Republicans blaming the Obama administration for this horrendous recession is like an arsonist blaming the fire department - and yet, there's a certain usefulness to their attacks. After all, liberals complaining about the administration's economic policies got us nowhere. Maybe they'll actually listen when Republicans do it!
Growing discontent over the economy and frustration with efforts to speed its recovery boiled over Thursday on Capitol Hill in a wave of criticism and outright anger directed at the Obama administration.
Episodes in both houses of Congress exposed the raw nerves of lawmakers flooded with stories of unemployment and economic hardship back home. They also underscored the stiff headwinds that the administration faces as it pushes to enact sweeping changes to the financial regulatory system while also trying to create jobs for ordinary Americans.
President Obama's allies in the Congressional Black Caucus, exasperated by the administration's handling of the economy, unexpectedly blocked one of his top priorities, using a legislative maneuver to postpone the approval of financial reform legislation by a key House committee.
Two buildings away, at a session of the Joint Economic Committee, Republicans escalated their attacks on Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, including a call for his resignation.
"Conservatives agree that as point person, you failed. Liberals are growing in that consensus as well," said Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Tex.). "For the sake of our jobs, will you step down from your post?"
Rep. Michael C. Burgess (R-Tex.) took a different tack. "I don't think that you should be fired," he told Geithner. "I thought you should have never been hired."
The Democrats are also fed up with the president's economic policies. Rep. Pete DeFazio, progressive:
"I have had a number of people say to me, 'I feel the same way you do but I'm not going to say it.' People are worried it will rub off on the president who still enjoys popularity," he said. "I tell them I still support the president. I just think he is being poorly served by his economic team."
"The truth of the matter," DeFazio added, "is that we have not changed the way the money is being used. It is not being used for the purpose it was supposed to be used for. We are not creating jobs and we have not aggressively taken on the culture of Wall Street."
At this juncture, the notion of Obama dumping Geithner remains far-fetched. Officials at the White House say that the Treasury Secretary still has the trust of the president and argue that he has played an instrumental role in righting the nation's economy. At Treasury, meanwhile, aides are acutely aware of the frustration over small business lending. They note that they have increased caps on small business loans, cut taxes for small business and changed the structure of the TARP to make it more open for community banks. If not for the poor reputation of the program, they argue, these banks would be more willing to take the government's money.
For DeFazio, however, the issue is as much one of perception as it is about policy. One of his chief concerns was that the president appeared enamored with the lords of finance. "The administration has, thus far, not threaded the needle here," he said. "They have taken care of Wall Street but not the rest of the country."
There is, the congressman concluded, "an anger" among the working class that could be a major factor in 2010. And without a new focus on jobs and small business from the White House, DeFazio warned, "a faux populist" Republicanism will fill the void.
Anyone want to take bets on what the collective IQ of this pair is? Sean Hannity brings in The View's Elisabeth Hasselbeck to do a bit of concern trolling for Sarah-Barracuda and that mean old "librul" media that just "hates" conservative women and the conversation turns to a bit of fear mongering over the trial of Khalid Sheikh Muhammed being moved to New York.
Hannity: How do you feel about Barack Obama? Do you think hes a Socialist? Do you think hes a radical?
Hasselbeck: You know I think he ran as from the middle of the road, right? But what were seeing are some what I think to be near extremist nonlack of decisions I should say. You know, take for instance Khalid Sheikh Muhammed getting a civilian trial here in New York City.
Hannity: Umm hmm.
Hasselbeck: The irony that we now are having this rock star KSM on the biggest Broadway stage of the world to what?reenact and draw up all that happened on 9-11. Wow! What a chance for al Quada to come inI mean they should start selling tickets now. This is going to be a circusan absolute circus and no illegal combatant deserves a civilian trial and I cannot believe that this decision has been made.
Hannity: And that and they still have the investigation into Fort Hood which I cant believe, but youre right about Khalid Sheikh Muhammed. Think about this. We will pass on intelligence information
Hasselbeck: Umm hmm
Hannity: to him and his defense team
Hasselbeck: Of course.
Hannity: When he already admitted guilt and was willing to get the death penalty.
Hasselbeck: Speaking of defense Sean, whos going to be the defendant here? Khalid Sheikh Muhammed, hes going to then be oh, poor guy. What did they chuck some water on him. And then we have the Bush administration going to be the real defendant and lets not kid ourselves here
Hannity: Youll get in as much trouble as me about chucking water
Hasselbeck: I will. Im sure. Im sure I will.
Hannity: Im glad we waterboarded him. It kept people safe.
Broadway stage? Really? I want to know when someones going to chuck some water in one of these twos faces. Hannity never did respond to Keiths challenge for him to be waterboarded himself. I await Sean making his Worst Persons segment after this one.
You gotta' love Hannity's lead in here as well. Barack Obama...Elisabeth is he really a Marxist, Socialist, terrorist or is he just a radical that wants to destroy America? Give me your insightful analysis on this, would you? Because I know there's no one more qualified than a former Survivor contestant turned daytime talk show co-host to weigh in on that.
Your defense of Glenn Beck is touching on AOL, but it comes up very short and very sad. You claim that the big bad lefty meanie comedians are picking on Beck even when he is sick. Well, let's get something straight. Glenn Beck is inciting violence and helping legitimizing radical militia and white nationalist movements that otherwise would still be chatting on their MySpace pages. And the hatred that he is helping to unleash on this country is indefensible.
He was the butt of a few jokes by comedians at a time that you disapprove of. OK, are you now saying that the ADL is also being mean to him when they call him the "fearmonger in chief?" Will you weep for him over that too?
What did you think of those gun-brandishing "patriots" who showed up for teabagger protests? Were you happy to see all that vitriol targeted at President Obama by a lot of clueless robots who are out their because of talkers like Beck who have only one goal in mind -- to tear down this president after Bush and conservatism tore down our country for the last eight years?
It's not as though Beck himself hasn't been demonizing people -- his McCarthyite attacks on a number of people have not only been absurdly distorted but viciously personal. And it's not as though Beck is an innocent in the media personal-attack game; indeed, you may recall that he was responsible for one of the ugliest on-air smears in broadcast history: When Beck had a falling-out with a former radio-show partner named Bruce Kelly, who became a competitor in the Phoenix market, Beck embarked on a series of dirty tricks, including an invasion of Kelly's wedding. But Beck hit a new low a little later:
The animosity between Beck and Kelly continued to deepen. When Beck and Hattrick produced a local version of Orson Welles' "War of the Worlds" for Halloween -- a recurring motif in Beck's life and career -- Kelly told a local reporter that the bit was a stupid rip-off of a syndicated gag. The slight outraged Beck, who got his revenge with what may rank as one of the cruelest bits in the history of morning radio. "A couple days after Kelly's wife, Terry, had a miscarriage, Beck called her live on the air and says, 'We hear you had a miscarriage,' " remembers Brad Miller, a former Y95 DJ and Clear Channel programmer. "When Terry said, 'Yes,' Beck proceeded to joke about how Bruce [Kelly] apparently can't do anything right -- about he can't even have a baby."
Two wrongs don't make a right, and here at C&L we've avoided making it personal with Beck (beyond pointing out his utter lunacy). Just because we choose to pitch clean, though, doesn't mean we much mind seeing a toxic clown like Beck face a little chin music.
Please, spare us the tears and defend somebody who truly deserves it.
John Amato...
(h/t CSPANjunkie)
It's hitting the fan in California as students protest the grotesque 32% hikes in their college tuition.
Angry students at the Davis, California, branch of the University of California refused to vacate the school's administration building Thursday evening in a show of defiance and protest over a 32-percent undergraduate tuition hike instituted by the California Board of Regents earlier in the day.
About 50 students remained in the building, which was supposed to close by 5 p.m. PT (8 p.m. ET), UC Davis spokeswoman Claudia Morain told CNN. At one point, as many as 150 students were at the building protesting the tuition increase, she said. She said she hopes campus police can resolve the issue without the need to make arrests.
CNN affiliate KCRA captured footage of students outside the building shouting, "Who's university? Our university!"
Nearly 400 miles south and hours earlier, hundreds of students marched and chanted against the increase while outside the UCLA building in Los Angeles where regents met to vote on the hike.
Protesting students and others say the increased tuition will hurt working and middle-class students who benefit from state-funded education. But officials argue that a fee increase and deep cuts in school spending are necessary because of a persistent budget crisis that has forced reductions across California's state government.
California is in bad shape and it's only to get worse.
Hullabloo:
And there's no end in sight:
In what's become a depressingly familiar story over the last 2 years, California faces another big budget deficit:
Less than four months after California leaders stitched together a patchwork budget, a projected deficit of nearly $21 billion already looms, according to a report to be released Wednesday by the state's chief budget analyst.
The new figure -- the nonpartisan analyst's first projection for the coming budget year -- threatens to send Sacramento back into budgetary gridlock and force more across-the-board cuts in state programs.
As the article points out, the deficit for 2009-10 (current fiscal year) is $6.3 billion, and the projected deficit for 2010-11 is $14.4 billion. Arnold is already talking about closing it with cuts...
Every time we run a Glenn Beck post, someone trolls into the comments and asks, "Why bother with this guy? We should just ignore him! Post more videos on [insert name of preferred progressive figure here]!"
We'd like to refer them to this week's special report from the ADL on the rise of populist anti-government rage, the one that officially dubbed Beck our national "Fearmonger in Chief".
Keith Olbermann invited Arianna Huffington onto Countdown to discuss the report last night:
OLBERMANN: It would be nice to think of Glenn Beck just as a joke, as fodder for this show and the Daily Show and others that point out how stupid some of this stuff is. But this report, you know, suggests something else, this isfearmonger-in-chief term is frightening.
HUFFINGTON: It is frightening. Well, I would say the fearmonger-in-chief title should still be reserved for Dick Cheney, even in retirement. But barring that, there is something that we need to really pay attention to with Glenn Beck. We cannot just dismiss him. Because the truth of the matter is that there is a good reason why we have an exemption to the free speech protection by the first amendment when we say you cannot shout fire in a crowded theater.
And he's doing that every night. He's basically using images of violence to bring together with all that he's accusing the Obama administration of, which varies from racism to communism, Nazism and everything else in between. So, all that has definitely an impact. I believe words matter, language matters and he's using it in incredibly irresponsible ways night after night.
OLBERMANN: What do you say to the argument that this country has always self corrected, that whether Father Coughlin on the radio in the 30s or Bo Carter (ph) who was a newscaster who presented literally stuff that was made up on the hour in CBS News in the 30s or the columnist Westbook Pegler or Senator Joe McCarthy? All these people a finale in which they exited the stage and suddenly. What is to say that thats not going to happen here?
HUFFINGTON: Well, I hope it's going to happen, but it's not going to happen without people pointing out what Glenn Beck is doing.
Indeed, since the report was issued, Beck seems to have turned up the Wingnuttery Dial all the way 11.
We put together a compendium of Beck's finest fearmongering of just the past year on Fox, inspired largely by the instances cited by the ADL -- with a few of our own favorite moments thrown in for good measure.
As Arianna says, confronting the Becks is vital to keeping our discourse healthy -- because he is polluting it daily with the toxic garbage of disinformation, paranoia, and scapegoating.
We discussed this recently in the matter of Lou Dobbs:
[I]t's one thing to hold a contrary opinion ... It's quite another to irresponsibly demagogue and demonize an entire bloc of the American population with provably false information and paranoid conspiracy theories derived in large part from hate groups whose entire purpose is to poison the well of our national discourse.
Dobbs wasn't in trouble with the public merely for attacking Latino immigrants or peddling conspiracy theories -- the public sought his removal because he had become a major conduit for right-wing extremism in the mainstream of our discourse.
The free press, and free speech, are indeed vital to the functioning of our democracy, precisely because they are the only means by which the citizens of a democratic society can obtain the information they need to function effectively.
What this means, however, is that the people in the press who dispense that information have an incredible responsibility not just to their readers, but to democratic society, to report accurately, truthfully, and responsibly.
And when they fail in those responsibilities, the public has not just the right but the obligation to demand accountability. Purveying false information is in itself fundamentally irresponsible; so is reporting with the intent to demonize people and target them for elimination; and the combination of the two is particularly toxic, because it almost inevitably has violent consequences.









