Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 979
October 16, 2015
Jenny McCarthy’s absurd Playboy hypocrisy: “They weren’t the girls that had just got off Monday nights on the poles”
Taking a break from spreading bad science about vaccines and autism, former model and "The View" host-turned-reality show star Jenny McCarthy waxed nostalgic about her time as a Playboy Playmate after the magazine announced this week that it would cease running nude photographs in its printed magazine. On her SiriusXM show "Dirty Sexy Funny" this week, a heartbroken McCarthy declared, "in solidarity, I will be wearing my panties at half-mast." Why the wistfulness over the end naked women in Playboy? McCarthy lamented the end of the era of "classy" nudes that the magazine was known for, heaping praise on their method of showcasing "girls next door" ... like her: “They weren’t the girls that had just got off Monday nights on the poles." In McCarthy's vision, women who want to pose nude for men's magazines are acceptable only when they "capture the innocence in the women," as in her own 1993 test shoot, when "I had one uni-brow and a giant bush to my knees, and they were like, ‘You’re in! You’re a girl next door!’" "There was nothing ever skanky, I thought, about the photos," she continued. "There was nothing I felt was too embarrassing or too gross." McCarthy has every right to be proud of her 1993 appearance in Playboy, which turned into a Playmate of the Year designation and launched the totally not-embarrassing career she has today starring in A&E's "Donnie Loves Jenny," the sort of reality TV "Joanie Loves Chachi" to "Wahlburgers"' "Happy Days." What she doesn't get to cling to is a completely "embarrassing" and "too gross" moral high ground of slut-shaming dancers or other women and men who have performed sex work that isn't up to her own hypocritical standards. Then again, many logical people have been flying their own panties at half-mast for years over McCarthy's departure from reality on everything from medical science and immunity to working for "The View." Call me skanky, but being the symbolic face of the crackpot "why not bring polio back?" movement would be a great deal more shameful to me than someone thinking I look like a stripper, "classy" or otherwise. McCarthy has generously volunteered to be in Playboy's last nude issue — hopefully not alongside anyone embarrassing and gross, of course. Listen to the whole segment: Taking a break from spreading bad science about vaccines and autism, former model and "The View" host-turned-reality show star Jenny McCarthy waxed nostalgic about her time as a Playboy Playmate after the magazine announced this week that it would cease running nude photographs in its printed magazine. On her SiriusXM show "Dirty Sexy Funny" this week, a heartbroken McCarthy declared, "in solidarity, I will be wearing my panties at half-mast." Why the wistfulness over the end naked women in Playboy? McCarthy lamented the end of the era of "classy" nudes that the magazine was known for, heaping praise on their method of showcasing "girls next door" ... like her: “They weren’t the girls that had just got off Monday nights on the poles." In McCarthy's vision, women who want to pose nude for men's magazines are acceptable only when they "capture the innocence in the women," as in her own 1993 test shoot, when "I had one uni-brow and a giant bush to my knees, and they were like, ‘You’re in! You’re a girl next door!’" "There was nothing ever skanky, I thought, about the photos," she continued. "There was nothing I felt was too embarrassing or too gross." McCarthy has every right to be proud of her 1993 appearance in Playboy, which turned into a Playmate of the Year designation and launched the totally not-embarrassing career she has today starring in A&E's "Donnie Loves Jenny," the sort of reality TV "Joanie Loves Chachi" to "Wahlburgers"' "Happy Days." What she doesn't get to cling to is a completely "embarrassing" and "too gross" moral high ground of slut-shaming dancers or other women and men who have performed sex work that isn't up to her own hypocritical standards. Then again, many logical people have been flying their own panties at half-mast for years over McCarthy's departure from reality on everything from medical science and immunity to working for "The View." Call me skanky, but being the symbolic face of the crackpot "why not bring polio back?" movement would be a great deal more shameful to me than someone thinking I look like a stripper, "classy" or otherwise. McCarthy has generously volunteered to be in Playboy's last nude issue — hopefully not alongside anyone embarrassing and gross, of course. Listen to the whole segment:
Men need rape crisis care, too: We know men are sexually assaulted — why is it so hard for them to get help?
Rape is a crime that thrives on the shame and silence of the victim. And if you're a male survivor of sexual assault, the challenges of being heard — and of being taken seriously — are unique. Too often, the idea that men can be raped is treated as a joke, or a commentary on their sexuality, or a fitting punishment for their own misdeeds. But now, what's being dubbed as the first facility of its kind has opened in Sweden — a rape center for men. The center, which Metro UK says opened in Stockholm's Södersjukhuset hospital on Thursday, was first announced back in the summer, with the promise of offering "gender equal" services for men and boys. The hospital already has a round the clock walk-in clinic that serves between 600 and 700 patients annually. Speaking to Sweden's Sveriges Radio in July, Lotti Helström, a senior physician at the hospital, said that the new facility aims to dispel myths and stigma. "The general perception is that men cannot be raped," Helström explained, adding, "In studies, the health effects are shown to be greater for men, both in terms of physical health and mental health. There is a greater risk of a raped man getting post-traumatic stress disorder," in part because the topic is considered "extremely taboo." The timing and location are especially apt, in a country that claims the dubious distinction of the highest rate of sexual assault in Europe. (A report in Sweden's The Local does note, however, that part of that high number may come from the fact that "the country records allegations in a different way to most other countries, tracking each case of sexual violence separately.") But throughout the world, sexual violence against men — in acts committed both by men and by women — is both astonishingly prevalent and disturbingly underreported. Here in the U.S., the FBI only recognized that men can be rape victims in 2012. Last year, a report on "The Sexual Victimization of Men in America" concluded that "federal surveys detect a high prevalence of sexual victimization among men — in many circumstances similar to the prevalence found among women." Male sexual assault occurs across a spectrum, from intimate relationships to locker rooms to prison cells. In 2013, the father of a 13 year-old Colorado boy who claimed he'd been sexually abused by three members of his wrestling team was told blithely by the parent of one of the suspects, "This happens 1,000 times a day around the U.S." The statistics on male prison rape, meanwhile, are varying and conflicting, but a 2012 report estimated that "More than one-third of gay and bisexual male inmates said that they were victimized by another inmate. By comparison, only 3.5% of straight male inmates reported being sexually assaulted by other inmates." Oh, only. There are nearly 1.5 million men in America's penal system. The incidence of prison sexual assault is, as Jill Filipovic wrote in the Guardian in 2013, "horrifying." Meanwhile, in the UK earlier this year, Survivors UK, a support organization for men who've experienced sexual assault, found its funding from the Ministry of Justice victims’ fund withdrawn. The Guardian reported in August that it is now in danger of closing — "despite a 120% increase in male victims of sexual violence in the capital last year." And just earlier this month, a judge ordered that the female babysitter who sexually abused a male child in her charge was given a suspended sentence after declaring, "It was quite clear he was a mature 11-year-old." It's pretty hard to stop a problem that isn't recognized as a problem. To end sexual violence against men — just like ending it against women — it has to first be acknowledged. And in one corner of Scandinavia, now it is. It's a start.Rape is a crime that thrives on the shame and silence of the victim. And if you're a male survivor of sexual assault, the challenges of being heard — and of being taken seriously — are unique. Too often, the idea that men can be raped is treated as a joke, or a commentary on their sexuality, or a fitting punishment for their own misdeeds. But now, what's being dubbed as the first facility of its kind has opened in Sweden — a rape center for men. The center, which Metro UK says opened in Stockholm's Södersjukhuset hospital on Thursday, was first announced back in the summer, with the promise of offering "gender equal" services for men and boys. The hospital already has a round the clock walk-in clinic that serves between 600 and 700 patients annually. Speaking to Sweden's Sveriges Radio in July, Lotti Helström, a senior physician at the hospital, said that the new facility aims to dispel myths and stigma. "The general perception is that men cannot be raped," Helström explained, adding, "In studies, the health effects are shown to be greater for men, both in terms of physical health and mental health. There is a greater risk of a raped man getting post-traumatic stress disorder," in part because the topic is considered "extremely taboo." The timing and location are especially apt, in a country that claims the dubious distinction of the highest rate of sexual assault in Europe. (A report in Sweden's The Local does note, however, that part of that high number may come from the fact that "the country records allegations in a different way to most other countries, tracking each case of sexual violence separately.") But throughout the world, sexual violence against men — in acts committed both by men and by women — is both astonishingly prevalent and disturbingly underreported. Here in the U.S., the FBI only recognized that men can be rape victims in 2012. Last year, a report on "The Sexual Victimization of Men in America" concluded that "federal surveys detect a high prevalence of sexual victimization among men — in many circumstances similar to the prevalence found among women." Male sexual assault occurs across a spectrum, from intimate relationships to locker rooms to prison cells. In 2013, the father of a 13 year-old Colorado boy who claimed he'd been sexually abused by three members of his wrestling team was told blithely by the parent of one of the suspects, "This happens 1,000 times a day around the U.S." The statistics on male prison rape, meanwhile, are varying and conflicting, but a 2012 report estimated that "More than one-third of gay and bisexual male inmates said that they were victimized by another inmate. By comparison, only 3.5% of straight male inmates reported being sexually assaulted by other inmates." Oh, only. There are nearly 1.5 million men in America's penal system. The incidence of prison sexual assault is, as Jill Filipovic wrote in the Guardian in 2013, "horrifying." Meanwhile, in the UK earlier this year, Survivors UK, a support organization for men who've experienced sexual assault, found its funding from the Ministry of Justice victims’ fund withdrawn. The Guardian reported in August that it is now in danger of closing — "despite a 120% increase in male victims of sexual violence in the capital last year." And just earlier this month, a judge ordered that the female babysitter who sexually abused a male child in her charge was given a suspended sentence after declaring, "It was quite clear he was a mature 11-year-old." It's pretty hard to stop a problem that isn't recognized as a problem. To end sexual violence against men — just like ending it against women — it has to first be acknowledged. And in one corner of Scandinavia, now it is. It's a start.
The GOP’s entire identity is based on a lie: How the Obama presidency exposed Republican deficit delusions
Following the first Democratic debate, Fox News and the broader conservative ecosystem erupted in a coordinated effort to paint the Democrats as frivolous spenders, handing out free stuff to everyone without bothering to discuss how they'd pay for it. However, the irony of this attack is thick, given how the Democrats have taken up the burden of fiscal responsibility in the modern era. The Republican Party has no choice but to dig deeply into the history books to find the last GOP president who actually bothered to leave the deficit in better shape than when he was inaugurated. Meanwhile, President Obama, like President Clinton before him, has seen the federal budget deficit fall by record numbers. According to a new report from the Wall Street Journal's Market Watch site, the federal government ran up a deficit of $439 billion for the 2015 fiscal year. That's 2.5 percent of GDP, which is the lowest level since 2007. Why is this significant? The Obama administration inherited a $1.4 trillion (with a "t") budget deficit -- driven in large part by stimulus spending meant to combat the financial crisis -- which authorized George W. Bush in October 2008. Since then, Obama has presided over a gradual $1 trillion-dollar reduction in the deficit. Insofar as deficit reduction is important -- and remember, according to the rhetoric of the GOP over the past several years, it is very important -- this is a massive achievement for the Obama administration. Massive. And neither he nor the Democrats will get any credit for it.
Chart via Steve Benen
If Mitt Romney's lies about the deficit in 2012 were a predictor of the GOP's attack plan for 2016, we can expect to hear the Republican ticket attack both Obama and the Democratic nominee on this very issue. But they won't cite deficit numbers because, well, they're not nearly as dumb as they look. Instead, they'll recycle the Romney tactic of conflating the deficit and the national debt -- two entirely separate numbers. For example, Romney said during his first debate against Obama in 2012: "The president said he’d cut the deficit in half. Unfortunately, he doubled it." Well, no. The deficit wasn't "doubled" at all. It was the debt that rose, but analysts have repeatedly shown that the chief drivers of national debt were George W. Bush's wars, Medicare Part-D (a Bush-era policy) and the impact of the Great Recession -- none of which was offset with higher taxes or spending cuts. Obama can hardly be blamed for all that. Not insignificantly, though, the Obama administration's deficit reduction has slowed the growth of the debt. In fact, the year-over-year increase in the debt has slowed to 10 percent. Compare that with the highest growth rate for the debt ever -- 13.4 percent per year under, yes, Ronald Reagan. We'll circle back to comparing the records of recent presidents in a second. Meanwhile, contra Romney, Obama promised to cut the deficit in half, and he did. It took him five years instead of four, but he did it. Suffice to say, when you hear the GOP talk about government spending, listen for their deliberate swapping of the terms "deficit" and "debt." They do it a lot. How exactly did Obama manage to slash the deficit so drastically? It's true that Republicans have controlled the House of Representatives since January 2011 (along with the Senate this term) and those years have been marked by aggressive GOP attempts to roll back the welfare state, punctuated by episodes of legislative brinksmanship that ultimately resulted in the dreaded sequester. But that only tells a part of the story. Nearly every bill signed by the president has included offsets to make the spending deficit neutral. Why? Because it's been the law of the land ever since President Obama signed the Statutory Pay-As-You-Go Act in February 2010, which mandates that new spending be offset with spending cuts or new revenue. Yes, a Democratic president and a Democratic Congress passed this legislation. Guess how many congressional Republicans voted for the law. Zero. Not one. Consequently, the president is responsible for the lowest government spending growth in 60 years. Once again, let's reference Market Watch:
I can name two Democratic presidents who've cut the deficit through the duration of their presidencies: Clinton and Obama. And what about Republican presidents? Bush 43? He turned a $200 billion surplus into a $400 billion deficit by the end of his first term, and a $1.2 trillion deficit by the end of his second term. Bush 41? Nope. Reagan? No. Ford? No. Nixon? No. The last Republican president who cut the deficit was Eisenhower. Along those lines, the recently introduced tax plan of the Republican frontrunner, Donald Trump, would explode the deficit by as much as $10 trillion over a decade. Tell me again: Which is the party of fiscal responsibility? A caveat: It's true that Congress, not the president, passes the federal budget, and that the recent Republican-dominated Congresses have been particularly vicious where non-military expenditures are concerned. But if the president is to be blamed for the size of the deficit -- and reminder: Obama is being blamed, at every opportunity -- then it's only fair and intellectually consistent that he should get credit when the deficit is reduced. Furthermore, and not to bury the lede, but there's no reason the deficit needed to shrink this rapidly. Given the depth of the Great Recession, government spending could've done more to stimulate the economy. That said, there's this GOP-based obsession with deficit reduction as an indicator of political success even though governments can operate quite well with short-term deficits. Accepting, though, that deficit reduction is a political reality, the Democratic record is galactically better than the GOP on this front. Numbers don't lie.Following the first Democratic debate, Fox News and the broader conservative ecosystem erupted in a coordinated effort to paint the Democrats as frivolous spenders, handing out free stuff to everyone without bothering to discuss how they'd pay for it. However, the irony of this attack is thick, given how the Democrats have taken up the burden of fiscal responsibility in the modern era. The Republican Party has no choice but to dig deeply into the history books to find the last GOP president who actually bothered to leave the deficit in better shape than when he was inaugurated. Meanwhile, President Obama, like President Clinton before him, has seen the federal budget deficit fall by record numbers. According to a new report from the Wall Street Journal's Market Watch site, the federal government ran up a deficit of $439 billion for the 2015 fiscal year. That's 2.5 percent of GDP, which is the lowest level since 2007. Why is this significant? The Obama administration inherited a $1.4 trillion (with a "t") budget deficit -- driven in large part by stimulus spending meant to combat the financial crisis -- which authorized George W. Bush in October 2008. Since then, Obama has presided over a gradual $1 trillion-dollar reduction in the deficit. Insofar as deficit reduction is important -- and remember, according to the rhetoric of the GOP over the past several years, it is very important -- this is a massive achievement for the Obama administration. Massive. And neither he nor the Democrats will get any credit for it.
Chart via Steve Benen
If Mitt Romney's lies about the deficit in 2012 were a predictor of the GOP's attack plan for 2016, we can expect to hear the Republican ticket attack both Obama and the Democratic nominee on this very issue. But they won't cite deficit numbers because, well, they're not nearly as dumb as they look. Instead, they'll recycle the Romney tactic of conflating the deficit and the national debt -- two entirely separate numbers. For example, Romney said during his first debate against Obama in 2012: "The president said he’d cut the deficit in half. Unfortunately, he doubled it." Well, no. The deficit wasn't "doubled" at all. It was the debt that rose, but analysts have repeatedly shown that the chief drivers of national debt were George W. Bush's wars, Medicare Part-D (a Bush-era policy) and the impact of the Great Recession -- none of which was offset with higher taxes or spending cuts. Obama can hardly be blamed for all that. Not insignificantly, though, the Obama administration's deficit reduction has slowed the growth of the debt. In fact, the year-over-year increase in the debt has slowed to 10 percent. Compare that with the highest growth rate for the debt ever -- 13.4 percent per year under, yes, Ronald Reagan. We'll circle back to comparing the records of recent presidents in a second. Meanwhile, contra Romney, Obama promised to cut the deficit in half, and he did. It took him five years instead of four, but he did it. Suffice to say, when you hear the GOP talk about government spending, listen for their deliberate swapping of the terms "deficit" and "debt." They do it a lot. How exactly did Obama manage to slash the deficit so drastically? It's true that Republicans have controlled the House of Representatives since January 2011 (along with the Senate this term) and those years have been marked by aggressive GOP attempts to roll back the welfare state, punctuated by episodes of legislative brinksmanship that ultimately resulted in the dreaded sequester. But that only tells a part of the story. Nearly every bill signed by the president has included offsets to make the spending deficit neutral. Why? Because it's been the law of the land ever since President Obama signed the Statutory Pay-As-You-Go Act in February 2010, which mandates that new spending be offset with spending cuts or new revenue. Yes, a Democratic president and a Democratic Congress passed this legislation. Guess how many congressional Republicans voted for the law. Zero. Not one. Consequently, the president is responsible for the lowest government spending growth in 60 years. Once again, let's reference Market Watch:
I can name two Democratic presidents who've cut the deficit through the duration of their presidencies: Clinton and Obama. And what about Republican presidents? Bush 43? He turned a $200 billion surplus into a $400 billion deficit by the end of his first term, and a $1.2 trillion deficit by the end of his second term. Bush 41? Nope. Reagan? No. Ford? No. Nixon? No. The last Republican president who cut the deficit was Eisenhower. Along those lines, the recently introduced tax plan of the Republican frontrunner, Donald Trump, would explode the deficit by as much as $10 trillion over a decade. Tell me again: Which is the party of fiscal responsibility? A caveat: It's true that Congress, not the president, passes the federal budget, and that the recent Republican-dominated Congresses have been particularly vicious where non-military expenditures are concerned. But if the president is to be blamed for the size of the deficit -- and reminder: Obama is being blamed, at every opportunity -- then it's only fair and intellectually consistent that he should get credit when the deficit is reduced. Furthermore, and not to bury the lede, but there's no reason the deficit needed to shrink this rapidly. Given the depth of the Great Recession, government spending could've done more to stimulate the economy. That said, there's this GOP-based obsession with deficit reduction as an indicator of political success even though governments can operate quite well with short-term deficits. Accepting, though, that deficit reduction is a political reality, the Democratic record is galactically better than the GOP on this front. Numbers don't lie.
Chart via Steve Benen
If Mitt Romney's lies about the deficit in 2012 were a predictor of the GOP's attack plan for 2016, we can expect to hear the Republican ticket attack both Obama and the Democratic nominee on this very issue. But they won't cite deficit numbers because, well, they're not nearly as dumb as they look. Instead, they'll recycle the Romney tactic of conflating the deficit and the national debt -- two entirely separate numbers. For example, Romney said during his first debate against Obama in 2012: "The president said he’d cut the deficit in half. Unfortunately, he doubled it." Well, no. The deficit wasn't "doubled" at all. It was the debt that rose, but analysts have repeatedly shown that the chief drivers of national debt were George W. Bush's wars, Medicare Part-D (a Bush-era policy) and the impact of the Great Recession -- none of which was offset with higher taxes or spending cuts. Obama can hardly be blamed for all that. Not insignificantly, though, the Obama administration's deficit reduction has slowed the growth of the debt. In fact, the year-over-year increase in the debt has slowed to 10 percent. Compare that with the highest growth rate for the debt ever -- 13.4 percent per year under, yes, Ronald Reagan. We'll circle back to comparing the records of recent presidents in a second. Meanwhile, contra Romney, Obama promised to cut the deficit in half, and he did. It took him five years instead of four, but he did it. Suffice to say, when you hear the GOP talk about government spending, listen for their deliberate swapping of the terms "deficit" and "debt." They do it a lot. How exactly did Obama manage to slash the deficit so drastically? It's true that Republicans have controlled the House of Representatives since January 2011 (along with the Senate this term) and those years have been marked by aggressive GOP attempts to roll back the welfare state, punctuated by episodes of legislative brinksmanship that ultimately resulted in the dreaded sequester. But that only tells a part of the story. Nearly every bill signed by the president has included offsets to make the spending deficit neutral. Why? Because it's been the law of the land ever since President Obama signed the Statutory Pay-As-You-Go Act in February 2010, which mandates that new spending be offset with spending cuts or new revenue. Yes, a Democratic president and a Democratic Congress passed this legislation. Guess how many congressional Republicans voted for the law. Zero. Not one. Consequently, the president is responsible for the lowest government spending growth in 60 years. Once again, let's reference Market Watch:
I can name two Democratic presidents who've cut the deficit through the duration of their presidencies: Clinton and Obama. And what about Republican presidents? Bush 43? He turned a $200 billion surplus into a $400 billion deficit by the end of his first term, and a $1.2 trillion deficit by the end of his second term. Bush 41? Nope. Reagan? No. Ford? No. Nixon? No. The last Republican president who cut the deficit was Eisenhower. Along those lines, the recently introduced tax plan of the Republican frontrunner, Donald Trump, would explode the deficit by as much as $10 trillion over a decade. Tell me again: Which is the party of fiscal responsibility? A caveat: It's true that Congress, not the president, passes the federal budget, and that the recent Republican-dominated Congresses have been particularly vicious where non-military expenditures are concerned. But if the president is to be blamed for the size of the deficit -- and reminder: Obama is being blamed, at every opportunity -- then it's only fair and intellectually consistent that he should get credit when the deficit is reduced. Furthermore, and not to bury the lede, but there's no reason the deficit needed to shrink this rapidly. Given the depth of the Great Recession, government spending could've done more to stimulate the economy. That said, there's this GOP-based obsession with deficit reduction as an indicator of political success even though governments can operate quite well with short-term deficits. Accepting, though, that deficit reduction is a political reality, the Democratic record is galactically better than the GOP on this front. Numbers don't lie.Following the first Democratic debate, Fox News and the broader conservative ecosystem erupted in a coordinated effort to paint the Democrats as frivolous spenders, handing out free stuff to everyone without bothering to discuss how they'd pay for it. However, the irony of this attack is thick, given how the Democrats have taken up the burden of fiscal responsibility in the modern era. The Republican Party has no choice but to dig deeply into the history books to find the last GOP president who actually bothered to leave the deficit in better shape than when he was inaugurated. Meanwhile, President Obama, like President Clinton before him, has seen the federal budget deficit fall by record numbers. According to a new report from the Wall Street Journal's Market Watch site, the federal government ran up a deficit of $439 billion for the 2015 fiscal year. That's 2.5 percent of GDP, which is the lowest level since 2007. Why is this significant? The Obama administration inherited a $1.4 trillion (with a "t") budget deficit -- driven in large part by stimulus spending meant to combat the financial crisis -- which authorized George W. Bush in October 2008. Since then, Obama has presided over a gradual $1 trillion-dollar reduction in the deficit. Insofar as deficit reduction is important -- and remember, according to the rhetoric of the GOP over the past several years, it is very important -- this is a massive achievement for the Obama administration. Massive. And neither he nor the Democrats will get any credit for it.
Chart via Steve Benen
If Mitt Romney's lies about the deficit in 2012 were a predictor of the GOP's attack plan for 2016, we can expect to hear the Republican ticket attack both Obama and the Democratic nominee on this very issue. But they won't cite deficit numbers because, well, they're not nearly as dumb as they look. Instead, they'll recycle the Romney tactic of conflating the deficit and the national debt -- two entirely separate numbers. For example, Romney said during his first debate against Obama in 2012: "The president said he’d cut the deficit in half. Unfortunately, he doubled it." Well, no. The deficit wasn't "doubled" at all. It was the debt that rose, but analysts have repeatedly shown that the chief drivers of national debt were George W. Bush's wars, Medicare Part-D (a Bush-era policy) and the impact of the Great Recession -- none of which was offset with higher taxes or spending cuts. Obama can hardly be blamed for all that. Not insignificantly, though, the Obama administration's deficit reduction has slowed the growth of the debt. In fact, the year-over-year increase in the debt has slowed to 10 percent. Compare that with the highest growth rate for the debt ever -- 13.4 percent per year under, yes, Ronald Reagan. We'll circle back to comparing the records of recent presidents in a second. Meanwhile, contra Romney, Obama promised to cut the deficit in half, and he did. It took him five years instead of four, but he did it. Suffice to say, when you hear the GOP talk about government spending, listen for their deliberate swapping of the terms "deficit" and "debt." They do it a lot. How exactly did Obama manage to slash the deficit so drastically? It's true that Republicans have controlled the House of Representatives since January 2011 (along with the Senate this term) and those years have been marked by aggressive GOP attempts to roll back the welfare state, punctuated by episodes of legislative brinksmanship that ultimately resulted in the dreaded sequester. But that only tells a part of the story. Nearly every bill signed by the president has included offsets to make the spending deficit neutral. Why? Because it's been the law of the land ever since President Obama signed the Statutory Pay-As-You-Go Act in February 2010, which mandates that new spending be offset with spending cuts or new revenue. Yes, a Democratic president and a Democratic Congress passed this legislation. Guess how many congressional Republicans voted for the law. Zero. Not one. Consequently, the president is responsible for the lowest government spending growth in 60 years. Once again, let's reference Market Watch:
I can name two Democratic presidents who've cut the deficit through the duration of their presidencies: Clinton and Obama. And what about Republican presidents? Bush 43? He turned a $200 billion surplus into a $400 billion deficit by the end of his first term, and a $1.2 trillion deficit by the end of his second term. Bush 41? Nope. Reagan? No. Ford? No. Nixon? No. The last Republican president who cut the deficit was Eisenhower. Along those lines, the recently introduced tax plan of the Republican frontrunner, Donald Trump, would explode the deficit by as much as $10 trillion over a decade. Tell me again: Which is the party of fiscal responsibility? A caveat: It's true that Congress, not the president, passes the federal budget, and that the recent Republican-dominated Congresses have been particularly vicious where non-military expenditures are concerned. But if the president is to be blamed for the size of the deficit -- and reminder: Obama is being blamed, at every opportunity -- then it's only fair and intellectually consistent that he should get credit when the deficit is reduced. Furthermore, and not to bury the lede, but there's no reason the deficit needed to shrink this rapidly. Given the depth of the Great Recession, government spending could've done more to stimulate the economy. That said, there's this GOP-based obsession with deficit reduction as an indicator of political success even though governments can operate quite well with short-term deficits. Accepting, though, that deficit reduction is a political reality, the Democratic record is galactically better than the GOP on this front. Numbers don't lie.
October 15, 2015
Hillary vs. Hillary: In the “Alien vs. Predator” cage match between the humane and reasonable debate winner and the cynical neoliberal hawk, do any of us actually win?
Hillary Clinton’s strong performance in Tuesday night’s Democratic debate in Las Vegas clearly came as an immense relief to her backers and supporters, who have alternately felt offended, perplexed and terrified by the improbable rise of Bernie Sanders. For many people on the Democratic left, not to mention those radicals or progressives with a more agonized or conflicted relationship to the party (or who simply hate its guts), Hillary’s resurgence after many weeks of left-wing rhetorical pummeling also marks the re-emergence of an insoluble paradox. Which Hillary Clinton will we get, as the presumptive Democratic nominee and as the 45th president of the United States? The humane, reasonable and pragmatic leader who showed up on TV the other night, or the opinion-poll weathervane, foreign policy hawk and shameless Wall Street tool? One Clinton seems to promise a return to effective White House leadership and legislative compromise, with less high-flown rhetoric than the Obama years but greater transparency and more tangible accomplishments. The other suggests a hardened imperial presidency with a friendly female face, where the realm of political reality is defined by neoliberal economics, the Sauron-like reach of the national security state and the global tides of investment capital backed by American military power. Hillary Clinton’s most formidable opponent on the path to becoming the first female American head of state – a development that will occur embarrassingly late in history, I have to say, after Britain and Germany and Israel and India and Pakistan and Moldova and Senegal, for the love of Christ – is Hillary Clinton. I don’t mean that metaphorically. The monstrous caricature of Hillary Clinton created by her enemies on the right, and to a lesser extent the one created by her enemies on the left, both stand in her way, their bloody fangs bared. So too, and far more significantly, does the reality that has fueled the enduring stereotype that Hillary Clinton cannot be trusted: Her actual record as an endlessly calculating policymaker and political operative whose core ideology has never been clear. Robert Reich, the staunch liberal economist and former secretary of labor who has known both Hillary and Bill Clinton since all three were classmates at Yale, assured Salon’s readers last spring that he felt no doubt about the strengths of Hillary’s “values and ideals.” Even in that piece of relative puffery, Reich was notably unable or unwilling to explain what they were. A few months later, Reich showed up on Lawrence O’Donnell’s MSNBC show to assign letter grades to Clinton’s economic platform, along with those of Sanders and Jeb Bush. He gave Clinton an A for explaining the central importance of widening economic inequality, but a “C or D or maybe even a failing grade” when it came to explaining what the hell she would actually do about it. For those of us who will soon face the existential dilemma of supporting Hillary Clinton as the unquestioned lesser of two evils -- however tepidly and against our better judgment -- or turning our backs on the whole damn thing and deciding that “Game of Thrones” is more important, those letter grades delivered by one of her oldest friends sum up the problem. How do we understand the relationship between those two Hillarys, between the A-student analyst and the one who flunks out on actual policy changes that might begin to alter the dark dynamics of money and power in American society? Can we reconcile their areas of overlap and apparent contradiction? Is the first persona a cynical ruse, meant to dupe the gullible Democratic electorate one more time, like Lucy Van Pelt with that football? Does the second persona reflect an understanding that in our disordered nation realpolitik and Machiavellian maneuvering are the only possible ways to get anything done, and the fact that Clinton is too shrewd to make promises she can’t keep? Those questions will preoccupy Democratic voters, and then the entire nation, for months to come. I don’t propose to answer them here in any definitive way. It’s nearly useless to say this amid the hilariously overheated discourse of the left, but I am neither trying to prop Hillary Clinton up nor chop her down, and I am not so deluded as to believe that I can achieve either objective. (If the great male chauvinist campaign to demolish Hillary, or for that matter the great Establishment crusade to stop Bernie Sanders, would like to ensure my loyalty, they know where to send the check.) A veteran political journalist and insider told me years ago that the only way to say anything interesting about politics was to back away from questions about who will win, or who should win, both because they are self-limiting – a reader either agrees with you or doesn’t – and because they are never as important or useful as the more open-ended questions about why events are unfolding as they are, and what stories we tell ourselves about them. With all that said, of course the election’s not over just because Hillary Clinton had a good debate, and because lots of well-dressed people in Beverly Hills or on the Upper West Side indulged in a celebratory single-malt on Tuesday night. In fact, the social-media response, along with all those Google searches for alarmingly inadequate dictionary definitions of “socialism,” suggests that Bernie Sanders’ prime-time rollout went pretty doggone well. But the reappearance of Hillary Clinton as a calm, confident, witty and (at least by her standards) personable candidate struck many in the insider class as reassuring evidence that the previously delirious 2016 campaign is coming down from its nitrous oxide high, and that we will soon see political reality reassert its natural laws. I have a number of responses to that, but here’s what they all boil down to: Be careful what you wish for, O punditocracy! On the Republican side, it is indisputably true that the great sky-obscuring blimp of Donald Trump’s candidacy is beginning to sag and list hither and yon with the shifting winds. Whether the huge crowds who eat up Trump's outrageous pronouncements and outsize persona were ever likely to translate themselves into real-world votes was always open to doubt. I mean, come on: Who votes anymore? The Trump demographic largely consists of people who have concluded that politicians are corrupt and elections are pointless, and it’s difficult to fault their logic. Those who claim to understand things like probability and plausibility and polling data and campaign spending in ways that I would never pretend to are confidently pronouncing that Trump and Carly Fiorina and Ben Carson are daylilies doomed to fade, and that Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio will be beaming down at us from the sun’s face before we know it. It is equally true that even Bernie Sanders’ true believers are beginning to cast a cold eye on the political calendar, which informs them that after Iowa and New Hampshire in early February come primaries and caucuses in 23 states over the ensuing five weeks, and that Sanders will be extremely fortunate to win four or five of those. He will quite likely be competitive with Clinton in Colorado, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Maine and his home state of Vermont, and might be able to keep it close in Virginia, North Carolina and Michigan. Anything beyond that is wish-casting, pure and simple. Give Bernie any six states of your choosing, just for the hell of it, and the race will still be over after the Florida, Illinois, Missouri and Ohio primaries on March 15, at the very latest. Again, that isn’t meant as an endorsement, and it isn’t the important part. If the whole thing were up to me – well, let’s just be glad it isn’t. That long, cold drink of political probability is good news for Nate Silver and Karl Rove and the Koch brothers and other people who have a vested interest in not being wrong, and in restoring the universe of American electoral politics to its normal (and profoundly depressing) parameters. But it isn’t good news for the rest of us, and it might not even be good news for Hillary Clinton or for whichever supposedly mainstream Republican – stretching that concept to a ludicrous extreme – emerges from the GOP’s tragicomic primary scrum. If Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders have accomplished anything, they have made this election seem like fun. On some level it’s no more complicated than that. They have injected the somnolent political process with unpredictable electricity, and no one knows what will happen when all that energy is discharged into the ether and we are faced with the disheartening prospect of a nine-month campaign between two candidates who cannot afford to say what they mean or mean what they say, and who almost no one actually likes. A showdown between Clinton and Marco Rubio next November (let’s just say) might be historically important -- and also might be close enough to make us all sweat. But the "Alien vs. Predator" cage match between Hillary Clinton and Hillary Clinton is the main event, the one whose outcome will shape history and is shrouded in doubt. Does any of that sound like fun? I fear the fun is just about over.
Amy Schumer cleans up her act: After a summer of backlash, her new HBO special mostly avoids jokes about race
The Apollo Theater in Harlem is not just a historic venue for African-American music, it is a symbol; the brick-and-mortar incarnation of a cultural movement that endured despite centuries of oppression. To paraphrase the New York Times, it’s a legacy that can be expressed just in list form: Winners of the Apollo’s amateur night include Ella Fitzgerald, the Jackson 5, Patti LaBelle, Jimi Hendrix, Billie Holiday, Thelonious Monk, and the Isley Brothers. Performers on the stage include Ray Charles, James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Dionne Warwick, Dizzy Gillespie, and the Supremes. And comedians who have brought the house down on that stage include black comedians Richard Pryor, Chris Rock, Wanda Sykes, and Katt Williams, as well as non-black comedians with marquee standing, such as Robin Williams, Louis C.K., Ellen Degeneres, and George Lopez. And now, Amy Schumer. On Saturday HBO will premiere the comedian’s hourlong special at the Apollo, which serves as a capper, of sorts, to the Summer of Schumer. Apparently it took until season three for her show, “Inside Amy Schumer,” to get both really brilliant and really popular. After debuting in April to rave reviews (including my own), the show went on to snag seven Emmy nominations and eventually two statues. Schumer followed that up with the surprise hit “Trainwreck,” a summer R-rated comedy that swept the field to eventually rake in $110 million, over three times its $35 million budget. Now Schumer is on tour, returning to her stand-up roots after six months that have changed her life. With extraordinary success has come extraordinary scrutiny. Schumer is smart, funny, and successful; she is also unabashedly political, centering feminism, equality, reproductive rights, and discrimination in her work. The result is that her media profile somewhat hovers in between successful comedian and outspoken activist. When one of America’s many mass murderers walked a screening of “Trainwreck” in Lafayette, Louisiana and killed two audience members because he “hated feminists,” it cast Schumer into even more of an activist-crusader role. Which is difficult, because although Schumer’s comedy about gender is incisive and hilarious, her comedy on race is much less so. In June, shortly before “Trainwreck”’s debut, Schumer and her Twitter account were at the center of a seemingly never-ending cycle of discussion about whether or not Schumer is a racist. (She’s probably no more racist than any other white woman, for whatever that’s worth. Say what you will about the crack on Latino men, for example, but it wasn’t not racist.) It led to some important commentary on what comedy can and should get away with—my personal favorite example came from Silpa Kovvali in the New Republic—as well as a lot of less fulfilling handwringing about “political correctness” and “punching down.” (The Daily Beast went so far as to headline a piece “The Persecution Of Amy Schumer,” with the kicker “BACKLASH.”) Schumer, like Lena Dunham before her, has shifted from making jokes about hot-button issues to becoming a hot-button issue herself. Every time she opens her mouth, the thinkpieces seem to write themselves; this one you’re reading right now is no exception. Given all of that, New York Times Magazine editor Jazmine Hughes’ joke on Twitter that “Amy Schumer: Live At The Apollo” “sounds like an Onion headline” makes a lot more sense (and is painfully accurate). Schumer’s struggled to be as nuanced on race as she is on gender, and now she’s going to walk the almost-sacred stage of the Apollo? What gives? It seems to me that Schumer is in the middle of a rebranding project. Whether or not she really is racist, great pains are being taken to ensure that she no longer looks quite so clueless about racial issues. The HBO special is not just at the Apollo; it’s directed by Chris Rock. Before her stint guest-hosting “Saturday Night Live,” Schumer tweeted a long, joking text from friend and fellow comedian Kevin Hart. Look, the subtext reads; some of her best friends are black! The stand-up material is very good, and notably steers very clear of race-inflected humor, except when she ribs the mostly white audience for braving Harlem just for her show. And she emphasizes self-deprecation, assessing correctly that the more she mocks herself, the more she can push the envelope when her stand-up persona says selfish, racist or otherwise horrible things. (For example, the “Inside Amy Schumer” sketch about being unable to tell several black retail employees apart reflects entirely on her; likewise in “Trainwreck,” when her character tries and fails to produce a photo as evidence of allegedly having black friends.) Indeed: A lot of “Amy Schumer: Live At The Apollo” pushes back against the notion that Schumer is a “good feminist”; like any comedian, she bristles at any label that prevents her from making a good joke. Schumer plays up her anxieties about her weight and her envy of beautiful women; she also describes the residue left in her underwear at the end of a day with lovely, filthy detail. “Warts And All” might as well be the motto of this special. It is notable, then, that HBO—or Rock, or Schumer herself—decided to edit out one rather telling wart, in this otherwise race-free hour. The special filmed on May 29; on May 31 Melissa Castellanos at Latin Post wrote a very positive review of the event, that ends with “Keep bringing the hotness, Amy!” Included in her recap is a joke that does not make it to the HBO special: After “getting into her zone,” Schumer “scolded an Asian girl on the balcony, (who she referred to as Woody Allen's step-daughter-turned-wife, Soon-Yi ) who was munching too loudly on chips…” I wasn’t there. I don’t know how this joke played. Considering we did not see a deluge of thinkpieces following the event, I’m assuming no one in that audience took it out of turn. Still, it’s kind of a stunner, in black-and-white. This was a good month before this summer’s discussion about Schumer’s race-inflected jokes; and even more time before “Trainwreck,” where Schumer’s character makes a different Soon-Yi joke. But I’m not surprised that it was edited out of the HBO special, to give the audience an hour of race-free Amy Schumer. Say what you will about the joke, but it wasn’t not racist.
Meet America’s most idiotic state representative, Thursday edition
Missouri Republican State Rep. Rick Brattin took a swing at Planned Parenthood by floating an idea for legislation that would force the organization to build a “Vietnam Wall type” memorial for aborted fetuses. “We have 56 million babies that have been lost in the abortion service and industry,” NPR’s KBIA reported Brattin saying. “I think maybe requiring that Planned Parenthood set up some type of memorial, like a Vietnam Wall type memorial." Acknowledging that his reasoning might sound “crazy,” he added that "in state law [fetuses are] given human status, so should there be a human memorial attached to that human life?” The Republican state representative's proposal certainly stood out in a meeting of Missouri’s House committees on Children and Families and Ways and Means, who were brainstorming for ways to impose new restrictions on abortion providers and prompting some Democrats to walk out in protest. Yet it is not the first time Brattin’s been trolling outrageous – and well, crazy – anti-abortion initiative. Last year, he sponsored a bill requiring pregnant women to seek spousal written, notarized permission from men before getting an abortion.Missouri Republican State Rep. Rick Brattin took a swing at Planned Parenthood by floating an idea for legislation that would force the organization to build a “Vietnam Wall type” memorial for aborted fetuses. “We have 56 million babies that have been lost in the abortion service and industry,” NPR’s KBIA reported Brattin saying. “I think maybe requiring that Planned Parenthood set up some type of memorial, like a Vietnam Wall type memorial." Acknowledging that his reasoning might sound “crazy,” he added that "in state law [fetuses are] given human status, so should there be a human memorial attached to that human life?” The Republican state representative's proposal certainly stood out in a meeting of Missouri’s House committees on Children and Families and Ways and Means, who were brainstorming for ways to impose new restrictions on abortion providers and prompting some Democrats to walk out in protest. Yet it is not the first time Brattin’s been trolling outrageous – and well, crazy – anti-abortion initiative. Last year, he sponsored a bill requiring pregnant women to seek spousal written, notarized permission from men before getting an abortion.Missouri Republican State Rep. Rick Brattin took a swing at Planned Parenthood by floating an idea for legislation that would force the organization to build a “Vietnam Wall type” memorial for aborted fetuses. “We have 56 million babies that have been lost in the abortion service and industry,” NPR’s KBIA reported Brattin saying. “I think maybe requiring that Planned Parenthood set up some type of memorial, like a Vietnam Wall type memorial." Acknowledging that his reasoning might sound “crazy,” he added that "in state law [fetuses are] given human status, so should there be a human memorial attached to that human life?” The Republican state representative's proposal certainly stood out in a meeting of Missouri’s House committees on Children and Families and Ways and Means, who were brainstorming for ways to impose new restrictions on abortion providers and prompting some Democrats to walk out in protest. Yet it is not the first time Brattin’s been trolling outrageous – and well, crazy – anti-abortion initiative. Last year, he sponsored a bill requiring pregnant women to seek spousal written, notarized permission from men before getting an abortion.Missouri Republican State Rep. Rick Brattin took a swing at Planned Parenthood by floating an idea for legislation that would force the organization to build a “Vietnam Wall type” memorial for aborted fetuses. “We have 56 million babies that have been lost in the abortion service and industry,” NPR’s KBIA reported Brattin saying. “I think maybe requiring that Planned Parenthood set up some type of memorial, like a Vietnam Wall type memorial." Acknowledging that his reasoning might sound “crazy,” he added that "in state law [fetuses are] given human status, so should there be a human memorial attached to that human life?” The Republican state representative's proposal certainly stood out in a meeting of Missouri’s House committees on Children and Families and Ways and Means, who were brainstorming for ways to impose new restrictions on abortion providers and prompting some Democrats to walk out in protest. Yet it is not the first time Brattin’s been trolling outrageous – and well, crazy – anti-abortion initiative. Last year, he sponsored a bill requiring pregnant women to seek spousal written, notarized permission from men before getting an abortion.Missouri Republican State Rep. Rick Brattin took a swing at Planned Parenthood by floating an idea for legislation that would force the organization to build a “Vietnam Wall type” memorial for aborted fetuses. “We have 56 million babies that have been lost in the abortion service and industry,” NPR’s KBIA reported Brattin saying. “I think maybe requiring that Planned Parenthood set up some type of memorial, like a Vietnam Wall type memorial." Acknowledging that his reasoning might sound “crazy,” he added that "in state law [fetuses are] given human status, so should there be a human memorial attached to that human life?” The Republican state representative's proposal certainly stood out in a meeting of Missouri’s House committees on Children and Families and Ways and Means, who were brainstorming for ways to impose new restrictions on abortion providers and prompting some Democrats to walk out in protest. Yet it is not the first time Brattin’s been trolling outrageous – and well, crazy – anti-abortion initiative. Last year, he sponsored a bill requiring pregnant women to seek spousal written, notarized permission from men before getting an abortion.
Fox News’ dimmest bulb offers gross tipping defense, likes to “slap down” to impress waitresses
Sparked by Shake Shack impresario Danny Meyer’s decision to eliminate tipping at all thirteen of his dining establishments in the Big Apple, Fox News “Outnumbered” claims that other top NYC restaurants are also following suit. Despite higher menu prices for customers, eliminating tipping will guarantee more wage parity between the back staff who “make virtually nothing” and the front waiters who usually receive all of the tips. Jesse Watters - who was also kicked out of last year's National Organization for Women (NOW) conference after making sexist comments - outdid himself by arguing against zero gratuity for waitresses, just so he could still experience the thrill of a male ego power trip. Watters boasted: “I like to be able to slap down a fat tip to impress the waitress. Don’t take that away from me. I like to be able to show off a little bit. When you go to Europe, the service is terrible because there’s no tipping and they don’t have any motivation to hustle.” Unfortunately, his all-female co-hosts tended to agree, if not also encourage his sexist behavior. His colleague Julie Roginsky joked about Watters: “He’s like waving a fiver around. He’s like ‘heeeyy,’ this could all be yours for the right amount of money.” Host Andrea Tantaros agreed on the “hustle” aspect of Watters’ argument: “As someone who grew up in the restaurant business — my parents, they own a number of restaurants — if you take away that incentive to work your tail off and everybody is just getting that flat wage, you’re not going to see the servers hustle.” Disturbingly, Tantaros mourned the potential loss of restaurant owners’ rights to abuse and exploit their workers under the pretext of capitalist productivity, as she added: “Well, my dad was also screaming at me from the kitchen - that is why we were motivated to move.” Watch the clip below: Sparked by Shake Shack impresario Danny Meyer’s decision to eliminate tipping at all thirteen of his dining establishments in the Big Apple, Fox News “Outnumbered” claims that other top NYC restaurants are also following suit. Despite higher menu prices for customers, eliminating tipping will guarantee more wage parity between the back staff who “make virtually nothing” and the front waiters who usually receive all of the tips. Jesse Watters - who was also kicked out of last year's National Organization for Women (NOW) conference after making sexist comments - outdid himself by arguing against zero gratuity for waitresses, just so he could still experience the thrill of a male ego power trip. Watters boasted: “I like to be able to slap down a fat tip to impress the waitress. Don’t take that away from me. I like to be able to show off a little bit. When you go to Europe, the service is terrible because there’s no tipping and they don’t have any motivation to hustle.” Unfortunately, his all-female co-hosts tended to agree, if not also encourage his sexist behavior. His colleague Julie Roginsky joked about Watters: “He’s like waving a fiver around. He’s like ‘heeeyy,’ this could all be yours for the right amount of money.” Host Andrea Tantaros agreed on the “hustle” aspect of Watters’ argument: “As someone who grew up in the restaurant business — my parents, they own a number of restaurants — if you take away that incentive to work your tail off and everybody is just getting that flat wage, you’re not going to see the servers hustle.” Disturbingly, Tantaros mourned the potential loss of restaurant owners’ rights to abuse and exploit their workers under the pretext of capitalist productivity, as she added: “Well, my dad was also screaming at me from the kitchen - that is why we were motivated to move.” Watch the clip below:
