On #climatechange this time, Jon Chait has his neoliberal head up his ass and Dear Leader's

I've come to loathe Chait, possibly to the degree Ken Silverstein loathes Nick Kristof, since, a few years ago, the degree of Chait's in-the-tank Obamiac-dom became apparent.

I've little doubt that Chait's Pollyanna tome on how "winning the war against climate change is just around the corner" has a fair amount to do with Dear Leader still being in office.

First, yes, greenhouse gases were flat in 2014. But, projecting a one-year trend into the future is nonsense. Chait either does know that, or should.

Related to that, as of September 2014, GHGs were projected to increase. It's possible that the Chinese recession was already starting last year, and that's why they didn't increase. Chait doesn't consider that possibility.

Second, he talks about "China this" and "China that." The non-Western world includes more than China, notably India. Indeed, per the third link, India's rate of increase in 2013 was higher than China's.

Third, China may not add 18 gigawatts of solar this year, do to the recession.

Fourth, the only mutually reinforcing treaty, or similar, is a carbon tax plus carbon tariff. If we do it first, China has to play ball. If China does it first, we have to play ball (with a tariff on our agricultural exports, primarily). And, Dear Leader has never come even close to talking about a carbon tax. That's in part because he has no cojones, and in part because a tax, and/or a tariff, would not be a "market based solution."

Fifth, promises have been made at climate conferences for 20 years and more now. If Chait really thinks promises this year will become reality, he'll probably sell you on the idea that Dear Leader will give post-presidential speeches for free.

Related to that, it's not just conservatives who scorned the U.S.-China agreement on climate change; see this blog post by yours truly. Or, in relation to the nanny-state scolding that Obama likes to engage in, I tackle that issue and how Obama wants to use it on climate change here.

Sixth, speaking of Dear Leader again, Chait talks about his trip to Alaska while ignoring his permitting of drilling in the Arctic Ocean.

Seventh, Chait's wrong for singling out U.S. conservatives. See "Harper, Stephen" and "Conservative Party, Canada."

As for Chait? I've called him a fellator of Obama (after previously calling him a fellator of Obama before that). I've then called him out as NOT a member of "the reality-based community."

Because New York magazine has continually and repeatedly blown massive money on his sorry ass, and yet doesn't have a paywall, I've put the "no follow" tag on the story. No need to reward their pageview count for analytics.

Racial profiling: #IOKIYAO

For Democrats, especially Obamiacs, who don't, can't or won't figure out what IOKIYAO stands for, here you go.

Now, that said, why do I say, in the wake of George Zimmerman trial, that racial profiling is OK for Dear Leader, and therefore for his devotees?

Because, as Conor Friedersdorf reminds us, in touting Ray Kelly as his possible (likely?) new Homeland Security secretary, Obama has given the Mafia love kiss to a known, and egregious, racial and ethnic profiler.

Under Ray Kelly, the NYPD infiltrated Muslim communities and spied on hundreds or perhaps thousands of totally innocent Americans at mosques, colleges, and elsewhere. Officers "put American citizens under surveillance and scrutinized where they ate, prayed and worked, not because of charges of wrongdoing but because of their ethnicity," AP reported, citing NYPD documents. Informants were paid to bait Muslims into making inflammatory statements. The NYPD even conducted surveillance on Muslim Americans outside its jurisdiction, drawing a rebuke from an FBI field office, where a top official charged that "the department's surveillance of Muslims in the state has hindered investigations and created 'additional risks' in counterterrorism."

There's no other way to put it. Our constitutional law scholar president has officially embraced an anti-constitutional abomination.

Ta-Nehesi Coates raises the same concerns. And, in his opening two grafs, calls Dear Leader a hypocrite, in not so many words:

In 2003, State Senator Barack Obama spearheaded a bill through the Illinois legislature that sought to put the clamps on racial profiling. Obama called racial profiling “morally objectionable,” “bad police practice” and a method that mainly served to “humiliate individuals and foster contempt in communities of color.” 

Obama was not simply speaking abstractly. In his 2006 book “The Audacity of Hope,” the future president wrote that he could “recite the usual litany of petty slights” directed at him because of his skin color, including being profiled by the police. “I know what it’s like to have people tell me I can’t do something because of my color,” he wrote. “And I know the bitter swill of swallowed-back anger.” That same bitterness probably compelled Obama, as president, to speak out after Prof. Henry Louis Gates of Harvard was arrested, and to famously note last year, “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.” 

That's about it.

Well, Dear Leader, your would-be Homeland Security chief would do a stop and frisk on the streets of NYC of your would-be son. (That's if one if his officers didn't start by asking, "Trayvon? Is that  Muslim name?)

That's why, 3 years ago already, I called him Just.Another.Politician.™. He is, after all. Even as, due to the soft bigotry of low expectations, the minions stay enraptured by his mellifluous voice.

But yet, many another elected Democrat who has condemned the results of the George Zimmerman trial and even railed against Zimmerman as a racial profiler (despite the evidence there being ambiguous, and Zimmerman being more multifaceted than that, as I note in my trial wrap) will likely follow Chuck Schumer's lead and give Kelly wet kisses. If someone like Pat Leahy jumps on board, you'll know the game is up.

And, on the other side of the aisle, let's see how the "libertarian" Rand Paul reacts, should Dear Leader move ahead with his bromance for Ray-Ray.

And, beyond that, let's see how allegedly humanistic Gnu Atheists react. I have no doubt that the most anti-Mooslim, like Sam Harris, are already applauding the idea of Ray Kelly allegedly keeping you and I safe.

Jon Chait, filibuster, #Obamiacs and the reality-based community?

Remember when Democrats, riffing on Karl Rove and his minions, said they were the "reality-based community"?

Well, top Obamiac fellator Jon Chait once again proves that's not true.

His latest malfeasance? Crowing over the deal in the Senate where Majority Leader Harry Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell agreed that the Senate GOP would stop filibustering a pack of Obama nominees in exchange for the Senate not doing a "nuclear option" and entirely killing the filibuster.

Here's his first teh wrong:

Democrats had proposed to change the Senate’s rules to prevent filibusters on executive branch nominations (but not to ban filibusters of legislation or judicial nominees). They’ve won.

Nope. No win. Obama still has multiple DC Circuit Court nominees in limbo. And Reid couldn't even get an agreement to force an actual Wendy Davis-style filibuster.

Then there's this:

Republicans got one face-saving concession: Democrats have to pick new names for the NLRB. This became an issue because Obama tried to execute an end-run around Congress by appointing them to their positions when Congress was functionally, though not technically, in recess, and was struck down by the Republican-controlled D.C. circuit court. 

As at least one labor group makes clear, this isn't a "face-saving concession." Instead, the Turtle had ramped up the whole idea of the "not in recess" recess precisely for this reason. Instead, this is a clear cave for Dear Leader.

Of course, even that's not the stupidist Jon Chait-ism. This is:

The deal was brokered by John McCain, who undercut McConnell and is fully emerging, yet again, as his old centrist self.

Wow, McCain a "centrist." Only in Jon Chait's Obama Happy Meal world.

John McCain a fucking centrist. Now I've heard it all.

Once again, IOKIYAO to spout this bullshit.

It's this same Beltway-based (yes, he's in NYC, I know) mentality of politics as chess game, and Dear Leader allegedly being the master of 11-dimensional chess (NOT) that I loathe. It's the same thinking that led Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas to put personalities, followed by personal victories, over policy victories.

Where is the "real left"? Why isn't it in the mainstream media more?

At Slate, Barry Friedman and Dahlia Lithwick rhetorically ask those very questions, and have a follow-up asking for ideas. And, then, at Balkinization, Frank Pasquale has charged that they're looking for liberals in all the wrong places.

First, on where Pasquale is all wet.

If Mother Jones is an example of true liberalism, rather than, in general, left neoliberalism of some sort, I'll eat my hat. Kevin Drum has long been a neolib squish as its chief blogger, back to when he was at Washington Monthly, and even before. Chief investigative reporter David Corn has shown an increasing willingness to write Obamiac blank checks on snooping-related issues.

Don't get me wrong, MoJo is further left than Washington Monthly. But that doesn't say a lot. Hell, The Nation, as long as it continues to give short shrift to the Greens, or even Rocky Barker's Justice Party, isn't as left at times as it could be, that's for sure.

And, anything to the right of The Nation is almost guaranteed to have a David Corn stance on Obama's snooping. IOKIYAO.

But, back to that "left neoliberalism." That's who runs the Democratic Party today, overall — a slightly nuanced version of neoliberals. And so, Friedman and Lithwick rightly are concerned that real liberalism isn't on the pages of major newspapers, because it's largely undefended.

Now, the likes of Wendy Davis show that some of their concerns about reproductive choice support may be somewhat overblown. Still, that may not be total.

Pasquale's mention of certain Twitter accounts is interesting. Yes, there are individual bloggers out there fighting for labor rights and other social issues. But, how many of them are inside the Democratic Party, or inside the Party-connected apparatus of think tanks like the Center for American Progress, which has already shown its left neoliberal colors over chained CPI.

And, so, Pasquale's missing the point of Friedman and Lithwick. Sure, there's true liberals "out there." That's the whole problem; they're out there, and outside the circle of today's Democratic Party and its connected policy, public relations and rainmaking apparatus.

Why? As I've said in many ways before, what Friedman and Lithwick are too polite to say: Today's Democratic national leaders have no balls. Or, to repackage Teddy Roosevelt's comment about William McKinley, directed at Obama: "He has all the backbone of a chocolate eclair."

That includes Democratic senators like Ron Wyden who refuse to hold Team Obama officials to account for known lies.

And, if you have ideas for the two of them, email them here.

Mr. Pasquale submitted an excellent one, namely, a massive expansion of the Community Reinvestment Act, beyond home loans, and to far more types of financial organizations than banks.