The Koch funded echo chamber

By Creature

If I was still blogging, I'd so post this video. Well, since I still have the keys here at The Reaction, what the hell.


[Via Digby]

The political pendulum of potential revolution

Guest post by Nicholas Wilbur 

Nicholas Wilbur is an award-winning reporter and opinion columnist turned political junkie and critic. He is the founder of the blog Muddy Politics and lives in New Mexico.

(Ed. note: This is Nicholas's third guest post for us. You can find his first two, both on the Obama-GOP tax deal, here and here. -- MJWS)

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A friend asked me recently, "Is there a revolution approaching?"

It was not a stupid question. Given the turmoil in Washington over tax cuts, immigration reform, unemployment benefits, gay rights versus military policy, the constitutional challenges to health-care reform, a quasi-filibuster in the Senate against affluence, and the continued existence of the government itself (via a controversial omnibus funding bill), revolution seems possible if not inevitable.

After the midterm elections, most assumed that the politicking and trash-talking of the campaigns would subside, that the lame-duck Congress would pass the last two months of the year making headlines only when reporters with a quota wrote fluffy filler features about golf games and vacation plans for the slew of Democrats retiring in January.

Obviously, that hasn't been the case. But political turmoil, brutal policy battles, inter-party fighting and even the near severing of the liberal base from the alleged liberal of the decade, the prophet of progressivism, the headman of hope, Barack Obama, are not signs of revolution.

They're signs of life in the most deplorable sense of the term – proof that, in a bittersweet, backward and still disappointing way, Washington is functioning. The fact that a socialist senator from Vermont carried the day as the No. 1 Twitter trend with his 8 1/2-hour filibuster means only that politics continues to provide ample entertainment for Americans, and – to the shame of too few Americans – for the rest of the developed world as well.

The truth is, revolution in America is a dream, a distant, out-of-touch fantasy with worse odds than a three-legged mule competing in the Daytona 500. A few will talk of it, a few less will listen, but fewer still will actually do anything to achieve it – mainly because nobody knows where to start, much less where to end.

Sen. Bernie Sanders’ filibuster speech proved this.

In talking about tax cuts for the wealthy, he went on for hours about rich people's control of the banks, the markets, the marketplaces – Wal-Mart, of course, not excluded. He railed against classism, inequality, education, poverty, corruption, and more – issues that millions of Americans fight for and against daily, whether volunteer social workers or over-paid corporate lobbyists.

And that is the dilemma.

It is the reason the majority of Americans generally tune out news from Capitol Hill. It is the reason politics is such a dirty word that patriarchs prohibit it as a dinner conversation topic. It is the reason so many feel helpless to the point of foregoing their most basic rights as United States citizens: voting.

There are too many issues to tackle, too many injustices to protest, too many wrongs to right – and not nearly enough time to adequately address them, even as a salaried member of Congress, who proved this by talking instead of marching, lecturing instead of fighting, and filibustering an issue all but decided after sitting on the sidelines as the policies that created these social ills were pushed through Congress, in many cases, decades ago.

Four thousand people began following Sanders on Twitter throughout and after his speech, and the blogosphere twitterpated with admiration, confusion, false hope, and a renewed longing for the long-abandoned utopian dream. The bleeding hearts fluttered anew with the romantic idealism of progressive revolution even as our elected members of Congress yawned and exited the building, knowing full well the difference between symbolic gestures and realistic political solutions.

It's difficult to gauge what is sadder, the fact that Sanders was correct and still ineffective in riling even his fellow lawmakers, or the fact that as his speech turned heads continent to continent, the most staunch supporters of his ideals did nothing but forward e-mails, "Like" Facebook pages, and "retweet" pragmatically impossible progressive talking points.

When unemployment begins to fall, steadily or slightly, the focus of American media consumers will adjust accordingly. The hostility of D.C. politics will be buried in the papers and ignored by the masses once again.

The truth was written by a Marine nearly four years ago on a wall nearly in Ramadi, Iraq, and it speaks beyond foreign policy: "American is not at war... America is at the mall."

The costs of the Obama-GOP tax deal

By Michael J.W. Stickings

The Senate voted yesterday to end Bernie Sanders's admirable filibuster and to send the Obama-GOP package to the floor for debate and a final up-or-down vote.

The vote was overwhelming: 83 to 15. (Nine Democrats, five Republicans, and one independent (Sanders) voted against it.)

An initial critic of the deal, I now go back and forth. In principle, I'm still against it. But what is principle? The reality is that Obama needs this (and we still care about his 2012 re-election, right?) and for the most part the American people need this. At the very least, given the continuing poor state of the economy, the stimulus that Obama won in exchange for extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy is critical. (For more on this, see our two guests posts by Nicholas Wilbur here and here. He makes a persuasive case.)

This is what happened with health-care reform. I wanted more, like so many others, but I nonetheless ended up supporting the bill. It was much, much better than nothing, and a lot was achieved.

Can that not be the case here? It will be, if Obama follows through on his promise not to extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy past 2012. If he stands firm, this will be, as Jonathan Chait puts it, "a huge victory." (And if he doesn't? Then this will be "a massive defeat." The president hardly inspires much confidence these days, particularly within his base, but there's good reason to believe that he will stand firm. I just hope I'm not trying to convince myself of this at the risk of looking stupid when, as so often happens, Obama and the Democrats give in once again to Republican demands.)

Anyway, Chait posted a couple of helpful charts yesterday -- one from the White House and one from MoveOn.org:

The first looks good (for our side), the second looks bad (for our side) -- if, in the latter case, the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy are extended (contra Obama's pledge).

So which one is right? Well, we'll have to see -- time, and politics, will tell. There is no doubt that making the deal entails significant risk for Obama and the Democrats.

But Chait is right, I think, that "the liberal revolt does help demonstrate the costs the administration will pay if it capitulates on the upper-bracket Bush tax cuts in 2012."

For that, I fear, there would be no excuse, and the president would deserve to be held accountable for such costly failure.