Quote Of The Day

"And so, Obama has finally finished evolving on same-sex marriage.  And about time! I, for one, never understood the point of saying you were 'evolving' when many of the voters you were pandering to don’t even believe in evolution."
-- Frank Rich

Obama's Evolution

It was inevitable.  President Obama has evolved.  Whether his recalcitrance threatened to become too much of a distraction, particularly after his Vice President got ahead of him, or whether he ultimately realized it was no longer politically risky to do so, Obama has finally endorsed same-sex marriage:  “I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married.”

As Greg Sargent put it, despite the fact that he had to be pushed into taking this step, it is an historic one -- a civil rights milestone:  "Obama has become the first — and only — sitting president to come out for full equality for gay and lesbian Americans."

This is huge.  Frank Bruni:  "Our highest elected official, our president, said that same-sex couples should have the right to marry, something that none of his predecessors had done, something that he had refused to do since becoming a national political figure. There’s a powerful message in that."

But -- and there's always a "but" with Obama -- the President made sure to emphasize that his position on same-sex marriage reflects his "personal" belief and he "still supports the concept of states deciding issue on their own."  Indeed,  his Administration made sure to clarify that "President Obama believes marriage is a state issue and the federal government does not have a role."  (I'm not sure who he is trying to appease with his states' rights hedge given that the right wing will skewer him anyway.  Indeed, FOX News is already out with its "Obama Declares War On Marriage" headline.)

As a practical matter, until there is a progressive sea change in Congress or the Supreme Court, it is up to the states, not the federal government to regulate marriage and civil unions.  And with the vote in North Carolina yesterday, there are 31 states (including the entire south) that don't allow same-sex couples the rights heterosexual couples take for granted.    

But that doesn't mean the President cannot play an important role as a leader -- the leader -- in the continued struggle for equal rights.  And so, Obama needs to evolve just a little more.  He needs to unequivocally state, as President of the United States, that the deprivation of rights based on sexual orientation is wholly unacceptable -- just as it was wholly unacceptable to deny such rights based on race.  This is not a states rights issue and it is not merely a matter of personal preference.  This is about the fundamental principle of equality.

Quagmire Accomplished

 One Year After Bin Laden's Death, Bring The Troops Home Now

By Kevin Martin and Michael Eisenscher, cross-posted from Common Dreams

Today marks one year since the death of Osama bin Laden. The CIA estimates there are fewer than 100 al Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan. Since ‘getting Bin Laden’ and defeating al Qaeda were the stated reasons the U.S. invaded Afghanistan in 2001, President Barack Obama should use the anniversary to announce the end of the U.S. war in Afghanistan.

Instead, his administration has negotiated an agreement with President Hamid Karzai’s government for a U.S. presence in that country until at least 2024, ten years past the supposed date for withdrawal of U.S. combat troops. The U.S. and its NATO allies are supposed to commit to ongoing training of the Afghan military, as well as development aid. Obama swept into Afghanistan in the middle of the night to sign the agreement, but full details of the agreement remain secret.

U.S. troops would also still have a limited combat role, namely Special Forces counter-insurgency operations, according to a draft proposal described by Admiral Bill McRaven, the head of U.S. special operations. A more detailed security plan will surely be discussed at the upcoming NATO Summit in Chicago.

If the agreement covers a ten year period, commits U.S. military forces for training and counter-insurgency (which means inevitable combat), obligates the U.S. to continue providing billions of taxpayer dollars annually in aid (essentially bankrolling the entire Afghan government and military), and posits support for any number of "nation-building" measures, isn't this in fact a treaty, subject to U.S. Senate ratification, rather than an intergovernmental memorandum of agreement?

Karzai apparently feels obligated to take the agreement to his parliament for approval.  Doesn’t Obama have a similar obligation - one imposed by the U.S. Constitution?It’s not clear what the year since the killing of Bin Laden has done to improve U.S. or Afghan security. It’s even less clear what staying for another dozen years will do for either country.

Quite apart from these legal, “process” questions, does anyone think our staying until 2024 is going to bring peace and stability to Afghanistan? We’ve already been there for eleven years – the longest war in our country’s history.  What do we really have to show for it?  We’ve spent almost $523 billion.  Almost 2000 Americans have been killed and another 15,300 wounded.  1000 NATO troops have lost their lives.


Staying through 2024 will be a hard sell to the majority of Americans. According to last week’s Pew Research public opinion poll, only about a third of those polled think U.S. troops should stay in Afghanistan “until the situation there is stabilized” (whatever that means). About two-thirds of Obama supporters, and almost as many swing voters (who make up nearly a quarter of the electorate), want a swift withdrawal of U.S. troops, while Mitt Romney supporters are split just about evenly.

It’s hard to imagine public support increasing for this mission, especially considering the ongoing cost.  Cities and states around the country face budget crises and are severely cutting all manner of public services.  In 2012 alone, states had a combined shortfall of $169.3 billion, which resulted in spending cuts of $135.8 billion and tax increases of $21.4 billion.  That has translated into deep cuts in public services at the very time when tens of millions need them most.  How many more lives and how much more treasure will another 12 years in Afghanistan cost us?

Congressional support for ending the war rapidly is growing, and will be manifest by upcoming votes in the House of Representatives on the Defense Authorization Bill, as well as in other forms of Congressional communication to the president. Congress is unlikely to cut off funding for the war, but the administration would do well to heed the rising bipartisan tide for ending it sooner rather than later.

The May 20-22 NATO Summit in Chicago provides a great opportunity to devise plans to withdraw all foreign troops while fulfilling non-military humanitarian assistance and support for human and minority  rights, especially for women’s rights in Afghanistan.

As the 15,000 delegates from alliance countries gather for the official confab at McCormick Place, tens of thousands of peace advocates will descend on Chicago to give voice to the demands of the pro-peace majority in the U.S. While there have been, and will continue to be, debates about security, First Amendment rights, and inconvenience to Chicagoans, such atmospherics should not obscure the real issues of U.S./NATO military policy, especially as it relates to the present and future military occupation of Afghanistan.

It’s not clear what the year since the killing of Bin Laden has done to improve U.S. or Afghan security. It’s even less clear what staying for another dozen years will do for either country. The time to bring U.S. forces home is now, not 2014, and certainly not 2024.

Obama Plays The Republican "Macho" Game

As Peter Bergen reported in the Sunday Times, President Obama is "one of the most militarily aggressive American leaders in decades."

Mr. Obama decimated Al Qaeda’s leadership. He overthrew the Libyan dictator. He ramped up drone attacks in Pakistan, waged effective covert wars in Yemen and Somalia and authorized a threefold increase in the number of American troops in Afghanistan. He became the first president to authorize the assassination of a United States citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki, who was born in New Mexico and played an operational role in Al Qaeda, and was killed in an American drone strike in Yemen. And, of course, Mr. Obama ordered and oversaw the Navy SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

Nevertheless, the "American public and chattering classes continue to regard the president as a thinker, not an actor; a negotiator, not a fighter."  So, I understand why Obama believes that he needs to tout his national security chops.  And the one-year anniversary of bin Laden's death provides the perfect opportunity to do so.  This may be good politics, but it is nonetheless distasteful.

As Digby puts it:

I get why the Democrats are doing it. I'm sure it's extremely satisfying to land those punches on the right wing blowhards after all the years of taunting and jeering about liberal cowardice. To be able to say they killed the evil mastermind where the swaggering codpiece failed is probably too much of a temptation for them to pass up. I get it.

But I hate it. I hated it when the Republicans did it and I hate it now. I don't believe the most powerful nation on earth should be running its democracy via schoolyard power plays. This is how we ended up stuck in Vietnam and how we have found ourselves floundering about in Afghanistan and elsewhere. It's why we can't stop spending trillions on useless weapons systems, why we "have" to continue to fund ridiculous programs like Star Wars and why everyone in the political establishment assumes that the only answer to budget problems is to cut the so-called "entitlements."

I know we live in a dangerous world. But this nation is extremely rich and extremely powerful and its most important assets are morality and mystique. I'm not going to argue about the morality of killing Osama bin laden, but it should be remembered that our unilateral wars,torture regimes and insistence on imperial prerogatives have already taken a toll on America's reputation for moral behavior.

As for mystique, well let's just say that schoolyard taunts and manly chest beating doesn't leave much to the imagination. I don't expect the macho worshiping conservatives to ever change this. It's fundamental to their very identity. I was hoping for something a little bit more sophisticated and a little bit more mature from the so-called "reality-based community."

That said, Romney's response -- that he or any other President, even Jimmy Carter for Gawd's sake, would have done the same thing with regard to bin Laden -- was not only asinine but contravenes earlier remarks that he wouldn't focus on hunting down bin Laden and that candidate Obama was misguided in asserting that he would unilaterally go into Pakistan to get bin Laden.

And hey, shouldn't the media be all over Romney for criticizing our foreign policy successes?  Shouldn't they be asking why he hates America? 

As Greg Sargent points out:

Back in 2004 and 2006, when Republicans were showcasing George W. Bush’s war-on-terror routine as central to their case for reelection, and Dems were responding by attacking Republicans for politicizing national security and pointing to Bush’s failures, Dems were widely described as the ones taking the big political risk then, too.

We were told again and again during the 2004 and 2006 campaigns that Dems risked coming across as not rooting for American military success; there was little discussion of any danger for Republicans in playing up Bush’s “war president” routine. Now the situation, roughly, is reversed — and this time we’re talking about the Obama administration’s successful targeting of America’s number one global arch-enemy — yet again it’s Dems who are seen to be playing with political fire here.

This remains the Republican's game.  As Sargent concludes, "there’s still a strong built-in presumption of political dominance for Republicans on national security, and [] any gains Dems have made on the issue are not deeply felt by Beltway establishment types."

For better or worse, that's not going to prevent Obama from trying.

Jamming Too Slow On Student Loans

"I'm President Barack Obama, and I too want to slow jam the news."

You've probably seen this already -- President Obama's appearance on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon during which they "slow jam the news" on the need for Congress to prevent interest rates on student loans from doubling (Congress must do so by July 1, or rates will go up from 3.4 to 6.8%):



At this point Republicans are predictably against extending the current rates, and their presidential candidate, Mr. Etch-a-Sketch, used to be with them.  Remember when he said students shouldn't count on the government's help:  “It would be popular for me to stand up and say I’m going to give you government money to pay for your college, but I’m not going to promise that . . .  And don’t expect the government to forgive the debt that you take on.”

But Romney is beginning to understand how potent an issue this is, and this week conceded that he would support an extension of the current interest rates on Stafford-loans, although as Amy Davidson points out, "there was no musical component to the announcement."

His fellow Republicans in Congress obscure their opposition to having the government assist students with their debt by claiming they don't object to extending the lower interest rates (although the Ryan Budget that passed the House doesn't do so) but are concerned with how to pay for it.  As Greg Sargent points out they are floating various ways to pay for the extension that seem likely to get shot down by the Democrats.

And while Democrats are merely trying to maintain the status quo, it is worth making the important point, as Robert Borosage does, that they should be building the groundwork for more progressive reforms to help students, such as 0% loans and/or free tuition at public colleges.

The Zombie Rises: The Return Of Simpson-Bowles

By Robert Borosage, cross-posted from Campaign for America's Future

Take a good look at Europe - bloody riots in Athens and Madrid, rising unemployment, spreading poverty and suicide, and a deepening recession - because the current American elite consensus bizarrely wants to drive America down that same path.

Europe's miseries come from imposing austerity before recovering from the recession caused by the financial collapse. Conservatives in Germany and England inflicted harsh measures to enforce budget discipline - hiking taxes, cutting spending.

In the US, the Obama recovery plan and the deal with Republicans over extending the Bush tax cuts combined to limit and slow the imposition of austerity. The result: Europe is sinking, while the US economy retains slow, but halting growth.

But now the deficit hawks are gearing up for another run at driving the US back into economic recession.

At the end of the year, we face a train wreck. After the November election, the Bush tax cuts, the payroll tax cut and extended unemployment benefits expire. The automatic cut - "sequester" in budget speak - of nearly 10% of military and domestic discretionary spending (everything except guaranteed programs like Medicare and Social Security and interest on the national debt) kicks in. We even hit the debt limit to add to the high stakes.

If all this is allowed to occur, it will subtract over 3% of GDP from an economy growing at 2.5% or less. A drop back into recession would be almost inevitable. So a deal is needed.

But the deal in everyone's head is some kind of "grand bargain," like that almost cut by House Speaker John Boehner and President Obama last year, or like that outlined by the co-chairs of the President's deficit commission, Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson (which failed to gain the needed votes to pass the commission).


Centrist Democrat Kent Conrad, chair of the Senate Budget Committee, has announced that he will use the Simpson Bowles recommendations as a guideline for budget negotiations that he assumes will take place in the lame duck Congress have the election.

There's lots not to like in Simpson-Bowles which marches under the banner of "shared sacrifice" at a time when 1% of the population is capturing 93% of the rewards of growth, while paying the lowest tax rates in living memory.

But the horror is less the bad terms of the supposed bargain, than its zombie like infliction of austerity on an economy barely out of the emergency room.
We've still got some 23 million people in need of full time work. We haven't recovered the jobs that were lost in the collapse, much less the jobs needed for young people coming into the economy. Wages are still failing to keep pace. Nearly one in four mortgages are under water; foreclosures are rising.

Yes, we have trillion dollar deficits. But austerity - some deal that raises taxes and cuts spending now - will put more people out of work and make reducing deficits even harder.

After experiencing the horrors of this misguided policy, European leaders will eventually turn back to trying to get their economies moving again. What we need this fall is a different grand bargain - a global agreement, like that that was forged in early 2009, for coordinated action by governments to reflate the economy - to borrow and spend to put people back to work.

For this to occur, the bipartisan elite fixation about inflicting austerity now must be challenged. If we are to avoid a lost decade or worse, we need action to support still weak and staggering economies. Global coordination would be the best way to achieve that. That requires putting a stake in Simpson Bowles, the Boehner-Obama grand bargain and other zombies.

In this country, the necessary remedies are clear. With interest rates near zero, a decrepit infrastructure that must be rebuilt, a construction industry flat on its back, anyone with a whit of business sense would finance a massive Rebuild America program over the next few years, put people back to work, and build the sinews vital for a more competitive economy. We will never have a better opportunity to make the investments that we will have to make anyway.

We should send money to states to rehire teachers, make universities affordable, and strengthen not weaken our public schools. It's simply nuts to make kids pay the price of Wall Street's follies.

And if we could get beyond ideological perversities, we'd set up a green corps, an urban corps, and a jobs corps to guarantee a job for every veteran and young person under 25. No one should risk their life for the country and return to an economy with no place for them. Young people are coming out of school into the worst economy since the Great Depression. Condemning them to idleness is a recipe for depression, drugs, crime, and misery. And we will all pay dearly for a lost generation.

Certainly, we have to be serious about getting our books in order. The wealthy and the corporations should pay more so we can afford the investments we need. But the overwhelming source of our long-term budget woes comes from projections of soaring health care costs. If we paid for health care at the rate other industrial countries do (with better results), we would be projecting surpluses, not deficits.

But right now, the focus should be on putting people back to work and getting the economy moving. Until that happens, austerity - as Europe is now experiencing - is a contagion, not a cure.

Photo Of The Day

President Obama seated in the bus in which Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat.

Socialism: A GOP Plan Signed By Obama

By Tina Dupuy, cross-posted from her website

Calling ObamaCare “socialized medicine” truly lowers the standards on what could be considered socialized medicine. It’s like calling paved roads “government overreach”; a stop light a “government takeover of your commute”; or a neighborhood with speed bumps “a road to communism.” The law is really some regulations to help consumers buy private insurance coupled with a small fee if consumers decide not to buy said insurance.

Is it perfect? No. Could it be improved? Absolutely. However, ObamaCare is the opposite of socialism, it’s a market solution.

The right-wing got a “free” market solution to health care. That was their cause – personal responsibility their mantra – now it’s law. They got an entire reform bill incentivising citizens to buy into private for-profit insurance plans. This is the Republican vision for America: Less government more profits for giant corporations. This core of the Affordable Care Act was an idea floated by President Nixon in 1974, touted by the Heritage Foundation in 1989, introduced by Newt Gingrich in 1993 and implemented by Mitt Romney in 2005. And now? Now it’s a big festering albatross around Obama’s neck.

As former presidential candidate Michele Bachmann said in front of the Supreme Court last week, “We have not waved the white flag of surrender on socialized medicine!”

So the decades-old Republican big idea finally gets Democratic presidential ink and now, if you ask a Republican, it’s an unconstitutional government takeover of health care Stalin would have loved. Mitt Romney wants to repeal ObamaCare and replace it with RomneyCare. Essentially repealing the Affordable Care Act with the Affordable Care Act. Leave it to a Republican frontrunner to vow their first act as president will be to waste time with redundancies while lamenting how ineffective government can be.

Now health care reform has reached the Supreme Court, we will have a ruling on the law in late June. Will it be overturned fully or partially or upheld? It’s anyone’s guess.
Regardless of the outcome, personal responsibility in health care is a Republican pet idea they’ve strapped to the roof of the car.

It makes the case that their ideas should never be law because if partisanship beckons, they’ll rally against them and call any Democrats who signed the bill, Hitler.

Imagine if Obama signed the most recent Paul Ryan Budget plan – a blueprint to cut taxes further for the wealthy and further increase the debt by not taking in enough revenues. If Obama embraced it, Republicans would storm the Capitol calling it a tax hike and a Maoist plot with Wall Street. People in tri-corner hats with signs reading, “Don’t raise my taxes!” and “Stop government takeover of business!” would swarm The Mall. The erosion of Medicare would make Republicans faint on the House floor. “It’s a tenet of Marxism to kill grandma!” They’d gasp.

Just remember, when George W. Bush took office the budget was set to be balanced in a few short years. Social security was actually its namesake – secure. And then he went uber-GOP-with-a-mandate – didn’t pay for any of the wars he started – just showered seniors with unpaid-for Medicare Part D and sent everyone in the country a rebate check. And when this “free market capitalism” failed? He bailed out the banks and the auto industry with taxpayer money, famously saying he “abandoned free market principles to save the free market system.”

Now? Now the Republicans blame the deficit, the debt, the recession, the bailouts and (wait for it) the wars on the Democrat in the Oval Office.

It’s a take on the Pottery Barn rule, “You break it, you buy it.” The Republican version: “We break it, we blame you … and call you a Nazi.”