Rachel Maddow's Blog, page 3409

Why the nominating fights are on hold (but not for long)

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A week ago, it looked like the Senate was gearing up for some major nominating fights. Richard Cordray's nomination to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was ready to be brought the floor, as were Thomas Perez's Labor Secretary nomination and Gina McCarthy's EPA nomination. The result would some knock-down-drag-out fights that could dictate the future of how the chamber deals with administration nominees.

And then ... nothing. Even Cordray's nomination, which was slated for tomorrow, was pulled from the schedule. What happened? Brian Beutler reports this morning:

Cordray will now most likely get his chance after immigration reform legislation clears the Senate. And not because Reid is giving up on Cordray's nomination, but because he wants to turn Cordray and a handful of other nominees into a test of the GOP's vows to filibuster top Obama picks, including two designated cabinet secretaries.

The move serves two purposes: First, it removes one of the largest pretexts Republicans will have to walk away from immigration reform. Second, it puts Republicans on the spot in an exquisite -- and in Reid's mind necessary -- way, thus providing the nominees their best chance at confirmation, and leaving Democrats little choice, if the GOP blocks them, but to change the rules to immunize executive and judicial nominees from filibuster.

A senior Democratic aide told Brian the idea is to set up "back-to-back-to-back confirmation votes" on Cordray, Perez, and McCarthy. My sources have suggested President Obama's nominees to lead the ATF and sit on the NLRB may also in the mix as part of the same effort.

If the Senate is allowed to exercise its advise-and-consent role, fine -- these nominees will be confirmed and the chamber will move on to other business. If the Republican minority blocks some or all of these nominees, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) will, in theory, be able to credibly argue that the GOP has given him no other choice but to pursue the "nuclear option."

Why not do this sooner rather than later? Two reasons.

First, Reid and Senate Dems see immigration as so important, they're inclined to push everything off until the reform bill has cleared the chamber. Once it's done, Democrats will feel freer to use hardball tactics to combat Republican obstructionism -- knowing that forcing the confrontation now would almost certainly derail the bipartisan legislation.

Second, if Reid is serious about the "nuclear option," he's going to need at least 51 votes to pull it off. That may sound easy given that the Senate Democratic caucus has 55 members, but let's not forget that plenty of those 55 have proven to be very reluctant when it comes to changing how the Senate operates. If they were uncomfortable with filibuster reform in January, the "nuclear option" is likely to be a tough sell, too.

Either way, this is a major fight on the horizon. As Brian concluded, "That effectively puts Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on a collision course. If McConnell caves or works out an agreement with Reid, then the nuclear option will become inoperative. But if he doesn't and these confirmation votes fail, then Reid will either have to admit defeat or do ... something. In that sense he's essentially building a 'permission structure' for himself and his caucus to do something about the rules in the event that Republicans make good on their threats."

Wednesday's campaign round-up

Today's installment of campaign-related news items that won't necessarily generate a post of their own, but may be of interest to political observers:

* In New Jersey, Democratic gubernatorial hopeful Barbara Buono has her first television ad of the cycle. It's generally just a light, bio ad, but note the Andrew Cuomo reference. [Update: It turns out the video below is Buono's first online ad, while this is her first televised spot of the campaign.]

Watch on YouTube

* In Massachusetts' Senate special election, Republican Gabriel Gomez released his first attack ad of the race, though several local reports are drawing attention to the commercial's obvious falsehoods.

* On a related note, Karl Rove's American Crossroads said this week it's "watching" the Massachusetts race "closely," but would not commit to intervening on Gomez's behalf.

* In Minnesota, a new Public Policy Polling survey shows Sen. Al Franken (D) leading each of his potential Republican challengers by margins ranging from 15 to 17 points. He appears to be a safe bet for re-election.

* In Virginia, we continue to learn more about E.W. Jackson, the Virginia GOP's nominee for lieutenant governor, including the fact that he worked to oppose housing desegregation in Boston in 1988.

* Virginia Republicans' gubernatorial nominee, state Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, endorsed Jackson publicly yesterday, but said he would refuse to comment on all of the nutty things his new running mate has said over the years.

* In Michigan, a new statewide poll shows incumbent Gov. Rick Snyder (R) with a one-point edge over former U.S. Rep. Mark Schauer (D), who has not yet announced his plans, 39% to 38%. The same poll found U.S. Rep. Gary Peters (D) as the early favorite in the open U.S. Senate race.

* In New York City, former Rep. Anthony Weiner (D) launched his mayoral campaign overnight.

* And the 2014 Senate retirements may not be over just yet: Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) acknowledged this week that he has not yet decided whether to seek re-election next year.

Time to update the deficit talking points

It must be tiresome to have to update political talking points. Partisans go to a lot of trouble to write, poll test, memorize, and repeat them, and when the talking points are no longer accurate, it must be terribly inconvenient to come up with new ones.

For example, Republicans were heavily invested in arguing that the unemployment rate was "above 8 percent of x months," which was fine until the unemployment rate dropped below 8 percent, forcing the right to come up with new talking points.

The same is true on deficit reduction. Conservative condemnations of "trillion-dollar" deficits made more sense right until the point the deficit shrunk below $1 trillion.

Alas, some folks stick to their old talking points, even when they're now wrong.

Now, this is ordinarily the point at which I note that China owns only a small portion of U.S. debt; large deficits are wise under the economic circumstances; and if Sen. Paul is really eager to reduce the deficit, he should endorse some tax increases.

But putting all of this aside, Rand Paul is using out-of-date math. "We are borrowing $4 billion a day"? Let's see -- there are 365 days in a year ... multiplied by 4 billion ... carry the one ... that means we'll have annual federal budget deficit of over $1.4 trillion.

Except, we won't. The latest CBO estimate says this year's deficit will be $642 billion, down $400 billion from last year, and nearly $800 billion from when President Obama took office. Paul's argument, in other words, isn't even close to being accurate -- we're not borrowing $4 billion a day; we're borrowing less than $2 billion a day.

If the right wants to argue that's still too much, fine. I disagree, but we can at least have a debate. But to use talking points from 2009, as if we have haven't already seen the fastest deficit reduction in modern U.S. history, is absurd. What Rand Paul is telling his followers is simply and demonstrably wrong.

Updating talking points may be annoying, but when the facts change, politicians' rhetoric needs to change with them.

Tuesday's Mini-Report

Today's edition of quick hits:

* The reports and images out of Oklahoma are simply heartbreaking.

* The latest from Moore: "Emergency crews in Oklahoma picked through neighborhoods without recognizable streets Tuesday in a grim, house-by-house search of the blasted-out husk of a city left behind by a ferocious tornado. Authorities lowered the death toll to 24, less than half the figure they gave in the initial chaos after the twister, but there was still no full accounting of those missing. Nine of the dead were children, including seven in a flattened elementary school."

* As big as they get: "The massive, mile-wide tornado that ravaged Oklahoma City suburbs on Tuesday with peak winds of over 200 miles per hour has been rated an 'EF5' by the National Weather Service."

* Lois Lerner's lawyers gave her obvious advice: "A top IRS official scheduled to testify Wednesday before the House Oversight committee has notified Congress that she will invoke the Fifth Amendment and refuse to answer questions."

* Immigration: "Sens. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) struck a deal Tuesday on visas for high-skilled workers, a major breakthrough for the Senate immigration reform bill. The deal paves the way for Hatch, the most senior member of the Senate Republican Conference, to support the immigration legislation pending in the Judiciary Committee."

* The images we will not see: "Photos of American military personnel burying Osama bin Laden will remain classified, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit sided with the government in finding that the release of postmortem images of the founder and leader of al-Qaeda could cause 'exceptionally grave harm' to Americans."

* Gallup: "U.S. Economic Confidence Reaches Five-Year Weekly High."

* Josh Marshall has an unexpected take on James Rosen: "It's difficult for me not to be more shocked by the self-interested preening of fellow journalists over a comically inept reporter and source than the arguable dangers this episode holds for press freedoms. Indeed, I've failed. I can't."

* Dear Kirsten Powers, please don't compare Fox News to Holocaust victims.

* And the NRA is outraged by the violence that Hollywood peddles and uses to poison our culture. On the other hand, the NRA also thinks violent movies are "cool." Good to know.

Anything to add? Consider this an open thread.

Reaching the 'weather weapon' stage

Ordinarily, with a story like this, I'd just shake my head in disgust and move on, but given recent events, I'm inclined to give it a little more attention.

Conspiracy theorist radio host Alex Jones explained to his audience today how the government could have been behind the devastating May 20 tornado in Oklahoma.

On the May 21 edition of The Alex Jones Show, a caller asked Jones whether he was planning to cover how government technology may be behind a recent spate of sinkholes. After laying out how insurance companies use weather modification to avoid having to pay ski resorts for lack of snow, Jones said that "of course there's weather weapon stuff going on -- we had floods in Texas like 15 years ago, killed 30-something people in one night. Turned out it was the Air Force."

Following a long tangent, Jones returned to the caller's subject. While he explained that "natural tornadoes" do exist and that he's not sure if a government "weather weapon" was involved in the Oklahoma disaster, Jones warned nonetheless that the government "can create and steer groups of tornadoes."

How can tornado truthers know for sure whether the Obama administration was responsible for yesterday's devastation in Oklahoma? According to Jones, we need to know whether locals saw helicopters and small aircraft "in and around the clouds, spraying and doing things." He added, "[I]f you saw that, you better bet your bottom dollar they did this." Jones, ever cautious, went on to say he does not yet know whether yesterday was a natural disaster or not. How reassuring.

Now, I realize that fringe figures are going to share nutty ideas all the time, and it was probably inevitable that some nonsensical allegations about the Oklahoma tornado would pop up. I didn't realize "weather weapons" would be part of the story, but there's probably no reason to be surprised.

This caught my eye, however, because of recent developments -- we've seen Republican officeholders in state legislatures, the U.S. House, and even the U.S. Senate take Alex Jones' ideas seriously. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) intends to run for president -- of the United States -- and he's been a guest on Alex Jones' show.

In other words, the guy raising the specter of Obama using "weather weapons" to kill Oklahomans is the same guy helping influence several Republican policymakers in 2013.

Maybe it's just me, but I find that rather alarming.

Appeals court strikes down Arizona abortion restrictions

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About a year ago, we discussed a measure signed into law by Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R), banning most abortions in the state after 20 weeks of pregnancy. Soon after, the 20-week standard became the new expectation for opponent of abortion rights in Republican-led states everywhere.

As of today, however, the law is no more.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the law violates a string of U.S. Supreme Court rulings starting with Roe v. Wade that guarantees a woman's right to an abortion before a fetus is able to survive outside the womb. That's generally considered to be about 24 weeks. Normal pregnancies run about 40 weeks

Several states have enacted similar bans starting at 20 weeks. But the 9th Circuit's ruling is binding only in the nine Western states under the court's jurisdiction. Idaho is the only other state in the region covered by the 9th Circuit with a similar ban.

The entire ruling is online here (pdf). It was, incidentally, a unanimous ruling of the three-judge panel.

It's probably safe to assume that the Brewer administration will appeal, either to the entire 9th Circuit, seeking an en banc ruling, or to the U.S. Supreme Court (or probably both). To be sure, it's an important case anyway, but if it's headed for the high court, the case, Isaacson v. Horne, may prove to be one of the most important reproductive-rights cases in many years.

'You've got to be on Mars to come up with some of this stuff'

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How do you know when congressional Republicans have gone around the bend on Benghazi? When their own staffers -- usually a hyper-loyal bunch -- are mocking GOP colleagues for pushing nonsense.

In particular, these aides say key staffers have been overly consumed with chasing down or addressing inaccurate or unfounded accusations emerging from the inquiry.

"We have got to get past that and figure out what are we going to do going forward," a GOP aide stressed. "Some of the accusations, I mean you wouldn't believe some of this stuff. It's just -- I mean, you've got to be on Mars to come up with some of this stuff."

Remember, this is a House Republican staffer talking about conspiratorial nonsense coming from other House Republican offices.

Senior GOP aides pointed out that many of the accusations involving security and military forces turned out to be unfounded. One recent example involved a supposed whistle-blower who reported that an armed Predator drone was operating in the area, but was not called upon to respond to the Benghazi attack, an assertion labeled erroneous by Pentagon officials and Hill staffers.

"There are some real issues there and then there is just some crazy stuff," the senior House GOP aide said. "The crazy stuff is, you know, the airman in Ramstein [Air Base, Germany,] that knew that the Predator [drone] was armed. There are no armed Predators in the region there. The [status of forces agreement] does not allow us to fly them armed, and everybody knows it."

It's against this backdrop that other GOP lawmakers are starting to back away from their own party's unhinged and conspiratorial accusations.

I realize there are some Beltway types (see Woodward, Bob) who still see a political scandal lurking in the shadows of this story, but when House GOP staffers are using phrases like "you've got to be on Mars" and "crazy stuff," you know this story is over.

What James Inhofe sees as 'different'

We talked earlier about Oklahoma's junior senator, Republican Tom Coburn (R), announcing last night that he will only support federal disaster relief -- for his own constituents -- if it's financed by comparable spending cuts elsewhere. But what about Oklahoma's senior senator?

Republican Sen. James Inhofe, like Coburn, has opposed emergency aid in the recent past, including voting against a relief package for victims of Hurricane Sandy. This morning, however, the conservative senator said that was "totally different."

In the wake of the devastating tornado in an Oklahoma City suburb, Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) rejected comparisons between federal aid for this disaster and the Hurricane Sandy relief package he voted against.

That was a "totally different" situation, Inhofe told MSNBC, arguing that the Sandy aid was filled with pork. There were "things in the Virgin Islands. They were fixing roads there and putting roofs on houses in Washington, D.C. Everybody was getting in and exploiting the tragedy that took place. That won't happen in Oklahoma."

Inhofe didn't specify his intentions, exactly, but I took his comments to mean he'd consider supporting relief for his constituents, even if the costs are not offset, so long as the aid bill doesn't include expenditures unrelated to Oklahoma. In other words, at least at first blush, it seems to me Inhofe is not on board with Coburn's position.

Of course, all of this speculation is premature -- we don't yet know when there will be a disaster-relief bill, what will be in it, how much it'll cost, etc. -- but it appears the political fight got underway just five hours after disaster struck.

In Oklahoma, safe rooms can save lives

Tushka, Oklahoma, April 14, 2011. Courtesy of Gabe Garfield and Marc Austin/NOAA

The tiny town of Tushka, Oklahoma, sits a couple hours drive southeast of Moore. And like Moore, Tushka is vulnerable to tornadoes. A twister rated EF-3 struck Tushka in 2011, leveling much of the town. But as the Tulsa World noted at the time, Tushka was not defenseless:

Nearly 100 men, women and children crowded shoulder-to-shoulder into a six-year-old, above-ground, concrete-reinforced safe room adjacent to the Tushka pre-school. A block away, about 100 other residents, their kids and their dogs in tow, rushed into the 90-year-old, below-ground, public shelter -- 45-feet long and shaped like a tube, with dirt floors and steel doors at either end. 

Tushka lost two people that day who were not in the shelters. The safe rooms saved the others. The superintendent of Tushka schools, Bill Pingleton, says the newer shelter cost about $150,000 to build. Most of that cost got picked up by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Divided over time, Pingleton says, safe rooms are not all that expensive.

The 2011 tornado destroyed Tushka's school; the new one they're building now will include three safe rooms, one each for the high schoolers, the middle schoolers and the grade schoolers. "That was absolutely our first thought, 'Where are we going to put the safe rooms?' " he tells us. "Then we sited the school around that." The design allows for all 460 kids to reach shelter within moments. 

Tulsa World

A safe room on the way in Tulsa, 2011.

Already people drive in from surrounding towns to use the existing Tushka safe rooms during bad weather, including yesterday. That is something of a tradition in Oklahoma, where they have at least 77 community safe rooms scattered around the state, most of them funded by FEMA. The federal government is still helping local governments build them. FEMA announced a $2.3 million grant for a community safe room in Victoria County, Texas, this month. 

After a tornado struck the town of Moore, Oklahoma, in 1999, people used FEMA grants for safe rooms at home. They would need them just four years later. A FEMA release tells the story of a Moore resident named Charles Atchley, in tornado number two:

During the tornado of May 8, 2003, Atchley and his three grandchildren took shelter in his safe room. His wife was at work at the time of the storm. He quickly took shelter after hearing the warning siren. When the storm passed, his family left the shelter safe and sound. Once again, this family was lucky and had no damage to their home, but Atchley said the storm shelter gives him "peace of mind" he wouldn't trade.

The shelter unit is neatly recessed into the ground and only the door can be detected nestled within the manicured landscape of the backyard. Atchley has stocked his safe room with the necessary supplies for survival and even included a black-and-white TV that runs on batteries. "I even get reception in the storm shelter," he boasted.

The town of Moore has continued its safe room program, urging people in town to get one. The city's website notes that only about 10 percent of homes there have a dedicated storm cellar and not many have basements. With two big tornadoes in the last several years, it does seem like people in Moore have been eager to take advantage of FEMA grants for safe rooms at home. In theory, FEMA will cover $2,000 of the $2,500-or-so cost for a shelter at home. But Moore officials have run into delays. From a February 2013 posting:

The City's safe room rebate program is still "on hold", with not a lot changed from our update of last May.

Our county-wide Hazard Mitigation Plan still has not been approved by the State and FEMA.  There were changes to the Federal requirements for this plan that occurred while our contractor was writing the document; he has had to rewrite it.  We've found that the FEMA requirements and their interpretations seem to be a constantly moving target, more so with the new wrinkles.  We're still working out various wording changes with the State reviewers and hope to submit the final document in March.

However, the Plan is not our main obstacle.  The Federal grant program which funds local initiatives such as ours is funded by monies set aside during Presidential major disaster declarations.  Oklahoma has had few of these declarations in the past couple of years, so there is not a lot of grant money available. 

Once our Plan is approved and grant funds become available, we will certainly proceed with our rebate program application.

Moore's public information officer, Jayme Shelton, says the process has been frustrating. "No one has gotten the money yet," he tells us.

There's no way to know for certain, of course, whether having more safe rooms would have made a difference in Moore yesterday, in homes or in the schools. Down the road in Tushka, superintendent Pingleton says he could not help thinking of Moore's teachers and students clustered in corridors, closets and bathrooms. "It was on my mind last night," he says. "When they were huddled in those hallways, it's a tough situation."

ADDING: Andrew Revkin at the New York Times' Dot Earth blog looks at the question of building shelters for more schools.

'Apologize to Apple'?

Apple may be one of the nation's richest companies, but it did so by avoiding billions in taxes here and around the world. Congressional investigators found that the tech giant created "a web of subsidiaries so complex it spanned continents and went beyond anything most experts had ever seen," relying on "gimmicks" and "schemes" to sidestep tax laws.

This has generated a fair amount of bipartisan criticism, though Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) doesn't seem bothered. In fact, he wants the Senate to apologize to Apple for bothering the company.

Paul not only endorsed Apple's tax-avoidance schemes, but condemned Congress itself for daring to question the company's efforts to circumvent international tax burdens. The Kentucky Republican said he's "offended by the tone and tenor of this hearing," and lamented the very idea of "berating" a company just because it's taken unprecedented steps to avoid meeting its responsibilities, largely by creating shell companies abroad with no real employees.

"If anyone should be on trial here, it should be Congress," Paul declared. "I frankly think the committee should apologize to Apple.... I would say what we really need to do is to apologize to Apple, compliment them for the job creation they are doing, and get about doing our job.

Nearly three years ago, after much of the country -- and much of Congress -- was condemning BP for the massive Deepwater Horizon oil spill, Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) apologized to the oil giant, saying it was wrong for Washington to try to hold the company responsible for its failures.

And now, it's Rand Paul wanting to apologize to Apple for questioning its tax-avoidance schemes. Amazing.