Behold the new Russia – exactly like the old one:
And this display is right at the center of the world’s attention in the Olympic Park. As Putin’s allies deploy crude force against the opposition in Ukraine, his goons round up gays and attack pop groups with whips.
I really respect @sullydish but I’m not sure many women, myself included, could pass his feminism purity test. http://t.co/UnQ4hSjTj5
— jodikantor (@jodikantor) February 18, 2014
A reader writes:
I had to laugh when I read your post comparing Hillary Clinton to Claire Underwood, especially the last paragraph. With the exception of her dogged desire to believe the husband she loves, the sins you list that supposedly disqualify Clinton from being a feminist icon are exactly what make her one. Her hardball legal tactics, her managing her image, her “ruthless” pursuit of power – she behaved exactly like a man. She refused to be defined by her gender in one of the most brutal arenas in our society. That’s why she’s a feminist role model, not having robotic obedience to some ever-shifting set of feminist virtues.
Another is on the same page:
Of course Hillary Clinton can still be a feminist icon! One of the main points of feminism is equality for women, not a woman’s obligation to stand up for all other women at all times. Clinton is a ruthless politician and she’s also a woman. It’s not either/or. In the examples you give, she’s dismissive of these women because they’re interfering with politics; their gender is much less important than their political relevance.
Another:
Your feminist standpoint kinda sounds like the Obama “not being black enough” crap. Why do we have to wait for a perfectly independent female politician who never relied on fathers and husbands beyond age 22? Don’t all the previous presidents used wives/mothers connections/powers throughout their adults lives? No men succeeded alone.
Another blows a ref whistle:
About Blair’s entry about “whiney women” – Blair did not quote Hillary saying that.
From your excerpt, it looks like that was Blair’s comment about Hillary’s view of these women, but not necessarily Hillary’s quote. Who can tell who used the word “whiney” at this point? There is no “gotcha” moment here.
Keep going. And another:
You’re saying Hillary herself tried to smear Flowers as a “fraud, liar and possible criminal”? Suddenly words written by Bill’s campaign strategists can be attributed to Hillary? If that’s to be the standard, we’re in for a long campaign indeed.
A side note from a reader:
Your nostalgia for faded and forgotten Clinton scandals brought back memories of my own. Specifically, your reference to “that amazing $100,000 windfall in cattle futures” reminded me of article I read by James Glassman long ago in 1994, which sought to determine just what illegality or impropriety could have been involved. The only serious charge was Ms Clinton’s broker cherry-picked successful trades for her, but Glassman said the evidence actually contradicted that possibility. So what was he left with? Nothing more than Hillary and Bill were given slack on required margin calls during the more harrowing sections of a roller coaster ride of massive gains followed by massive losses. Glassman also noted the Clintons’ experiences with the broker were no different than his other clients, both with regards to the wild swings of profit and margin call laxity. His account was an interesting example of draining the fever swamp of conspiracy with facts, and I recall it to this day. And who was the editor for James Glassman article? Why you, Andrew! I could probably dig up my old issue if you need a reminder.
I remember it well.
Ahead of the 2006 midterms, Congressional Democrats outlined a fairly broad and thorough agenda and vowed to advance them through the House within the first 100 working hours of their majority in the event that they won. When they did win, then-Speaker
Nancy Pelosi definitely let Bush be The Story for the next two years. But she also moved a bunch of items that lacked GOP support through the House to establish a Democratic agenda (including familiar items like the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, the Employee Free Choice Act, and two different State Children’s Health Insurance Plan expansions, both of which President Bush decided to veto). And moreover she managed to pass some actual laws, including two stimulus bills (can you imagine if Obama requested a stimulus bill now?) and marshaled overwhelming Democratic support (twice) for the bill that ultimately authorized TARP when then-minority leader John Boehner couldn’t muster half his conference to support the bailout President Bush demanded.
This year’s Republicans aren’t capable of anything like this. Winning in 2014 might not require them to be. But it might also leave them without much to tell the public if it watches Democrats actually doing things and begins to wonder what the GOP has to offer other than a single-minded hatred of Obamacare.
It’s hard not to feel extremely dispirited by the prospect of the next eight months. The country’s business is hostage to political gamesmanship and jockeying. Doing nothing about almost anything right now – for brazenly partisan purposes – is the GOP’s game-plan. It’s pure oppositionism – and we’ll likely see the entire pre-election period as one in which the Republicans do one thing only: sabotage and undermine and slander and oppose the ACA. So a law that has greatly expanded the number of insured Americans will be relentlessly described as a law that threatens the insurance of millions. This is not going to be a campaign for an alternative to the ACA – because the actual alternative looks a lot like what we’ve got, and a comparison of alternatives – an exploration of costs and benefits of various approaches – is not something the GOP wants.
The same with immigration reform. The kabuki theater of the past month has been a contest in cynicism, crafted entirely around the desire to bury this issue until after the mid-terms. The purported reason for not acting is a preposterous and self-evident falsehood – that Obama cannot be trusted to enforce the border. As Fareed recently noted,
the Obama administration has enforced immigration laws ferociously. It deported more than 400,000 people in 2012, 2½ times the number in 2002. In 2002, for every two people removed from the country, 13 became legal residents. In 2012, for every two removed, just five became residents. For these reasons, as well as the recession, the number of illegal immigrants has not increased in several years. (On the more general point, Dan Amira of New York magazine has compiled data that show that Obama has issued fewer executive orders than any president in 100 years.)
So these are transparent dodges of pressing national issues almost entirely for internal party politics and the mid-terms.
No, I’m not shocked. But I’m also not so cynical as to ignore the nihilism at the heart of today’s GOP. They are the reason we have gridlock; they are the reason we cannot reach some obvious fiscal compromise that could raise some taxes and trim some entitlements; they are the reason we cannot even have a debate about how to tackle climate change; they are the reason we cannot enact even minor gun control measures backed by huge majorities; they are the reason we cannot offer some relief to countless undocumented immigrants while reforming immigration to allow for more skilled workers. I won’t even begin on foreign policy, where, again, they are all opposition and no coherent policy (or divided by Rand Paul non-interventionism and Cheney-style neoconservatism).
Obama is getting the blame for all this; which, of course, is the strategy. But he doesn’t deserve it; which, of course, is the truth.
So good it’s worth a replay from last year:
It’s the stress factor, apparently.
Gabriel Arana thinks we are on the verge of a wave of legislation in the red states similar to the Kansas bill:
As I argued back in November, seeing defeat on the horizon in the gay-marriage wars, social conservatives have shifted gears. Instead of trying to stop the tide of social change, they are seeking to exempt themselves from it under the banner of “religious liberty.” Typically, social conservatives have pushed for exemptions in blue states like New York or Vermont only once the legislature has begun considering gay-rights legislation. But starting with Kansas, followers of the gay-marriage saga should expect to see more and more red states considering such preemptive measures as standalone bills.
Here’s my core question: how can we know these bills are genuinely about religious liberty and not actually about anti-gay prejudice? I think there’s one test that can clarify that. Allow me to explain.
Readers know I have sympathy for those – like evangelical florists, say – who feel that catering a same-sex wedding violates their conscience. I don’t like the idea of forcing those people to do something that truly offends them; if I were planning my own wedding again and found that a florist really had issues, I’d find one who didn’t. It would sure be nice to muddle through a bit here and avoid, if we can, outright zero-sum 
battles between the freedom of some to marry and the freedom of some to avoid an occasion of what they regard as sin.
But this is America, and so we won’t, of course. So it also seems to me that the one demand we should make of such a defense of religious freedom is that it be consistent. For me, with devout Catholics, the acid test is divorce. The bar on divorce – which, unlike the gay issue, is upheld directly by Jesus in the Gospels – is just as integral to the Catholic meaning of marriage as the prohibition on gay couples. So why no laws including that potential violation of religious liberty? Both kinds of marriage are equally verboten in Catholicism. So where is the political movement to insist that devout Catholics do not have to cater the second weddings of previously divorced people?
For that matter, why no consideration of those whose religious beliefs demand that they not bless marriages outside their own faith-community? Do we enshrine the right of, say, an Orthodox Jewish hotel-owner to discriminate against unmarried couples who might be inter-married across faiths? Do we allow an evangelical to discriminate against Mormon couples, because their doctrine about marriage is so markedly different from mainstream Christianity’s?
It seems to me that the acid test for the new bills being prepared by the Christianist right with respect to religious freedom and marriage is whether they are discriminatory against gays and straights alike. Currently, they don’t begin to pass muster on that front. Until they do, the presumption that they are motivated by bigotry rather than faith is perfectly legitimate. Dish readers are already flagging the discriminatory bills as they pop up:
I’ve appreciated your work in keeping the world up to date on the recent events in Kansas. Unfortunately a bill that would seem to be suspiciously similar, if not identical, is being picked up in Tennessee as well.
It may not have gotten the same amount of attention because it hasn’t been passed, although given the current makeup of the state legislature, it seems likely. Our state legislators labor under the belief that a race to the bottom is one they want to win. There’s a good summary here in Nashville’s local alt-weekly, which takes the primary daily paper to task for skipping some of the facts about the proposed legislation.
The Tennessee bill was withdrawn yesterday. Another looks west:
An almost identical bill has been introduced in Arizona. There is a fundamentalist Christian “non-profit” group here called the Center for Arizona Policy. They write all sorts of anti-gay, anti-abortion, anti-education bills and pass them on to state legislators. The legislators introduce the bills, have the Center for Arizona Policy spokeswoman (Cathi Herrod) testify in support, and the laws get passed. The group claims to be non-partisan. Ha! See their blurb about the bill here. The next step is the state having to defend these laws in court. Millions and millions of tax payer dollars spent to defend laws written by this “non-profit.” In almost every case, the bills have been deemed unconstitutional. Always amazed at the amount of time and money spent on culture war crap in Arizona.
And another:
There’s also a bill similar to Kansas’ proposed in Idaho – in fact, it might be worse.
Previous Dish on the ill-fated Kansas bill here and here.
(Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty)
The Congressional Budget Office forecasts that raising the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour, as Obama and the Democrats in Congress hope to do, would give 16.5 million American workers a raise and lift 900,000 out of poverty – but it would also lead to 500,000 job losses. Barro thinks this is a pretty good deal:
As economist Richard Thaler puts it, “All methods of helping the poor cause distortions”; a minimum wage increase can cause a modest rise in unemployment and still be a good policy idea, so long as it has more than offsetting positive effects.
And the minimum wage trade-off presented by CBO looks awfully favorable. For every person put out of work by the minimum wage increase, more than 30 will see rises in income, often on the order of several dollars an hour. Low- and moderate-income families will get an extra $17 billion a year in income, even after accounting for people who get put out of work; for reference, that’s roughly equivalent to a 25% increase in the Earned Income Tax Credit.
Mike Konczal accuses the CBO of “putting a thumb on the scale” to inflate the number of job losses:
[T]he CBO’s methodology is weighed to overstate the impact of a $10.10 minimum wage on jobs, while also understating the benefits. Even then there’s a clear tradeoff – a minor fall in jobs for serious real gains again inequality and wage security.
Never mind the scary headlines, or the report that unfortunately plays to them: When you consider that the academy is far more ambiguous about the costs of giving the country a raise, and more bullish on the benefits, this is still an excellent deal for working Americans.
To Jared Bernstein, the report confirms the wisdom of raising the minimum wage:
As I’ve stressed many times on this blog, policy makers need to be concerned about the quantity of jobs, and pursue policies that will increase that number. But they also have to worry about job quality, especially in the low-wage sector, where the decline in the real value of the minimum wage, the increase in earnings inequality (meaning less growth finds its way to the low end of the wage scale), and the low bargaining power of the work force have placed strong, negative pressure on wage trends for decades.
With such job-quality concerns in mind, I’d say the long history of research shows that increasing the minimum wage is a simple, effective policy that achieves its goal of raising the value of low-wage work with minimal distortions at no cost to the federal budget. The Congressional Budget Office report further confirms that conclusion.
The administration is disputing the job loss numbers, but Yglesias argues that they really shouldn’t be:
If the White House genuinely believes that a hike to $10.10 would have zero negative impact on job creation, then the White House is probably proposing too low a number. The outcome that the CBO is forecasting—an outcome where you get a small amount of disemployment that’s vastly outweighed by the increase in income among low-wage families writ large—is the outcome that you want. If $10.10 an hour would raise incomes and cost zero jobs, then why not go up to $11 and raise incomes even more at the cost of a little bit of disemployment?
Cowen sees it differently:
Spin it as you wish, we should not have a major party promoting, as a centerpiece initiative and for perceived electoral gain, a law that might put half a million vulnerable people out of work, and that during a slow labor market.
Philip Klein seizes on the contradiction between the CBO report and the president’s promises:
The bottom line is that Obama has presented hiking the minimum wage as a no-brainer that would boost the economy, increase wages and immediately reduce poverty without adverse effects. CBO has estimated that in reality, the action would raise unemployment among lower-income workers, deliver most of its benefits to families living above the poverty level, and have offsetting adverse effects on businesses and consumers. To the extent that it will reduce poverty, according to the CBO, the effect will be less significant and less immediate than what Obama has claimed.
Jordan Weissmann puts the numbers in perspective:
[T]he report … demonstrates the limits of the minimum wage as a policy tool for curing poverty or bolstering the middle class. There are currently about 45 million people living in poverty—the CBO’s estimate suggests the wage hike being debated in Washington would only reduce that number by 2 percent. Among families under the poverty line, average incomes wouldn’t increase any more than 3 percent.
For liberals looking for ways to combat inequality and poverty, raising the minimum wage would be a good start, but no more.
Bouie chimes in:
I should also say that this gets to why—as far as raising incomes is concerned—the minimum wage isn’t the greatest option. An expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit—to raise payments and include single, childless workers—could increase incomes without the hit to the labor market. Indeed, a combination of the two policies—a larger EITC and higher minimum wage—could substantially boost incomes and provide enough stimulus to the economy to completely outweigh the adverse effects.
But, with the notable exception of Florida Senator Marco Rubio, it’s hard to find Republicans who would support a stronger EITC, or any measure that would move funds from the wealthy to the poor. Which leaves the minimum wage at a disadvantage as well. The difference, of course, is that the EITC is a federal policy, while individual states can set a minimum wage. And it’s for this reason that Democrats have committed to the latter; even if they lose in Congress, they can still take their fight to America’s statehouses.
Suderman cautions against reading too much into the CBO’s findings:
It’s complex and highly politicized, and the CBO tries hard to avoid politicization to the extent that it’s possible. So this report is probably best taken as a wonky but readable guide to the economic research on the topic. And it’s probably not worth investing too much in the specific point projections about jobs lost and incomes raised. Instead, it’s best to think of the report as highlighting the variety of economic costs and trade-offs that would come with a hike in the minimum wage, including job loss, and a reminder that the administration has an incentive to downplay potential negatives and paint its policy proposals in the most positive possible light.
And Drum wonders why the office bothered to take up this issue in the first place:
[T]his is a report that I suspect CBO shouldn’t have bothered doing. Their value-add lies in assessing the effects of legislation that no one else is studying. But the minimum wage has been studied to death. CBO really has nothing to add here except its own judgment about how to average out the dozens of estimates in published academic papers. In other words, they aren’t adding anything important to the conversation at all. This report is going to get a lot of attention, but it really doesn’t teach us anything new.
As the years go by, the smell intensifies. If you want a glimpse into the utterly corrupt British Establishment under Tony Blair, look no further than the evidence produced yesterday at Rebekah Brooks’s trial in charges of phone-hacking. It was an email from the former prime minister to the disgraced editor offering his personal assistance and help as she faced down the scandal of the criminality on Fleet Street. At the time, the Labour Party leadership was demanding full accountability from the various Murdoch papers involved in hacking phones. The former PM was privately backing the Murdochs. Money quote from Brooks’s email to James Murdoch:
I had an hour on the phone to Tony Blair. He said:
1. Form an independent unit that has a outside junior council, ken macdonald, a great and good type, a serious forensic criminal
barrister, internal council, proper fact checkers etc in it. Get them to investigate me and others and publish a hutton style report.
2. Publish part one of the report at same time as the police closes its inquiry and clear you and accept short comings and new solutions and process and part two when any trials are over.
3. Keep strong and definitely sleeping pills. Need to have clear heads and remember no rash short term solutions as they only give you long term headaches.
4. It will pass. Tough up.
5. He is available for you, KRM and me as an unofficial adviser but needs to be between us.
He is sending more notes later.”
Not exactly a disinterested party is he? But the real news here is his proposal of a “Hutton-style” report. What does that mean? It refers to the Hutton Inquiry into the death of David Kelly, a top government scientist who committed suicide after his skepticism of the Blair government’s claims about Saddam’s WMDS went public. That inquiry was widely viewed at the time as a total whitewash – a way to seem to be investigating a deeply troubling matter while essentially rigging its conclusions in advance. And that was the view of Tory papers as well as Labour ones. So why would Tony Blair be looking for a way for the Murdochs to avoid the reckoning they now face? Developing …
(Photo: Former British prime minister Tony Blair leaves after giving evidence at the Leveson Inquiry into media ethics at the High Court in central London on May 28, 2012. Blair told a press ethics inquiry Monday that he got too close to Rupert Murdoch’s media empire. By Carl Court/AFP/GettyImages. Illustration: the front cover of the Independent newspaper after the publication of the Hutton Inquiry’s findings.)
Atlantic City, New Jersey, 12.01 pm
In a speech at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library last week, the Louisiana governor claimed that there was a “silent war on people of faith” being waged in this country. Waldman examines how Jindal’s rhetoric played to the conservative id:
Jindal is rather shrewdly attempting to tap into something that’s universal, but particularly strong among contemporary conservatives: the urge to rise above the mundane and join a transformative crusade. It’s one thing to debate the limits of religious prerogatives when it comes to the actions of private corporations, or to try to find ways to celebrate religious holidays that the entire community will find reasonable. That stuff gets into disheartening nuance, and requires considering the experiences and feelings of people who don’t share your beliefs, which is a total drag. But a war? War is exciting, war is dramatic, war is consequential, war is life or death. War is where heroes rise to smite the unrighteous. So who do you want to get behind, the guy who says “We can do better,” or the guy who thunders, “Follow me to battle, to history, to glory!”
Saletan compares Jindal’s argument to the one Bob Jones University made for its ban on interracial dating 14 years ago:
The resemblance between Bob Jones’ argument and Jindal’s argument raises a simple question: Does the right to practice a religious belief against gay marriage differ fundamentally from the right to practice a religious belief against interracial marriage? There are several ways to claim that it does. But these rebuttals don’t stand up. … If religious freedom protects your right to discriminate privately between same-sex and opposite-sex relationships, does it also protect your right to discriminate privately between same-race and opposite-race relationships? If not, why not? As Bob Jones put it: “Does a Christian consensus have to exist to make a belief right? Who decides?”
Kilgore notes that “Jindal’s job approval ratio now comes in at a terrible 35/53”:
Worse yet, asked if Jindal should run for president, Louisianans say “no” by an insulting 63/25 margin (even Republicans oppose his candidacy by 50/36), and that’s not because they want him to stay home and do his job since he’ll be leaving office at the end of 2015. Listed among possible 2016 candidates, Bobby can win only 13% among Louisiana Republicans, seven points behind Mike Huckabee and just one point ahead of Ted Cruz.
The Dish 