The Republicans Want to Cause a Bond Panic....

...just so that they can gut what remains of America's social safety net, and by extension its middle class.

And, as digby points out, along with Stan Collander,  the Dems appear to be perfectly willing to go along with it.

He says that just because the Republicans get their wish for a failure of a clean vote, it does not necessarily follow that they would vote for a "dirty" one either. He feels this vote is entirely a kabuki dance that's necessary (because of the polls saying people don't want to raise the debt ceiling) for the Republicans to record a "no" vote no matter what's in it.

So basically, the Democrats are sacrificing their position so that Republicans can be comfortable voting to raise the ceiling with spending cuts in a couple of months. If Collander is right, the Democrats are even stupider than usual. It's a twisted good cop/bad cop scene where the Republican base applauds its leaders for being tough guys and the Democratic base hand theirs a hankie and commiserates with their powerlessness. (And then the leadership goes out and has a cup of coffee and a donut, or in more common parlance -- Tipnronnie have a drink together.)

Digby has a point. That seems fits both bases quite nicely. The Republican base gets to celebrate a Republican victory, whereas the Democratic base gets to mourn one.

Collander does allude to an end game that seems to be making its way into the beltway ether:

Many Members publicly insist that a big “no” vote on a clean bill will have little to no effect on financial markets. But here’s another dirty little secret: There is a growing suspicion that, like what happened the day after the House rejected the Troubled Asset Relief Program in September 2008 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell by almost 7 percent, such a vote could quickly change market perceptions of the situation and have a substantial negative effect on interest rates and equity prices.

It’s even possible that’s part of the plan. Former Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag said last week that it is going to be difficult to get Members of Congress to agree to increase the debt ceiling without some kind of “turbulence” in the bond market. A big “no” vote on a debt ceiling increase bill could easily accelerate that type of disturbance in the financial force. Indeed, it might be what’s needed to precipitate it and the leadership may be counting on that happening.It’s even possible that’s part of the plan. Former Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag said last week that it is going to be difficult to get Members of Congress to agree to increase the debt ceiling without some kind of “turbulence” in the bond market. A big “no” vote on a debt ceiling increase bill could easily accelerate that type of disturbance in the financial force. Indeed, it might be what’s needed to precipitate it and the leadership may be counting on that happening.

 So that's where it stands. After all the bullshit about building confidence by cutting spending, we now have a Republican party that's preparing to DEMOLISH confidence by cutting spending.  Notice the common theme, there? It isn't about building a strong economy. It's about driving taxes to zero for their ultra-monied friends and clientele, while simultaneously driving wages to rock-bottom by making people so desperate that they'll accept absolutely anything.

Digby again:

I don't know what kind of sick nihilism makes a scenario like that remotely possible, but again, I don't believe it. We are talking about Big Money here and there are a lot of things that aren't working right in this country right now, but the greed mechanism isn't one of them. I don't believe "the markets" are going along with that plan. And I don't think even the Republicans are going to take that kind of risk going into an election year.

But if these people are actually planning a financial panic in order to destroy the safety net, can someone explain to me just how it is they can possibly be considered anything but criminals? This isn't a joke. Panics have a way of getting out of hand --- it's not like you can wave a magic wand and it stops. At the very least can we at least admit that every single sentence they've ever uttered about the desperate need for market "confidence" and "uncertainty" was unadulterated rubbish? (If this happens keep an eye on the short sellers because somebody's going to make money on it and you have to assume the people who caused it are among them ...)

The Democrats can turn this clean vote against the Republicans if they want to. The polls may say that the people don't want the debt ceiling raised, but they also don't want the government shut down, Medicare to get privatized and the economy to get worse. If the Democrats have even a modicum of guts they'll relentlessly hammer this vote home for the next two months as a sign of the Republicans' willingness to do anything to destroy Medicare, even destroy the economy. There are several months of negotiations ahead and they could tie this albatross around their necks right along with the dead Ryan plan if they want to. The real question is whether they want to.

Well, that's the rub, isn't it? I disagree with digby that this is implausible. It's extraordinarily plausible, and will pay off big for the Republicans and their buddies. Going along with this program of tax cuts WILL mean that the Democrats will get punished. The Republicans will get away with selling the cuts by lying about their economic impact and because they'll retain the support of their deluded base. The Dems will watch as their base simply doesn't bother to vote. The "swing" voters won't help the Dems, either; they'll go to whichever party can promise that they won't be homeless in two years, and the Republicans will be more than happy to swoop in with supply-side horseshit about how this engineered panic will ultimately help "job creators".


It's a lie, of course.  the whole POINT of this thing is to demolish the middle class and loot the wreckage left behind for every nickel. The middle-class will be poor, the poor will be destitute, and America's income distribution will look like something out of the third world. But, hey, that's what Republicans are ABOUT, now, isn't it?

Digby's right in saying that the Dems could turn this around. The Republicans are taking it on the chin for this anti-Medicare bullshit of theirs. The Dems could absolutely savage the Republicans for using this sort of game to threaten America's economy. They probably won't do it, though. If they had THAT sort of sense, they wouldn't have gotten their asses kicked last year after a recession which should have discredited the Republicans once and for all.

Edit: And, yes, the Republicans are probably gunning for a bond panic.  They've been hoping for one for years, because rising interest rates would give them the cover they need to insist that America's turning into Zimbabwe. When the current situation just isn't supporting your story, why not create the situation yourself?

Digby in The Hill

Huh, I'm a bit behind the times. Didn't realize that Digby was doing real-name pieces now. But she is, at The Hill, and it's a great piece about how the talking heads in the media just ain't gonna sympathize with the American people, because they aren't really part of the American people to begin with. They make too much money for that, and (as digby puts it) "[i]t’s very easy to prescribe “shared sacrifice” when you will not personally sacrifice anything at all."

(Yes, it's under her real name. You want it, it's there. She was, is, and will always remain "digby" to me, so that's the name I'll use.)

Illegal American Experimentation on Prisoners

Digby on a report from Physicians for Human Rights:

2010:

In the most comprehensive investigation to date of health professionals’ involvement in the CIA’s “enhanced” interrogation program (EIP), Physicians For Human Rights has uncovered evidence that indicates the Bush administration apparently conducted illegal and unethical human experimentation and research on detainees in CIA custody. The apparent experimentation and research appear to have been performed to provide legal cover for torture, as well as to help justify and shape future procedures and policies governing the use of the “enhanced” interrogation techniques. The PHR report, Experiments in Torture: Human Subject Research and Evidence of Experimentation in the ‘Enhanced’ Interrogation Program, is the first to provide evidence that CIA medical personnel engaged in the crime of illegal experimentation after 9/11, in addition to the previously disclosed crime of torture.

To those of us who have been following the torture story from the beginning it has long been obvious that there were those in the government who used the "enhanced interrogation" regime as an opportunity to experiment. We had evidence that they were documenting the efficacy of various techniques from the OLC memos. But this was more systematic than previously suspected.

Some of the sick details are here:

The PHR report indicates that there is evidence that health professionals engaged in research on detainees that violates the Geneva Conventions, The Common Rule, the Nuremberg Code and other international and domestic prohibitions against illegal human subject research and experimentation. Declassified government documents indicate that:

• Research and medical experimentation on detainees was used to measure the effects of large- volume waterboarding and adjust the procedure according to the results. After medical monitoring and advice, the CIA experimentally added saline, in an attempt to prevent putting detainees in a coma or killing them through over-ingestion of large amounts of plain water. The report observes: “‘Waterboarding 2.0’ was the product of the CIA’s developing and field-testing an intentionally harmful practice, using systematic medical monitoring and the application of subsequent generalizable knowledge.”

• Health professionals monitored sleep deprivation on more than a dozen detainees in 48-, 96- and 180-hour increments. This research was apparently used to monitor and assess the effects of varying levels of sleep deprivation to support legal definitions of torture and to plan future sleep deprivation techniques.

• Health professionals appear to have analyzed data, based on their observations of 25 detainees who were subjected to individual and combined applications of “enhanced” interrogation techniques, to determine whether one type of application over another would increase the subject’s “susceptibility to severe pain.” The alleged research appears to have been undertaken only to assess the legality of the “enhanced” interrogation tactics and to guide future application of the techniques.

Of course they used detainees as guinea pigs and of course they documented it. The question is, are they still doing it?

PHR’s report, Experiments in Torture, is relevant to present-day national security interrogations, as well as Bush-era detainee treatment policies. As recently as February, 2010, President Obama’s then director of national intelligence, Admiral Dennis Blair, disclosed that the US had established an elite interrogation unit that will conduct “scientific research” to improve the questioning of suspected terrorists. Admiral Blair declined to provide important details about this effort.

That doesn't sound good, does it?

No, it doesn't. It's terrible. It's unsurprising, but it's terrible. For all that I've been focusing on Israeli security and political issues lately, the fact remains that the United States really did go completely off the rails after 9/11, and the U.S. government has been responsible for reprehensible acts in the name of the "War on Terror".
(Which was won, by the by, by deciding not to use that phrase anymore. Which suggests it never really existed in the first place.)

The problem in Israel and America is fairly similar, though. It's about a lack of empathy. The Israelis have problems empathizing with their Palestinian counterparts as sentient, individual human beings. It's the same with many Americans attitudes the "terrists" with different countries of origin and cultural backgrounds to their own. And, critically, it's the same with the people that caused 9/11 in the first place. It's an issue with thinking of "America" or "Israel" or "the Jews" or "the Muslims" or anybody else...

...(China, anybody?)...

...as some amorphous entity filled with nameless, lifeless, inhuman "cells", not a collection of thinking individuals.

It's that attitude that blew up the World Trade Center.

It's that attitude that caused all the events that preceded that attack.

It's that attitude that is losing Iraq and Afghanistan.

And it's that attitude that allowed Americans to build their own little Unit 731.

Digby on Walking Away

Take a look:

Contemplating Chris Bowers' interesting discussion of the progressive bloc(k) strategy, Matt Yglesias points out what should be evident to anyone who's ever done a negotiation: whoever can walk away always has more power. It's just the way things work. That doesn't mean that you can't win if you want something more than the person with whom you're negotiating. There are lots of strategies. You can ask for far more than you're willing to settle for, you can play others against each other, you can try for a "win-win." But in the final analysis, it's always going to be much tougher to walk away from something everyone knows you really want and much easier if it doesn't matter much to you. That's life.

True. But it's not that simple.

Everybody wants a lot of things. In fact, they want so much that they're often contradictory. You want lots of services and low taxes. You want to eat your cake and have it too. You want to save your money but buy nice things. That's life, too.

The real question is "what do you want more?" Do you want health care expansion, or do you want a good health care expansion? Do you want broader coverage, or do you want to reduce the power of insurance companies? Sure, you want to "raise the poor", as digby says later, but how do you want to do that, exactly?

You also have to compare personal vs. public or political goals. Do you want personal access and wealth? Do you want to be "at the table" as a reliable supporter, or do you want to be influential but, perhaps, somewhat untrusted? Are you willing to sacrifice your personal career goals for something you truly believe in, or are your beliefs flexible?

It's that latter problem that has motivated my opinions on this fight. Chris Bowers and Matthew Yglesias can write all they wish about how the "progressive bloc has been ineffective" because progressives aren't as willing to walk away as Conservatives are. But let's be honest: they've been part of the problem. They have access. They have notoriety. They have identities in the notorious "Village", and careers that depends on such things.

They also know that if they don't play ball with the White House, all that could go away. That suffuses every word of their arguments; particularly Yglesias. It's one of the main reasons I've been so disappointed with them of late. It's why I asked the question that, unanswered, still guides my beliefs to this day: Is there a Democratic bill that they wouldn't support, as long is it was labelled "Health Care Reform"?

That's what it comes down to, really. Are they willing to walk away? Not "the progressive movement". Obviously some progressives are, or Jane Hamsher and the rest of the anti-HCR progressive group wouldn't exist. I mean you personally. Are you willing to give up influence, notoriety and access in favor of something greater? Digby's right. That's where power comes from. It comes from the ability to walk away.

They didn't, though. Yglesias, Bowers, Moulitsas, Klein et al—they haven't provided a single reason to ever believe that they would walk away. Not one. They are as reliable as the sunrise and therefore completely ineffectual. Worse still, when people did make that decision, Yglesias et al carved them up: over, and over, and over again ad nauseum. They didn't just go along with the White House's agenda, they enforced it. They deny their own agency, but one of the major reasons why progressives didn't walk away was because they would endure withering attacks if they did. I mean, for the love of all that's holy, we had Kos saying he was going to try to primary Dennis Kucinich! This over a bill that Kos himself said was unsupportable, back before he stood the risk of actually taking some serious heat over it!

(And I'm not even going to get into Nate Silver's issues.)

Conservatives understand that the power of their movement comes from being able to walk away from the Republicans. They did it to George H. W. Bush, and they've certainly done it at lower levels. They don't attack those who disagree from the right: those people actually get catered to! They don't employ the opposition's framing during the debate, as the Dems' lackeys so often do, and they recognize those lines that they are not willing to cross.

Digby says that maybe they should take a stand on a different issue:

But as Yglesias says, there are plenty of issues where it can work. In fact we saw it with Grayson's audit the fed initiative and earlier in the year they gave Pelosi and Emmanuel big, big headaches over the first war supplemental. There's power in legislators working together across party lines and being willing to play hardball.

I don't believe there is actually precious little power in "working together across party lines" in this case. (One of the things I disagree quite severely with Hamsher about, by the way.) You will just end up supporting their arguments, and they'll judo-flip you to force legislators to move in their direction. I do agree that there is enormous power in being willing to play hardball, but that must come making it absolutely clear that you aren't going to pull a 180 and support the bill when the White House tells you to. You not only must accept that they might get egg on their faces; you have to be willing to hurl the thing yourself, or be willing to stand by those that would.

So far, they have not demonstrated that they are. I hope things change. I hate having this incredible disappointment and discouragement about people that I once respected so highly. I do hope that, when the next time rolls around, Yglesias, Kos et all are willing to say "no, Mr. Obama, this is too important and we will not compromise on it."

But, then again, I hoped that in 2003, too.

Edit: Here's Hamsher's position on it:

[I]t’s also worthy of note that it’s hard for them to withstand the assault of liberal “pundits” who sneeringly derided their efforts as naive, futile and “purist.” These thoughtful folks should be proudly taking credit for their role in delegitimizing progressive opposition to the bill in liberal intellectual circles, much the same role that the same people played during the Iraq war. After all, it’s TNR’s stock in trade.

I’ll leave it to others to analyze how corporate cash was laundered through foundations to underwrite the efforts of various “opinion leaders” in the health care debate, but it definitely deserves more scrutiny.

I had been wondering why Yglesias had been so obnoxious in this post, saying "they say they agree with me now so that proves I'm right! Hah!" Now it makes sense, though, since he really hates the Iraq analogy. Probably because it sort of hits home—a lot of the people who supported that war did it for the same political ends that causes them to support LieberCare now.

Re-Edit: Look at Kucinich here. This is not a man who enthusiastically agrees with Yglesias and the defenders. This is not a man who thinks that this is even a good bill. This is a man who has, for whatever reason, been given no other choice but to knuckle under.

To claim him as anything else is just perverse.

(Edited slightly for clarity)