Seriously. Thanks Obama

Busy with real life stuff so outsourcing all my posts today. Betty Cracker finds a bucket full of good news:

1. Colorado, Washington get OK from feds on marijuana

2. Federal Tax System Will Recognize Married Gay Couples Even If Their States Do Not

3. HHS Extends Medicare Benefits To Married Gay Couples

Plus the executive order on guns. Not a bad day’s work. Thanks, Obama!

The gun order closes a loophole that allowed convicted felons to subvert background checks by taking possession of firearms through a corporation and shut down the reimportation of military weapons from abroad. Click over for the supporting posts.

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Give the people a living wage

Alec MacGillis asks a good question:

Liberals have spent years now agonizing over why it is that many working-class white Americans vote for the party whose policies on taxes, organized labor and much more work against their own economic interests—the "What's the matter with Kansas" problem. Well, here is an issue where lower-income people who vote Republican are quite clear about what's in their own interest—that is, they state a preference at direct odds with their party's line. Maybe it would be a good idea for Democrats to try to peel them away by actually talking up that issue?

Raising the minimum wage polls well with pretty much everybody except crackpot cons who are against anything that doesn't piss liberals off and the people who make a living exploiting minimum wage workers. All the focus inside the Beltway bubble is on the well off and reasonably secure but the working poor are the fastest growing demographic in our country. They're not feeling any grass shoots recovery in those circles.

Championing this demo could not only win back the House but a successful push to raise the damnably inadequate wage would actually help all the people. Hell, it might even restore the people's faith in government.

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Farm bill fails in the House

Boehner blames the Democrats for not delivering the votes for him.

In a blow to House GOP leaders, the House on Thursday rejected a five-year farm bill.

Members voted down the $940 billion bill in a 195-234 vote that only won 24 Democratic votes. Most Democrats voted against the bill because it cut food stamp programs by more than $20 billion.

The 62 crackpot cons voted against it because it didn't cut food assistance enough. The crackpots think they might pass it if they make bigger cuts. In which case Boehner better have all the votes on his side because they'll likely lose the 8 Dems that voted for this abomination.

Still would be a horrible outcome, but let the damn GOPers own their own inhumane policy. No reason for a single Dem to help them do it.

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Yes, austerity kills economies

Just when you think there's no hope left for this country, Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) does something spectacular:

So it was a little striking to see her using the Senate Budget Committee, which she chairs, to hold a hearing on the negative effects of austerity. This isn’t a flip on policy; her budget does, after all, include some stimulus spending. But instead of the usual routine of emphasizing the importance of medium-run deficit reduction, while paying lip service to the need to prevent premature cuts, Murray used the hearing to focus almost exclusively on the latter concern.

The CBO’s latest projections and the Reinhart-Rogoff debacle, she argued, “make it clearer than ever that now we need to focus above all else on our fragile economic recovery, and that the case for austerity in a time of economic weakness is simply wrong.”

Lots of charts and wonkery at the link, but the other important point is The Heritage Foundation has devolved under DeMint from a pseudo think tank that at least made some attempt to advance logical argument into a hotbed of pure conservative crackpottery. Steve Benen makes the case for why any remaining pundits of good conscience should be embarrassed to afford Heritage any credibilty at all.

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Ambulatory turds

Apparently I owe the GOP a small apology. While Republicans certainly deserve blame for slashing food assistance, I just found out they were not alone in this inhumane act against hungry Americans. This Kos petition reveals an alarming number of Democrats voted against restoring food aid as well.

Last week, the U.S. Senate voted down an amendment by Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) to restore $4.1 billion in food stamp cuts—by reducing corporate welfare to a handful of crop insurance companies, mostly based overseas. Only 26 senators voted “yes.”

Here are the Democrats who voted against the amendment:

Sens. Baucus, Bennet, Cardin, Carper, Coons, Donnelly, Durbin, Feinstein, Franken, Hagan, Harkin, Heinrich, Heitkamp, Johnson, Kaine, Klobuchar, Landrieu, Manchin, McCaskill, Mikulski, Nelson, Pryor, Rockefeller, Shaheen, Stabenow, Tester, Mark Udall and Warner

Hard to think a bigger betrayal against the people and the apparently former values of the Democratic party. Call them out if your Senator is on that list. And even if they're not, shame them in every venue you can find. [Blog title shamelessly stolen from Mike Finnigan]

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Don't want to go to war no more

Second day analysis is coming in on Obama's foreign policy speech and this NYT editorial sees what Obama did there:

President Obama’s speech on Thursday was the most important statement on counterterrorism policy since the 2001 attacks, a momentous turning point in post-9/11 America. For the first time, a president stated clearly and unequivocally that the state of perpetual warfare that began nearly 12 years ago is unsustainable for a democracy and must come to an end in the not-too-distant future.

Our POTUS effectively declared the war on terror over. No more axis of evil. No more existential threat to justify deploying combat assets to fight a ground war that doesn't have a home ground. Obama is calling for a return to law enforcement and intelligence gathering for such preventative measures as are possible in fighting small cell groups and radicalized individuals.

Unsurprisingly, Charlie Pierce has the most astute analysis of Obama's speech. Definitely read it all but here's the punchline:

The process of making the presidency an office with far more power in foreign affairs than the Founders intended took decades. The process of putting a sharp edge on that office took less than one. Give this president some credit. At least he knows what a deadly weapon his office is.

Yes, Obama's speech was only words but I believe this counts as the use of the bully pulpit his critics so often claim he refuses to use. He's calling for an end to the forever war. He's asking America to calm down and restore some of those freedoms we gave up for supposed security. He's asking to have some of the executive war powers rescinded. But he can't make his rhetoric come to fruition alone. Congress needs to do its part, so maybe targeting them for some criticism would help acheive the goals Obama laid out. It's worth a try.

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Sure as death panels and no taxes

Who could have predicted?

1) GOP says no budget deal without "entitlement" cuts.

2) Obama gives them "entitlement" cuts.

3) Republicans say no budget deal because:

Well Rep. Greg Walden (R-OR) — who also happens to be chairman of the House GOP’s re-election committee — just showed how it’s done, saying Obama’s budget “lays out a shocking attack on seniors.”

“I’ll tell you when you’re going after seniors the way he’s already done on Obamacare, taken $700 billion out of Medicare to put into Obamacare and now coming back at seniors again, I think you’re crossing that line very quickly here in terms of denying access to seniors for health care in districts like mine certainly and around the country,” he said on CNN Wednesday afternoon.

White House strategery team really can't be the only ones who didn't see this coming. It's equally clear the GOP crackpot caucus won't buy any deal -- ever. Even if he gave them every single thing they wanted and didn't ask for a thing in return the crackpots wouldn't take the deal because, if Obama wants it, they don't want him to have it. So what's the point of pissing off the entire rest of the electorate except for Very Serious Pundits who nobody listens to outside of the Beltway bubble?

Think Obama needs better consultants.

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Chain of fools

In the interests of my blood pressure, decided long ago to save my outrage for things that are clearly imminent. So I'm not all that exercised about Obama's new budget even though it's said to offer up the chained CPI on Social Security. Matt thinks it's dangerous but it's not scaring me yet. Looks like just another deal that isn't meant to happen.

It's a budget proposal. A political document that has more to do with messaging than policy. I do agree with Charlie Pierce though. Offering up yet another dismal grand bargain with these kind of optics is stupid politics and reinforces the false choices that should belong solely to the Republicans.

This is what Jim DeMint believes, after a few years in a sweet government job, from which he will derive a sweet government pension, and which enabled him to move sweetly into a quasi-governmental job at which he produces nothing at all except hot air. Nice work if you can get it. This is what they all believe. They believe that the problem with Social Security is that...it...works. This is why any economic compromise with these people is guaranteed to hurt all the wrong people.

I'm guessing the White House consultants decided Obama needed to piss off the liberals to appease the Village elders with a show of making tough choices. That may work. Twitter told me E.J. Dionne loved it. But the hundreds of millions of voters who get their news in 30 minutes on the teevee, all they're going to internalize is newscasters very seriously telling them -- again -- Obama wants to cut Social Security. After he and Joe explicitly promised not to touch Social Security. If there's some eleventy dimensional chess strategy here which leads to energizing the Democratic vote in 2014, I'm not seeing it.

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Look at all the hungry people

Wall St. Journal is concern trolling about the rise in use of the food assistance. Some well fed genius is appalled to learn the number of enrollees aren't falling along with the unemployment rate. Well you don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure it out. There's a simple answer:

There are record numbers of Americans on food stamps today because there are record numbers of Americans in poverty (records begin in 1959.)

As of 2011, there were 46.2 million men, women, and children living below the U.S. poverty line. There isn't much reason to believe that the last year of mediocre job growth has dented that number. And until it plunges, the food stamp rolls are going to stay full -- plain and simple.

The jobs being created are minimum wage positions that often only offer part time hours. Minimum wage in this state is $7.25 and most of the jobs in that range won't give any one person more than 24 hours of work in a week. The price of everything from food, to fuel, to clothing to shelter has risen far faster than wages, which we already know have been basically flat for over a decade. Every private food bank is seeing an astronomical rise in clients who were formerly secure in the middle class.

Furthermore the vast majority of the weath that's been created during this stubbornly slow recovery is being sucked up by the already wealthy 1% at the top. But sure, let's demonize the poors. You know, you give those people too many free ramen noodles and they'll never want get off the dole. Better we should let their kids starve than ask the wealthy to kick in a few more tax dollars to help them out. [graphic via Class Wars]

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