What Newt Gingrich is trying to say is that Islam, like all religions, has to be responsible for its biggest assholes.

— Senior Religion Correspondant John Oliver regarding Gingrich’s comments likening the organizers of Park 51 community center to “Nazis” putting a “sign next to the Holocaust museum.”

Crossposted from Care2.com ~ Originally published 29 July 2010

President Barack Obama took to the Rose Garden July 19 to urge Congress to pass legislation extending unemployment benefits.  Obama had some harsh words for Republicans regarding their filibuster of the measure, and the minority’s curious advocacy for the failed economic policies of the Bush administration.

From Obama’s remarks (full transcript/video):

I have to say, after years of championing policies that turned a record surplus into a massive deficit, the same people who didn’t have any problem spending hundreds of billions of dollars on tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans are now saying we shouldn’t offer relief to middle-class Americans like Jim or Leslie or Denise, who really need help.

Thankfully, the Senate cleared the Republican’s procedural bloc the following day, and jobless benefits will soon be restored for 2.5 million jobless Americans.

It’s a win for the Democrats and for the administration, but a temporary one, and if they’re smart, they will continue to feature the tone and content of Obama’s Rose Garden speech.  They should keep the spotlight on Republicans and what has emerged as their economic platform:  Extend the Bush tax cuts of 2001 & 2003 — an initiative which would deprive the government’s balance sheet of $678 billion over the next ten years — while simultaneously screaming about the perils of the budget deficit.

The hypocrisy is apparent; but, more importantly, when Republican lawmakers publicly defend these policies they put their insincerity on display along with their flippant disregard for the facts.  Read on for examples of both.

Falsehood #1 – Republican Politicians Are Worried About the Deficit

Keep in mind that the budget deficit ranks as a top concern for both Democrats and Republicans when either finds themselves in the minority.  However, the present field of GOP officeholders and hopefuls has brought an unprecedented level of disingenuousness to this time honored political tradition.

Matt Yglesias made it plain within his fourth installment of “Conservatives Don’t Care About The Deficit.”

…there are zero historical examples of conservatives mobilizing to make the deficit smaller. What is true is that most conservatives oppose increases in non-military spending when those increases are proposed by Democratic presidents. A minority of conservatives are more consistent opponents of increases in non-military spending. But the key element of conservative fiscal policy is that tax revenue as a percent of GDP should be made as low as possible. This isn’t a goal they pursue that stands in some kind of balance with concern about the deficit, it’s the only goal they pursue…

Barry Ritholtz offered some particularly stinging commentary regarding “these new deficit chickenhawks” within his July 13 post.  Ritholtz raises an important question:  would those preaching austerity to the Obama administration have said the same to Reagan?

The current president, who obviously has very different priorities than RR, is in many ways following his path: Huge deficits, tax cuts targeted to his electoral base, allowing policies of his predecessor to expire.

I find it terribly amusing that some conservatives have latched onto the deficit as their key issue, when they took the idea of deficit spending to great new heights! Whether you are looking at the economic policies of Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush, reining in the deficit was clearly of no concern. (Forget speechifying, I refer to actual policies).

Having already weighed in on conservatives’ misplaced reverence for Reaganomics, I won’t bother with it here.

Bush’s economic policies, however, were largely emulative of Reagan’s, and are doubly relevant.   First, the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 have contributed greatly to America’s budgetary woes.  Second, “the new deficit chickenhawks” have flatly misrepresented the economic impact Bush tax cuts in order to rail against Obama, whose administration is tasked with cleaning up Bush’s mess.

Falsehood #2 – Bush Tax Cuts Increased Revenue, Paid For Themselves:

This particular falsehood is exhibited in various forms.  Perhaps the most vivid of these comes from Fox Business Channel; the Republican propaganda outfit’s “Largest Tax Hike Ever” countdown clock is representative of the GOP’s argument that the Bush tax cuts should be extended.  But this is generally in line with the rest of Fox’s “news” products:  Flashy, yet fictional.  More significant are the claims which have recently spewed from the politicians, themselves.

Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-AZ) articulated the argument June 11, claiming that unemployment benefits are a “necessary evil” which must be paid for by cutting spending or raising taxes.  When asked the following day how an extension of the Bush tax cuts should be paid for, Kyl responded, “My view, and I think most of the people in my party don’t believe that you should ever have to offset a tax cut …”

That this is a commonly held belief among Republicans was confirmed by Minority Leader Mitch McConnell during a July 13 press conference (via TPMDC, emphasis added):

“That’s been the majority Republican view for some time,” Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told TPMDC this afternoon after the weekly GOP press conference. “That there’s no evidence whatsoever that the Bush tax cuts actually diminished revenue. They increased revenue, because of the vibrancy of these tax cuts in the economy. So I think what Senator Kyl was expressing was the view of virtually every Republican on that subject.”

Not so, says economist and Times columnist Paul Krugman.  Justifiably dismayed by McConnell’s assertions, Krugman published a couple of relevant blog posts –  “Invincible Ignorance,” July 13 and “Carter, Reagan, Revenue,” July 15 — dispelling the ‘tax cuts increase revenue’ claim.

Following the Bush tax cuts, Krugman explains, there was a predictable drop in government revenue which regained its ascent as the economy grew.  After bottoming out, revenue never caught up to what had been the projections had the tax cuts not been enacted.

Krugman’s blog posts culminated in his Friday Times column, “Redo that Voodoo,” invoking the phrase coined by George H.W. Bush while campaigning against Reagan for the 1980 Republican presidential nomination:

Ronald Reagan said that his tax cuts would reduce deficits, then presided over a near-tripling of federal debt. When Bill Clinton raised taxes on top incomes, conservatives predicted economic disaster; what actually followed was an economic boom and a remarkable swing from budget deficit to surplus. Then the Bush tax cuts came along, helping turn that surplus into a persistent deficit, even before the [housing] crash.

But we’re talking about voodoo economics here, so perhaps it’s not surprising that belief in the magical powers of tax cuts is a zombie doctrine: no matter how many times you kill it with facts, it just keeps coming back. And despite repeated failure in practice, it is more than ever, the official view of the G.O.P.

Krugman stresses that our present economic predicament, while serious, is not yet a crisis, thanks, in part, to “the perception that the deficit is manageable has helped keep U.S. borrowing costs low.”  Should Republicans make significant electoral gains in 2010, and should they attempt to put their talking points into practice, Krugman warns, a fiscal crisis is exactly what we’ll have.

I’ve included a relevant clip from the Rachel Maddow Show below, but if you’re interested in reading more about the history of voodoo, supply side, trickle down, or whatever you want to call it, economics, here are a few solid links:

• Hale “Bonddad” Stewart, “The Stupidity and Hypocrisy of the Austerity Movement,” fivethirtyeight.com, 18 July 2010. - Stewart provides a brief history of both, the deficit and the austerity movement, and concludes, among other things, that the GOP’s deficit alarmism is purely political.
• Mike Kimmel, “Presidents, the Tax Burden, and Economic Growth,” presimetrics.com, 13 June 2010 – Kimmel provides a dispassionate, data driven analysis of how the tax policies of Democrats and Republicans have impacted economic growth.  Kimmel’s results may surprise you.
• Thom Hartmann, “Two Santa Clauses or How The Republican Party Has Conned America for Thirty Years,” CommonDreams.org, 26 January 2009 - When Paul Krugman mentioned, “flirting with crisis was arguably part of the [Republican] plan,” this is what he was talking about.  Hartmann traces the history of the supply-side, “starve the beast” Republican strategy to just after Barry Goldwater’s failed 1964 presidential run.  As I noted in a relevant post from last year:

“Two Santa Clause” theory, Hartmann explains, was constructed as a means to consolidate Republican power.  Briefly stated, its adherents reasoned that Republicans could cut taxes, increase spending, and increase government revenue in the process.  If successful, the only way Democrats could counter would be to argue for higher taxes, effectively ‘shooting a Santa Clause.’

via t r u t h o u t ~ Tuesday 20 July 2010

(Image: City Lights Publishers)

The late Howard Zinn’s new book “The Bomb” is a brilliant little dissection of some of the central myths of our militarized society. Those who’ve read “A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA’s Secret Cold War Experiments,” by H.P. Albarelli Jr. know that this is a year for publishing the stories of horrible things that the United States has done to French towns. In that case, Albarelli, describes the CIA administering LSD to an entire town, with deadly results. In “The Bomb,” Zinn describes the U.S. military making its first use of napalm by dropping it all over another French town, burning anyone and anything it touched. Zinn was in one of the planes, taking part in this horrendous crime.

In mid-April 1945, the war in Europe was essentially over. Everyone knew it was ending. There was no military reason (if that’s not an oxymoron) to attack the Germans stationed near Royan, France, much less to burn the French men, women, and children in the town to death. The British had already destroyed the town in January, similarly bombing it because of its vicinity to German troops, in what was widely called a tragic mistake. This tragic mistake was rationalized as an inevitable part of war, just as were the horrific firebombings that successfully reached German targets, just as was the later bombing of Royan with napalm. Zinn blames the Supreme Allied Command for seeking to add a “victory” in the final weeks of a war already won. He blames the local military commanders’ ambitions. He blames the American Air Force’s desire to test a new weapon. And he blames everyone involved — which must include himself — for “the most powerful motive of all: the habit of obedience, the universal teaching of all cultures, not to get out of line, not even to think about that which one has not been assigned to think about, the negative motive of not having either a reason or a will to intercede.”

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When Zinn returned from the war in Europe, he expected to be sent to the war in the Pacific, until he saw and rejoiced at seeing the news of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, 65 years ago this August. Only years later did Zinn come to understand the inexcusable crime of the greatest proportions that was the dropping of nuclear bombs in Japan, actions similar in some ways to the final bombing of Royan. The war with Japan was already over, the Japanese seeking peace and willing to surrender. Japan asked only that it be permitted to keep its emperor, a request that was later granted. But, like napalm, the nuclear bombs were weapons that needed testing. The second bomb, dropped on Nagasaki, was a different sort of bomb that also needed testing. President Harry Truman wanted to demonstrate nuclear bombs to the world and especially to Russia. And he wanted to end the war with Japan before Russia became part of it. The horrific form of mass murder he employed was in no way justifiable.

Zinn also goes back to dismantle the mythical reasons the United States was in the war to begin with. The United States, England, and France were imperial powers supporting each other’s international aggressions in places like the Philippines. They opposed the same from Germany and Japan, but not aggression itself. Most of America’s tin and rubber came from the Southwest Pacific. The United States made clear for years its lack of concern for the Jews being attacked in Germany. It also demonstrated its lack of opposition to racism through its treatment of African Americans and Japanese Americans. Franklin D. Roosevelt described fascist bombing campaigns over civilian areas as “inhuman barbarity” but then did the same on a much larger scale to German cities, which was followed up by the destruction on an unprecedented scale of Hiroshima and Nagasaki — actions that came after years of dehumanizing the Japanese. Zinn points out that “LIFE magazine showed a picture of a Japanese person burning to death and commented: ‘This is the only way.’” Aware that the war would end without any more bombing, and aware that U.S. prisoners of war would be killed by the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, the U.S. military went ahead and dropped the bombs.

Americans allowed these things to be done in their name, just as the Germans and Japanese allowed horrible crimes to be committed in their names. Zinn points out, with his trademark clarity, how the use of the word “we” blends governments together with peoples and serves to equate our own people with our military, while we demonize the people of other lands because of actions by their governments. “The Bomb” suggest a better way to think about such matters and firmly establishes that:

• What the U.S. military is doing now, today, parallels the crimes of the past and shares their dishonorable motivations;
• the bad wars have a lot in common with the so-called “good war,” about which there was little if anything good;
• Howard Zinn did far more in his life for peace than for war, and more for peace than just about anybody else, certainly more than several Nobel Peace Prize winners.

This piece originally appeared on WarisaCrime.org.

This work by Truthout is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

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In a conversation recorded by the FBI in 2008, recently played for his jury, former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich had this to say following some rather dismal poll digits:

Only 13 percent of you all out there think I’m doing a good job. So [expletive] all of you.

That’s right!  Blago told me and all of my fellow Illinoisans to go f#ck ourselves.  I still can’t believe I voted for that douchebag – (sigh) – twice.

That said, the walking, talking embarrassment that is Blago was still preferable to the alternative.