They just tell you the little items you’re supposed to know.” . . .

Well, Chris, if you want someone to “explain Newsmax,” I will: It is a monthly news magazine, developed originally as a Web site by Christopher Ruddy. While I might have preferred it if Governor Palin had named The American Spectator on her reading list, it is no stain on Palin’s credibility that she mentioned one and not the other. (Just don’t let it happen again, governor!)

What Wolffe and Matthews are doing, of course, is conveying the consensus opinion  of the American journalistic elite that Palin is an anti-intellectual imbecile.

This consensus, I would argue, is a perception deriving from the vast gulf that separates the lives of the journalistic elite from the lives of Ordinary Americans like Sarah Palin.

Let’s look at Palin’s résumé, shall we? Television sportscaster, wife, mother of five, mayor of Wasilla, chairwoman of Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, governor, 2008 vice-presidential candidate, and so on down to today: Reality TV star, Fox News contributor, bestselling author and — the reason she’s relentlessly mocked by liberals, let’s admit — prospective 2012 presidential candidate.

Looking at that résumé, then, we see a woman very busy with practical everyday activities, a life which probably didn’t permit a lot of time to sit around thumbing through Thucydides, Cicero, Locke, Hume, Smith, Gibbon, Burke, De Tocqueville, J.S. Mill, etc., etc. Governor Palin is by profession neither an academic nor a think-tank scholar nor an essayist. She is not Peter Robinson or Thomas Sowell or Christopher Hitchens. She is not the sort of person we have in mind when we use the term “intellectual.” Continue reading Does Sarah Palin Need a Tutor? Would Richard Wolffe Volunteer for the Job? →

Media Bias or Media Accuracy?

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When I was an assistant national editor at The Washington Times, one of my pet peeves was when reporters in our Capitol Hill bureau would write about the budget with the idea that they were writing about the government’s money, rather than the taxpayer’s money.

This would typically come up when, discussing proposals to reduce tax rates, reporters would describe how legislators proposed to “pay for” the tax cut, which would be said to “cost” however many dollars.

Wrong, wrong, WRONG.

Knowing the supply-side lessons of the Reagan years — that when tax rates were reduced, government revenue actually increased due to private-sector economic growth — I knew that the projected revenue loss from tax cuts was a mere accounting fiction. If the reporter wished to talk about “offsets” (proposed spending cuts), that was OK with me, but if I was editing a budget story, you weren’t going to get away with talking about “paying for” the “cost” of tax cuts.

This made me rather obnoxious in the eyes of our Capitol Hill bureau staff, who viewed me as a rigid ideologue. Capitol Hill reporters were (and are) usually 20-somethings and, it seemed to me, excessively herd-oriented. The young reporters at our conservative paper wanted to report the story the same way their press-corps peers in the liberal media were reporting it, and my job was to prevent their stories from mirroring their biases of their peers.

Now, I relate that history for two reasons, the first of which is related to how the recent tax compromise is being reported. The Wall Street Journal:

The Obama-McConnell tax compromise will cost $858 billion over the next 10 years, according to estimates from the Congressional Budget Office.

And here’s the Bloomberg headline:

Senate to Consider Tax-Cut Bill That
Would Add $857 Billion to U.S. Debt

You see what I’m talking about? I don’t want to argue with the green-eyeshade guys at the CBO, but I object to the flat assertion that this deal — which is not a tax cut, by the way — would “cost” such-and-such an amount and automatically add that amount to the national debt. Historic fact argues otherwise.

Meanwhile, everybody has been beating up on Bill Sammon, Washington managing editor for Fox News, because he sent out a 2009 memo to Fox personnel telling them to use the phrase “government option” rather than “public option” when discussing the Democrats’ health-care plan.

And the objection to this is . . .?

“Public” has positive connotations — “public library,” “public park,” “public school” — while “government” has rather different connotations. And Sammon clearly saw that reporters, in using the phrase “public option,” were engaged in a subtle form of advocacy.

Nothing wrong with advocacy, you understand, but when you’re collecting a paycheck from what is the de facto Republican TV network, you can’t be smuggling Democratic Party talking points into your reportage, OK?

During the Bush administration, when Bill was White House correspondent for The Washington Times, I occasionally edited his stories. He evidently saw his job as an opportunity to do reporting that counter-balanced the anti-Bush agenda of much of the rest of White House press corps. Sometimes perhaps Bill went a bit overboard in that regard — “President Bush scored another stunning triumph Tuesday . . .” — but there’s no need to rehash those old arguments at this late date, eh?

The reality of liberal bias in the media is that much of this bias involves simple word choices — the “cost” of tax cuts, etc. — which, repeated over time, exercise a usually unnoticed influence over public opinion.

Bill Sammon was justified in his attempt to counterbalance that bias. Now, if he can just get Fox News reporters to exorcise this nonsense about how much tax cuts will “cost” . . .

My pet peeves are still my pet peeves.