No sophomore slump for the second weekend of Up with Chris Hayes . On Saturday, Hayes took on the ever-present, but disingenuous, conservative talking point that the top ten percent of income earners pay seventy percent of income taxes. David “Bobo” Brooks is the latest conservative pundit to pull out this canard : [Obama] claimed we can afford future Medicare costs if we raise taxes on the rich. He repeated the old half-truth about millionaires not paying as much in taxes as their secretaries. (In reality, the top 10 percent of earners pay nearly 70 percent of all income taxes, according to the I.R.S. People in the richest 1 percent pay 31 percent of their income to the federal government while the average worker pays less than 14 percent, according to the Congressional Budget Office.) Uh, speaking of half truths there, Bobo, that’s some fine kissing up to the uber-wealthy you’re doing. Nothing says “patriotic American” more than defending the super-rich from a three percent hike to pre-Bush tax levels : You have to hand it to Brooks–he has a flair for turning reality upside down that George Orwell would admire. The wealthiest 10 percent pay nearly 70 percent of all income taxes in this country because they make more than 70 percent of all the income! Check out Mother Jones charts on skyrocketing income inequality in America. Over the last decade, as incomes for the very wealthy have soared, their tax rates have fallen. That 31 percent Brooks grouses about is considerably lower than the 37 percent they paid when they controlled less of the nation’s money than they do now. And the poor schlubs who are paying 14 percent? Their income has stagnated since the 1970s. The degree to which a tiny minority of Americans have continued to get richer, even as their tax rates go down and the incomes of the huge majority of the population stagnates is truly astonishing. We are becoming a Third World nation, where a small elite control all the wealth and the rest of us scramble to afford any kind of reasonable life. We have become, in a word, Inequalistan.
Continue reading …Suskind: Same People Attacking Me For Writing About Obama Praised My Bush Books
September 25, 2011 No Comment
One of the finest recent examples of liberal media bias has been the press's hostile treatment of author Ron Suskind for having the nerve to write a book critical of the Obama administration. As Suskind told CNN's Howard Kurtz Sunday, these are “[m]any of the folks who were praising me mightily during the Bush era” for books criticizing the previous president (video follows with transcript and commentary): HOWARD KURTZ, HOST: Hasn't the Obama team succeeded in this respect: when your book first came out, the headlines were about dysfunctional administration, president, inexperienced president not ready to govern, and women in the White House felt that they were being given short shrift. Now all of the stories and interviews – and I guess we're doing it here to some extent – are about the credibility of Ron Suskind. So was this a tactic to make you the issue? RON SUSKIND: I think that as people read the book, they're often surprised to see this is not sensational. This is very well sourced. It's complete. It's credible, and in the book, there are long passages of responses from the key actors to all of the major disclosures. That was part of the idea of making the book complete as a text in and of itself. I think much of the attacks, they came prior to the book being in people's hands. Now that it is in people's hands, already that is turning. KURTZ: But does it disappoint you that some of the criticism from people in this administration has been so personal toward you? SUSKIND: You know, Howie, you know as well as anybody it's a tough town. Many of the folks who were praising me mightily during the Bush era – these are the most definitive works on George Bush, this is the historical record – now are doing their best to struggle really to discredit those books and discredit this book. KURTZ: Are you suggesting it's ideological, that some people who are liberals are perfectly happy to have you go after President Bush and not so happy to have you go after Barack Obama? SUSKIND: Well, certainly many commentators have pointed that out. That’s not just me. I think that's part of the way this works. Yes, but wouldn't it be wonderful if it didn't work that way? If Suskind was considered a credible journalist in the previous decade while he was severely criticizing one president, how does he become persona non grata for criticizing the next? Is the bias in the media so pervasive and acknowledged that it's just accepted as a fact of life? Is impartiality in journalism really dead, and expecting otherwise just a fantasy? How can our great nation survive if not only isn't there any objectivity in the news media, there's also no burning desire outside of the small circle of conservative analysts and commentators for there to be any? What this episode demonstrates is that unless you toe the Democratic Party line as a journalist, you will be hounded by your colleagues even if what you report is factual. Pretty darned scary when you think about it.
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Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal arrive in city following release under $1m bail deal mediated by Oman and Iraq last week Two Americans released from an Iranian prison have landed in New York after being held for more than two years on spying charges. Josh Fattal and Shane Bauer arrived in the US on Sunday after being released and flown to Oman last week under a $1m (£640,000) bail deal. They were greeted by friends and relatives including Sarah Shourd, their fellow hiker who was freed last year. The three were detained in July 2009 along the Iran-Iraq border. They say they were only hiking in Iraq’s relatively peaceful Kurdish region. Since her release last year, Shourd has lived in Oakland, California. Bauer, a freelance journalist, grew up in Onamia, Minnesota, and Fattal, an environmental activist, is from Philadelphia. United States Iran Middle East Oman guardian.co.uk
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Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal arrive in city following release under $1m bail deal mediated by Oman and Iraq last week Two Americans released from an Iranian prison have landed in New York after being held for more than two years on spying charges. Josh Fattal and Shane Bauer arrived in the US on Sunday after being released and flown to Oman last week under a $1m (£640,000) bail deal. They were greeted by friends and relatives including Sarah Shourd, their fellow hiker who was freed last year. The three were detained in July 2009 along the Iran-Iraq border. They say they were only hiking in Iraq’s relatively peaceful Kurdish region. Since her release last year, Shourd has lived in Oakland, California. Bauer, a freelance journalist, grew up in Onamia, Minnesota, and Fattal, an environmental activist, is from Philadelphia. United States Iran Middle East Oman guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal arrive in city following release under $1m bail deal mediated by Oman and Iraq last week Two Americans released from an Iranian prison have landed in New York after being held for more than two years on spying charges. Josh Fattal and Shane Bauer arrived in the US on Sunday after being released and flown to Oman last week under a $1m (£640,000) bail deal. They were greeted by friends and relatives including Sarah Shourd, their fellow hiker who was freed last year. The three were detained in July 2009 along the Iran-Iraq border. They say they were only hiking in Iraq’s relatively peaceful Kurdish region. Since her release last year, Shourd has lived in Oakland, California. Bauer, a freelance journalist, grew up in Onamia, Minnesota, and Fattal, an environmental activist, is from Philadelphia. United States Iran Middle East Oman guardian.co.uk
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There is no prospect now of any UK-Russian thaw, and Russia itself faces a long period of political and economic stagnation Spare a thought for poor Dmitry Medvedev. It was US diplomats who back in November 2008 cruelly dubbed him Robin, to Vladimir Putin’s Batman. The phrase stuck. Over the past four years Medvedev has done nothing to dispel the impression that he is anything other than a useful seatwarmer, his time in the Kremlin a legalistic blip in an epoch of endless Putin rule. It wasn’t always like this. At the start of Medvedev’s presidential term there were faint hopes that he might preside over a partial liberalisation of Russian society. The president himself spoke of ending “legal nihilism”. Commentators, meanwhile, scrambled to make sense of Russia’s historically anomalous ruling arrangement – the “tandem”, as it became known. In the shadow world of Kremlin politics it was hard to work out what was going on behind the scenes. Some looked in vain for signs of an intra-leadership struggle. Others speculated that Medvedev might eventually escape from Putin’s gravitational pull, or even fire his mentor. The Obama administration tried to reach out to Medvedev in the hope this would nudge Russia’s foreign policy away from its hawkish Putin vector towards a more constructive approach. By 2010, however, US diplomats had concluded that Project Medvedev was hopeless. Medvedev’s position became one of humiliation. I heard one expert describe Russia’s ruling model not as a tandem but as “a bicycle with a child’s seat in the front”. US diplomats even cabled back to Washington the following joke: Medvedev sits in the driver’s seat of a new car, examines the inside, the instrument panel, and the pedals. He looks around but the steering wheel is missing. He turns to Putin and asks: “Vladimir Vladimirovich, where is the steering wheel?” Putin pulls a remote control out of his pocket and says: “I’ll be the one doing the driving.” Medvedev’s announcement on Saturday that he was stepping down to allow Putin a third presidency came as a surprise to no one, then. Medvedev’s only significant act as president was to extend Russia’s presidential term from four years to six, hardly a democratic step forwards. This was seen, rightly, as teeing up the conditions for a triumphant comeback during elections in the spring of 2012: Putin’s. So what now? Putin’s return means the west faces another decade of difficult relations with Russia. During his first two stints as president, the former KGB agent demonstrated his gift at G8 gatherings and other international get-togethers for sardonic repartee mixed with snide remarks about western hypocrisy and double-dealing. We can expect more of this. There is no prospect of any real improvement in UK-Russian relations. David Cameron did manage to meet Putin this month during his trip to Moscow, the first contact with him for four years. But until Downing Street caves in to the Kremlin’s demand that it resumes co-operation with Russia’s FSB spy agency – suspended after Alexander Litvinenko’s polonium murder – no “reset” is possible. The prospects for Russia itself are equally gloomy. The country now faces a long period of political and economic stagnation and single-party rule. Increasingly the Putin era resembles that of the Soviet Union under Leonid Brezhnev, another too-long authoritarian period sustained by a commodities boom, which left ordinary citizens frustrated. Increasing numbers of talented but Disenfranchised Russians are voting with their feet and moving abroad. In theory Putin could go on until 2024, when he will be 72. Or longer. This week, however, the blogger and anti-corruption campaigner Alexey Navalny predicted that Russia’s kleptocractic system would collapse well before that. “People now realise it doesn’t work. It worked between 2000-2005. There was stability up until 2008,” he said. “But now it’s useless, even for the corrupt people who benefit from it.” With no political mechanism for removing Putin from power, Navalny said, another Russian revolution was inevitable. At some point, he said, frustrations would boil over. “Maybe in five months, maybe in two years, maybe in seven years,” he said. Asked what would spark it, he suggested: “The Caucasus.” Many observers have plausibly argued that Putin is tired of being leader. So why did he come back? The Kremlin, of course, is more prestigious that then prime minister’s office, and gives Putin an international platform. More than this, though, it allows Putin to protect his own alleged secret assets and those of his team, US diplomats believe. And it allows him to avoid potential law enforcement prosecution – inevitable, once he steps down from power. Vladimir Putin Dmitry Medvedev Russia Europe Luke Harding guardian.co.uk
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Conviction of president’s rival would be ‘incompatible with EU values’, says minister during Yalta visit The EU is threatening to downgrade relations with Ukraine and frustrate its attempts to move closer into Europe’s orbit unless the former Soviet republic drops a landmark case rapidly heading towards a verdict against its former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko. Viktor Yanukovych, Ukraine’s president, has been warned that Europe sees the case against Tymoshenko as a politically motivated attempt to silence his chief rival. EU officials say a conviction would be “incompatible with EU values” and jeopardise the finalisation of a free trade agreement that would solidify the country’s ties to Brussels. Speaking in Yalta after a two-hour private meeting with Yanukovych, Stefan Fule, the EU enlargement minister, said relations would “be hardly the same between the EU and Ukraine” if the charges against Tymoshenko were not dropped. He had made clear, he said, that the case amounted to no less than a judgment on the democratic credentials needed to forge close ties with the bloc. Swedish foreign minister Carl Bildt said: “Clearly this particular trial is conducted under laws that would have no place in any other European country and should have no place in a country aspiring to European membership.” Tymoshenko’s trial is due to resume on Tuesday, after a surprise two-week delay. Optimists saw the delay as a sign Yanukovych was looking for a way to give in to EU demands without losing face, while cynics said he hoped to avoid the topic being raised ahead of several EU-Ukraine meetings. Tymoshenko was charged in May with exceeding her authority as prime minister when she signed a 2009 gas deal with the Russian prime minister, Vladimir Putin, to put an end to a disruptive gas war that had left much of eastern Europe freezing. The deal left Ukraine saddled with what Yanukovych’s administration considers an intolerably high price. Yanukovych’s attempts to renegotiate the deal with Moscow have so far been rebuffed, prompting him to threaten taking the issue to an international court. Yanukovych flew to Moscow on Saturday for rare talks with Putin and the Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev. The informal visit, coming shortly after the announcement of Putin’s bid to return to the Kremlin , was designed to ease tensions. Russia’s leaders are said to want Ukraine to forego closer ties with the EU in favour of a Moscow-led customs union that is the latest Russian attempt to solidify its influence in the region. Tymoshenko has used the trial as a platform to denounce a growing democratic deficit since Yanukovych came to power last year. She called the judge a puppet and accused the president of attacking his rivals “just like Stalin”. On 5 August she was detained for violating court rules and has been languishing in a Kiev jail ever since. Supporters and friends, both Ukrainian and European, have been refused permission to visit her and have begun to worry about her physical and mental health. “She will have to be quite strong in order to overcome this,” said Arseny Yatsenyuk, a former parliament speaker and current opposition leader. “It’s clear this is not a war on corruption, this a war on political opposition.” Ukrainian officials have denied Tymoshenko is the target of a witch hunt. Mario David, a European MP, said during a visit to Ukraine this month: “This is too much of a political trial. When it’s not only Tymoshenko, but 17 people in her government that are facing problems with justice, that is too much of a co-ordinated effort to make the opposition collapse.” Yanukovych, whose election was seen as ringing the death knell for Ukraine’s western-leaning Orange Revolution, has been at pains to promote a “pragmatic” foreign policy that would balance the country between Europe and Russia, the country’s former overlord. Early overtures to Russia – including dropping attempts to join Nato and extending by 25 years Moscow’s right to base its Black Sea fleet in the Crimea – have been overshadowed by Yanukovych’s refusal to give up on the dream of EU membership. Now, opposition MPs have introduced a bill that would change the law under which Tymoshenko has been charged, giving Yanukovych a possible exit. Tymoshenko faces 10 years in prison if convicted. There are worries she will be convicted and then pardoned, which would release her from prison but ban her from politics. EU officials say that is not enough. “That would put Yanukovych in a situation like Burma,” said Anders Aslund, a former adviser to the Ukrainian government, referring to the case of Aung San Suu Kyi. “They want to sentence her and then ban her, but the cost is simply too high.” Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych Yulia Tymoshenko European Union Europe Miriam Elder guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Michael Gerson Thinks Asking the Rich to Pay Their Fair Share in Taxes Isn’t a Good Democratic Message
September 25, 2011 No Comment
Click here to view this media Here’s an example of why no Democrat or President Obama should ever look to the likes of someone like Michael Gerson for advice on what makes for good campaign messaging. While discussing President Obama now campaigning on raising taxes on the rich, here was some of Gerson’s input after Chris Matthews asked him whether he thought it would hurt or help the president in the upcoming election, given that he’s “now seen as the guy taking sides against the rich, he says aren’t paying taxes.” GERSON: I’ll tell you what. I think the problem is not that he’s being to harsh on the rich. I think the problem is he’s being irrelevant to the only debate in American politics, which is growth and job creation. He had an anemic plan he brought forward that was largely recycled stuff and then even swamped that plan with now class warfare rhetoric. People are concerned with Europe in economic decline, with the possibility of a second dip of an American recession. How do we get growth back in this economy? The president’s not even speaking to this issue. After some of the panel acknowledging that anything President Obama has proposed to try to get our economy back on track has been knocked down by Republicans and Chris Matthews talking about how some fairness in our tax system has finally gotten the progressive base animated and supportive of what they’re hearing from the president, Matthews went to his “Matthews Meter” for the week, the question being whether “tax the rich” will get Obama votes in 2012. Three of them agreed that it was a smart move that were on the panel this week. Naturally, Gerson disagreed and then pulled out the angry black man card, or if not that, at least the heaven forbid anyone should be angry about the real class warfare we’ve seen waged on the poor and middle class card. GERSON: But I think Obama’s basic problem here, political problem, is changing his narrative completely. He ran the last time as the candidate of hope, inclusion, progress. Now he’s running as the candidate of anger and redistribution. That’s not a particularly good Democratic message. As Andrew Sullivan rightfully pointed out, a large part of the reason the president has finally resorted to just calling out Republicans instead of continuing to try to work with them was because Republicans have obstructed everything President Obama has tried to do and he can’t keep running on the meme of bipartisanship because he “looks like Lucy with the football.” Can I just say amen to Andrew Sullivan here with that statement and for pointing out to Gerson how ridiculous it is to say that President Obama should continue to pretend that Republicans are ever going to work with him on anything. Most of us on the left have been tired of the President continuing to pretend like the Republicans were not the obstructionists they obviously showed themselves to be quite a long time ago, but Gerson apparently thinks it’s still worth beating that dead horse here. Note to Michael Gerson. It’s exactly a good Democratic message that we’ve got horrible income disparity in the United States and asking the rich to pay their fair share and a call for some “shared sacrifice” is a message any Democratic candidate should be running on rather than asking for more austerity measures and tax breaks for the rich, which is apparently the Republican’s only plan to supposedly create jobs. The Republicans’ economic policies are nothing but a race to the bottom for what’s left of our dwindling middle class and American workers and Gerson’s message here pretty well resonates with one group of people, and that’s the far right of the Republican Party. And they’re not going to do anything to help President Obama get reelected no matter what he says on the campaign trail.
Continue reading …Michael Gerson Thinks Asking the Rich to Pay Their Fair Share in Taxes Isn’t a Good Democratic Message
September 25, 2011 No Comment
Click here to view this media Here’s an example of why no Democrat or President Obama should ever look to the likes of someone like Michael Gerson for advice on what makes for good campaign messaging. While discussing President Obama now campaigning on raising taxes on the rich, here was some of Gerson’s input after Chris Matthews asked him whether he thought it would hurt or help the president in the upcoming election, given that he’s “now seen as the guy taking sides against the rich, he says aren’t paying taxes.” GERSON: I’ll tell you what. I think the problem is not that he’s being to harsh on the rich. I think the problem is he’s being irrelevant to the only debate in American politics, which is growth and job creation. He had an anemic plan he brought forward that was largely recycled stuff and then even swamped that plan with now class warfare rhetoric. People are concerned with Europe in economic decline, with the possibility of a second dip of an American recession. How do we get growth back in this economy? The president’s not even speaking to this issue. After some of the panel acknowledging that anything President Obama has proposed to try to get our economy back on track has been knocked down by Republicans and Chris Matthews talking about how some fairness in our tax system has finally gotten the progressive base animated and supportive of what they’re hearing from the president, Matthews went to his “Matthews Meter” for the week, the question being whether “tax the rich” will get Obama votes in 2012. Three of them agreed that it was a smart move that were on the panel this week. Naturally, Gerson disagreed and then pulled out the angry black man card, or if not that, at least the heaven forbid anyone should be angry about the real class warfare we’ve seen waged on the poor and middle class card. GERSON: But I think Obama’s basic problem here, political problem, is changing his narrative completely. He ran the last time as the candidate of hope, inclusion, progress. Now he’s running as the candidate of anger and redistribution. That’s not a particularly good Democratic message. As Andrew Sullivan rightfully pointed out, a large part of the reason the president has finally resorted to just calling out Republicans instead of continuing to try to work with them was because Republicans have obstructed everything President Obama has tried to do and he can’t keep running on the meme of bipartisanship because he “looks like Lucy with the football.” Can I just say amen to Andrew Sullivan here with that statement and for pointing out to Gerson how ridiculous it is to say that President Obama should continue to pretend that Republicans are ever going to work with him on anything. Most of us on the left have been tired of the President continuing to pretend like the Republicans were not the obstructionists they obviously showed themselves to be quite a long time ago, but Gerson apparently thinks it’s still worth beating that dead horse here. Note to Michael Gerson. It’s exactly a good Democratic message that we’ve got horrible income disparity in the United States and asking the rich to pay their fair share and a call for some “shared sacrifice” is a message any Democratic candidate should be running on rather than asking for more austerity measures and tax breaks for the rich, which is apparently the Republican’s only plan to supposedly create jobs. The Republicans’ economic policies are nothing but a race to the bottom for what’s left of our dwindling middle class and American workers and Gerson’s message here pretty well resonates with one group of people, and that’s the far right of the Republican Party. And they’re not going to do anything to help President Obama get reelected no matter what he says on the campaign trail.
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Eighteen shot after crowd of 6,000 marches through capital, as returned president reportedly prepares to give televised address Scenes of bloodshed greeted the Yemeni president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, on the second day after his surprise return from Saudi Arabia, as government troops under the command of his son Ahmed opened fire on unarmed protesters marching through the capital. The latest round of bloodshed followed a week of violence in Sana’a in which more than 100 protesters were shot dead, some by government troops using anti-aircraft guns. Saleh was reported to be preparing to address the nation in a live televised speech on Sunday evening. “I return to the nation carrying the dove of peace and the olive branch,” Saleh was quoted as saying by state television on Friday shortly after calling for a truce between battling troops. But this did not stem the violence. At midday on Sunday a crowd of 6,000 men and women marched out of the tented protest encampment dubbed Change Square and into the capital shouting “Freedom! Freedom! The people want the murderer tried!” As they marched deeper into the streets of Sana’a, a volley of bullets fired by Republican Guard troops dispersed the protesters, who fled back to their camp. “We reached the roundabout and then a group of soldiers under the bridge just started shooting straight at us without warning – they were 10 metres away,” said Abulqawy Noman, a professor of chemistry at Sana’a University, as doctors in a field hospital held up an x-ray showing an image of his calf with a bullet lodged below the knee. “One of my friends was shot in the chest, he couldn’t speak, blood was pouring from his nostrils and his mouth.” In addition to the professor, 17 others were shot, one in the forehead and another in the square of his back. Outside the hospital gates a weeping muezzin gathered protesters for a mass prayer to mourn the death of 10 people on Friday, nine of them pro-opposition tribal fighters and one of them a journalist who died after being shot a few days earlier. Men jostled for position in front of the line of bodies wrapped in flags and laid out in the sun. Sana’a may be sliding out of government control. Many of the city’s neighbourhoods are now gripped by street battles and exchanges of shelling between Republican Guards led by Saleh’s son and a division of renegade soldiers known as firqa who have been backing the pro-democracy demonstrators. Protesters are caught in the middle as both sides hurl mortars and anti-aircraft missiles at each other in a battle for the capital. Saleh, who returned to Sana’a on Friday, was airlifted to Saudi Arabia in June for emergency treatment after a booby-trap explosion ripped through the mosque in his presidential compound. His prolonged stay in Riyadh gave false hopes to some that he might step down and allow a peaceful transition of power. Saudi princes and US diplomats are now scrambling to embrace a new political scenario with Saleh back in Yemen instead of having him cornered in a luxurious, marbled palace in Riyadh. Despite Saleh’s return, many diplomats still hope that the strongman will accept a deal drawn up by the Gulf monarchies in April offering him and his family immunity from prosecution in return for him stepping down within three months. He agreed three times to earlier drafts of the deal only to back out at the last minute. Ali Mohsin, the wayward general whose troops are fighting the loyalists, lashed out at Saleh in a statement on Saturday calling him a “sick, vengeful soul” and comparing him to the Roman emperor Nero, wasting time as his city burns. Mohsin, who once served as the president’s iron fist and has access to more than half of the country’s military resources and assets, defected to the opposition in March after 52 protesters were shot dead in a co-ordinated sniper attack. Many in the anti-Saleh camp accuse both Riyadh and Washington of supporting Saleh, who had once been their ally against al-Qaida’s Yemen-based wing. They accuse the west of adopting double standards by supporting the pro-democracy uprising in Libya but not in Yemen. “There are millions of us and only one of him,” said a female protester leader, Nura. “We ask the west and our neighbours in the Gulf to withdraws their support in order to stop the blood from running.” Hospitals are struggling to find the floor space, let alone provide care, for the hundreds suffering from bullet wounds and gas inhalation. Tariq Noman, a doctor working in a field hospital, told the Guardian that people were dying because of a shortage of medical supplies. The International Committee of the Red Cross has delivered wound-dressing material to the hospital but claims that it has had equipment confiscated and been denied access to people in need of first aid by government officials. Yemen Arab and Middle East unrest Middle East Protest Tom Finn guardian.co.uk
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