Disgusting: Warmonger Joe citing MLK

Almost as much disgust as a wingnut citing Martin Luther King's color of their skin as an excuse to junk affirmative action and pretend it worked, or if you're a Black wingnut like Clarence Thomas, to ignore that it worked to some degree and you benefited.

Anyway, here's Warmonger Joe Biden, per the WaPost, riffing on King's "I Have a Dream" speech itself, given 60 years ago this week.

First, this:

Trickle-down economics holds that taxes should be cut for the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations, that public investments in priorities such as education, infrastructure and health care should be shrunk, and good jobs shipped overseas. It has exacerbated inequality and systemic barriers that make it harder for Black Americans to start a business, own a home, send their children to school and retire with dignity.

You've done nothing to reverse the Trump tax cuts that exacerbated that, or the Bush tax cuts that became the Obama tax cuts, when your then-boss, Dear Leader, accepted them. And, don't tell me you have a Republican House now; you didn't in the first two years. You've also, while attacking Republicans on Social Security, have offered no concrete plan for shoring it up. And, while in the Senate, you supported partial privatization, like both Dear Leader and Slick Willie did as president.

Second, Martin Luther King didn't die a week after that speech. And as Jonathan Eig knows, and states, in his truly magisterial new bio of King, with an extended version of my Goodreads review here, he went on to protest the Vietnam War, and some degree, militarism in general, as well as the non-racial as well as racial causes behind poverty.

I quote, as he noted in the epilogue:

The epilogue is good in noting Reagan’s resistance to making his birthday a holiday, and how we still have failed to address King’s “call for an end to the triple evils of materialism, militarism, and racism.”

That anti-militarism would surely extend today to poor Ukrainians going into a proxy war meatgrinder, as well as the poor Russians also in that meat-grinder because we never really fully abandoned Cold War politics vis-a-vis Russia, other than when exploiting the nation.

As for the racism? Let's not forget that Warmonger Joe, like Bill and Hillary, was Superpredator Joe back in the 1990s.

Is it any wonder that Biden and #BlueAnon surrogates fear a third-party presidential run by a Black man, Cornel West, who is hitting on all three of these things?

The Iraq War at 20

After that start-off by Two-Party Opera, let's add a few more thoughts. March 20 is the official start, but, I'm jumping the gun a day with Brian's prodding, and it may still have been March 19 in DC when "go was the word" anyway.

First, like World War I and II are really part of a thread, so are the original Gulf War and the Iraq War. Connection? House of Bush.

Actually, there's three parts to that thread, arguably. The first being the Carter-era Iran hostage crisis. 

According to former Texas House speaker Barnes, Poppy Bush was not part of that, it seems. Rather, in a big twist? John Connally was.

The Gulf War? Before my blogging time. Before there really was a civilian internet. But, I remember the controversy over depleted uranium tank shells. I remember Poppy Bush later being attacked from his right for stopping the war early. 

And, of course, connecting it to the Iraq War? I remember the sanctions and their punishment on Iraq. I remember Madeleine Albright, as Clinton's Secretary of State, writing off the many thousands of deaths they caused.

The Iraq War itself? We know the only "Mission Accomplished" by Shrub Bush was Turd Blossom Rove's politicizing the war run-up in the 2002 midterms, then again in the 2004 general, as the cowardly Dems warhawked with John Kerry. This was when and why I became a Green.

We know how Obama flip-flopped on the "surge."

And, we know that Lying Glenn Greenwald supported the war, in the preface to the book that made him famous. And lied about it to the point of attacking others who pointed out his lies. Then doubled down on his lying.

Part of why I became a Green? A decade after the invasion, and 8 years after Glennwald supported the invasion in his first big book, a BlueAnon wanker at Daily Kos was STILL regurgitating his lies.

And, 20 years later? Iraq is still a hellhole; Sadrites not under Iran's thumb battle other Shi'ites who are. Sunnis are semi-marginalized. Kurds want still more autonomy and may still push for an independent nation. ISIS lurks at their edges, still.

And, BlueAnon never learned. Dear Leader, with Shillary as his Secretary of State, pushed to bomb Libya, figuring that it too would succumb to shock and awe, then easily be rebuilt. Actual result? North Africa's strongest economy wrecked, and replaced by open slave markets. And, people smart enough in other fields to know better, like Massimo Pigliucci, or Juan Cole, or Bernie Sanders, signed off. (Bernie also voted for the first, and all subsequent, "support the troops" resolutions in Iraq.)

And, BlueAnon still hasn't learned. Even Pope Francis talked about NATO "barking" at Russia, but Warmonger Joe won't listen to him or the Goldilocks Three Bears and start peace talks. And, even within BlueAnon, showing Dem tribalism on war, the Congressional Progressive Caucus, including the Fraud, er the Squad, supports the warmongering.

Don't forget that all these wars were started by, or abetted by, lies.

Gulf War? We're still not sure what Ambassador April Glaspie told Saddam Hussein; I believe it was indeed the claim that the Bush Administration had no big problems with him taking Kuwait. I also wrote an op-ed column about that. We know, during the run-up to war, about the incubator babies who weren't real, and the Emir of Kuwait hiring Western PR flak.

Iraq War? The lies about the aluminum artillery tubes by Powell et al. Tenet going Hearst reporter to Shrub Bush's William Randolph Hearst in 1898 Cuba. Condi Rice's "smoking gun - mushroom cloud."

Libya? The lies about how easy this would be. The lies about our real intent. The lies, post-Iraq, about how regime change could be done without boots on the ground.

Russia-Ukraine? The lies that we never promised "not one inch further eastward" on NATO expansion, when we did; even Gorby lied about that later in life, just because he hated Putin that much. The lies behind the Minsk Agreements. And more. That's even as Warmonger Joe still opposes real peace talks.

==

Sidebar, and not noted immediately? Our media's responsibility. Via Jeff St. Clair, the New York Slimes' 20th anniversary piece "somehow" never mentions the name of Judith Miller.

And, directly related to that, at Counterpunch, Jeff has a good piece about the selling of the war.

Sidebar: Here's my story about meeting a guy in the middle of nowhere, New Mexico, with a VERY interesting conspiracy theory on how the Gulf War started.

Bye Bye Madame Secretary Albright

Just because you make "firsts" doesn't make you good.

Madeleine Albright, the first female US Secretary of State, died earlier today. 

And, yes, this is a takedown type obit. And, it's HUGELY deserved.

Albright, as CNN notes at the link, as Slick Willie Clinton's SoS, pushed for the expansion of NATO that pissed off then Russian president Boris Yeltsin just like it pisses off today's Russian president Vladimir Putin.

And, she probably knew it would do just that.

Meanwhile, per her Wiki page, she once called Putin a snake. Many right-knowing people on Twitter have espoused variants of "it takes one to know one."

And, as Huff Post notes, she also claimed that if half a million Iraqi kids were killed by sanctions, it was worth it.

Full quote, with exchange with Lesley Stahl, via Fair:

Lesley Stahl on U.S. sanctions against Iraq: We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it? 

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: I think this is a very hard choice, but the price–we think the price is worth it. —60 Minutes (5/12/96)

Fair notes that the mainstream media largely buried under the rug when she uttered it. 

Albright then showed exactly the type of bullshit the establishment can engage in. She claimed that Lesley Stahl had asked her a loaded question, and that Stahl was promoting Iraqi propaganda. At about the same time, when someone asked why are we arming Israel to bomb Palestinians, she accused them of supporting Hussein. There's video at that Twitter link, and yeah, really, she's pretty loathsome.

More on Albright, Palestinians and speeches? She spoke at Berkeley's commencement in 2000, at the same event where a Palestinian was recognized as a University Medalist. A Mondoweiss writer, who worked on student newspaper The Daily Californian, reminisces.

As for whether the death toll was real, Saddam Hussein propaganda, or somewhere in between? A. Doesn't matter. Even if totally untrue, she accepted as true for the sake of argument. B. At the time, on the show, she didn't claim it was untrue.

She also, per The Nation, was a loathsome promoter of American exceptionalism, specifically what Andrew Bacevich calls "Indispensible Nation Syndrome," with her as originator.

“If we have to use force, it is because we are America. We are the indispensable nation. We stand tall. We see further into the future.”

No wonder Dear Leader gave her the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Dear Leader who bombed the shit out of Libya, with the best economy in Mediterranean Africa, and left it with slave markets a decade later. (And even Bernie Sanders' protest about that one was weak."

Don't forget, as Colin Powell didn't, that even pre-SoS, as Clinton's UN ambassador, she was a warhawk:

“My constant, unwelcome message at all the meetings on Bosnia was simply that we could not commit military forces until we had a clear political objective,” Powell wrote in his memoir, “My American Journey.” Albright, he wrote, “asked me, ‘What’s the point of having this superb military that you’re always talking about if we can’t use it?’ I thought I would have an aneurysm.”

Yep.

And, for Kosovans talking about how she freed their country? It was at a price — literally. Wiki also notes that her investment company originally planned to bid on the privatization of Kosovo's telecom and postal company. (That's beyond the issue, that Wiki doesn't note, of the same Harvard types who advised Boris Yeltsin about privatization surely talking the same talk to Kosovans.)

Wiki's page also gives us a friendly reminder of other things, like her serving at the National Security Agency under Henry Kissinger's Democratic doppelgänger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, under whom she took graduate courses. She also led the effort to deny UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali a second term. That said, HIS Wiki page notes that his initial election was due to many countries withdrawing support from another African candidate under fears the US was trying to torpedo both.

To do her some fairness, she wasn't all wrong on Serbia, at least vis-a-vis Bosnia. But? Croatia had its own initially thuggish post-Yugoslav breakup leadership. And, Franjo Tudjman was "our" thug, with Croatia being eyed for NATO membership well in advance. And Milosevic was Russia's thug when Yeltsin raised some mild objections to the bombing and beyond. And, the bombing didn't work, any more than Russia's does today. Boutros-Ghali? Maybe he was sluggish on Rwanda, but I think it was posterior covering on her part, in part.

Rod Rosenstein blasts James Comey into bits

Former Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein has turned both barrels on former FBI Director James Comey, calling him a "partisan pundit" who trampled "bright lines that should never be crossed."

The specific target of his ire is how Comey handled reopening the investigation into Hillary Clinton's emails adn server after then-AG Loretta Lynch had had her conflict-of-interest inducing meeting with Bill Clinton on the Phoenix tarmac.

Rosenstein is totally right. It was grandstanding, as I said at the time, and not SOP, either. Then-Deputy AG Sally Yates, Rosenstein's predecessor should have been contacted by Comey and she should have been asked to get Lynch to officially recuse herself, then take over. If Yates refused to act, then it's out of Comey's hands (other than leaking to the press).

That's why I said, in reviewing it, that Comey's book should have been called "A Higher Loyalty to His Self-Image."

Rosenstein said he would have handled Comey's firing differently had it been just him, not Trump, but that Comey deserved to be fired.

He did.

Period and end of story, Donut Twitter and Resistance.

Amy Chozick puts Peter Principle of MSMon full display with 'Chasing Hillary'

Chasing Hillary: Ten Years, Two Presidential Campaigns, and One Intact Glass Ceiling by Amy Chozick
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

This book had hit the one-star level WELL before the finish line, but I slogged through so you don't have to. This is going to be an extended version of what I originally posted on Goodreads.

First, no index? Any nonfiction book, other than something like a self-help manual, without an index, even one written as breezily as this, without an index? Automatic loss of a star. That's in part because I do that in general with no-index books, but here in particular, the lack of an index undercuts the book's claims to seriousness.

Second, that breeziness. (And, that doesn't count the personal bias in political reporting, nor the way that personal bias is waved like a wet dishrag. Nor does it count that [although the title should have given this away, I guess in hindsight] that this is part of the book being about Chozick as much as Clinton.)

Now, let's get to the real mistakes, and the biggies, that torpedoed this baby.

First, her "Berniebros"? I'm not saying Chozick didn't get some of the Tweets she claims. BUT! ... She makes it look like about EVERY Sanders backer was one of these strawman stereotype Berniebros. Beyond that, post-election at least, donut Twitter has enough vileness in it that it probably doesn't have much to learn from the alt right.

All of this, in turn — the reality vs. Chozick's framing — gets back to the bias above.

Second, a clearly proven error. In chastising Robbie Mook for being a tightwad, she claims on page 152 that the Clinton campaign gave some of its leftover money to Jill Stein's recount effort.

This made me say "huh?" in part because I'm a Green voter and had never heard of such a thing.

I checked around with Green friends, and sure enough, untrue. Clinton's campaign had talked about sharing some data/data crunching, but I'm not sure it did that. NEVER gave money.

And, really, couldn't give much anyway.

Federal Elections Commission says that one political campaign CANNOT give another more than $2,000. Amy, took me a 30-second Google to find that.

Third, the Clinton Foundation has had actual ethics problems, and even more than other people at your paper have reported, Amy.

Fourth, yes, incomes for the middle class as well as the upper class did go up under Bill Clinton. But, income inequality still increased. Hell, middle class incomes went up under Shrub, too. And income inequality increased, and more than under the Slickster. This is also easily verifiable, and the way Chozick made her statement came off as PR first, journalism distant second. (At least, real journalism.)

Fifth, Chozick has several cover-ups by omission on foreign policy issues. She has no mention that Bill Clinton broke the promise of Poppy Bush, Helmut Kohl and other NATO members not to expand NATO eastward. She also doesn't mention Clinton's interference in Russian elections. (Sidebar: Perhaps, and far more subtly than with sacks of money, Shrub Bush and Obama did more of the same that we don't know about yet.)

Sixth, nothing but a brief mention of Clinton's emails, and nothing of her private server. Related? Chozick takes her paper's default stance on "Russiagate."

Seventh is the "reveal" by Chozick of how the Times was in the tank for Clinton, despite Bill claiming an anti-Clinton conspiracy by the Times. The "reveal" is keyed by the Times holding a story about the clusterfuck of our intervention in Libya until after the South Carolina primary. (Nothing new there, though; remember, it held a story about Shrub Bush's snooping on Americans until after he was re-elected.)

The reveal itself is nice. There's no real critical take on this bias by Chozick, though. Nor does she critically examine her own bias, starting with fawning over the idea of the "FWP," as she routinely abbreviates First Woman President.

As for her claim to be an agent of Russian intelligence by reporting on hacked emails? First, the first emails were likely stolen by Seth Rich or someone else inside DNC, not hacked by Russians. Second, per a good piece by Jack Shafer, any Russian activity was only background noise. Plus, the NYT reporters who got the Pentagon Papers from Daniel Ellsberg weren't agents of North Vietnam or whatever, Shafer notes.

My take on this point? Chozick's trying to extend her Warholian 15 minutes of fame. Of course, that's the big picture point of the whole book, isn't it?

With all of those major, and minor, errors, it was easy to one-star.

That said, she does give us an occasional look at the NYT background, like the snooty arrogance of people at the home office seeming to assume that there's only one time zone in the US.

As for my subhead? Per the likes of Charles Pierce at the Esquire, plenty of real journalists, reporters and editors at newspapers out in the heartland, could do a better job than Chozick, and probably than several others, at the Times. I am personally sure of this.

Anyway, it's clear that that the Beltway/Acela Corridor MSM has problems. This is a good illustration but still the tip of an iceberg.

And, The Slickster and Failed Would-be President (Chozick's FWP) still think the Times hated them? When they had a Hillary-token feminist reporting? (Chozick is smart enough to recognize that Hillary's feminism, like that of most her Hillbot supporters, is selective. She also notes the Slickster deliberately went Sister Souljah on Black Lives Matter. Must give credit for something. She gets half credit for noting sexism and even sexual harassment on the Clinton campaign trail by the "guys" who ran her campaign; misses full credit for not reporting it in live time. Not reporting it because she believed in Hillary as FWP, even while noting Hillary tolerated this, cuts it to one-quarter credit.)

Meanwhile, the Times panders to Clinton supporters, then to counterbalance that, foists the likes of Bret Stephens and Bari Weiss on all of us.


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A few quick thoughts on Uranium One re #TrumpTrain and #GOPTaxScam

Bill Clinton with Frank Giustra

I'm putting something up because the wingnuts are blathering about the DOJ's announced investigation of the Clinton Foundation getting money from international mercenary grifter Frank Giustra and friends in exchange for about 20 percent of US uranium production capability

First, the wingnuts aren't asking a word about the timing. To me, it seems classic "wag the dog," diverting the Trump Train from looking more at the massive locomotive that's the light at the end of the tunnel, aka, how a country with massive new debt in a decade has done nothing for them in the meantime.

Related to that, the fake leftists like ShirtLost DumbShit Zack Heller will use this to further their claims that Bill and Hillary Clinton are more corrupt than Donald Trump. Actual Flatticus might do the same, were he alive.

Related to THAT is some left-liberals to actual leftists on Twitter retweeting threads by people who either in the thread at hand or others go off into semi if not full conspiracy mode.

(That reminds me of the proper rephrasing of an old cliche, especially for Twitter. "Sometimes the enemy of my enemy is not my friend, but a temporary ally of convenience and nothing more." And sometimes, they're not even that.)

Reality? This actual leftist has no doubt they're corrupt, but still sees them as less corrupt fiscally in particular, or on broad ethics in general, than The Donald. Put that in your pipe and puff it, Zack.

Reality to this issue, now that the preliminaries are at hand?

Yes, the Uranium One deal is corrupt. Ethically corrupt for sure. In my opinion, possibly criminally corrupt, but that's going to be hard to prove.

What is the real problem behind Uranium One is that it's a bright, shiny mirror of bipartisan corruption. Beyond using it as a wag the dog to divert attention from the #GOPTaxScam, Trump's probably also using it to divert attention from the Robert Mueller investigation, which will show nothing about Vladimir Putin hacking US elections but which WILL show plenty about his own seeming money laundering.

So, no, Mueller's not being fired tomorrow. He's being overshadowed today.

The third thing is that Trump is probably jealous he didn't think of something like this. He's probably also jealous that he's not smooth enough to pull it off. (And he's not.)

Let's also remember that the Giustra grifting, related to uranium issues in Kazakhstan, started when Shrub Bush was still president. And, enough of this was known in 2012 that Mittens Romney had the chance to make a bigger issue out of it with Barack Obama's re-election campaign than he actually did.

Again: the real problem behind Uranium One is that it's a bright, shiny mirror of bipartisan corruption. The related issue is that the corruption is never dealt with until it becomes a handy political cudgel for one half of the duopoly.

And Jeff Sessions' investigation won't change that one bit.

One sidebar from all this is that, although Trump himself remains an idiot, somebody, whether White House staff or RNC staff, is thinking smartly on tactics issues. As news outlets noted yesterday, Trump getting Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi to agree on a short-term funding bill to avoid a government shutdown gave the Congressional GOP time to ram the tax bill home before Christmas. (And, assuming Doug Jones wouldn't be a total sellout, just a partial one, that time now appears to have been quite valuable.)

==

Damn, I forgot that I blogged about the Clintons, Giustra and Kazakhstan way back in 2008.

What Happened? Hillary Clinton tried to write a book and wrote a novel

My review of "What Happened":

What Happened by Hillary Rodham Clinton
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

My 2 cents, or 2 stars worth

I didn't rate it 1 star for two reasons.

First, in a few rare instances, like discussing sriracha sauces, Hillary Clinton does allow peeks at what is presumably her real self.

Second, it deserves a second star because it reflects what Hillary Clinton believes about the 2016 campaign, and its backstory.

That said, much of what she believes, especially related to "Putin Did It," is simply wrong. (Note, I am writing from a leftist, not a GOP let alone Trumpist, angle. That said, many of the "Putin Did It" claims have been either PROVEN wrong or else withdrawn or modified. So, let's dig in!)

Here's a list of the major problems, by page number.

20. Did Hannah the Wisconsin election worker later / elsewhere get mad about Clinton not visiting the state?
35. Tries to triangulate between Obama as previous Dem president and Obama’s sluggish recovery.
47. Well-respected Clinton Foundation doesn’t mention Frank Giustra/Russia/uranium, nor does it mention Haiti and its less than totally reputable operation there
72. Calls emails — without mentioning a “server” — “one boneheaded mistake.” No deliberation, especially on server, not just account, mentioned.
74. Blames Bernie for not exiting the campaign sooner. Doesn’t mention parallel with her slow withdrawal in 2008.
112ff. Never mentions, in discussing her childhood, that she was a “Goldwater Girl.”
226. Falsely claims Bernie’s a socialist. She knows better.
229. Repeats stereotypes about BernieBros online harassing people. Never mentions online harassment of likes of Peter Daou.
229. Claims Bernie’s not a Dem. He is, de facto; Dem party has “cleared the field” for him since second House run. He is also, in a sense, de jure a Dem.
234. Obamacare is “universal” only on paper. For many, they can’t afford to buy anything other than the cheapest plan, and then they can’t afford to use it except in catastrophic cases.
239. Clinton claims that, deep inside, she favored a financial transactions tax and even basic income. Yeah, right. No post-election news stories about that.
254. Obama claimed that nobody in history was more qualified than her for White House. Reality? Setting aside Washington, there’s Adams, Jefferson, Quincy Adams, Van Buren, Buchanan, FDR, and Poppy Bush, on paper, at least.
289. Narrative about personal email >>account<< doesn’t mention server until 297, and then only in passing.
328. On matter of Putin’s being upset about NATO expansion, doesn’t mention that hubby Bill broke Poppy Bush’s oral pledge to Yeltsin that, after the fall of the Iron Curtain, NATO wouldn’t move east.
338. Wrong on Guccifer 2.0. Wrong on citing Crowdstrike as primary evidence.
341. Wrong on Russia hacking DNC emails vs a Dem insider stealing them.
352. Repeats the rejected “17 agencies” claim on Russia hacking DNC emails.
354. References the Steele dossier, now pretty much discredited, AND knows to have been paid for in part by the DNC, which Clinton also doesn’t mention
363. Many of the “21 states” she claims had state elections agencies that were Russian hacking targets now say that not only were they not compromised, as faras they know they weren’t targets.
411. Takes Jill Stein out of context, ignoring that the Obama-Clinton semi-coup in Ukraine that now has neo-Nazis in power is something that Stein rightfully complained about.

==

And, in a big picture on all of the “Putin Did It” claims, ignores that Crowdstrike either ignored or was unaware of poor security of NGP VAN, didn’t catch the DNC emails theft, as theft it was, and missed the Podesta phishing for months.

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Addendum to the review, for this blog post.

I feel kind of sad for her, and not in a patronizing way. I think she really believes most of what she (and one or more ghostwriters?) put in this book, even and especially the stuff about a Tobin tax and basic income. (Feel free to let me know if she's actually given speeches or anything about this.)

In reality, of course, this, along with her triangulating off Obama, shows that even by modern American political standards, there's no "there" there. Hillary Clinton is the Oakland of the Democratic Party, to riff on Gertrude Stein.

But, the modern Democratic Party seems to kind of like presidential candidates like that. Barack Obama didn't have much more "there" in 2008 than Clinton. And, post-presidency, banksters are paying him even more than they did her. But, many "resisters" who dislike, or even loathe, Hillary Clinton still fellate Barack Obama any chance they get. The reality is that they projected a lot of hopes and dreams on him. You didn't have to be a Green like me, or Green-leaner, to know that. All you had to do is note Obama's flip-flip on warrantless spying and giving a free pass to telecommunications companies in the summer of 2008.

The Slickster, of course, started the idea of triangulation, at least in modern form. He, of course, perfected the idea of "punching down" inside the modern Democratic Party.

Jimmy Carter was by no means perfect. He was the first neoliberal Democratic president, in many ways. (In some ways, JFK was.) But, in a number of cases, especially environmental issues, he was willing to take stances. Of course, his own party rick-rolled him in Congress for his pains.

The MSM halfway catches up with me on #Obamacare

It's long been clear to me that Obamacare is at least semi-broken. (Well, that's setting aside another issue that I've repeatedly blogged about — we don't even have "Obamacare" since Dear Leader himself, its namesake, has delayed implementation of several of its major portions — some delayed repeatedly.)

Well, the Old Gray Lady has finally weighed in, at least in part.  

The nut grafs are buried near the end, in two quotes, especially the second:

Dr. John W. Rowe, who was the chief executive of Aetna from 2000 to 2006 and the president of Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York before that, predicted that “the insurance market will stabilize in two or three years.”

“We are not in a death spiral,” Dr. Rowe said. “If this were a patient, I would say that he’s not in intensive care, but he’s still in the hospital and requires careful monitoring.”

But that does not mean the act will heal on its own, said Sara Rosenbaum, a professor of health law and policy at George Washington University.

“Even the most ardent proponents of the law would say that it has structural and technical problems that need to be addressed,” she said. “The subsidies were not generous enough. The penalties for not getting insurance were not stiff enough. And we don’t have enough young healthy people in the exchanges.”

Bingo.

The big issue is that these were issues largely known in 2008. Hillary Clinton called Obama out for not having any sort of penalty in his plan. That, in turn leads to not enough young people enrolled. These could have been fixed as part of the original law — which also could have been less complicated, especially in its not-yet-implemented areas.

The lack of subsidies? That's on Obamacare vs. single-payer.

(In turn, that ignores that the profit motive, and a hypercapitalist version, may be so ingrained in the American medical system that we need a British-type NHS.)

As for the public option, the devil is in the details.

Contra Bernie Sanders, I think it should have deductions and co-pays similar to single-payer systems in other developed countries. 

At the same time, it should be more generous in psychiatric coverage than current private insurance.

Meanwhile, in your hypocrisy alert of the day, the Slickster is calling O-care "the craziest thing in the world." And Madame Slickster has also, despite wrapping herself in the flag of O-care vs. Bernie Sanders, has made recent similar cracks. Indeed, the flag-wrapping included her claim that O-care was originally H-care.

And, an update, as the Big Dog tries to walk it back, including:

(T)he insurance model "doesn't make sense" and "doesn't work here."

So, he now backs single-payer?

As for differences between O-care and Hillarycare, the small businesses the Slickster claims to defend opposed Hillarycare because it would have forced them to provide coverage. Politico has a thumbnail sketch of the few differences between the two.

Colin Powell vs Hillary Clinton — #DNCLeak cuts both ways on lies

So, the latest iteration of Democratic National Committee leaks lets us know just what one former Secretary of State thinks about another, and her husband, right? I do have to admit it's pretty funny to see that.

At the same time, this is the same Colin Powell who lied to the United Nations Security Council about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction, including specific lies about uranium tubes that allegedly were for nuclear centrifuges, when he had good reason to know they were for artillery barrels.

And, the same Powell who may have lied 30-something years before that about My Lai.

Plus, Powell's own political ambition, including an eyeball for the White House, wasn't exactly bridled itself.

And, per the email, does he know something we don't? Was Hillary Clinton already 70 in 2014 and 72, not late 60s, today?

Show me the birth certificate!

Also, per the email, what proof did the New York Post (I presume that's the NYP) have of where the Slickster was putting Slick Dicky? Maybe, per other photos of him with The Donald, they were sharing some lady friends ... maybe on joint airline flights to visit Jeffrey Epstein?

At the same time, what is, or was, the allegedly sensible, moderately conservative, Powell doing reading a rag like the Post?

Clinton pandering, triangulation and maybe warhawking over #genocide by #ISIS or not in Iraq

Hillary Clinton, playing Hamlet for Politico, indicates that she's willing to take the oh-so-tough decision of breaking with President Obama and calling ISIS's killing of Christians in Iraq genocide.

On Twitter, which is where I saw the link, Doug Henwood disagrees, snarkily, noting that he doesn't think it's genocide:

Because it’s not genocide. If she said the sun rises in the west would you go along? https://t.co/ImJsPvmdJ6

— Doug Henwood (@DougHenwood) December 30, 2015

Per Doug, if Hillary Clinton said that, not only would I open the blinds, I'd go outside to check. And, as I told Doug, I like the assumedly deliberate direction reversal.

My concerns are other.

First, per the Politico piece, genocide declarations have little teeth, and basically no teeth at all against a non-state actor like ISIS. Given that Clinton was a former Secretary of State, and State is basically in charge of a lot of the relevant issues, she damn well knows that.

She also knows that from her husband's experience, as the U.S. did little but hand-wringing over Rwanda even after a genocide declaration.

So, it's pandering, since a couple of dozen Congresscritters have already pushed for such a declaration.

Besides all that, Obama is planning a genocide declaration against ISIS because of the Yazidis, per the Politico piece. And thus it's triangulation, as well, the Clinton claim that genocide also is against Christians in Iraq, since a fair amount of the push to have Obama declare this comes from the Religious Right. But, just because he's hypocritical (how many boots on the ground are YOU sending, Dear Leader, since bombing is of, er, less than optimal effectiveness?) doesn't mean that two hypocriticalities make a right.

As for the specific issue at hand, international law doesn't provide a percentage requirement for what constitutes genocide. Yet, per what I can tell, the percentage of people deliberately killed for religion by ISIS/ISIL is definitely smaller among Christians than Yazidis. Given that Yazidism is syncretistic of Islam and Zoroastrianism, mainly, it may draw extra ire. Per this NYT piece, about the "rape culture" of ISIS, the facts that the Yazidis are polytheists (more here), it seems, and not a "People of the Book," adds to ultra-fundamentalist Islamic contempt. Hence, if this all is a guide, Obama is right, right now.

(And, given that Obama has indicated that his administration likely will enter a finding of genocide re the Yazidis, the NYT piece linked just above, while horrific and disgusting, has no relevance to wanting to expand said declaration to cover Christians in Iraq, or Syria. None.)

Beyond that, if it's genocide by ISIS against Christians, why wasn't it genocide by al Qaeda before splinterings, makeovers and whatever else? If it's very clear to candidate Clinton that ISIS is committing genocide against Christians, not just Yazidis, why wasn't it clear about al Qaeda to Secretary Clinton? Or, to really throw the haggis in the fire, quoting Scotty of Star Trek fame, why not a finding of genocide by ISIS against Shi'ites?

Or, for that matter, if any finding of genocide by ISIS includes territory in Syria as well as Iraq, I'll bet we could get a finding against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. I mean, he did cross a red line publicly stated by Dear Leader by using chemical weapons.

Beyond that, what purpose is there of a second genocide declaration? If one of them has real teeth, it's like killing a person with an H-bomb instead of an A-bomb to have a second declaration. If one is toothless, it's like shooting a person with two water pistols instead of one.

That said, we know Clinton is more of a warhawk than Bernie Sanders, and probably more of a warhawk than her husband. After all, she did, in my opinion, "wear the pants in the family" more than he did, often times. And, for Hillarybot feminists who don't like that metaphor, I'll top you by reminding you that SHE quoted a famous, or infamous, Tammy Wynette song.

So, if you want to go beyond Rwanda hand-wringing, Madame Secretary, how many boots on the ground are you planning on sending to Iraq if you're elected president of These United States? If not that, what other actions do you plan?

Contra Amy Fried, who also didn't like that rhetorical question, it's a legitimate one, even were the declaration made against the nation of Iraq. It's even more legitimate against a non-nation state terror group. And, it's very legitimate when I'm told on Twitter to "do some research," when I already have more an idea what I'm talking about than she does.

Otherwise, we're in the land of rhetoric, where the epithet-thrower is king. Or queen, if you're a Hillarybot. Especially now that Amy Fried seems to think the Godwin's Law angle, or a milder version of it, is the next tactic. Saying we should worry as much about ISIS as Nazi Germany is ridiculous. And, Henwood's right on this, again: If you do believe that, then what action, not rhetoric, do you support?

And, that squares the circle again. Pandering, triangulation, or both, none of this should be of any surprise to people who track Hillary Clinton with a skeptical, gimlet eye.

Also, myths about smallpox blankets aside, under that international law definition, if exact percentages aren't involved, U.S. action against American Indians is arguably genocide.

Jimmy Carter: Not a Hillary fan

Dunno about NOW, but the one living Democratic ex-prez without the last name of Clinton absolutely did not support Hillary in 2008.

It's part of a long interview with him and author Jacquelyn Woodson.

Carter talks about his own segregationist father, and how segregation was a tool, among others, to keep people in "ugly boxes."

Here’s a few other excerpts, like this on the Confederate flag:

JC: Also the South Carolina legislators are not voting to take down the flag because they’ve changed their mind about it. They’re voting for it because South Carolina and Charleston are going to suffer severely, economically, if they don’t make the change.

True, I'm sure.

That said, let's not forget that, in 1976, Carter made a play to hold onto what became called "Reagan Democrats," some of whom had been called "Wallace Democrats" four years earlier. Or that he was the first neoliberal Democrat on regulatory and other issues. (Carter started deregulating trucking; Reagan just finished it. Carter started deregulating airlines.)

I don't know that Carter has explicitly repented of his 1970s, let alone 1960s, racial stances. His actions seem to indicate that.

Or this on race relations:

JC: You’re assuming that a white person who believes in the Confederate flag is listening to his black neighbor who doesn’t like it. There’s very little communication on a sensitive subject like that.

Woodson responded that this was because blacks “knew their place.” Carter doesn’t disagree. He presumably accepts Woodson’s “complicated” observation.

Anyway, give the whole thing a read.

Meet the gravediggers of Russian democracy

With the death of Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, it's pretty clear that Russia is a non-democratic state, de facto.

So, who killed Russian democracy?

Vladimir Putin is, if anything, only a final cause.

The real gravediggers are six.

And, they are two Russians, and four Americans.

The Russian I propose is Boris Yeltsin, and the three Americans are George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Jeffrey Sachs, a single name to represent the neoliberals who got Yeltsin to "burn down" Russia.

Poppy Bush first refused to see Yeltsin as an alternative to Gorbachev, perhaps setting him up for future sensitivity to would-be slights. He then, despite earlier pledges not to do so, became somewhat triumphalist over the end of the Cold War. Even worse, although German Chancellor Helmut Kohl put a big crowbar in the Federal Republic's wallet to ease the financial shock of East Germany being reincorporated into the West, Bush refused to offer significant aid to Gorbachev.

As a result, he lost credibility at home, and thus the coup. When it failed, Yeltsin, still not well-appraised by the West in general, became "the option."

That's even though it was clear that another Russian — vodka — was clearly in charge of Boris Yeltsin.

That alcoholism is why Yeltsin rapidly cycled through would-be political heirs, especially after Sachs et al convinced him to burn down Russia. Nemtsov was the second-last of those heirs, before Putin.

Bush was wrong in encouraging Sachs et al to do a neoliberal sell-off of Russia, and Clinton was wrong in encouraging it to continue.

Then, there's Yeltsin vs. "what are the options," namely leading up to the 1996 elections.

The "leader principle" probably seemed to Clinton to be the best that Russia could do. Was he right?

First, he was wrong to not "nudge" Yeltsin to settle on one good choice.

Second, he was wrong to not have other people, whether instead of, or in addition to, the Sachses of the world, working on improving Russian democratic and electoral structures.

Third, he was wrong to not consult more with Yeltsin on the Balkans War. Even if we eventually ignored Yeltsin's ideas, not talking to him more, especially as we expanded NATO eastward, which made Russia feel more isolated, and  fueled strong nationalistic sentiments inside Russia.

The fourth American?

John McCain. He was right to see "KGB" inside Putin's eyeballs. He, and others, were even more wrong than the first round of NATO expansion, when they wanted to expand at least affiliate membership to countries like Georgia and Ukraine. The result is that Georgia's already gotten its war at Russia's hands, and Ukraine is getting it now.

In both cases, affiliate membership offered little, yet was almost as stupid as full membership. Plus, NATO now looks like its words won't ever be backed with actions. And, Putin and other ultranationalists had their triumphalist lust fed in Georgia, and want it fed again now.

And the second Russian? Symbol of nationalist intellgentsia even as he was dying, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn gave Putin the intellectual blessing to pursue a neo-Tsarist past to a new, strong, nationalistic Russia. His sentiments about Ukraine, his totally wrong claims that it was never a separate country (Kievan Rus, the first "Russian" state, that introduced Christianity to Russia

Putin as the final cause? Yeltsin's alcoholic erraticness may have led him to settle on somebody worse, if he'd lived another year. That said, once tabbed, Putin wormed himself totally into Yeltsin's life, both personal and political.

But, otherwise, the others are the real gravediggers, and the real pallbearers.

Of these people, Yeltsin died dead and drunk. Solzhenitsyn died dead and unapologetic. Sachs was later partially apologetic; none of the three American politicians ever have been.

To put it another way, other than a bit of euthanizing help, Putin didn't kill Russian democracy. He's just the greedy heir rewriting the will to make sure he's the only real beneficiary of its demise.

Alison Grimes: Misinformed? Twit? Family political pawn? Just.Another.Neoliberal Liar?

Alison Lundergan Grimes, waving bye-bye to her own campaign

Updated Nov. 4, 6:30 p.m. Mitch the Turtle is already projected the winner in this race. It's too bad, but not surprising given the campaign that Alison Lundergan (say it three times fast) ran while going down the White Rabbit's (her daddykins) rabbit hole of an inept campaign.

And, given one Democratic troll I ran into on Raw Story, I don't feel sorry (well, not THAT sorry) for Kentucky Dems.

And, now that it appears Republicans have taken control of the U.S. Senate, I'll add that Grimes is a poster child for the mix of bad campaigns and bad candidates in many Senate Democratic races.

Meanwhile, your original post.

The Kentucky Democrat challenging Senate Majority Leader Mitch "The Turtle" McConnell may be politically smart to distance herself from President Barack Obama during the campaign, but then claiming Hillary Clinton has any significant political differences from Dear Leader is a laugher.

If one race reveals the depth of the divisions between Democrats this cycle it is in Kentucky, where the party’s Senate nominee still refuses to say whether she voted in 2012 for President Obama, whom she endorsed and served as a convention delegate. But on Monday, Alison Lundergan Grimes took the next step forward into the chasm when a debate moderator asked her the difference between her, a self-styled “Clinton Democrat” and an “Obama Democrat.” Grimes was quick to respond: “It’s growing the middle class in the right way.” 

Yeah. sure. 

Especially when it's a claim that "poor Hillary" of White House departure days understands, or by extension, cares about the middle class any more than Obama. This is also the same Hillary Clinton who supported the Slickster in taking tax deductions on underwear (dunno if they were boxers or briefs) he gave to Goodwill and elsewhere.

Hillary Clinton has some special sauce for "growing the middle class the right way." Not. Unless it involves underwear at Goodwill.

Also, per this piece, given the great success of Obamacare's Medicaid expansion in Kentucky, her worries about The Turtle scoring political points over her vote for Obama, which we all know she did (because, if she actually didn't, she'd answer the question "no") undercut potential political gains.

The piece also brings in the other angles. Her daddy's a big Friend of Bill's, and she's banking on the women's vote, even though she's not earning or retaining a big edge on it.

There's more nuggets, speaking of Grimes' daddy, to unpack from that quote.

First, did she ever, post-marriage, still go by the name of "Alison Lundergan," then realize that, like Hillary, she needed to officially take on her hubby's last name to succeed in a Southern state? (Not to be confused with seceding in a Southern state.) Did she, at some later point, then decide she needed to trade on her family's last name, and thus then change her name from "Alison Grimes" to "Alison Lundergan Grimes"?

And, did she, at some point in this campaign, realize that Lewis Carroll wasn't giving her "Alison Lundergan" (yeah, I went there) any ending but going down the White Rabbit's madhole?

What seems up is spillover from the 2008 Democratic presidential primaries. Daddy Lundergan and cronies are still steamed at Obama in some way, and steamed enough to lose an election over it.

I know that Ashley Judd, had she not been worried about The Turtle's staff digging up trash on her,  or Kentucky Dem powerhouses chickenshitting on her either from being in Grimes' corner or what's left of Big Coal's corner, couldn't have done worse.

So, if Grimes loses, Kentucky Dems? You danced with them what you brung, and she couldn't dance her way out of a wet paper bag.

Chickenshit Boehner gets House GOP to pass pseudo-impeachment lawsuit

Cry me a river, Mr. Backbone of Chocolate Eclair

Let's be honest, that's what Speaker of the House John Boehner's plan to Barack Obama is, now that the House has OKed it. (And, with just five House Republicans in opposition, anybody who ever, again talks to me about "moderate Republicans" at the national level gets kicked in the nads.)

After the Clinton debacle, Republicans know they cannot win a politically-driven impeachment conviction, especially with any "charges" against Obama having even less substance than those against Slick Willie.

So, sue instead.

Isn't it funny how the GOP always talks about tort reform — except when it would hurt them?

And, gets hypocritical:

"What price do you place on the continuation of our system of checks and balances? What price do you put on the Constitution of the United States?" said Rep. Candice Miller, R-Mich. "My answer to each is 'priceless.'"

Checks and balances are already in place. Democrats who control the Senate won't pass your idiocy, so you boo-hoo and sue.

So, Speaker Boo-Boo (he's got Yogi's voice but Boo-Boo's face), or RedFace, as I also call him, is suing Obama for "being the President."

Let's let RedFace speak for himself:

"This is not about impeachment -- it's about him faithfully executing the laws of this country," Boehner said.

The speaker alleged that the president not only has ignored the law but "brags about it," decrying what he described as "arrogance and incompetence."

Boehner had been weighing such a lawsuit in recent days, over concerns that Obama exceeded his constitutional authority with executive actions.

Now, let's translate. On paragraph No. 3? This is another It's OK If You're A Republican, of course, because RedFace never talked about suing Shrub Bush, who wrote more executive orders than Obama ever did. 

Paragraph No. 1?

Failure in "faithfully executing the laws of this country" would certainly be considered a high crime or misdemeanor, as it would be violating his oath of office. Therefore, per Article I, Section 2:

The House of Representatives shall chuse their Speaker and other Officers; and shall have the sole Power of Impeachment.

You're that Speaker guy, you idiot.

So, you're chickenshit because you know you'll lose an impeachment, but you, like many a GOPer, has no problem with barratry, and with waste of taxpayer money, when it suits your own ends.

So, will Senate Democrats please sue Boehner for being Speaker of the House? C'mon, Harry Reid, do it!

$15? Or $10.10? And how quickly?

After figuring out that Thomas Piketty has written a left-neoliberal book on capitalism's faults that ignores organized labor, and also figuring out that Bill Clinton will never, ever apologize to labor for NAFTA and the WTO, I can sympathize with the international fast-food employees' strike in wanting a higher minimum wage.

(Hat tip to Perry for reminding me of this.)

But, per the header of this piece? That said, in details of the strike, I think $15/hr, without a phase-in of seven or so years, is too high. Even then, it might be a bit much. The $10.10 of Beltway rounds, with a four-year phase-in, AND a COLA clause as part of that, sounds about right to me.

And, that's in part due to strategy reasons — reasons of what's realistic — as well as other considerations. And, I'm not alone:

Gary Chaison, a professor of industrial relations at Clark University, said Thursday’s protests were an example of “the labor movement reinventing itself. It’s the most experimental thing labor has done in a long time.”

But he characterized the goal of a $15 hourly minimum as overly ambitious.

“They seem to forget you have to take little steps at a time,” he said. “When you don’t have very much, getting a little can mean a lot. You can’t get it all at once.”

Exactly.

And, expecting $15 an hour and almost immediately? Your store managers would put you all on salary and abuse comp time laws. Or try to figure out a way to classify you as independent contractors. Or simply shut down less profitable locations.

Yes, I know big businesses often use threats of closure or cuts as their own negotiating tools. And, I know that McDonald's jobs can't be outsourced to China.

And, I know it's true that wages are a fairly small portion of overhead for fast-food restaurants. Nonetheless, asking for them to be more than doubled off the current US minimum wage of $7.25 is a bit much.

And, if wages get to honestly be too big a portion, businesses will do more than just threats. Besides closures, or cuts, you could have cuts combined with split shifts. Every day of your work week. Or, even more of last-minute call-ins, or last-minute stay-homes, on your work schedule.

We also have to remember that a country as fast, populous and diversified as the US has great regional income disparities. In my current location in Texas, a $15/hr minimum wage would pretty much gut half the jobs here.

I blogged about this a bit before with Seattle's push for a $15 minimum wage. Protesters need to, per Chaison, have some sense of political reality.

They also need to have some sense of economic reality.

And, that's not just at the local level. The movement behind this all, Fast Food Forward is reportedly backed financially by Service Employees International Union.

A $15/hr minimum wage, at a full-time, year-round job, would produce a higher wage than the current individual median income, per the Census Bureau. I can understand (unlike Barack Obama) a deliberate "overshoot" as part of negotiations, but when you're pricing yourself out of the ballpark at the start, you don't sound very realistic. Or very well-informed. And, it's not just small-town Texas. Let's take Maplewood, Mo., a down-on-the-edges, but not totally "out," St. Louis suburb. A minimum wage of $15/hr on a 40-hr week puts you at 95 percent of annual household income there, and at almost 45 percent above per capita income. Nearly the same is true in a nowhere near down-at-the-edges heartland city, Grand Island, Neb. About 40 percent above the per capita median, and while only about 75 percent of the household income, still.

And, given that these protests are being backed or organized to some fair degree by organized labor folks well above the level of individual fast-food workers, that too is sad. Even in the glory days of Eisenhower, when adjusted into real dollars, the minimum wage was never but a sliver above $10 an hour.

So, restaurant workers? Dial back to $10.10, but with unionization rights as part of the deal. As for the $10.10, the Center for American Progress agrees. Its reason? That would be 50 percent of the national mean (not median) per capita. Elsewhere, Dylan Matthews notes than $15 would be 75 percent of the national median. Given the amount of economic diversity I indicated exists in America, I am confident in saying that it would be more than 100 percent of the median for census tracts of 25 percent of America.

Sadly, per Matthews, Felix Salmon is dumb enough to tout the $15 minimum, too. He says it would help the feds by bringing in tax revenue and moving people off the Earned Income Tax Credit. He should know better. He should know that with as high of a hike as I propose, even in northeastern metropolitan areas, some of this will happen.

Of course, about nobody I link above has ever lived in small-town Midwest or South areas.

SEIU? The same for the bulk of the types of workers you represent. Don't overshoot; you won't get sympathy for the broader issues behind this, including ever-increasing judicial hostility. Beyond that, that hostility is backed by Rick Snyder's election as governor of Michigan, Scott Walker's election as governor of Michigan, and more. A lot of Americans think that "union" is a four-letter word.

That said, I know that not a lot of workers are working 40 hours a week on minimum wage and that American unions like to use the minimum wage to bolster employees on the first tier above that. That then said, that's why a $15/hr request is really bad. SEIU? Nobody's going to want to pay janitors and security guards $17/hr in Grand Island, Neb. Simply ain't happening. They'll put up with dirty banks and fewer security guards.

Tocqueville missed noting that America is a land of confrontations, as part of American democracy. Too bad he wasn't here in the 1880s.

Speaking of him, this is part of why the US can't be fully like Western Europe. Lower population density, and more diversity within the various states. Well, maybe Western Europe will learn its lesson that a "Western Europe" that includes places like Greece under the euro umbrella can't be fully like Western Europe, either.

Finally, it's also why I identify myself on this blog as a skeptical left-liberal. I attempt to subject left-liberal ideas to some form of logical and empirical analysis before discussing them.

Update, May 18: Another way to put this, per the comment of Simon, who's non-American, is that the minimum wage, with that much of hike, has a broad parallel to the European Union's Eurozone crisis, to more clearly spell out what I first said. The rural South and Midwest are Greece, and New York City is London. Raise the minimum to $15/hr, and fair chunks of the US become post-eurozone crisis Greece.

And, per Simon's one comment, I noted that at $7.25, wages are a relatively modest part of fast-food overhead; I specifically indicated that likely would not be the same at $15. (Also, per that link to the Washington Post blog about the Center for American Progress, Australia's $16+ minimum wage would only be about $12 at most, here, at least under CAP's sensical idea. Also, Australia's minimum wage has a variety of loopholes, per that same link.

So, with that, and the added links above, can we please stop believing that a $15 minimum would be a painless panacea? I've already knocked down attempts to link it and helping the homeless.

The #Slickster is whitewashing his record, likely for #Hillary2016

Thomas Frank takes Bill Clinton to the woodshed for retroactively pretending he actually cared a lot about income inequality when he was president.

Frank links to a New York Times piece in which the Slickster whines that he really did worry about income inequality. Frank speculates that he's afraid of Thomas Piketty's book , and later on gets to the core of the case — that the Slickster is probably worried about his "legacy" for Hillary Clinton's sake in her likely 2016 presidential run.

First, it's funny that Piketty's book is producing this much knee weakness. It's actually a semi-toothless half-loaf, as I noted here, with a conclusion that Frank himself thumbsed-up on Facebook. But, that shows, if anything, that neoliberal Democrats like the Slickster realize that a few people, at least, know they have no clothes.

Here's the facts, both for Clintonistas and their Obamiac cousins, per Frank:

Alan Greenspan, who Clinton twice reappointed to chair the Federal Reserve Board, used to joke back in 2007 that “Bill Clinton was the best Republican president we’ve had in a while.” That’s coming from a man who worked for some real Republicans — and who was also one of the greatest culprits in the housing bubble and the financial crisis, because he just didn’t feel like using his power to regulate the way mortgages were done.

But that complete and utter assuredness that we shouldn’t really regulate financial institutions was the prevailing sentiment of the Clinton years. That’s what it was all about. 

That's the bottom line.

And Clinton knew that before even coming to the White House.

As I said in posting the link to Frank's story on Facebook:

The Slickster doesn't like that his ox is getting Pikettyed. What I love is that the Slickster "suddenly" discovered that his budget was "hostage" to the bond market back in 1993. Hell, the Slickster had been friends with Arkansas' finest, Jackson Stephens, the biggest boy in the bond market outside Wall Street, since his first term as governor. And, I think Thomas Frank is about right. This is all a posture for Hillary to run as the candidate of income equality. Folks, the Green Party could run an effing dead dog in 2016 and I wouldn't vote for her.

And, I won't. Period and end of story. Instead of a yellow-dog Democrat, call me a dead-dog Green or something.

Frank does note that not everything Bill did was bad:

Give the man his due. There was a tax increase on the rich in the first Clinton administration. Wages grew in the second Clinton administration, and that was a very good thing. It happened because unemployment was so low, however, not because unions had made a comeback or anything. Clinton also expanded the earned income tax credit, which is probably what he thinks of when he wants to recall what a friend he was to working people.

But the overall feeling of the era was one of complete, unreserved adoration for Wall Street and money and the heroic boss. This was the age of CNBC’s “CEO Wealth Meter,” the years when the Nasdaq soared to 5,000, when you had all those investment books coming out — the Beardstown Ladies, “Dow 36,000″ — when you could follow the adventures of those awesome “day traders,” when you had “Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire,” surely one of the most pungent moments in the long and reeking history of trash culture. Of course Clinton deregulated the banks — they were making us all rich.

This kind of celebrationism was objectionable when Reagan was president, but under Clinton — this jolly man of the people — it looked different somehow. Those CEOs were just regular folks, working to make all of us richer, via our lovable pal the stock market! That’s what Clinton’s cultural function was — to make all this seem human. I called it “market populism.”

But reminds us that even this was ephemeral:

Of course it turned out to be a bubble, and it ended in disaster. As did the housing boom, which got its start in the late ’90s, and as will the next bubble to come down the pike. 

Sure it did, just like Shrub's "compassionate conservativism" twist on all of this. The most charitable statement is that income inequality's rate of growth increased less under Clinton than under Reagan-Bush before him or Bush II after.

And, Frank forgot to mention NAFTA and the WTO, which even in his tear-streaked apologetics, the Slickster is avoiding like the plague. All part of kicking labor in the teeth in various ways.

And the need to re-empower labor, and workers' desire for that, was shown on May 15 by an international fast-food employees' strike. (That said, in details of the strike, I think $15/hr, without a phase-in of seven or so years, is too high. Even then, it might be a bit much. The $10.10 of Beltway rounds, with a four-year phase-in, AND a COLA clause as part of that, sounds about right to me.)

The Slickster could sell ice to Eskimos. That's how he got proclaimed America's first black president even after overseeing and pushing for the execution of a mentally handicapped black man while still governor.

But, don't believe him. He knew that the financial snake oil he was selling was financial snake oil back in Little Rock.