No Narratives

The title is misleading of course. There is one continuous narrative in the MSM: Everything that happens is good for the Republicans and bad for the Democrats. You can take that MSM wisdom further and say everything that does happen is the responsibility of the Democrats and not the Republicans. Sadly a lot of Democrats or progressives are happy to play along. I'd say they do that to show off their independence creds, but that would be cynical on my part too. There are some genuine reasons for criticism and I'll talk about that, but it'd be nice if after a long week if some of the good could get as much attention.

I know the left is supposed to be more critical than the subservient right. But there is however a useful limit. A point beyond which you do your cause harm. Now you'd never know it if you listened to the MSM hacks who play journalists on TV, Barrack had himself, legislatively speaking, a hell of a week. There was Wall Street Reform, the much needed unemployment extension for millions that the Republicans had been stubbornly blocking, and credit card reform designed to better protect consumers.

There was also an Executive Order from the President to provide a National Endowment for the Oceans, to provide a stable funding source to support stewardship of the oceans, to benefit the communities that rely on the many services provided by the oceans, from healthy fisheries to clean beaches to clean air.

There was the Improper Payments Elimination and Recovery Act which is designed to begin to put an end to unnecessary no-bid contracts. There's some savings involved for taxpayers ($48 billion) and modernization of how government does things.

While the president is having a hard time getting what he wants, what many feel is absolutely necessary, for a Climate and Energy bill, he did manage to expand greenhouse gas reduction targets for federal operations. The Federal Government will reduce greenhouse gas pollution from indirect sources, such as employee travel and commuting, by 13% by 2020. Every little bit helps.

There was bad news for the administration as they joined everyone in jumping the gun on the Shirley Sherrod affair. A nasty and deliberate smear job perpetrated by Andrew Breitbart, someone who has done this sort of thing before, that proves the Obama administration to be overly cautious and sensitive to criticism from people who should not matter a whit. It is a failing but it is also a moment that they will hopefully learn from.

As for that failed climate bill, every progressive I've read blames Obama for running a poor campaign to get it passed. That's an argument with merit. It's hard to tell from reading about the issue whether or not it is him directly or if it is the political calculations of his staff. Either way it is a major disappointment but it doesn't mean that it can't be rectified in the near future, in fact it has to be. The one caveat here is that not a single Republican is on board for what may prove to be the defining issue of our times and that is not Obama's fault, but it not the fault of those who have lobbied hard and long to change their minds. There's blame enough to go around to be sure.

One more thing, my favourite blogger is the guy over at Eschaton, an economist named Duncan Black who has proved to be remarkably prescient. His beef with Obama, and he does have one, is about Obama's willingness to constantly give in to pressure from what he calls the wise old men of Washington. The people who, in effect, led the US to this place with 9.5% unemployment and a struggling economy. He makes a persuasive argument.

Interesting times are, without a doubt, a curse.

US Chamber of Horrors!

When I saw the story about the open letter the US Chamber of Commerce sent to the President a couple of days ago I was so horrified I had to flee from the computer console and take refuge in... well, you know, life. I went to a comedy show, hung out with friends, talked, laughed and never mentioned what I had seen.

Sociopathy will suck the fun right out of an evening and that's the only word I can use to describe the contents of the letter the US Chamber of Commerce sent to the President on Wednesday. It's their Christmas wish list and all they want is everything - tax cuts for them tax raises for the middle-class and the poor as well as gutting social Security. To paraphrase, "We want all the nice shiny things the American middle-class has left.

Crooks and Liars does a good job of summarizing what the Chamber's goals are all about. They use the phrase the Chamber no doubt loves and probably coined, "Drill, baby drill!" to great advantage and turn it into other phrases the Chamber probably is secretly in love with: "Loot, baby loot!" and "Starve, baby starve!"

From the huffpo, here's what the Chamber wants: ...deregulation of business, tax cuts for the wealthy, free trade agreements, a reduced corporate income tax, expanded offshore drilling and logging in national forests and the privatization of waterways and roads.

Specifically, the Chamber urges the president to extend Bush-era tax cuts in full and provide tax breaks for companies that move jobs overseas.

The Chamber simultaneously calls for a reduction in the deficit -- a gap caused largely by the tax cuts the Chamber wants extended, which are projected to add $3.4 trillion to the debt between 2009 and 2019.

Now I think this will all work against them and the Republicans in the long and hopefully the short run if word gets out there and people can bear witness to their brazen attempts to ruin once and for all the American middle-class.

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Sunday Links

Never got back yesterday and I even manage to feel a little guilty about it... well not terribly but just enough to remind me I was raised Catholic. So this'll just be links until I'm all caught up here, at the radio station and for tomorrow's show.

Here's some of the things you could have missed if you were busy and had a life and a summer to get to: In the US the Republicans doing everything they can to screw the economy and the unemployed strangely hoping there will be no accountability for their actions and that it will in fact win them seats in November - maybe they hope they can just bury the Dems under an avalanche of corporate money.

Amy Goodman reporting on how the media and scientists are being shut out from examining and covering the ongoing catastrophe in the Gulf and how the lack of transparency may lead to more disasters. From Keith a report on 27,000 abandoned wells in the Gulf of Mexico, 3,500 hundred of which pose a risk of leaking.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The US courts also refused to grant the Obama administration a stay on the deepwater drilling moritoium.
If you saw the post abut the New Black Panther Party and wondered about the extent of the demagoguery taking place in the American MSM, here from David Neiwert is a collection of those news reports and the ones they don't want you to see. The guy who started the caterwauling about the DOJ's refusal to bring voter intimidation cases against blacks over the New Black Panther case from election day 2008 is J. Christian Adams. He's one of the Bush appointees who was running the DOJ back then who was actively purging career attorneys and replacing them with right-wing activists. Why do these people have any credibility? Well, it's Fox news.

The Washington Post reports that a tax on tanning salons is evidence of reverse racism - someone actually cites this and says, "I now know the pain of racism," seriously! Speaking of MSM wankery - the Huffington Post gets inclusion as a new entrant to the club. Turns out money is more important than accuracy or integrity.

The heat wave has abated somewhat in the east although the long-range forecast for this week includes lots more heat so no putting away those fans yet. A study by Stanford University climate scientists says that exceptionally long heat waves could become the norm in the near future. As the mercury rises outdoors, it's a fitting time to consider the affects of summertime droughts and global warming on ecosystems.

It's also the right time to look at sunscreens and two studies that are creating confusion for Canadians on the subject: one from the Canadian Medical Association Journal and the other from the Canadian Dermatology Association - this CBC report tries to sort it out.

It's the age of stupid and Michelle Bachmann is its standard-bearer.

The face of the republican party!

"I believe that there is a very strong chance that we will see that young people will be put into mandatory service. And the real concerns is that there are provisions for what I would call re-education camps for young people, where young people have to go and get trained in a philosophy that the government puts forward and then they have to go to work in some of these politically correct forums."

“The big thing we are working on now is the global warming hoax. It’s all voodoo, nonsense, hokum, a hoax.” [3/15/08]

“[T]here isn’t even one study that can be produced that shows carbon dioxide is a harmful gas. There isn’t one such study because carbon dioxide is not a harmful gas, it is a harmless gas. Carbon dioxide is natural. It is not harmful. It is part of Earth’s life cycle.” [4/22/09]

“And the science indicates that human activity is not the cause of all this global warming. And that in fact, nature is the cause, with solar flares, etc.” [3/22/09]

“I want people in Minnesota armed and dangerous on this issue of the energy tax because we need to fight back. Thomas Jefferson told us, having a revolution every now and then is a good thing.” [3/22/09]

“I came away with the idea that [the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge] is the most perfect place on the planet to drill.” [8/13/08]

Rep Michelle Bachmann (R MN)